THE PIONEER BLOG

Taylor Armerding

A way to bend the cost curve up

/2 Comments/in , , /by

Minimum staffing provisions in public sector union contracts – largely in police and fire departments – are a major reasons those services are so expensive. They lead to massive, unnecessary overtime costs and are easily abused – it is simple for a worker to call in sick so a friend can pick up some extra OT. It also turns the proper relationship of manager and worker on its head – employees, not management, dictate how many people are required to do a task. The union, naturally, wants as many people as possible on a task, a vehicle, a shift. It undermines efficiency and productivity, by design. Gov. Deval Patrick and state legislators, who huff and puff about “bending the cost […]

Joshua Archambault

Health Care Econ-101 For Governor

/0 Comments/in , , /by

During an appearance on WTKK-FM today, Governor Patrick dipped his toe into the uncompensated care pool controversy that has been splashed over the pages of The Boston Herald. Here and here. Some highlights (lowlights) from the Inspector General’s report that sparked the stories have been: $7 million on care for non-Massachusetts residents. Claims were paid out for patients with home addresses in 48 other states, and a handful of foreign countries. $17.8 million for more than 60,000 “medically unlikely” or “medically unnecessary” claims, such as foot X-ray charges for patients suffering from headaches. Suspicious claims for gender-specific procedures for members of the opposite gender. (Such as gynecological bills for men) $6 million for 13,000 duplicate claims. 45% of those seeking […]

Joshua Archambault

CMS Ignites ACO (Accountable Care Organizations) Debate

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Today the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released long awaited proposed regulations for accountable care organizations (ACOs). Under the federal Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), ACOs– which are associations made up of groups of health care providers—can share Medicare savings derived from improvements in care. In CMS administrator Don Berwick’s own words: The creation of ACOs is one of the first delivery-reform initiatives that will be implemented under the ACA [the national Affordable Care Act]. Its purpose is to foster change in patient care so as to accelerate progress toward a three-part aim: better care for individuals, better health for populations, and slower growth in costs through improvements in care. Under the law, an ACO will assume responsibility for […]

Joshua Archambault

Medicaid’s Drug Problem: $329 million a year

/0 Comments/in , , /by

I have blogged before about the problems that we have here in Massachusetts with our exploding Medicaid costs (here, here, here)– roughly 40% of the budget this year. Alex Brill at American Enterprise Institute (AEI) updated a working paper titled Overspending on Multi-Source Drugs in Medicaid that brings attention to one of those cost drivers –the elevated use of multi-source drugs in Medicaid. Multi-source drugs are prescription drugs that are available in both brand and generic form. While the title may not draw in many readers outside of the health policy community, it highlights a very important issue that does (and will continue) to impact state budgets for years to come. The recently enacted Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) […]

Jim Stergios

Teacher pensions: Answering Your Questions

/0 Comments/in , /by

Last week, I blogged on teacher pensions and the piece drew agreement and criticism. In response to critics, I’ll let the numbers speak for themselves. Today, I wanted to continue the conversation by following up on the good questions raised by commenters. How much do teachers’ salaries go up on average? Berkman34 and ChuckinMedford asked about the assumption of a 4.69 percent annual increase in salaries that underpins my average salary number for 2011. There are a few things to say on this which can be helpful. First, the 4.69 percent increase is simply what empirically happened between 2004 and 2009, which were also difficult fiscal years, and years in which municipal aid from the state was not seeing the […]

Joshua Archambault

FactCheck.org: ‘RomneyCare’ Facts and Falsehoods

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

A reporter from FactCheck.org visited Pioneer’s office a couple of weeks ago to learn more about the Massachusetts health reform law. Without a doubt this will be a big issue in the 2012 presidential campaign. I give the Annenberg Public Policy Center at UPenn and their FactCheck.org project credit for attempting to get ahead of the curve here. A few thoughts on the article: More Research Needed: There are still a lot of unknowns in Massachusetts. The data in the state is improving but much is still unclear. Pioneer has attempted to capture key metric in its Report Card Series. Interim Report Cards on Massachusetts Health Care Reform A) Increasing Access B) Equitable and Sustainable Financing C) Administrative Efficiency D) […]

Steve Poftak

Relearning the Lesson

/0 Comments/in , /by

Its been painful to watch the situation with Transportation Secretary Mullan play out over the past two weeks. As an observer of transportation in this state, I have had the opportunity to interact with him and he’s been gracious enough to appear at one of our events. I’ve found him to be smart, knowledgeable, and dedicated. Further, given two false starts at the position and the importance of managing major structural reforms, the administration could ill-afford another transition at the Secretary level. So its been painful to watch as we review the same painful lesson once again: its not the ‘crime’, its the coverup. The inability to get a story straight on a hot button issue related to the Big […]

Taylor Armerding

Obamacare superstar sales team goes missing

/0 Comments/in , /by

Here’s yet more evidence that, in the year since Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid presided over the ramming of Obamacare through Congress, the dust has yet to settle – the Democratic superstars who were supposed to be trumpeting its virtues are in hiding. Jennifer Haberkorn has a piece on Politico noting that the Health Information Campaign, launched with great fanfare last June, is all but defunct. Wal-Mart Watch founder Andrew Grossman unveiled the Health Information Campaign with great fanfare last June. Tom Daschle and Ted Kennedy’s widow, Vicki, were expected to lead the effort. They’d have help from former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn. They’d have an office in Washington with 10 or 15 operatives backing the Affordable Care Act […]

