About the Author

James C. Capretta

New Atlantis Contributing Editor James C. Capretta is an expert on health care and entitlement policy, with years of experience in both the executive and legislative branches of government. E-mail: jcapretta@eppc.org.
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James C. Capretta’s Latest New Atlantis Articles

“Health Care with a Conscience” (Fall 2008) 

“Health Care 2008: A Political Primer” (Spring 2008) 

“The Clipboard of the Future” (Winter 2008)

 

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Text Patterns - by Alan JacobsFuturisms - Critiquing the project to reengineer humanity

Thursday, January 5, 2012

More on Premium Support 

I have a new column up at National Review Online on premium support and controlling health care costs:

There are many reasons to be grateful for the introduction of the Medicare “premium support” plan by Democratic senator Ron Wyden and Republican House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan.

In some respects, it represents an improvement over the design of previous versions of premium support. Whereas the original Ryan plan offered seniors a subsidy based on a predetermined formula, the Wyden-Ryan plan relies on competitive bidding for setting the government’s contribution rate. Competitive bidding has the potential to cut costs even more than a predetermined index, because an index tends to lock in today’s wasteful spending. Of course, Wyden-Ryan also very usefully shook up the political debate over premium support, making it much more difficult for Democrats to demonize the concept.

But perhaps the most useful byproduct of the Wyden-Ryan plan has been the clarifying effect it has had on the debate over how to slow the rise of health-care costs.

The full article is available here.

posted by James C. Capretta | 12:45 pm
Tags: Medicare reform, premium support
File As: Health Care