Things to Read at Dinnertime on April 2, 2014
Must-Reads:
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Jared Bernstein: Paul Ryan’s New Budget: Orwell Would Blush: “It’s a lot like his old ones, as you’d expect, with a few new wrinkles…. Here’s pretty much all you need to know: his cuts to Pell grants–college tuition assistance for students from low-income families–comes under the section called ‘Expanding Opportunity’. ‘Strengthening the safety net’ is actually block granting SNAP (food stamps) and Medicaid. ‘Ending cronyism’ is repealing Dodd-Frank. Orwell would blush.”
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Aaron Carroll: Look, exchanges are either evil, or they’re not.: “From the Fiscal Year 2015 House Budget Resolution: ‘Starting in 2024, seniors (those who first become eligible by turning 65 on or after January 1, 2024) would be given a choice of private plans competing alongside the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program on a newly created Medicare Exchange. Medicare would provide a premium-support payment either to pay for or offset the premium of the plan…. The Medicare recipient of the future would choose, from a list of guaranteed-coverage options, a health plan that best suits his or her needs. This is not a voucher program. A Medicare premium-support payment would be paid, by Medicare, directly to the plan or the fee-for-service program to subsidize its cost. The program would operate in a manner similar to that of the Medicare prescription-drug benefit…. This approach to strengthening the Medicare program——which is based on a long history of bipartisan reform plans——would ensure security and affordability for seniors now and into the future….’ If I took this language, swapped in ‘Americans’ for ‘seniors’ and ‘ACA’ for ‘Medicare’, this would almost be a perfect description of the state exchanges that are part of the Obamacare…. I know that exchanges are, to some conservatives… preferable… [to] the single-payer-like Medicare system we have… that these same exchanges are less preferable… than the status quo ante. What I don’t understand, however, are people who declare community-rated, guaranteed-issue exchanges some unholy end-of-days totalitarian plan to destroy freedom when they’re part of the ACA, yet completely awesome and budget-saving when they’re part of Medicare.”
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Austin Frakt: Job lock: Conclusion: “The ACA only addresses certain, but not all, conditions that give rise to job lock and not completely. If you combine this fact with the prior paragraph, you’ll notice that we have a situation in which we neither fully know the extent of the problem nor the extent to which the ACA will address it. In their 2002 literature review, Gruber and Madrian also commented on the fact that we do not know the full welfare implications of job lock. As best I can tell, the literature has not advanced…. Nevertheless, the labor market distortions of the pre-ACA insurance landscape… are real… weighed heavily on the minds of economists… motivated some of the provisions of the health reform law.”
Should-Reads:
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Jared Bernstein: The Path to Full Employment: “Making Jobs a National Priority: 8:50am Underwriter Remarks John Irons, Managing Director, Foundation Initiatives, the Rockefeller Foundation, @jsirons: 8:55am Keynote, Larry Summers, former U.S. Treasury Secretary, Harvard University President Emeritus, @LHSummers: 8:55am Panel: Moderated by Jared Bernstein: Dean Baker, Co-Founder, Center for Economic and Policy Research, @DeanBaker13: Laurence Ball, Professor of Economics, Johns Hopkins University and Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, @nberpubs: Kevin Hassett, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, @AEI: Harry Holzer, Professor of Public Policy, Georgetown Public Policy Institute, @Georgetown: Susan Houseman, Senior Economist, Upjohn Institute for Employment Research: LaDonna Pavetti, Vice President for Family Income Support Policy, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, @CenterOnBudget: 11:00am Closing Remarks by Jared Bernstein”
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Nicholas Bagley: The Legality of Delaying Key Elements of the ACA: “Encouraging a large portion of the regulated population to vio- late a statute in the service of broader policy goals — however salutary those goals may be — probably exceeds the limits of the executive’s enforcement discretion…. ‘An agency’s pronouncement of a broad policy against enforcement poses special risks that it has consciously and expressly adopted a general policy that is so extreme as to amount to an abdication of its statutory responsibilities.’ The ACA delays appear to be just such broad — and worrisome — policies…”
Should Be Aware of:
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Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: ECBs deflation paralysis drives Italy, France and Spain into debt traps: “The European Central Bank has let it happen…. Prices have been falling at a pace of 6.5pc in Greece, 5.6pc in Italy, 4.7pc in Spain, 4pc in Portugal, 3pc in Slovenia and nearly 2pc in Holland since September, based on my rough calculations (annualised) of Eurostat monthly data…. Frankfurt could force down the euro at any time by signalling a determination to do something about its predicament. It has chosen not to do so, hoping that a few dovish words spoken without conviction will somehow turn the global tide. It is hard to judge at what point deflation becomes embedded in the system…”
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John Graves and Jon Gruber: Obamacare Enrollment Is Far From Over: “Enrollment in the ACA is far from over now that March 31st has passed… millions of individuals will lose their insurance during 2014–and Obamacare will be there to catch them…. The ACA’s state Marketplaces, in contrast, provide a non-discriminatory home for those losing their insurance coverage…. For those seeing a sharp drop in income due to job loss, the tax credits available through the ACA exchanges can provide a much more affordable option than COBRA; in about half of the states, Medicaid will also be available for those suffering the largest income losses. The number of Americans that will eligible for these qualifying events is large. In 2012, for example, 7.6 million people lost coverage and became uninsured. Almost half of this group, or 3.4 million, cited loss of job as the reason for losing insurance; another 600,000 cited loss of student insurance upon graduation or due to aging out of parental coverage; another 200,000 cited divorce as the source of insurance loss; while 60,000 lose insurance because they move. All of these… trigger a special enrollment period .”
And: