THE PIONEER BLOG

Taylor Armerding

Their Solution is Dilution

/0 Comments/in , , , /by Taylor Armerding

If there was any confusion about what Massachusetts public employee union leaders mean when they keep saying they just want to be “part of the solution” to the struggles municipalities are having with health care costs, the budget just signed by Gov. Deval Patrick should remove it. To them, being part of the solution means to dilute it – to water it down. And Gov. Deval Patrick was happy to roll over for them and help with the dilution. The first attempt at reform – a bill approved by the House – actually offered a credible solution by eliminating the automatic veto power Patrick had granted to the unions if municipal leaders tried to move them into the less expensive […]

Joshua Archambault

Feds Crapping Away Health $ and Increasing Deficit

/0 Comments/in , , /by

GAO (Government Accountability Office) will release a report today on the failings of the fraud and abuse system for Medicaid or Medicare. The study was requested by Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown (R) and Delaware Senator Thomas Carper (D). From the AP story this morning: The federal government’s systems for analyzing Medicare and Medicaid data for possible fraud are inadequate and underused, making it more difficult to detect the billions of dollars in fraudulent claims paid out each year, according to a report released Tuesday. The Government Accountability Office report said the systems don’t even include Medicaid data. Furthermore, 639 analysts were supposed to have been trained to use the system — yet only 41 have been so far, it said. […]

Joshua Archambault

Vermont Single-Payer Plan Full of Holes

/3 Comments/in , , , /by

The Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation of Massachusetts held a forum in Boston recently on Vermont’s efforts to move towards single payer. A few takeaways. 1) Using the data and criteria cited at the forum,  every state should be moving towards a single payer system. Of course some on the left nod their head in agreement, to the rest of us, the logic seems flawed at best. For example, how does 7% uninsured in Vermont justify single payer? The national average is close to 17%. In addition, the architect of the plan Dr. Hsiao wrote recently in the New England Journal of Medicine. … Vermonters are also largely unwilling to reduce their level of benefits. Our analysis found that, on […]

Steve Poftak

Muni Health Leap of Faith?

/0 Comments/in , /by Steve Poftak

This space has written previously on the muni health portion of the budget, currently sitting on the Governor’s desk. I’ve heard from several folks that my assessment of the municipal review panel is too harsh and that their power is highly circumscribed in the budget. The key clause is this one (Line 786 of Conference Budget): (d) The municipal health insurance review panel shall approve the appropriate public authority’s immediate implementation of the proposed changes under section 22 or section 23; provided, however, that any increases to plan design features have been made in accordance with the provisions of section 22. If the panel does not approve implementation of changes made pursuant to section 22, the public authority may submit […]

Steve Poftak

A Platform You Can Believe In

/0 Comments/in , /by Steve Poftak

Finally, a political party I can support unreservedly: Switzerland’s Anti-PowerPoint Party. Its mission? Ban PowerPoint in their country, citing its tedious demotivation of employees and (loose, very loose) estimate of $2.5 billion in time and productivity wasted. The intellectual godfather of this party would have to be Edward Tufte, who anti-PowerPoint polemics include a detailed assessment of how PowerPoint dependence contributed to the Columbia shuttle disaster. And other creative types have shown the life-draining aspects of the medium, including its impact on the Gettysburg Address. So why the animus to PowerPoint? It’s become a crutch for lazy presenters who don’t bother to master their material — writing out their speech (or at least their notes) verbatim then reading their slides. […]

Jim Stergios

Watch Me Pull A Rabbit Out of My Hat

/0 Comments/in , , , /by Jim Stergios

Again? Ruffle up my sleeve. Presto. The Great and Good have done it again. The just-passed 2012 budget, it has been proclaimed, has “solved” the structural deficit, which just half a year ago was said to be in the $2 to $3 billion range. According to the State House News Service (sub. required): …The Patrick administration and lawmakers have also cheered what they have described as the elimination of a persistent structural deficit – caused largely by an annual reliance on onetime sources of revenue and an unchecked use of capital gains taxes – that has forced policymakers to close budget gaps each year with new revenues or revenue grabs, spending cuts or withdrawals from the rainy day fund. SHNS […]

Taylor Armerding

State budget: Late and not so great

/1 Comment/in , , , /by

With the next fiscal year now the current fiscal year, it’s good of the Legislature finally to have approved a state budget – unless Gov. Deval Patrick, who has 10 days to review it, refuses to sign it. It is another reminder that those who make the rules don’t abide by the rules. If we miss a deadline to pay our taxes, we get penalized with interest charges. If we don’t get our car inspected on time, we can get fined and towed. If they’re late approving a budget, they spend the next several days congratulating themselves on all the hard work and tough decisions they made. The congratulations, besides being unseemly, are also premature – as Joshua Archambault notes […]

