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The Goodman Institute Health Blog

Thursday Links

Posted on April 27, 2023April 26, 2023 by John C. Goodman

Why we need Association Health Plans for small businesses and gig workers: Less than one-third of small companies are even offering heath insurance to their employees.

Why doctors so aggressively pushed the Covid vaccines.

Sanders/Cassidy bill would speed genic drugs to the marketplace.

Mattel is making a Barbie doll with Down syndrome:  “It’s set to join existing dolls with behind-the-ear hearing aids, a wheelchair, alopecia and a prosthetic limb within the company’s heavily diversity and inclusion-focused line.”

Against bringing back the Woolly mammoth.

An early estimate of the cost of Covid from Harvard: $16 trillion!

2 thoughts on “Thursday Links”

  1. Ron Greiner MSA King says:
    April 27, 2023 at 8:21 am

    Paragon Health Institute’s goofy Association Health Plans (AHP) is pure uninformed propaganda. If a small employer offered health insurance to employees they are STEALING their Obamacare tax credits! The entire AHP is a house of cards because their so-called reasoning is that large employer groups’ health insurance is so cheap!!! The largest employer-sponsored plan in Nebraska is the State employees where sick employees find their COBRA to be over $36,000 a year for family coverage on their “Regular Plan.” Paragon INSISTS that this coverage is cheap, cheap, cheap, because of their so-called “Economy of Scale.”

    Wait, the PASCO County Schools in Tampa are the LARGEST school district in America that votes for a superintendent and their Blue Cross PPO cost for a poor teacher to add a 30-year-old husband and child is $1,900 a month. See how CHEAP these large employers are getting insurance from the BLUES?

    I was the State Director for the National Association of the Self-Employed (NASE) in 1990, the largest association of self-employed people in America. The head guy was BILLIONAIRE Ron Jensen who founded Life Investors in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Jensen had the state laws changed so AHPs in Individual Medical (IM) would automatically be approved in 22 states if the state of Alabama INSURANCE DEPARTMENT approved the product. AHPs were a way for RON JENSEN to bring products to the States more rapidly.

    Of course, there is nobody in the world who can defend the Paragon Health Institute’s GOOFY propaganda that Large Employer Groups have Cheap, Cheap, Cheap, insurance. Don’t expect a comment here from these PhDs in economics to defend Brian Blase and Paragon Health Institute’s silly attempt to save over-priced and dangerous Employer-Based insurance because it can’t be done.

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    1. Bob Hertz says:
      April 27, 2023 at 4:29 pm

      Ron is basically correct here

      Let’s assume that a small business employee is in a family of four in my zip code of 55116.

      Assume that their family income is $70,000 per year. Their Obamacare premium would be $258 a month with a $4200 deductible. If their family income is less than $58,000 a year, their monthly premium for “Minnesota Care” would be $160 with a $200 deductible.

      The employer could just give them a little cash to help with premiums if they felt generous.

      Neither of these plans has any exclusions, any chance of insolvency, and very little chance of second year rate shock.

      The author of this piece on AHP’s does a good workmanlike job, but he is kind of writing in a pre-ACA universe.

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For many years, our health care blog was the only free enterprise health policy blog on the internet. Then, when the NCPA closed its doors, the health blog stopped as well.

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