Social Security’s annual Trustees Report just came out and it shows that Social Security ran a gigantic $9 trillion deficit between last year and this year. The system’s long-term unfunded liability is now $43 trillion, up from $34 trillion last year.
Employers are paying hospitals more than twice as much as what Medicare pays. At some hospitals they are paying four times as much. So, who’s to blame? John Goodman says employers are to blame.
No other savings vehicle can top an HSA. Not a 401(k) plan. Not an IRA. Not even a Roth IRA. For starters, deposits to an HSA escape both income and payroll taxes. That can’t be said of the other three options. During the retirement years, health expenses are going to be larger than what most people realize. HSA withdrawals can be used to pay premiums for Medicare Part B, Part C and Part D, as well as any out-of-pocket medical expenses.
Accountable Care Organizations are President Obama’s attempt at stealth privatization — 10.4 million people think they are in a fee-for-service system, when in reality their doctors have economic incentives to reduce care. And it has been illegal for doctors to inform their patients of this fact. John Goodman and Laurence Wedekind explain the development and what Medicare director Seema Verma is doing about it.
Health Savings Account plans are the fastest growing product in the health insurance marketplace. At last count, 25 million Americans were covered by an HSA plan and the account balances totaled $50 billion. That’s on a par with the gross domestic product of the entire state of Alaska. It’s more than the GDP of South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming or Vermont.
Why do people save for retirement? Or buy life insurance? Or home owners and other kinds of insurance? In all cases the objective is the same: to smooth out life time consumption. We don’t want our normal consumption of goods and services to be interrupted by retirement or the myriad accidents that could befall us.
In the face of cash constraints, job market uncertainty and other uncertainties planning is very difficult, however. And it isn’t helped much by conventional financial advice. New breakthroughs in computer programming by Prof. Laurence Kotlikoff help solve these problems.
Senior citizens are discriminated against by a number of unwise public policies.
The Cato Institute hosted a celebration of a book John Goodman and Gerald Musgrave a quarter a century ago. Commenters included Sen. Bill Cassidy, MD, (R-LA); Paul B. Ginsburg, Leonard D. Schaeffer Chair in Health Policy Studies, Brookings Institution; and David A. Hyman, Coauthor, Overcharged; Professor of Law, Georgetown University; and Michael F. Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies, Cato Institute.
If AOC is the voice of the left, New York Times writer Paul Krugman is its brain. But here is the catch. Krugman rarely ever attempts to introduce readers to the economic way of thinking. Day after day, in column after column, he reinforces the view that left-wingers don’t need to read textbooks or study economic models. Their gut instincts will do just fine.
A new study shows that the benefits of tax reform vary widely – and the most important reason is a new $10,000 limit on itemized deductions for state and local taxes. As a result, high-tax states which tend to be Democratic had smaller gains than low tax states which tend to be Republican. For example, Among the 12 states where the average household has the smallest gain from tax reform, 10 are reliably blue states in presidential elections. Among the 10 states where the average household had the highest gains from tax reform, half are reliably red states in presidential elections.