This FAQ is a work in progress. All answers will be a list of links to posts in the TIE archives. You can participate by submitting questions. Better, you can even supply the answers if you do the work to search the archives yourself. User-supplied answers will be posted with attribution, if you wish.
ACA
Medicare
- What are some problems with Medicare spending?
- What are consequences of raising the Medicare retirement age?
- What’s good and bad about Medicare Part D?
- What’s good, bad, and ugly about premium support?
Medicaid
Cost Shifting
- To what extent do hospitals cost shift, or charge private payers more for shortfalls in public payment?
- How much cost shifting is due to the uninsured?
- How much cost shifting is there by physicians?
- How much cost shifting is there in the pharmaceutical industry?
Health Care Prices and Spending
- What is the effect of hospital market concentration on hospital prices?
- What are the consequences of insurer market power?
- What makes the US health care system so expensive?
- How does the US health system compare to that of other nations?
- What is “competitive bidding”? How does it work? Etc.
- Which controls health care costs better, public programs or private insurers?
- What does big pharma do?
Health Care Quality
Health Insurance
- Does health insurance save lives/improve health?
- What does increasing cost sharing (deductibles, copayments) do?
- How does health insurance distort the labor market (job lock)?
Health Care Delivery
- What does research tell us about the value of prostate cancer screening and treatment?
- Why isn’t emergency department care adequate health care?
The Value of Health Care
