1. Why are we raising taxes on anyone right now? Raising rates now as opposed to a year from now will not change the long-term budget situation and it may hurt the recovery.
2. Why shouldn't there be co-pays on birth control? Don't tell me it's a low-income issue. If it's a low-income issue you subsidize low-income care or restrict the policy to Medicaid. Don't tell me it's a mean employer issue either. If it's a mean employer issue you mandate coverage.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
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A tax on hoarding I could see, but that won't happen.
ReplyDeleteBecause nothing solves fear for the future like threatening people's safety net!
DeleteI see where you're coming from, but I think there are better ways ;-)
How do you get out of a suboptimal equilibrium? One way is to change the payoffs. Currently voters have been frightened about the debt and deficit, and want to reduce them. How do you change the payoffs to get cash flowing without gov't spending? ;)
DeleteIsn't that part of what expansionary monetary policy is supposed to be?
DeleteTo give the Fed room to act or a push.
ReplyDelete2 - the savings to insurers from having co-pays is less than what they save from making sure every women who needs access to birth control has it. Pregnancies are expensive.
ReplyDeleteI would point out a larger issue that I think can't be overstated, women's ability to have the full amount of choices in today's world means having access to birth control. One could almost argue it should be a right, but I am sure that will really make some people angry.
Right - I'm not saying I'd be adamantly opposed to insurance companies deciding there should be no co-pays on birth control. That would be fine. In fact it would have saved me a lot of money over the years. I'm just not sure why the government is making that assessment. I don't think it's because it's more cost effective for the insurance company and the administration just wants to make sure they're not missing a profit opportunity.
Deletere: "I would point out a larger issue that I think can't be overstated, women's ability to have the full amount of choices in today's world means having access to birth control."
I completely agree. So mandate coverage of it, and subsidize low-income purchases of it.
Actually, my understanding was that this was originally something that the insurance companies requested. Remember, they were quite active in helping to craft the law.
Deleteusufruct -
DeleteThat would be interesting if you had more information on that. I could see how insurance companies would request a mandate for coverage of it. I don't understand the logic by which they would press for no co-pay. If it helped their bottom line so much why wouldn't they just drop the co-pay a long time ago? For all that people mocked Sandra Fluke, for young couples that constitutes a huge share of their medical spending. The stuff isn't cheap. If some insurance companies provided the opportunity to distribute those costs across all premium holders, I think you'd get a lot of demand for that insurance.
So I'm skeptical... but interested in a potential wrinkle I'm missing.
"I completely agree. So mandate coverage of it, and subsidize low-income purchases of it."
ReplyDeleteSee? He's a free-market economist after all.
Yeah I don't see how mandating coverage and subsidizing some people is any less arbitrary than mandating coverage and just having no copay.
ReplyDeleteAs other people have said in different ways we aren't looking for a market outcome where the marginal buyer at an arbitrary copay price just desires not having a baby enough to pay for BC. We want BC to be freely available to anyone who wants it since the externalities are significant.
Also, it seem far more elegant to just make BC free through insurance than to overlay an entire bureaucracy to decide and verify who is poor enough to get free BC. Also, as a political matter, universal programs (like unemployment insurance and social security) have much wider bases of support than means tested programs. If you want to make BC access available in any kind of stable and long lasting way as a public policy goal then it make sense to not open it up to attack as another program for welfare queens.