Rethinking the Economy

Stumbling towards a new model for creating growth, opportunity, and justice

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Entries Tagged as 'Health care'

Power Isn’t a Stain on the Economy’s Fabric, It’s Part of the Economy’s Fabric

June 28th, 2010 · Comments Off

It’s time, says Robert Reich, to drop a Top Hat on the corruption spewed by the market:
In the words of lobbyist Lauren Maddox, “The policy process is an extension of the market battlefield.”
The answer is not necessarily found in broader or stricter “ethics rules” barring specific gifts to politicians. Such rules may have [...]

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Tags: Checks and Balances · Government · Health care

Green Signs of Hope

April 12th, 2010 · Comments Off

If you’re feeling blue about our side’s chances of getting its act together, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, and several other environmental justice organizations from around the country just released a report you should check out: Environmental Justice and the Green Economy. The report lays out three principles for building a just, sustainable [...]

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Tags: Good Jobs · Green Economy · Health care · Housing · Race · Smart Growth · Transportation

Winning the Next Health Care Fight One Pothole at a Time

April 8th, 2010 · Comments Off

When I first took a look at the list of projects in Chicago’s 49th Ward’s Participatory Budgeting experiment, I was a little disappointed. Participatory Budgeting sounds so lofty: We the People choosing directly. And yes, some of the items folks get to vote for are pretty cool, like art projects or community gardens. But most [...]

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Tags: Choosing Together · Health care

Only Ten Republican Reps Aren’t Socialists

February 9th, 2010 · Comments Off

Snow isn’t the only thing in DC causing a little chaos. Rep. Paul Ryan, ranking member on the Committee on that Budget, has produced a Roadmap to eliminate the budget deficit. To do it, he turns Medicare and Social Security into voucher programs and cuts benefit increases. From the Executive Summary:
* Preserves the existing [...]

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Tags: Aging · Health care

What the Health Insurance Companies Lost

January 4th, 2010 · Comments Off

A lot of progressives are really pissed off at the crappy compromises that went into the healthcare bill. So am I. But after having a little time to let go of the fury I felt at just how much we’d lost, and after learning more about the details, I now think some of our [...]

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Tags: Health care

Great Parody, Scary Reality

September 23rd, 2009 · Comments Off

How do you do smart, funny progressive propaganda? Like this:

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell
And that’s pretty damn impressive considering how hard it’s becoming to parody insurance companies.
Take the letter America’s Health Insurance Plans’ President and CEO Karen Ignagni sent to Max Baucus. Among other requests, Think Progress explains, the insurance [...]

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Tags: Health care

Propaganda’s B Team: Kelloggs’ “Smart Choice” Froot Loops

September 9th, 2009 · Comments Off

As we’ve seen, Big Pharma’s very sophisticated in how they pollute the info doctors and patients have take decisions about drugs. Food manufacturers? Not so much.
A new food-labeling campaign called Smart Choices, backed by most of the nation’s largest food manufacturers, is “designed to help shoppers easily identify smarter [...]

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Tags: Health care · People Aren't Calculators

Drug Companies v Moral Hazard Geeks: Why Traditional Econ Models Don’t Cut It

September 7th, 2009 · Comments Off

Aside from being truly appalling, the subject of last week’s post is a great example of how traditional economic models don’t work. To recap via the New York Times:
A growing body of evidence suggests that doctors at some of the nation’s top medical schools have been attaching their names and lending their [...]

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Tags: Assumptions · Health care · Model

Is Grassley a Socialist?

September 2nd, 2009 · Comments Off

Monday’s post explored how Big Pharma ghostwrites articles for doctors to promote their drugs. Universities, the AMA — they’re all basically do what they can to avoid seriously dealing with this crisis in medical ethics. Guess who’s decided to step in? Senator Charles Obama-wants-death-panels, “the government is a predator not a competitor” Grassley.
Grassley [...]

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Tags: Health care · Stacking the Deck

Healthcare: the Hazards of the Moral Hazard Argument

August 31st, 2009 · Comments Off

In a post on the economic issues around health insurance, Professor Dan Saviro makes the standard “moral hazard” argument:
Consumer demand drives the market, but it is largely the demand of subsidized consumers who are not actually paying at the margin for what they get. Suppose that in the market for groceries or cars we [...]

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Tags: Health care · People Aren't Calculators