Things to Read on the Morning of March 9, 2014

Must-Reads:

1. Dylan Scott: It Looks Like Obamacare Is Finally Making Progress With The Uninsured: “A new survey has found that 27 percent of people who signed up for coverage in February were previously uninsured…. ‘There’s every reason to believe that early enrollment skewed towards the already insured and that the uninsured will sign up later’, Larry Levitt [said]…. ‘People who were insured and had their old non-compliant policies cancelled were no doubt first in line in the new marketplaces, along with some people with pre-existing conditions who were locked out of the market before’. Another finding from the survey also suggests there could be a March surge in uninsured people enrolling in coverage: 65 percent of respondents who said they hadn’t enrolled yet but planned to before March 31 were uninsured…. The survey doesn’t account for Medicaid enrollees…. 31 percent of uninsured Americans have an income below 138 percent of the federal poverty level — the threshold for expanded Medicaid under the law in states that chose to participate…. Between 1.1 million and 1.8 million new enrollees could be attributed to the law through January…”

2. Jason Furman: Poverty and the Tax Code: “The creation and expansion of these tax credits have served as a powerful demonstration that the old adage ‘a program for the poor is a poor program’ need not always be true…. There has been a long-standing torrent of fierce criticism of the EITC and the partially refundable child tax credit, including claims of fraud, criticism of beneficiaries who end up not paying any federal taxes (going so far as to call them “lucky duckies”), and strong resistance to extending or expanding the benefits…. But… the political success of these credits over the years is also likely a function both of the inherent work requirement and the fact that they are administered through the tax code, which is a universal system… not just tax credits for one section of the population, but… provide broader insurance to a much wider set of beneficiaries over time…. Over an 18-year period, because of fluctuations in income, more than half of taxpayers benefitted from the EITC. (As an aside, a similar point applies to other programs like nutrition assistance or unemployment insurance)…. The relative size and scope of the tax credits compared to traditional means-tested programs underscores the extent to which poverty-alleviation programs now emphasize employment…”

Should-Reads:

1. James Kwak: Posturing from Weakness: “President Obama’s 2015 budget proposes a number of tax increases…. Limiting the tax savings on deductions to 28 percent of the deduction amount…. Requiring a minimum 30% income tax on income less charitable contributions…. Reducing the estate tax exemption…. Eliminating tax preferences for retirement accounts once someone’s account balance is enough to fund a $200,000 annuity…. But, of course, they have no chance of actually happening. If President Obama really wanted these outcomes, there was a way to get them. He could have let the Bush tax cuts expire for good a year ago, making high taxes on the rich a reality. Then, a year later, he could have proposed a middle-class tax cut…. But no. Instead, he locked in low marginal rates, including low rates on dividends, that cannot be budged so long as Republicans have 41 votes in the Senate. And today he’s left waving a ‘roadmap’ that has no chance of becoming reality…”

2. Richard Mayhew: Complexity is costly: PA Medicaid Expansion: “Republican Tom Corbett, has filed an 1115 waiver application with Health and Human Services for the Arkansas style ‘private option’ expansion…. HHS is quite willing to grant significant flexibility for Medicaid expansion waivers as long as there is no poor-shaming and everything in the waiver has some logical connection to either health quality or health costs. The last requirement for job search with termination of coverage if an individual fails to meet the requirements does not meet the [WTF?!?!] for health quality or health costs. The Corbett Adminstration seems to have been quietly hit with a clue stick, and they’re proposing a new alternative that is structured as an incentive instead of a punishment.  Newly enrolled individuals would be able to see their premiums reduced if they worked…. If this is approved ( I don’t think it will be), then this will be an expensive fiasco.  It is an added layer of complexity to an already complex population base. Complexity costs money in general, and the job search step-function of eligibility and benefit design means claims will have to be regularly manually re-processed. That is expensive.”

Laura Tyson: “Ultimately, whether the benefits of artificial intelligence and digitization are distributed broadly or continue to accrue to a small minority of the population will depend not on the design of smart machines, but on the design of smart policies” | Kevin Drum: Obamacare Rate Shock Probably Affects Less Than 1 Percent of the Country |

Should Be Aware of:

1. David Atkins: Let’s get straight who is paying for whom: “Two data points today, side by side. First: http://delong.typepad.com/.a/6a00e551f08003883401a3fcd01eee970b-pi. Second: http://delong.typepad.com/.a/6a00e551f08003883401a3fcd01f01970b-pi. I’m no economic royalist, preaching about producers and parasites. I don’t much care. I believe that we’re all one big human species, and that every single human being on earth deserves basic dignity and economic protection. But it’s very, very tiresome to watch a bunch of delusional narcissists taking urban tax dollars to pay for their rural infrastructure and safety nets (most SNAP recipients are white, remember) elect a bunch of jokers to Congress who prevent the people who actually pay the bills from solving big problems like climate change, healthcare, privacy, wealth inequality, poverty, and financial corruption. All while whining that ‘those people’ in big cities are stealing their hard-earned munnee from Real ‘Murica.”

2. Thoreau: Zdravstvuyte, Pyotr. Poluchili li vy zapisku?: “I… spen[t] today at a conference on teaching…. I was in a session where most of the participants… people at least one step removed from the classroom… were all talking about some set of standards…. This is the first I’ve ever heard of these standards, and nobody that I know at other schools has ever mentioned having to comply with these standards…. There are apparently a lot of people (not necessarily at my school) who work on producing reports to show compliance. Occasionally I do get vague rumblings of something that sounds vaguely sort of maybe related, and when we slap together a somewhat fictional and near-gibberish report in response, they thank us profusely, but I’ve never heard anything specific to these standards. It seems to be some exercise for people who aren’t in the classroom to demonstrate that what is happening in the classroom is really good and important, even though they have no idea what we are up to…. On one level I suppose I should be grateful that I am spared from this, and should come away reminded that there is no point in attending a teaching conference.  On another level, I felt like I was in a meeting of Soviet planners, eagerly crunching fictional data passed to them by factory managers who knew that the only real crime is failing to tell them what they want to hear.  I suspect that sufficiently large corporations are pretty much the same. I will add that many people at the conference were convinced that fad adoption is the only thing that will save us…”

And:

Francesco Saraceno: Wanted: German Inflation | Sparse Thoughts of a Gloomy European Economist | Bill Gardner: President Obama’s 2015 Budget for Health Research is a Disaster | John Quiggin: John Quiggin » Capabilities as menus: A non-welfarist basis for QALY evaluation |