John Graves

Does the IRS change how much I'll have to pay for my health insurance each year? Unless Congress extends the subsidy enhancements, the percentage of income that you have to pay for self-purchased (individual/family) health coverage is going to increase significantly in 2026. This ...

Next year, Marketplace enrollees are going to have a pay a larger percentage of their income in premiums (assuming Congress doesn't extend the current subsidy enhancements).

Here's my overview of how it all works, including examples: www.healthinsurance.org/faqs/is-the-...

Jan 26

alas it will have to live as “personal correspondence” for now …

When TN had it's "mini unwinding" back in 2016 (due to difficulties implementing the MAGI conversion, resulting in delays implementing eligibility system) the demographic group that saw the most rapid disenrollments were those 19-21.

in a way--the enhanced premiums were scheduled to expire and the OBBB codified a decision not to extend them past 2025

Until this year, consumers were largely shielded from rising premiums in exchange plans because enhanced premium tax credits capped premiums at no more than ~9% income for everyone.

But not next year: premium tax credits will be lower & consumers will additionally shoulder the premium increases.

www.maths.dur.ac.uk/users/jochen...

Reminds me of the classic Basu's Elephant paper I learned from Alan Zaslavsky in his survey design course.

We're doing a similar exercise you recommend for a new insurance simulation model: MLE w/ (unweighted) survey data, with later weighted aggregation & MCMC calibration for population ests

New teaching hook for covering "job lock" in health economics courses just dropped.

Nearly everything I do today is empirics and coding. But my English degree is unquestionably the most important thing I took from (liberal arts) undergrad.

Decades of mechanistic talk about university degrees as if they were bundles of 'skills' and 'prep' are about to be proved completely wrong (obviously). Want to get a real boost? Do History or English.

Dems Must Really Fix Medicaid, Not Just Undo Trump’s Damage to It The party should use this as an opportunity to build toward universal coverage—working from these seven principles for reforming health care.

Trump's bill could strip Medicaid from 12 million Americans. Repeal isn't enough. Democrats must use this opportunity to propose bold reforms that truly fix Medicaid’s core problems.

In @thebulwark.com, I share how to build a system that actually works: www.thebulwark.com/p/democrats-...

my sense is a lot of the new verification requirements (e.g., address, work, etc.) are going to really limit the practical effectiveness of ex parte

so that's one possible avenue ...

When states couldn't implement MAGI conversions in time (and they had four years of lead-time...), CMS allowed states flexibility to extend renewal periods (you may recall, as I think I've discussed w you, TN had a lot of vendor challenges on this ...)

Get ready for the Enrollment Industrial Complex to emerge

Ugh. I'm so sorry to hear this.

Loss of Subsidized Drug Coverage and Mortality among Medicare Beneficiaries | NEJM A total of 14 million Medicare beneficiaries receive the Low-Income Subsidy (LIS), which reduces cost sharing in Medicare Part D. Losing the LIS may impede medication access and affect mortality. U...

Eric Roberts and @joefigs.bsky.social led a groundbreaking new study on Medicaid and Medicare, out today in NEJM. I’m lucky to have been a part of it.

Medicare saves lives. But is it enough to save lives of the most vulnerable Americans? The study suggests no; Medicaid still matters. (1/11)

ADVISEES: YOUR MENTORS WANT TO KNOW HOW YOU'RE DOING.

(And, yes, I know I could do better with reaching out to you, but leave that aside for the moment.)

Please don't ever think you're bothering your former mentors with requests to catch up. They are not a bother. They want to hear from you.

The Value Zeitgeist — Considering the Slowdown in Health Care Spending Growth | NEJM Over the past two decades, the health care spending growth rate in the United States has declined. But reducing the emphasis on value-based care could lead to a resurgence in spending growth.

The Value Zeitgeist — Considering the Slowdown in Health Care Spending Growth | New England Journal of Medicine www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.... @melindabbuntin.bsky.social , Carrie Colla, and I argue it's too soon to give up on value-based care.

at this point I am an uber/lyft driver with a side hustle as a university professor

Amazing, Laura - congrats!!

New article out in Health Affairs Scholar with a great group of co-authors led by Jane Zhu providing a novel view on provider networks & adequacy from the carrier perspective

Medicaid managed care organizations' experiences with network adequacy

doi.org/10.1093/hasc...
#HAScholar

Indeed -- from our recent JAMA viewpoint

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

To be clear, there is evidence such an appetite exists (e.g. the wildly popular EITC has a benefit/cost ratio <1).

But this new paper pushes back on that, arguing that when liquidity constraints are considered, the value of Medicaid to benes is 2x higher than previously estimated.

An influential recent finding in health economics is that the welfare benefit of Medicaid to beneficiaries may be less than the cost to the gov't for providing it.

This indicates we need a strong social appetite for redistribution to justify that $ transfers involved. (1/2)

🚨 Rethinking Moral Hazard: Moral hazard in health insurance—the increased spending that comes when you get insured—is usually seen as wasteful due to insurance’s price distortion. This paper challenges that view.

Instead, people are just really bad at estimating percentages

They systematically overestimate smaller %s and underestimate larger %s, including ENTIRELY NON-POLITICAL %s, such as the % of the population that owns an Apple product, has a passport, or has indoor plumbing

congrats, Matt!

Not too much goin' on today, so thought I'd tell you about a new paper out in @nejm.org w/Angrist, Gao, and Yeh

We explain & demonstrate why instrumental variable methods are essential for trials of medical interventions that fail to play out as intended

Check it: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/lsnmm...