Marc Stier at Large

Published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sunday,  December 20, 2009 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09354/1022041-109.stm   A smaller and smaller percentage actually goes to health care, reports MARC STIER of Health Care for America Now Do you know where your health-insurance premiums go? Fifteen years ago, the answer to that question was easy. Whether you got insurance from a for-profit insurer, a nonprofit insurer or Medicare, the answer would about the same: 95 percent of your premiums (or, in the case of Medicare, your tax dollars) went for health-care benefits. Fast forward to now and things are very different. Continue reading

See two notes at the end, where I point to one unfinished part of this analysis and also show how my approach is similar to and different from that of Nate Sliver at 538. With the possibility that a public option won’t be part of the health care reform legislation passed this year, progressives are looking more closely at the rest of the legislation. And some of them have been worried by what they are seeing. For even when subsidies are applied in the Exchange, moderate income families will pay a substantial amount for health care in both premiums and out of pocket expenditures. Some progressive are asking how we can justify asking moderate income families to pay so much for health care? But, in fact, the health insurance program that would be created under the House legislation would be highly beneficial to moderate income families. Subsidized insurance under the Exchange… Continue reading

Just to let you know: I’m keep track of all the so-called progressive so-called organizations sending me emails saying we need to kill health care reform. In the future, when they jump on another issue campaign to build their email lists—and that is when you hear from them because basically that is all they do–I’m going to get out here, on Twitter, on Facebook my blog and anywhere else I can, a reminder that these are the people who care more about attracting your dollars with misleading appeals to ideological purity, then about doing something that actually makes life better for poor and working class people. Continue reading

I argued in my last post that we should stay the course and make the final bill as good as possible. This mostly means replacing some provision in the Senate bill with provisions form the House bill in four areas. I’ll discuss them and then turn to some good features of the Senate bill we want to keep. Continue reading

I want to report to you on where the health care bill is as of this moment. The news is not as good as I hoped it would be. But there is every reason to keep working hard to make this legislation as good as possible. Continue reading

I wrote this about three weeks ago as an op-ed for a local paper. But, by the time the editor got to it, the public option was in trouble in the Senate where it remains. It might be dead this year. But let’s not forget that the House voted for it. And a House-Senate conference committee will have to figure out how to merge the two bills. As we move closer to that moment, the public option, which has been counted out more than once before, may make a comeback. And the fundamental reason is that it just makes sense. That’s why public support for the public option remains high as 60 and 65 percent of the public think it is a good idea. Continue reading

We don’t yet know much about what’s in the compromise the Senate 10 has come up with. But what I’m hearing does not leave me enthused. Rather it leaves me worried. Continue reading