{"id":150262,"date":"2010-01-07T10:46:56","date_gmt":"2010-01-07T15:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/health\/2010\/01\/07\/medicare-drug-benefit-when-public-subsidy-met-private-market\/"},"modified":"2010-01-07T10:46:56","modified_gmt":"2010-01-07T15:46:56","slug":"medicare-drug-benefit-when-public-subsidy-met-private-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/150262","title":{"rendered":"Medicare Drug Benefit: When Public Subsidy Met Private Market"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pill\"Washington Dems are still grinding out a deal on the health-care bill; here’s coverage from the WSJ<\/a>, New York Times<\/a> and Los Angeles Times<\/a> on yesterday’s meeting between congressional leaders and President Obama.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the WSJ’s David Wessel writes today in his Capital column<\/a> that Medicare Part D — the prescription drug program launched a few years back — offers some useful lessons for the current debate.<\/p>\n

The program has shown that you can drive widespread coverage by enlisting private insurers to administer a public plan — something that sounds a lot like the insurance exchanges proposed under the health-care bills. But there are a few twists.<\/p>\n

Under Medicare Part D, seniors choose from dozens of privately administered plans. Research shows that they don’t typically choose the one that’s the best deal for them, because they overrate the importance of premiums and underrate the importance of out-of-pocket spending. That’s a reminder that elaborate cost-sharing formulas aren’t always as efficient in the real world as economists might hope.<\/p>\n

Widespread drug coverage has led seniors to use more prescription drugs. No surprise there, but it’s a reminder that increased health insurance coverage is likely to lead to more people seeking health care, which may strain the system. (Finding a doctor could be particularly tough for Medicaid patients, as we noted<\/a> yesterday.)<\/p>\n

One big surprise in the Medicare drug benefit: It’s been far cheaper than the CBO predicted. The initial price tag was $640 billion over 10 years, and now it’s down to $410 billion. That suggests that not everything in health care proves more expensive than expected. At the same time, plans to close the Medicare “doughnut hole<\/a>” are a reminder that entitlements tend to expand over time, a former CBO chief told Wessel.<\/p>\n

Image: iStockphoto<\/em><\/p>\n

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Washington Dems are still grinding out a deal on the health-care bill; here’s coverage from the WSJ, New York Times and Los Angeles Times on yesterday’s meeting between congressional leaders and President Obama. Meanwhile, the WSJ’s David Wessel writes today in his Capital column that Medicare Part D — the prescription drug program launched a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":650,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}