Category: Health Care

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PBPC on CBO Score for GOP Health Care Plan

  By Health Care, PA Budget and Policy Center, Statements

Marc Stier, Director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, made the following statement following the release of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scoring for the “American Health Care Act,” the GOP House healthcare proposal: The Congressional Budget Office released its evaluation of the Republican replacement for the Affordable Act (ACA), the American Health Care Act (AHCA) today and, not surprisingly, the news is grim for the nation, and by extrapolation, for Pennsylvania. The most disturbing information in the new report is the prediction that 24 million Americans will lose health insurance by 2026. That high number reinforces our tentative estimate that at least 1.1 million Pennsylvanians, and probably more, will lose health care coverage when the AHCA goes fully into effect. It also lends support to our view that 4,000 Pennsylvanians will die prematurely because a lack of insurance will make it impossible for them to get the health… Continue reading

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Analysis of Effects of House GOP Health Care Plan on Pennsylvania

  By ACA, Health Care, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts

The following is an analysis of how the recently-released House GOP proposal, the “American Health Care Act,” would affect Pennsylvanians: The health care legislation introduced by the House Republicans late yesterday is a devastating and dishonest attack on not only the Affordable Care Act, but on the Medicaid program. When fully implemented, it will have horrible consequences not only for the health of low- and moderate- income Pennsylvanians, but on long-term care for all but our wealthiest senior citizens. We will be providing a thorough analysis of the legislation soon. But our preliminary analysis suggests that when the program is fully implemented, around 1 million low- and moderate- income Pennsylvanians will lose health insurance; the state budget will lose at least $2.5 to $3 billion in funding; at least 60,000 Pennsylvanians will lose their jobs, and over 4,000 Pennsylvanians per year will die prematurely. Some key points: The bill would… Continue reading

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Health care must be provided communally

  By Health Care, Published Op-Eds

This piece originally ran in Newsworks on January 26, 2017. You can find the original here.  Every once in a while, when I write something in defense of the Affordable Care Act, or point out, as the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center recent reported, that repealing it will lead 1.1 million Pennsylvanians to lose their insurance and 3,425 to die each year as a result, someone comments, “I pay for my own health insurance. Why should I pay taxes for anyone else’s?” I often ignore those comments for two reasons. First, unless the writer has an individual income over $200,000, or a family income over $250,000, he or she is not paying taxes for the ACA. And, second, if someone doesn’t share the notion that we all have a moral responsibility to guarantee that everyone has access to high-quality, affordable health care, I’m not sure what I can say to change their… Continue reading

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Devastation, Death, and Deficits:The Impact of ACA Repeal on Pennsylvania

  By ACA, Health Care, PA Budget and Policy Center, Policy reports

The Affordable Care Act of 2010 is one of the most important pieces of domestic legislation enacted since the 1960s. It has had a dramatic impact in reshaping the provision of health care in the United States at a time when health care amounts to 18% of the United States economy. This report aims to quantify the benefits of the ACA to Pennsylvanians, in part by showing just how costly repeal of it will be. Click here to print or read full screen.   Continue reading

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What ACA Repeal Means in Pennsylvania

  By ACA, Health Care, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts

We have seen politics in America take strange turns in the last few years, turns that often seem to reflect an almost total disregard of the basic facts of political and economic life. It is critical that we don’t allow this to happen in the debate about the Affordable Care Act. The consequences of repealing the ACA in Pennsylvania will be not only devastating, but deadly. We at PBPC are working on a detailed report about the consequences of repealing the ACA in our state. It will be ready soon. But the preliminary information we have compiled is so horrifying that we don’t want to wait to give you the broad outlines of what we are finding: ACA repeal will cause over 1 million Pennsylvanians to lose health insurance.Many of our fellow citizens will face dire health consequences for lack of health insurance as a result. ACA repeal will be… Continue reading

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New Data, Good News: Health Care

  By Health Care, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts, Pennsylvania, US

Most news is bad news. And political campaigns are more likely to flag what is wrong with our country than what is right with it. So, it’s not surprising that in the heat of a presidential election, we are more focused on what is wrong with our country than what is right with it. But as the federal government updates its statistics on income, poverty, and health care this week, we can take a moment to appreciate the good news—government at the federal and state level has been increasingly successful at encouraging prosperity. We start today with health care. The Affordable Care Act remains controversial and even those of us who support it recognize that further reforms are needed to guarantee that quality health care remains affordable to everyone. There can be little doubt that the ACA is working in Pennsylvania and beyond. Between those who bought health insurance on… Continue reading

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Take the Money for Medicaid

  By Health Care, Pennsylvania, Public Policy

Originally published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, February 11, 2013 By Valerie Arkoosh and Marc Stier Imagine a new federal program guaranteed to provide Pennsylvania with $43.3 billion between 2013 and 2022 for repairs to roads and bridges. Imagine that the program is paid for entirely by the federal government for the first three years. After that, Pennsylvania will have to put in $4 billion. Imagine that despite the expenditure, Pennsylvania saves a greater amount because the new federal funding would replace almost $4 billion in state funding. And imagine that the new funding would create tens of thousands of jobs in the state and generate millions of dollars in state and local tax revenue. Can anyone imagine Gov. Corbett turning down this deal? Of course not. Yet in his budget address Tuesday, Corbett did just that, failing to embrace $43.3 billion from the federal government over 10 years to expand… Continue reading

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Single Payer Advocates Can’t Make Up Their Minds About the Problem With the ACA

  By Health Care

Ever since the Affordable Care Act was passed, the left wing critics of it—especially the single payer advocates—have said, wrongly, that it was passed at the behest of the insurance companies and that subsidies in the exchanges are a handout to them. This was never true for few reasons, not least because the insurance companies spend at least a hundred and forty million or so opposing the ACA. Now, to my great surprise, one of the leaders of the single payer movement in PA, Chuck Pennacchio, has posted an article on Facebook in which he seems to entirely reverse direction without noticing it. Continue reading

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David Brooks Gets It Wrong About Education and Health Care

  By Education, Health Care, Taxation

David Books outdid himself today in writing post about education and health care that is completely misleading about improvements in both in the last fifty years and about the limits of productivity increases in both areas. It takes more than a FB status update to explain why. Read this blog post for details. The short story though, is that if you really think there haven’t been any improvements in either education or medical care in this country since 1960, you don’t deserve to have your opinions appear on the op-ed page of The New York Times. And if you think that huge productivity increases in labor intensive fields are possible, then maybe you should explain why NY Times columnists do only two columns a week instead of the three they did in the 1960s. Continue reading