Sunday, December 29, 2013

Placing Odds on your Health (and Its Cost)

Read my Datapoints column in today's New York Times. The really important point in shopping for health insurance is understanding your risks of incurring big bills. That information is difficult for individuals to figure out. (and neither the government or health insurers are making it any easier)  

What Americans could use is an individual assessment of risk based on health history, age, and other relevant factors. We know that it can be done, at least to some degree, since in past years health insurers studied their data to figure out who was likely to have big expenses in order to deny them coverage. Health insurers are not making that data readily available, though. 

For now, Milliman’s estimates which I use as the basis for my NYT column can provide a rough guide. Here's the table Milliman provided. Perhaps in the future we’ll see better ways to help Americans become savvy health care shoppers.

The Risk of Incurring Various Amounts of Health Expense in a Year, Without Health Insurance.
Source: Milliman Inc

(1)
(2)
Trended
Percentage of
Total
Adults (under 65) with
Annual
Claims Greater
Claim
than Column 1
(Rounded)
(Rounded)
$0
93%
$100
90%
$500
80%
$900
70%
$1,700
60%
$2,700
50%
$4,300
40%
$7,300
30%
$13,300
20%
$26,800
10%
$47,300
5%




Friday, December 27, 2013

Two Numbers: The Coming US Retirement Crisis

Read my Newsweek column on how prepared we are for retirement. It's scarier than you think.

Monday, December 16, 2013

Two Numbers: the Rich are getting Richer Faster

Read my latest Newsweek piece. By one measure, at least, inequality is growing at a faster rate.

Monday, December 9, 2013

Bitcoins from Heaven

Bitcoins are traded on unregulated markets and open to manipulation. Read my piece in Newsweek.

Friday, November 29, 2013

Monday, November 25, 2013

Monday, November 11, 2013

Twitter's New Owners: Big Institutions

Read the first of my weekly posts on Newsweek about Twitter, the stockmarket and the disappearing small investor.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Insurers' stock unhurt by the dawn of the health care law

Read my DataPoints column in the NYT today on how the market expects health insurers to do just fine under Obamacare.

Friday, October 25, 2013

Eating Our Young

Read my Newsweek Cover on Eating Our Young. When times get tough we're cutting back on our young.

Monday, October 7, 2013

European Stocks Finally Showing Signs of Recovery

Read my piece in the NYT on whether we're seeing the start of a European Economic Renaissance.

Monday, September 30, 2013

Why Verizon Wanted it All

Read my Datapoints column in the NYT on the story behind the Verizon/Verizon Wireless $130 billion deal.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

More evidence that income inequality is accelerating under Obama

The world's leading experts on income inequality, Saez and Piketty, have updated their study of income inequality in the US and have found that the top 10 per cent of earners accounted for half of all income earned in 2012, the highest level ever. Income inequality has been growing for some 30 years now. Isn't it concerning that after all that time the rate of increase is actually accelerating instead of slowing down? Isn't it also shocking that the Bush era, typically thought of as worsening inequality, may not look as bad as the Obama era?

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Income Gap Grows Wider and Faster

Read my New York Times Datapoints column on how income inequality has accelerated during the Obama Administration.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

The Price of Influence

Data Points:

General Electric lobbying spending 1998 - 2013: $294 million

Jeff Bezos purchase of The Washington Post: $250 million

As prices of prime media properties plummet, America's corporate chieftains have unprecedented opportunities to increase their influence. Prices are now comparable to what the biggest companies are spending on influence.
(Source: Opensecrets.org) 

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Saturday, August 3, 2013

Listen to our discussion of the sharing economy on NPR

I was a guest on Warren Olney's To The Point program on KCRW yesterday where I discussed the sharing economy and the role of trust.

Monday, July 8, 2013

A profile on Robert Monks by Anna Bernasek

Read my story on Robert Monks, one of the great corporate governance crusaders of his generation, in the New York Times

Monday, June 24, 2013

A question from a Data Points reader

A reader asked why employers are going to drop health coverage after penalties are introduced when they can drop health coverage today with no penalty. 

That's a good question. The answer depends on the context. Right now, without Obamacare, if a company cancels health insurance it puts employees in a serious bind. It is virtually certain that sicker and older employees will have difficulty getting coverage, especially comparable coverage at anything like comparable cost. So historically companies haven't dropped coverage not because it wouldn't save them money, but because there wasn't an acceptable alternative. Even companies under financial stress have kept coverage in effect in the past.
 
I anticipate--and we'll just have to wait to see if I'm right--that once Obamacare is up and working, companies will have a choice that they didn't have before. It will suddenly become practical for them to drop coverage where it was not practical before. And that just may prove enough of an impetus for companies, perhaps lots of companies, to drop coverage. If you have any experience with how company management views health coverage, you are well aware how much companies have been frustrated by ever rising premiums that either reduced profits or, if borne by employees, resulted in unhappy workers. In many cases cases both happened.

Nobody knows what the outcome will be; but it will certainly be an interesting experiment.  As they crunch the numbers, corporate executives will have to make educated guesses about whether the coverage employees can buy is any good, how much employees can afford and how much the company can afford. Whether a firm is financially stressed will play a part. Dropping health coverage and effectively cutting wages is one way to reduce costs. Perhaps most important, corporate decision makers will take into account what other companies do. Unwittingly, the government is about to unleash a huge experiment in game theory.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Data Points

Read my first Data Points column in the New York Times Sunday Business Section. A pointed look at economic issues by the numbers.

Monday, April 8, 2013

Monday, February 11, 2013

Economics at work

On February 1, I returned to the University of Michigan campus and spoke to freshman and sophomores about how an economics degree made a difference to my career.

A wealth tax would look beyond income

See my story on a wealth tax in Sunday's New York Times

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Funds aren't wielding much power over executive pay

Read my story on mutual funds and executive compensation in the NYT