Category: Equitablog

Richard Mayhew: $2.32 per person per month: “That is the great ‘risk corridor’ and ‘death spiral’ potential of one major Exchange carrier…

Highmark is an insurer for Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia.  They did well on the Exchanges this year by picking up over 100,000 new members in Pennsylvania.  However their actuaries were off by a little bit….

The state’s largest health insurer expects to lose $2.9 million on its exchange business in Pennsylvania from July 1, 2014, to June 30, 2015, according to a filing with the state Department of Insurance.

The actuaries, flying blind, were able to get within a large cup of coffee.  The article states that the major source of error was an underestimation of how much ‘catch-up’ care that previously uninsured individuals were consuming in the first three months of the open enrollment and active policy period.  I think that this error will narrow as the last minute surge of healthier and younger people who either signed up last week or are in the process of signing up now through the blue box enrollment period enter the acturial calculations.  But even if the revised projection is perfect, and the age/health composition of the Highmark risk pool does not get younger/healthier, their base rates have to increase by the cost of a good cup of coffee.

So how do we get death spiral stories out of that? We don’t.

Must-Reads:

1. Tim Duy: One For the Doves – Tim Duy’s Fed Watch: “this [employment] report fits nicely with the view outlined by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen earlier this week.  The labor market continues to improve at a moderate pace, a pace that remains insufficient to rapidly alleviate the issues of underemployment and low wage growth…. I think the real policy question should be: “why is the Fed engaged in reducing policy accommodation in the first place?” If Yellen is as concerned about the plight of labor as she purports to be, and if she and her colleagues are as committed to the 2% inflation target as they purport to be, then it seems like there is a strong argument for slowing the pace of the taper and using a rules based approach to take the risk of earlier-than-anticipated rate hikes off the table. In short, there seems to be a disconnect between the Fed’s rhetoric and the general policy direction.  They seem to have lost interest in speeding the pace of the recovery. Persistently low inflation, however, may push them into action.  St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard opened up the door to slowing the taper if inflation does not prove to be bottoming.”

2. Ryan Cooper: How to talk to a climate change contrarian (if you must): “Climate trolls make the link between climate change and extreme weather seem highly complicated. It isn’t…. Roger Pielke Jr… made his career repeatedly accusing climate scientists of scientific malfeasance for exaggerating the link between climate change and extreme weather…. Now the Breakthrough Institute, which is about as troll-y as they come with regards to climate change, is out with a true-to-form defense of Pielke, claiming that a new, devastating report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change entirely vindicates his approach to weather disasters…. When it comes to climate change and extreme weather, one simple fact takes care of the vast majority of what’s really important. You ready? Here it is, drum roll… More global warming means more extreme weather. To put it another way: Why do we care about climate change? Because it could cause serious, potentially catastrophic damage to our civilization. Extreme weather is a big part of how this will happen, according to the new IPCC report, which even Breakthrough and Pielke apparently agree is a good source: ‘Impacts from recent climate-related extremes, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, cyclones, and wildfires, reveal significant vulnerability and exposure of some ecosystems and many human systems to current climate variability (very high confidence). Impacts of such climate-related extremes include alteration of ecosystems, disruption of food production and water supply, damage to infrastructure and settlements, morbidity and mortality, and consequences for mental health and human well-being. For countries at all levels of development, these impacts are consistent with a significant lack of preparedness for current climate variability in some sectors.’ It’s really that simple. Organized science is highly confident that unchecked climate change will cause more extreme weather in the future, along with a grim parade of horribles. So we should stop the carbon pollution that causes it…. Economic damage is a completely cock-eyed way of looking at any of this. Poor countries are going to be hit hardest by climate change, but since they’re poor the damage isn’t going to be very ‘expensive’. As some dude named Nate Silver showed us back in 2009, you could delete something like three billion people off the face of the Earth and it would only add up to 5 percent of world GDP. What happened to that guy?”

3. Doug Henwood: GDP etc. in a deep funk: “By the way, here’s a graph of actual real U.S. GDP and its major components relative to their long-term (1970–2007) trendlines through the end of 2013. Note how things fell off a cliff in the recession. GDP, consumption, and government spending are all about 15% below where they’d be had they continued to grow in line with their long-term trend. (The hysteria over out-of-control government spending looks ludicrous in the light of this graph.) Investment is about 25% below where it “should” be. thanks largely to the housing collapse, though it’s staging something of a recovery. The other components have yet to begin closing the gap, because the recovery’s been so weak.”

4. Simon Johnson: The Too Big To Fail Subsidy Debate Is Over: “No doubt there is still a lot of shouting to come, but this week a team at the International Monetary Fund completely nailed the issue of whether large global banks receive an implicit subsidy courtesy of the American government…. Yes, there is an implicit subsidy that lowers the funding costs for very large banks… as much as 100 basis points… and yet this large scale of implicit support is small relative to the macroeconomic damage that is likely to be caused by the high leverage and incautious risk-taking that the subsidy encourages…. Still, as I explain in my NYT.com Economix column, I’m a big fan of this work because the Fund’s report is very good on how to handle and reconcile the main alternative methodologies for getting at the issue. The Fund offers an entirely reasonable approach that sets a very high quality bar.”

