Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report Feature Highlights Recent Blog Entries

"Blog Watch" offers readers a roundup of health policy-related blog posts.

The American Prospect's Ezra Klein notes that some unions oppose proposals being considered to tax health care benefits.

John Iglehart of the Health Affairs Blog looks at a new Business Roundtable report that looked at the difference in "value" of U.S. health spending compared with other nations and how it impacts competition.

Greg D'Angelo of the Heritage Foundation's The Foundry says changing the tax treatment of health care is a bipartisan issue.

Mike Feehan on Insure Blog explains why certain health plans are regulated by ERISA, in relation to the Healthy San Francisco plan.

Greg Scandlen on John Goodman's Health Policy Blog looks at out-of-pocket spending by Medicare beneficiaries and says Medicare is the source of "massive 'underinsurance,'" based on the common definition of spending more than 10% of one's income on health care.

Marilyn Werber Serafini of the National Journal's Health Care Expert Blog asks, "How serious are Medicare's financial problems? Can they easily be solved without jeopardizing the fundamental integrity of the program? What are the best and worst possible responses?" Responders include Drew Altman, Stuart Butler, Karen Davis, John Goodman, Len Nichols, Uwe Reinhardt, John Rother, Leonard Schaeffer and Kerry Weems.

James Capretta of the National Review Online's The Corner looks at news that Massachusetts is facing difficulty controlling health care costs and says, "If President Obama succeeds [in passing similar reforms], he and the Congress will be back in a year or two or three ... to say the financial future of the country depends on agreeing to government-imposed cost constraints, just as Massachusetts officials are doing today."

Uwe Reinhardt on the New York Times' Economix responds to some reader comments on his comparative-effectiveness post.

Linda Gorman of the State Policy Network Blog looks at a report that found CHIP had the highest rate of payment errors among government health programs.


Reprinted with kind permission from kaisernetwork. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at kaisernetwork/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

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