Turns out Wikipedia has a pretty good entry on Massachusetts Health Care Reform (of course). In particular, the Outcomes section has some good numbers.

There is a “safety net” that is supposed to help low income residence pay their out-of-pocket expenses. To do that, it reimburses the providers for copays, deductibles, etc. Apparently, the payouts from the state have gone down recently. That’s probably part of the larger budget shortfall, but it points to a bigger problem with the system paying for itself (which it certainly isnt).

All in all, I’m glad that Massachusetts tried something. But I’m not sure it’s a good model for the rest of the country. And I certainly don’t think we have enough data to make a judgement yet.

At our annual 4th of July gathering, the topic of healthcare reform came up and I was asked about the state of the Massachusetts health insurance initiative. Since the national healthcare plan is looking a lot like ours - individual mandate, subsidized plans for lower-income families, tax on small businesses who don’t offer insurance (though that one was removed from by Romney) - it seemed like I should dig up some info on that. So here are a few quick facts and links to recent Boston Globe articles on the subject.

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I’ve been spazzing lately on trying to understand a little bit about the econoclysm. As I mentioned, I like Krugman’s blog. Howard pointed me to Baseline Scenario, which is nice. I do enjoy the Planet Money podcast and, of course, the periodic This American Life segments by the Planet Money crew. I even tried some papers at the Heritage Foundation to understand the right side of things (didn’t help a lot). I think I have more questions than when I started. Here’s some:

• If we nationalize the really big banks, then who’s left to sell them to when we’re done with them?
• If we nationalize the big banks, how does that get done operationally and is it even possible from a manpower/management perspective?
• How are tax cuts supposed to help stimulate the economy when a) everyone (including corporations) will probably just save the money and not spend it and b) the problem is one of low demand, not low supply?
• How is “mark to market” even an issue? Sure, I’d love to pretend my house was worth a lot more than it is, but it just doesn’t work that way.
• How is restraining spending supposed to help? Doesn’t that just fuel the demand problem?
• Some say we shouldn’t boost demand, we need to lower supply, but doesn’t that just mean lots of companies go under and we have huge unemployment for a long, long time?

I’m sure I’ll have more later.

My resource of choice for running narrative on the econocalypse has become Paul Krugman’s blog at NYtimes. I appreciate his columns, too but the blog is where it’s at.

I understand maybe half of what I read there, but I’m fascinated by the blog as an exemplar of cultural movement. The man writes like a snarky thirty-year-old, but one who happens to have a Nobel in economics. He can combine impenetrable wonkishness (by his own explicit declaration) with delightful, slightly stale nerditry. A wonderful encapsulation of this is his recent post titled “All Your Downside Are Belong To Us“.

I find the blog helpful as a digest of the technical details of economic issues from day to day. And I find it absorbing as a reflection of this moment in cultural evolution - a cataclysm refracted through a delicious soup of Internet themes.

I know I’m not exactly early to the Paul Krugman party (and I do hope the members of the administration were, as is suggested, a lot earlier than I) but I still think he deserves another whoop.