Econ 309 Medicare & Medicaid

For interest:  

• Medicaid sucks, and just gets suckier with the states' budget problems.  (New York Times, March 15, 2010)

  • Medicaid payment rates as a percent of average physician pay by state (Washington Post, July 24, 2012)

  • Medicaid saves lives!  (New York Times, July 26, 2012)  At a cost of about $1,000,000 per life saved

    • Check out what is happening with Arizona's Medicaid:  Arizona Budget Cuts Put Organ Transplants at Risk (NPR, November 17, 2010)

• Medicare Plan D has a long run deficit of $7.2 TRILLION!!

  • How Medicare Pays Physicians (Uwe Reinhardt, New York Times, December 3, 2010)

  • Medicare Plan D and Financial Protection for the Elderly (Gary Engelhardt and Jonathan Gruber, NBER July 2010)

• How bad is Medicare's funding?  

  • Bruce Bartlett (August 20, 2010)

  • Stanford G. Ross & David M. Walker (New York Times, August 15, 2010)

• How does Medicare decide how much to pay for a procedure?  "Relative Value Units" (RVUs).  (Slate, Sept. 2, 2009)

  • More on RVU's (Uwe Reinhardt, New York Times, December 10, 2010)

• People are idiots, just idiots.  "Tell government to keep its hands off my Medicare!"  (Slate, Sept. 28, 2009)

• What is the effect of mandatory waiting periods before children can get onto SCHIP?  (2008) Forum for Health Economics & Policy