Halfway to Paying for Health Care Reform? A Growing Consensus for Taxing Health Insurance Benefits Produces Lots of Money

But do we want to pay for most of it with tax increases?This is a reprint of an April 22nd post.Yesterday in Senate Finance it was clear that changes to the tax treatment of employer-provided health insurance are on the table.I thought it important to revisit my earlier summary of just what such a tax change does toward raising the needed money for reform. Since I posted this, the most commonly

The $2 Trillion Offer to Reduce Health Care Costs—Now They've Done It!

First it was great to see the press coverage of the $2 trillion offer come back down to reality as the day wore on yesterday. From gushing over the “unprecedented” commitment to reform by these key stakeholder groups the news reports and editorials finally, by days end, reflected the fact that nothing is really promised or enforceable yet.Now we hear that these groups have to deliver specifics on

"Trust But Verify"--Health Care Stakeholders to Pledge $2 Trillion in Reductions

This from the Wall Street Journal on Sunday:Major health-care providers are planning to pledge Monday to President Barack Obama that they will work to reduce cost increases in the nation's health-care system by $2 trillion over the next decade, officials said…Groups representing hospitals, health-insurance companies, doctors, drug makers, medical-device makers and labor are joining in Monday's

An Open Letter to the Men and Women Over at the CBO--Hang In There!

Last November I did a post: To the Congressional Budget Office: Please Keep Playing it Straight!In it I said:I hope the CBO doesn't cave to political pressure and keeps doing its non-partisan down-the-middle job.If I hear the politicians whining and the special interests squealing about CBO's conclusions about how these cost containment "lite" proposals...don't save much money I know the CBO pros

"An Open Letter to the New National Coordinator for Health IT: Part 3 -- Certification As The Elephant in Health IT's Living Room"

by DAVID C. KIBBE and BRIAN KLEPPERIn the first and second parts of this series we talked about how and why there is no universal definition for the term "EHR." Instead there is a legitimate, growing debate about the features and functions that "EHR technologies" should offer physicians seeking to qualify for HITECH incentive payments. We explored the layers of network technology, suggesting that

A Side Deal on the Medicare Physician Fee Cuts? What Does That Say About the Chances for Health Care Reform?

John Reichard has dug deeper than anyone else into the Medicare physician payment problem in an important article in today's CQ HealthBeat.He reports that the Blue Dog Dems (about 50 House moderate and conservative deficit hawks) may be willing to give the docs a pass by not requiring offsets for a two-year patch for their upcoming fee cuts--including the 21% fee cut due on January 1st. They are

CBO Proving to be an "Obstacle" to Health Care Reform--I Hope They Don't Cave!

Looks like it's "in season" for shooting the messenger up on Capitol Hill!Senate Finance Chair Max Baucus was heard to complain this week about that pesky Congressional Budget Office (CBO) saying that, "The slight challenge we have is getting numbers and estimates from CBO,“ he went on, "Otherwise, health care reform is in jeopardy. The learning curve for all of us is fairly steep."Well Senator,