Jim Stergios

No answers from the Know Nothings

/0 Comments/in , /by

Boston and Massachusetts as a whole have made some strides toward racial harmony in the past few decades. But we still face what some politicians like to refer to as the “civil rights issue of the 21st century”: education. Fact is from the time of Brown v. the Board of Education, education has always been the civil rights issue. Our history with tolerance has, as we know too well, high points and some really low points. At the same time that we nested some of the early abolitionists, we became a stronghold of vituperative anti-Catholicism. The picture above shows one of the brutal emanations of that intolerance: the Plug Uglies. The Plug Uglies’name was fitting, indeed; commissioned by the Know […]

Jim Stergios

What’s a retiring teacher’s pension worth?

/5 Comments/in , /by Jim Stergios

TRAIN CRASH – Watch more Funny Videos Well, that’s an easy one to answer. It depends on how much a retiring teacher earns at the end of his or her career. So let’s start there. According to the state’s department of education, in 2009 the average teacher in the Commonwealth earned $67,577 in 2009. That’s the last year for which we have complete data. If you apply a reasonable algorithm, based on the lowest assumption for salary increases (just over 4.5% annually) made by the pension system itself, you get an average teacher salary in 2011 of about $74,000. Retiring teachers, of course, reach salaries that are far beyond the average salaries. You put 30, even 35 years into a […]

Jim Stergios

The New Monopoly and the Ballot Initiative

/0 Comments/in , /by

Here is testimony I submitted today to the Election Laws Committee on the attempt by big public labor to undermine the ballot initiative process. James Stergios, Pioneer Institute Testimony ~ Wednesday, March 23, 2011 ~ 10:30 AM ~ Room B-1 HEARING BEFORE ELECTION LAWS COMMITTEE Senate Chair Barry R. Finegold, Senate Vice Chair Sal N. DiDomenico, Senator Kenneth J. Donnelly, Senator James T. Welch, Senator Thomas P. Kennedy, Senator Michael R. Knapik, House Chair Michael J. Moran, House Vice Chair Sean Garballey, Representative Cory Atkins, Representative Stephen Stat Smith, Representative Brian M. Ashe, Representative Dennis A. Rosa, Representative Denise Andrews, Representative Jerald A. Parisella, Representative Daniel K. Webster, Representative Marc T. Lombardo Thank you for the opportunity to testify here […]

Taylor Armerding

Public pension tension is warranted

/1 Comment/in , /by

Interesting juxtaposition in the Globe recently on public pensions. First came columnist Renee Loth, carrying water for the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, formerly the Tax Equity Alliance of Massachusetts. The rumor, when they changed their name, was that the group did it because the nickname Barbara Anderson’s group Citizens for Limited Taxation had given them – “Tax Everything And More” – had gained some serious traction. Loth rehashed the favored talking point of the past couple of years from public employee unions. “Independent” studies by groups like MBPC find that public employees actually make less than those in the private sector, when compared with those with similar education. The “penalty” for those with college degrees working in the public […]

Taylor Armerding

It’s not where the gov is, it’s the business climate

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

The timing was lousy. Gov. Deval Patrick was on his big “trade mission” to Israel and England when the giant sucking sound came from Marlborough – Fidelity announced it was essentially shuttering its operation there, moving 1,100 jobs to Merrimack, N.H. and Rhode Island. It tended to take the wind out of the governor’s announcement that this 10-day junket might bring all of 50 jobs to Massachusetts. Patrick didn’t help his cause much, declaring from London that he was “deeply frustrated” that the company had blindsided him, and later demanding that they “tell me to my face” that the decision is final. What does he expect – that CEOs are going to check with him first, or ask his permission […]

Jim Stergios

Bill Gates doesn’t like liberal arts, Steve Jobs does

/1 Comment/in , /by

So Bill Gates lets us all know what he really has in mind on standards and the liberal arts. In a speech to the National Governors Association in late February, he suggests that higher education spending be devoted largely to job-producing disciplines. In his view we should drop funding at the higher ed level for the liberal arts, because there is not much economic impact/job creation impact from the liberal arts. Compare that to Steve Jobs, who during his release of the iPad 2 (admittedly not the most successful launch I’ve seen of an Apple product), trumpeted the liberal arts. It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that […]

Jim Stergios

Hollowing out our cities

/1 Comment/in , , /by

So today we learn that Massachusetts’ cities continue to “hollow out.” Secretary of State William Galvin may want to sharpen his calculator a bit, and I am sure that Boston is relieved to know that its population has increased. But Boston is an exception. “Hollowing out” was the term used in the 1990s to describe the trend among Japanese investors to transfer manufacturing assets to China and other low-cost centers for doing business. We’ve seen a similar phenomenon in our New England and Rust Belt cities, where manufacturing jobs have flown off to greener pastures in the South and of course to other countries. In the 1950s alone the South’s Gulf coast there was 10 times the industrial growth experienced […]