5. Henry Farrell: Piketty on Capital: A Footnote: “A correction: Dean Baker, in a somewhat grumpy review [of Piketty’s Capital, says: ‘Rather than continuing in this vein, I will just take one item that provides an extraordinary example of the book’s lack of attentiveness to institutional detail. In questioning his contribution to advancing technology, Piketty asks: “Did Bill [Gates] invent the computer or just the mouse?” Of course the mouse was first popularized by Apple, Microsoft’s rival. It’s a trivial issue, but it displays the lack of interest in the specifics of the institutional structure.’… I’ve been seeing the Gates quote circulate a bit among left-leaning friends, very likely because of its structural similarity to a notorious claim by a rather different big sweeping economics book [by David Graeber]…. Dean’s use of the Piketty quote is unfortunately rather misleading. What Piketty actually says…. ‘As for Bill Gates and Ronald Reagan, each with his own cult of personality (Did Bill invent the computer or just the mouse? Did Ronnie destroy the USSR single-handedly, or with the help of the pope?), it may be useful to recall that the US economy was much more innovative in 1950-1970 than in 1990-2010, to judge by the fact that productivity growth was nearly twice as high in the former period as in the latter, and since the United States was in both periods at the world technology frontier, this difference must be related to the pace of innovation.’ In other words, Piketty isn’t claiming that Bill Gates invented the computer, or the mouse, any more that he’s claiming that Saint Ronald went in there like Rambo with his missile launcher (with or without the help of trusty sidekick JP-II) to bring the Soviet Union to its knees. He’s engaging in sarcastic hyperbole to illustrate the ludicrous way in which popular wisdom attributes vast historical changes to the intervention of singular, godlike culture heroes. This is quite unambiguous in context, especially as Piketty has talked some pages before about Gates’ actual role…. Taken out of context, as it is in Baker’s review, it wrongly suggests that Piketty is ignorant or sloppy to a quite extraordinary degree…. I don’t think that this is deliberate dishonesty on Baker’s part… this kind of mistake can happen… there but for the grace of God…. But Baker’s misattribution to Piketty of a bewilderingly stupid-sounding claim that Piketty obviously does not make is the kind of thing that could go viral (and already is going semi-hemi-quasi viral). Thus, I think, it’s worth pointing out that it’s just not so…”

Continue reading “Things to Read on the Evening of April 5, 2014” →

Henry Farrell: Piketty on Capital: A Footnote: “A correction…

…Dean Baker, in a somewhat grumpy review [of Piketty’s Capital, says:

Rather than continuing in this vein, I will just take one item that provides an extraordinary example of the book’s lack of attentiveness to institutional detail. In questioning his contribution to advancing technology, Piketty asks: “Did Bill [Gates] invent the computer or just the mouse?” Of course the mouse was first popularized by Apple, Microsoft’s rival. It’s a trivial issue, but it displays the lack of interest in the specifics of the institutional structure….

I’ve been seeing the Gates quote circulate a bit among left-leaning friends, very likely because of its structural similarity to a notorious claim by a rather different big sweeping economics book [by David Graeber]…. Dean’s use of the Piketty quote is unfortunately rather misleading. What Piketty actually says….

As for Bill Gates and Ronald Reagan, each with his own cult of personality (Did Bill invent the computer or just the mouse? Did Ronnie destroy the USSR single-handedly, or with the help of the pope?), it may be useful to recall that the US economy was much more innovative in 1950-1970 than in 1990-2010, to judge by the fact that productivity growth was nearly twice as high in the former period as in the latter, and since the United States was in both periods at the world technology frontier, this difference must be related to the pace of innovation.

In other words, Piketty isn’t claiming that Bill Gates invented the computer, or the mouse, any more that he’s claiming that Saint Ronald went in there like Rambo with his missile launcher (with or without the help of trusty sidekick JP-II) to bring the Soviet Union to its knees. He’s engaging in sarcastic hyperbole to illustrate the ludicrous way in which popular wisdom attributes vast historical changes to the intervention of singular, godlike culture heroes. This is quite unambiguous in context, especially as Piketty has talked some pages before about Gates’ actual role…. Taken out of context, as it is in Baker’s review, it wrongly suggests that Piketty is ignorant or sloppy to a quite extraordinary degree…. I don’t think that this is deliberate dishonesty on Baker’s part… this kind of mistake can happen… there but for the grace of God…. But Baker’s misattribution to Piketty of a bewilderingly stupid-sounding claim that Piketty obviously does not make is the kind of thing that could go viral (and already is going semi-hemi-quasi viral). Thus, I think, it’s worth pointing out that it’s just not so.

