In an official statement released later in the day, Cruz blasted the executive order and accused Obama of distorting his position on Obamacare: “I never said I didn’t want to have it. I said I didn’t want everyone else in the country to have it.”
Hospitals Are Wrong About Shifting Costs to Private Insurers
Conversely, hospitals in more competitive regions are more efficient and can earn a profit on Medicare prices. But, because of competition, they must charge lower prices to private insurers. Put it together and it is hospitals’ underlying costs, driven by competition — not cost shifting — that lead to differences in prices charged to insurers and Medicare shortfalls or profits.
.. Another weakness of the cost shifting theory is that it runs counter to basic economics. Hospitals that maximize profits, or even maximize revenue to fund charity care, would not raise private prices in response to lower public ones. In fact, such a hospital would already be charging the highest possible prices to all payers.
.. Likewise, retailers charge lower prices to clear inventory, not higher ones to make up for less revenue from early purchasers.
Gladwell: Steven Brill on how health-care reform went wrong.
Near-history, the journalistic reconstruction of contemporary events, has come to be dominated by two schools. The first is represented by Michael Lewis. Lewis wrote about the 1996 Presidential election through the story of a Republican candidate no one had ever heard of, the eccentric millionaire Morry Taylor. “The Big Short” was an account of the financial crisis told through the eyes of four obscure short-sellers. Lewis’s interest is psychological and moral. His books have won him many admirers (including me) because they offer deceptively simple narratives in the service of a grand canonical theme. “Liar’s Poker,” which recounts the young Lewis’s stint in the Wall Street of the nineteen-eighties, is Daniel in the lion’s den. “Money Ball,” about the strategies of small-market baseball teams, is David and Goliath. “The Blind Side” is the Good Samaritan. “The Big Short” is Noah’s Ark, and “Flash Boys” is Jesus casting the money changers out of the temple.
The second school is associated with the Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward. Woodwardian history is kaleidoscopic. The reporter makes many telephone calls and office visits, and reads many documents. All key players are represented and events detailed. The approach is sociological: the great theme of the Woodward school is the interaction of institutions and vested interests.
.. Names may be irrelevant; titles tell you what you need to know. That is what makes Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s “All the President’s Men” a masterpiece: its great achievement was to show how the institutional power of the White House led to the President’s personal corruption.
Steven Brill’s Recommendation: Cap CEOs to 60 times Lowest Paid Physician
Two of his suggested regulations would require that every market have at least two provider-insurer health systems and that operating profits be capped at 8 percent. Mr. Wood pointed out that UPMC’s operating margin was 1.7 percent in fiscal 2014 and 1.3 percent in 2013.
Another proposed regulation would cap a CEO’s salary at 60 times the lowest-paid physician. In that scenario, Mr. Brill writes, Mr. Romoff’s salary would be capped at just over $3 million, which would put him more in line with his counterparts at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and Geisinger Health System in Central Pennsylvania. Mr. Romoff’s total compensation for fiscal 2013 was $6.55 million.