obamacare

This is one of a number of blogs that will appear on my daughter.  I call her Kitty.  She is a wonderfully talented, bright, and empathetic individual in her late ‘20s.  She and I agreed I would write this series to impart how important health coverage is. Not only is her decision to have surgery courageous, but so is her decision to share her journey through me. The principal reason to share the journey is because we both want to explain what many average Americans go through financially when they have major operations and do not have the best insurance or no insurance at all.  My daughter is privileged to come from a well-off family and to have consistent and robust insurance.  This will mean that she will pay a tiny amount for a surgery with a sticker price in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  But for uninsured and

This is one of a number of blogs that will appear on my daughter.  I call her Kitty.  She is a wonderfully talented, bright, and empathetic individual in her late ‘20s.  She and I agreed I would write this series to impart how important health coverage is. Not only is her decision to have surgery courageous, but so is her decision to share her journey through me. The principal reason to share the journey is because we both want to explain what many average Americans go through financially when they have major operations and do not have the best insurance or no insurance at all.  My daughter is privileged to come from a well-off family and to have consistent and robust insurance.  This will mean that she will pay a tiny amount for a surgery with a sticker price in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  But for uninsured and

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has reported one of those weird conundrums in healthcare when it outlined expected cost increases in Medicare and Medicaid for 2024.  The CBO said that Medicare is expected to shoot up dramatically just as Medicaid expenditures will drop considerably as well. How is that possible? Let’s dig in here. Medicare The CBO says that Medicare spending will increase by about $65 billion in 2024 to $865 billion.  That is an increase of about 8%.  The significant rise in expected Medicare costs is driven by a few different things: In the outyears, outlays for Medicare will equal 3.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2025 and increase to 4.2 percent of GDP in 2034. Medicaid On the flip side, the CBO says Medicaid expenditures will decrease by $58 billion to $557 billion.  This is a drop of about 9%.  The reason for this drop is driven by