Simon Johnson: The Too Big To Fail Subsidy Debate Is Over: “No doubt there is still a lot of shouting to come…

…but this week a team at the International Monetary Fund completely nailed the issue of whether large global banks receive an implicit subsidy courtesy of the American government…. Yes, there is an implicit subsidy that lowers the funding costs for very large banks… as much as 100 basis points… and yet this large scale of implicit support is small relative to the macroeconomic damage that is likely to be caused by the high leverage and incautious risk-taking that the subsidy encourages…. Still, as I explain in my NYT.com Economix column, I’m a big fan of this work because the Fund’s report is very good on how to handle and reconcile the main alternative methodologies for getting at the issue. The Fund offers an entirely reasonable approach that sets a very high quality bar.”

**Tim Duy:** One For the Doves – Tim Duy’s Fed Watch: “this [employment] report fits nicely with the view…

outlined by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen earlier this week.  The labor market continues to improve at a moderate pace, a pace that remains insufficient to rapidly alleviate the issues of underemployment and low wage growth…. I think the real policy question should be: “why is the Fed engaged in reducing policy accommodation in the first place?” If Yellen is as concerned about the plight of labor as she purports to be, and if she and her colleagues are as committed to the 2% inflation target as they purport to be, then it seems like there is a strong argument for slowing the pace of the taper and using a rules based approach to take the risk of earlier-than-anticipated rate hikes off the table. In short, there seems to be a disconnect between the Fed’s rhetoric and the general policy direction.  They seem to have lost interest in speeding the pace of the recovery.

Let me first protest about the framing: it is not real inflation-adjusted risky interest rates that have been coming down for three decades: it is safe nominal interest rates, and even more so safe nominal interest rates that have been coming down (as the exaggerated early 1980s inflation premium has been wrung out). If we had a 4%/year inflation target in the North Atlantic, or if we had the gaps between expected returns on risky and safe nominal assets that back in the 1990s we thought of as normal, we would not have a big problem at all.

And I am still waiting for an argument as to why the obvious solution is a one-time permanent move to a 4%/year inflation target or a 6.5%/year nominal GDP growth target. Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Michael Weber (2013) provide one such argument, but I do not think it is strong enough to reverse what I see as a strong presumption that the right inflation target is 4%/year.

Continue reading “Why Not a 4%/Year Inflation Target? Or a 6.5%/Year Nominal GDP Growth Target: Friday Focus: April 4, 2014” →

Ryan Cooper: How to talk to a climate change contrarian (if you must): “Climate trolls make the link between climate change and extreme weather seem highly complicated…

…It isn’t…. Roger Pielke Jr… made his career repeatedly accusing climate scientists of scientific malfeasance for exaggerating the link between climate change and extreme weather…. Now the Breakthrough Institute, which is about as troll-y as they come with regards to climate change, is out with a true-to-form defense of Pielke, claiming that a new, devastating report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change entirely vindicates his approach to weather disasters….

Continue reading “Afternoon Must-Read: Ryan Cooper: How to Talk to a Climate-Change Contrarian” →

Bureau of Labor Statistics: Employment Situation Summary: “Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 192,000 in March…

…and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 6.7 percent…. In March, the number of unemployed persons was essentially unchanged at 10.5 million, and the unemployment rate held at 6.7 percent…. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more), at 3.7 million, changed little in March…. The labor force participation rate (63.2 percent) and the employment-population ratio (58.9 percent) changed little over the month…. The number of persons employed part
time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was little changed….

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 192,000 in March. Job growth averaged 183,000 per month over the prior 12 months…. The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls increased by 0.2
hour in March to 34.5 hours, offsetting a net decline over the prior 3 months…. In March, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls edged down by 1 cent to $24.30…. Over the year, average hourly earnings have risen by 49 cents, or 2.1 percent…

Over at Health Law Prof blog: Ann Marie Marciarille: *REINVENTING AMERICAN HEALTH CARE by Ezekiel Emanuel:

The best joke in Zeke Emanuel’s new book is told near the beginning, but referenced throughout–which makes the joke yet richer and more multi-layered by the book’s dense 349 page end. It goes like this: There are two people who actually understand the American health system, and both Victor Fuchs and Alain Enthoven are 90 and 83 years of age, respectively. I don’t care if Zeke Emanuel wrote the joke himself because what he did write is the book that should make all of us a little less fearful….

[It] is two shorter books, intertwined. Several chapters… could be a standalone book as a primer on the American health care system, or what the anthropologist Clifford Geertz described as “thick description.” More than an entry-level overview of the status quo, these chapters (particularly Chapter Two on “Financing Health Care”) represent something I might assign to my health law students.

Continue reading “Ann Marie Marciarille Reads Zeke Emmanuel on the ACA: Thursday Focus: April 3, 2014” →

Doug Henwood: GDP etc. in a deep funk: “By the way…

here’s a graph of actual real U.S. GDP and its major components relative to their long-term (1970–2007) trendlines through the end of 2013. Note how things fell off a cliff in the recession. GDP, consumption, and government spending are all about 15% below where they’d be had they continued to grow in line with their long-term trend. (The hysteria over out-of-control government spending looks ludicrous in the light of this graph.) Investment is about 25% below where it “should” be. thanks largely to the housing collapse, though it’s staging something of a recovery. The other components have yet to begin closing the gap, because the recovery’s been so weak.