Jim Stergios

Virtually There

/0 Comments/in , , , , , /by

If Massachusetts has because of lack of leadership within the Board and the Department of Education, ground to a halt on digital learning, other states are moving fast. Let me give you two examples — one (Michigan) where the governor is particularly interested in digital learning and trying to make big changes fast; the other (Arizona) where “blended learning” is at the cutting edge. A month or so ago, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder laid out his education agenda. Admittedly, Gov. Snyder comes to his new gig with a strong background in computer technology, having in the past helmed Gateway Computers. Drawing off research from a local think tank, he saw how digital learning programs could save money and increase student […]

Joshua Archambault

Beacon Hill’s Budget MassHealth Mirage

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Today the Legislature will vote on the final state budget. I wanted to take one last opportunity to highlight the unrealistic assumptions that are being used for the MassHealth (Medicaid) program. If the state is unable to achieve these “savings” and instead follows historic spending trends, it could be looking at a $900 million gap, just for MassHealth. For years, Medicaid costs have advanced robustly, at roughly 7% per year which is a big number given that it’s building on a base of billions. See Pioneer’s work on this here. The Legislature is hoping for the state to drive down its per Medicaid enrollee costs by 3.5% next year. How have we done at that recently? On average, per enroll […]

Steve Poftak

Hold the Victory Lap

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Conference Budget contains substantive reform to municipal health care. But let’s be clear – it looks a lot more like the weaker Senate version than the stronger House version. Happily, the Conference Budget’s municipal healthcare reform is free of the ‘poison pill’ provision that actually raised costs. This provision was slipped into a redrafted amendment which presented to members as a “technical amendment” by the sponsor, Senator Clark. That’s a phrase typically reserved for correcting obvious errors that don’t change the intent of the underlying legislation. To his credit, Senator Marc Pacheco was the only voice in the chamber to ask if he could review the amendment to make sure nothing substantive had changed. (State House News Service transcript, […]

Joshua Archambault

HCFA & GBIO’s Misdiagnosis

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Health Care for All and the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization held a rally today at the State House to call for a zero percent increases in premiums for health insurance. The intent may be worthy, but the mechanism is misplaced. Focusing on a cap of premium increases is like trying to prevent all car accidents by adding an extra bumper at the end of a production line. (The analogy only goes so far, I know) Until consumers understand the cost impact of their health care decisions, and small businesses are relieved from the burden of state mandates and over regulation in Massachusetts, this cap will be an unrealistic goal that will result in one more year of finger pointing without […]

Steve Poftak

Have Much Drinking Should You Do At Ed Meetings?

/1 Comment/in , /by

OK, I tried in my previous post to give a higher level policy analysis of why you should care about the unfolding scandal regarding what appears to be an egregious corruption at the Merrimack Special Education Collaborative and Merrimack Education Center. Next, we’ll move on the prurient details: When was the last time you had nine drinks? Each guest at the non-profit Merrimack Education Center’s 2008 annual meeting Friday dinner averaged 8.8 drinks at the event. The dinner the next night was a model of decorum with the average plummeting to just under seven drinks per person. All told, the weekend event had a bar tab of $154 per attendee.

Jim Stergios

Virtually Worlds Apart

/0 Comments/in , , , , , /by

Mirror-mirror on the wall, which states are pushing innovation most of all? Not Massachusetts. A number of other states are at this point moving faster than Massachusetts on key educational innovations. The good news for Massachusetts is that last January the state passed a law to double the number of charter schools. Further good news is that students in our charters consistently do better than their district peers; in other states that level of consistency is not always the rule. The bad news for Massachusetts is that states like Florida, Colorado, Michigan, Arizona and so many others are pushing forward with digital learning much faster than the Bay State is. In fact, the education bureaucracy is putting some of the […]

Joshua Archambault

Misinformation About Massachusetts Reform from the Left

/1 Comment/in , , , /by

Jonathan Cohn, Senior Editor of The New Republic tries to undercut the controversial McKinsey study on employer sponsored health insurance (esi) under Obamacare at Kaiser Health News. I wanted to take a moment to highlight one talking point that I have seen repeatedly in the media from the left to defend the federal law and bash the McKinsey study. …studies have consistently shown a very different result: that the majority of employers will continue to offer health insurance, even after health care reform… While these predictions could be wrong, obviously, their findings are consistent with what happened in Massachusetts, where a similar coverage scheme actually bolstered employer-sponsored insurance. (I added the link to DHCFP data here in MA) The problem with […]

Steve Poftak

Big Trouble in the Merrimack Valley

/1 Comment/in , /by

No one is happier with the Whitey Bulger arrest than John Barrenco. It’s knocked the problems with the Merrimack Special Education Collaborative off the front pages, but there’s a big problem up in the Merrimack Valley area and it appears that a lot of people are going to be in trouble by the time it’s all sorted out. First, a disclaimer: All items below are based on allegations and all the accused are innocent until proven guilty in court of law. With that out of the way, a quick synopsis of the allegations against Barrenco – he served, for a number of years, as the head (or was effectively in control) of both the Merrimack Special Education Collaborative (a public […]