Health Policy Made Ridiculously Simple

AMSA has a great set of primers on health policy, under their "Health Policy Made Ridiculously Simple" section. Find it here: http://www.amsa.org/hp/hpsimple.cfm

Tax Financing in Health Care

Even in America, where we do not have a national health care system, over half of our health-care spending is financed through tax dollars. Some background on Medicare financing, and taxes in general, is below.

http://www.kff.org/medicare/7305.cfm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_tax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothecation

Employment-based Health Insurance

In the last decade we have seen a rise in problems with America's traditional employment-based health insurance, including rising cost of business (Ford pays more for health care per car than for steel), trouble for small businesses, loss of job mobility, and a perverse incentive for employers to choose health plans not best suited to the needs of their employees. Some of the articles below touch on the debate over these issues, but they only represent a small proportion of the wealth of information available on this topic.

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/hlthaff.w3.237v1.pdf

http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0033-5533(199402)109%3A1%3C27%3
AEHIAJM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-F&cookieSet=1

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=tIXSFDEzDf8C&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=
employment+based+health+insurance&ots=VWTyA-DuHt&sig=PG_5gBng71hWgulrhe-
Zhr6uoRk#PPP9,M1

Medical Savings Accounts

There really are no reputable papers supporting medical savings accounts, so if the opinions represented here appear biased it is because there is consensus in the policy community that MSAs are a bad idea. However, that doesn't stop many American politicians from using MSAs as a cornerstone for their policy reform packages, so it is important to understand their arguments and why they don't hold true in theory or in practice.

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=EHGelqyhVKQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA133&dq=
medical+savings+account&ots=3_--PndlUi&sig=IyxF8rnZCpTXlQyHSB0ORQetAA8#PPA133,M1

http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/reprint/167/2/143

RAND Health Insurance Study

The definitive study on the impact of cost-sharing on health behavior was done by the RAND group in the 1970s. There are links to the RAND website and a few discussions of the study below. I've tried to get a few different perspectives in the mix, remember to think about the
biases of each source as you read through them.

http://rand.org/pubs/reports/R3055/

http://www.kff.org/insurance/upload/7566.pdf

http://cdhc.ncpa.org/policy-issues/rand-retrospective-study-finds-cost-sharing-affects-medical-usage

April 8 HPAP

The topic for Health Policy and a Pint this month is fundraising. There are several ways to collect money to pay for health care, including:

1. Taxes
2. Insurance Premiums
a. Employer
b. Individual
3. Out of pocket
a. Co-payments
b. Co-insurance
4. Health Savings Accounts (combination out-of-pocket and tax incentives)

Below is a link to the online version of a book with everything you might ever want to know about health care financing. I'll put up separate posts with background info on these topics as I find it. We will also have brief presentations before our discussion. I hope to see everyone at the Kitty Cat Club tomorrow at 5!

http://mcgraw-hill.co.uk/openup/chapters/0335209246.pdf