The following originally appeared at The Upshot (copyright 2014, The New York Times Company). See also this, related post that reinforces my point. It’s a rare health
A second point that was cut from my piece at The Upshot reinforces the claim I made that congressional “doc fixes”—patches to the formula that would otherwise demand
A very good chart on the federal budget from The Committee for a Responsible Federal Government: @afrakt
Today’s chart comes from a new Health Affairs paper by Daniel Austin and colleagues. They simulate the effect of rising employee contributions for employer-sponsored insurance
The US fiscal year ends on September 30 and the government reaches its borrowing limit a few weeks later. Because there will be drama about
Here’s the key passage from the State of the Union transcript: On Medicare, I’m prepared to enact reforms that will achieve the same amount of
Charles Roehrig answers the question using his illuminating triangle of painful choices. In brief, Simplson-Bowles is a heap o’ pain. The final chart locates Simpson-Bowles
A nice, short post by Robert Dittmar makes a great point in a few charts. Here’s his chart, using Bureau of Economic Analysis data, of
The California Healthcare Foundation claims that the federal government spent half its revenue on health care in 2010. Is it true? Well, no. The report
I was already aware of four challenges to the economy and policy facing us on or about January 1, 2013: On January 1, 2013, the
Commenter “DreadGazebo”, a public finance economist, put some real numbers to my (not) double counting in Fraktopia sketch. His chart is to scale. Notes: This
Like so many before me, I’ve gone to my whiteboard to sketch the chart below. The bars represent two states of the federal budget of
