Book | Foreign Remedies: What the Experience of Other Nations Can Tell Us about Next Steps in Reforming U.S. Health Care

David A. Rochefort and Kevin P. Donnelly. Foreign Remedies: What the Experience of Other Nations Can Tell Us about Next Steps in Reforming U.S. Health Care. New York: Routledge, 2012. 106 pp. $9.95 paper.

David Rochefort and Kevin Donnelly have produced a concise guide to the policy process for health reform using the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act of 2012 (PPACA) as their entrée into that sometimes enigmatic and often frustrating world of health policy and politics. The book is part of a series dedicated to framing disparate social issues and presenting them in accessible, debatable, and ultimately teachable formats. The series is targeted at undergraduates and, in this case, novices in health policy. But Rochefort and Donnelly contend that Foreign Remedies will be of interest to anyone new to health policy issues. They substantiate this contention in three ways. First, their writing is clear, direct, and well organized. Second, they provide a largely nonbiased presentation of health policy, politics, and health care reform. Third, they offer realistic and usable end-of-chapter questions for discussion and debate. Foreign Remedies provides a solid foundation for understanding health policy and politics.

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Call for Papers: Special Issue: Insurance Law and Policy

The following Special Issue will be published in Risks (http://www.mdpi.com/journal/risks/, ISSN 2227-9091), and is now open to receive submissions of full research papers or outstanding long reviews for peer-review and possible publication.

Special Issue: Insurance Law and Policy

Website: http://www.mdpi.com/si/risks/insurance_law_and_policy

Guest Editor: Professor Daniel Schwarcz

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 June 2013

You may send your manuscript now or up until the deadline.

Submitted papers should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere. We also encourage authors to send us their tentative title and short abstract by e-mail for approval to the Editorial Office at risks@mdpi.com.

This Special Issue will be fully open access. Open access (unlimited and free access by readers) increases publicity and promotes more frequent citations as indicated by several studies. Open access is supported by the authors and their institutes.

More information is available at http://www.mdpi.com/about/openaccess/.

Article Processing Charges (APC) will be fully waived for papers submitted  in 2013. However, a fee of 250 CHF may apply for those articles that need major editing and formatting and/or English editing.

More information can be found at http://www.mdpi.com/about/apc/.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors before submitting a manuscript:

http://www.mdpi.com/journal/risks/instructions/.

Manuscripts should be submitted through the online manuscript submission and editorial system at http://www.mdpi.com/user/manuscripts/upload/.

Risks (ISSN 2227-9091) is an international, peer-reviewed scholarly open access journal of research and studies on insurance and financial risk management. It publishes reviews, regular research papers, and communications. Risks is published by MDPI online quarterly, with its main Editorial Office located in Basel, Switzerland.

MDPI publishes several peer-reviewed, open access journals listed at http://www.mdpi.com/. The Editorial Board members, including several Nobel Laureates (http://www.mdpi.com/about/nobelists/), are all leading active scholars. All MDPI journals maintain rapid, yet rigorous, peer- review, manuscript handling and editorial processes. MDPI journals have increased their impact factors, see “2011 Newly Released Impact Factors”, http://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/235/.

In case of questions, please contact the Editorial Office at:

risks@mdpi.com.

Strassel: Obama’s Imperial Presidency – WSJ.com

The ObamaCare litigation is history, with the president’s takeover of the health sector deemed constitutional. Now we can focus on the rest of the Obama imperial presidency.

via Strassel: Obama’s Imperial Presidency – WSJ.com.

RealClearPolitics – Can Obama Force Nuns to Pay For Abortion-Inducing Drugs

Obamacare gives an HHS bureaucrat the unprecedented power to redefine what counts as “health care.” Right now, the president has decided that health care insurance must include contraception, including drugs that sometimes cause early pregnancies to abort. But it won’t stop there. The left has no problem redefining such basic concepts as “marriage” and “human life.” How long will it take into a second Obama term before HHS redefines “contraception” to include all chemical abortions?

via RealClearPolitics – Can Obama Force Nuns to Pay For Abortion-Inducing Drugs.

If You Like What You Have, Can You Keep It? PPACA and Employer-Sponsored Insurance | e21 – Economic Policies for the 21st Century

On Tuesday, January 31st, e21 held an event: “If You Like What You Have, Can You Keep It? PPACA and Employer-Sponsored Insurance.”

The event explored the implications of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), which was sold to the American people with the promise that “If you like what you have, you can keep it.” New academic research is clearly disproving this claim. The health law provides strong incentives for employers to move their sick and low-wage workers out of job-based plans and into publicly subsidized coverage. The result will be soaring costs for taxpayers, and millions of people losing the coverage they have today.

The event featured a presentation by Professor Daniel Schwarcz of the University of Minnesota Law School, a keynote speech by Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), and commentary from James C. Capretta.

via If You Like What You Have, Can You Keep It? PPACA and Employer-Sponsored Insurance | e21 – Economic Policies for the 21st Century.

Political Calculations: The Throughput of Abortion Providers

Having previously determined the number of abortions performed by the various types of abortion providers in the United States, we’re digging deeper into the Guttmacher Institute’s report on Abortion Incidence and Access to Services in the United States, 2008 to do some basic math to find out the typical throughput for the various types of abortion providers.

via Political Calculations: The Throughput of Abortion Providers.

