I'm going with "The Quants" for the Book of the Month. The question now is, which month? I have a somewhat long vacation coming up over Easter, and will be reading it then. And it seems like everyone's been pretty busy anyway, so should we just bump things back and make this the Book of the Month for April?
As an aside, I found this article to be the most sensible political piece I've read from a Republican in a while (granted, I haven't been reading too many political articles lately): http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/22/frum.healthcare.gop.strategy/index.html?eref=rss_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+rss/cnn_topstories+(RSS:+Top+Stories)&utm_content=Google+Reader.
I'm especially in favor of dumping government incentives for employer-subsidized health care, for both the reasons he mentions (hiding the cost of health care to the end consumer), and for the reason that, ultimately, I suspect that government incentives for employer-subsidized health care result in an unfair distribution of government subsidies to those who 1) are employed; and 2) are employed by employers who can afford to offer health care. (However, I'm not familiar enough with the tax code to be able to say with certainty that tax breaks on health care plans selected by individuals aren't commensurate with tax breaks offered to employers).
Anyone want to discuss?
(The only point I disagree with is his point #1. Surely the $500,000 is or would eventually be keyed to inflation, rendering his primary argument that it would cover increasingly more Americans moot.)
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2 comments:
I know I should've said this earlier, and don't mean to dissuade you from your choice, but I have read the Patterson book and thought it was nonsense. As a "quant" in the finance world I can tell you he has clearly no idea what "quants" are or what they do. But I'm glad to make those comments after everyone reads it. Maybe it will therefore be an interesting discussion?
The subsidy for employer health insurance is simply that benefits are not counted as taxable income. This of course benefits workers with a larger proportional share of their total compensation accounted for in benefits (unionized workers, for example). That is one reason ending this subsidization has been unpopular with both parties: it effectively increases taxes (R's hate it) and disproportionately so on unionized workers (D's hate it too)...
On Frum's article: I don't disagree with much of what he said, but I do disagree with some of it.
1) Fomenting a switch from an income tax-based funding method to a consumption tax-based funding method (whether it's carbon or alcohol or sales tax) seems like a lousy idea politically. Consumption taxes tend to be quite regressive and weigh disproportionately on the lower middle class. I find that morally discomfiting and politically inadvisable.
2) I absolutely agree on the points about the employer-based care skewing cost transparency. FWIW, the Wyden-Bennett bipartisan Senate proposal did most of what Democrats got in the current plan, but did it more cleanly, more efficiently, and included a transition of the employer-based tax incentive to an individual-based tax credit. As Jesse says, naturally it was attacked from both sides of the aisle.
3) Lighter regulation. I'm somewhat ambivalent about regulating plans on the exchanges. I'm more concerned with how the federal gov't plans to audit whether people are carrying the mandated insurance, both from a cost and a privacy perspective. I know here in MA it's part of filing taxes and insurance companies have to sand out annual mailings similar to W-2s. But will the IRS then be tasked with catching free riders? And do we really want the IRS expanding it's regulatory authority that way?
4) Small business impact; I'm doubtful the thresholds would be pegged to inflation. Part of gaming the CBO to get good numbers is to pretend that we'll pay later when we know we don't have the political will to do it. Hence the annual AMT fix and the Medicare doctors fix; neither political party can bear to admit to true costs, but they pretend that future lawmakers won't make identically craven calculations.
On the topic of book club timing, I think shifting Quants to be April's book is a good idea. I doubt anyone will have the time to really read it in the next couple of weeks. That's probably largely my fault for dropping the ball on Red State, Blue State. Sorry.
Okay, that's enough. Now I'll write my post about Gelman's book. Interesting coincidence: Gelman occasionally posted columns on www.frumforum.com. He stopped sometime last year, I don't know why.
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