The Dartmouth health group released a new version of the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care today, highlighting once again the substantial variation in costs per Medicare beneficiary across the United States -- and that the higher-cost areas and hospitals do not seem to generate better health outcomes, on average, than lower-cost ones. (On the basis of this evidence, the Dartmouth researchers suggest that health care spending could be reduced by roughly 30 percent without harming health outcomes.
April 2008
CBO released a new monthly budget review on Friday, which contains data for the first half of fiscal year 2008. The budget deficit amounted to an estimated $310 billion, roughly $50 billion more than during the same period of fiscal year 2007. Corporate tax receipts are down 16 percent (or $24 billion) in the first half of fiscal 2008 relative to the year earlier; those receipts have declined in each of the past nine months.