In Search of Corporate Tax Incidence by Kimberly Clausing :: SSRN

This paper reviews existing theory and empirical evidence concerning corporate tax incidence. Corporate tax incidence is difficult to establish in theory since the burden of corporate taxation will depend on at least five crucial economic parameters. Further, even if these parameters can be agreed upon, theoretical models of corporate taxation neglect at least seven important considerations. Unfortunately, existing empirical work does not provide clarification, since much of the work either relies on inappropriate tests of general equilibrium tax incidence or suffers from data or methodological limitations. This paper attempts to improve knowledge in this area by undertaking a comprehensive series of analyses of multiple data sources on labor market outcomes and corporate taxation. The analyses are informed by open-economy general equilibrium corporate tax incidence models, and they focus on OECD countries over the period 1981-2009. Results indicate substantial uncertainty regarding what fraction of the corporate tax burden falls on labor, but there is no robust evidence that corporate tax burdens have large depressing effects on wages. These results stand in contrast to findings of other papers; I discuss several possible reasons for this divergence.

via In Search of Corporate Tax Incidence by Kimberly Clausing :: SSRN.

AEAweb: 2012 AEA Annual Meeting Papers

Jan 07, 2012 8:00 am, Hyatt Regency, Wrigley

Health Economics Research Organization

Contributed Papers in the Economics of Specialist Care, Agents and Brokers in Health Insurance, and Quality in the Nursing Home Market (I1)

Presiding: J. FITZMAURICE (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality)

The Role of Agents and Brokers in the Market for Health Insurance

PINAR KARACA MANDIC (University of Minnesota)

ROGER FELDMAN (University of Minnesota)

PETER GRAVEN (University of Minnesota)

Returns to Specialist Care: Evidence from Supply Shocks

JOSEPH DOYLE (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Quality Disclosure and Demand Rationing: Evidence from the Nursing Home Market

DAIFENG HE (College of William and Mary)

R. TAMARA KONETZKA (University of Chicago)

Discussants:

PHILIP COOPER (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality)

JOHN A. GRAVES (Harvard University)

AL DOBSON (Dobson DaVanzo & Associates)

via AEAweb: 2012 AEA Annual Meeting Papers.

AEAweb: 2012 AEA Annual Meeting Papers

Jan 07, 2012 8:00 am, Hyatt Regency, Grand Ballroom A

American Economic Association

The Effects of Personality on Labor Market and Health Outcomes (J1)

Presiding: JAMES HECKMAN (University of Chicago)

Transmission of Inequality – Maternal Skills, Behavior and Birth Outcomes

GABRIELLA CONTI (University of Chicago)

PIA DOVERN-PINGER (University of Mannheim, ZEW)

JAMES J. HECKMAN (University of Chicago)

ARIANNA ZANOLINI (University of Chicago)

Conscientiousness, Education, and Longevity of High-Ability Individuals

PETER A. SAVELYEV (Vanderbilt University)

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Constructing Economically Justified Aggregates: An Application to the Early Origins of Health

GABRIELLA CONTI (University of Chicago)

JAMES J. HECKMAN (University of Chicago)

HEDIBERT F. LOPEZ (University of Chicago)

REMI PIATEK (University of Chicago)

The Effects of Education, Personality, and IQ on Earnings of High-Ability Individuals

MIRIAM GENSOWSKI (University of Chicago)

JAMES J. HECKMAN (University of Chicago)

PETER A. SAVELYEV (Vanderbilt University)

Discussants:

HEATHER ROYER (University of California-Santa Barbara)

DONALD KENKEL (Cornell University)

FRANK WINDMEIJER (University of Bristol)

DEBORAH COBB-CLARK (University of Melbourne)

via AEAweb: 2012 AEA Annual Meeting Papers.

AEAweb: 2012 AEA Annual Meeting Papers

Jan 06, 2012 2:30 pm, Hyatt Regency, Regency B

American Economic Association

Innovation in Insurance Coverage for Higher Value Care: Theory and Evidence (I1)

Presiding: RICHARD FRANK (Harvard University)

Insuring the Health of Behavioral Consumers

KATHERINE BAICKER (Harvard University)

SENDHIL MULLAINATHAN (Harvard University)

JOSHUA SCHWARTZSTEIN (Dartmouth College)

Patient Cost-Sharing In Low Income Populations: Dispatch From Massachusetts

AMITABH CHANDRA (Harvard University)

JONATHAN GRUBER (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

ROBIN MCKNIGHT (Wellesley College)

A Randomized Controlled Trial of Copayment Elimination for Blood Pressure Medication

KEVIN VOLPP (University of Pennsylvania)

Benefit Plan Generosity and Productivity

MICHAEL CHERNEW (Harvard University)

THERESA GIBSON (Thompson-Reuters)

MARK FENDRICK (University of Michigan)

Discussants:

RICHARD FRANK (Harvard University)

DAVID CUTLER (Harvard University)

WESLEY YIN (Boston University)

DOUGLAS STAIGER (Dartmouth College)

via AEAweb: 2012 AEA Annual Meeting Papers.