The variability of individual earnings and household income (that is, how much a worker's earnings or a household's income bounces around from year to year) has become a topic of much interest to analysts and the policy community. Today, CBO issued a comprehensive paper on the topic. The study follows up on our earlier work on earnings and income variability -- see here.
June 2008
Today's New York Times has an outstanding and quite detailed front page story on the use of computed tomography (CT) scanners.
Yesterday, I participated in a forum discussing a new paper on health care financing options from Better Health Care Together. The video is posted here.
A major issue in the pharmaceutical world involves the licensing of biological drugs. (Biological drugs are products derived from living organisms.)
CBO has a fantastic internship program -- I regularly hear from former interns about what a wonderful experience they had as part of the program. In addition to our summer intern program, we also recently created a Health Policy Internship, which may be available on a summer, semester, or year-long basis depending on work needs and students' availability.
Here's a photo of this year's CBO interns:
CBO just released a score of the Medicare legislation (H.R. 6331, with a proposed amendment) under consideration in the House. In total, CBO estimates that the bill would reduce deficits by $0.3 billion over the 2008-2013 period and by less than $50 million over the 2008-2018 period. (The five-year savings would decline to $0.1 billion if the pending supplemental appropriations act is cleared before H.R. 6331.)
As I mentioned in a previous post, behavioral economics seems to have advanced substantially in influencing policymakers in the UK. For some recent commentary on that phenomenon, see this article from the Sunday Times and this comment on the article. The comment notes that "The Sunday Times is very good at spotting intellectual trends. When they print an entire piece on some new thinking, it is an important sign that a change is taking place."
On Friday I participated in a briefing sponsored by the Alliance for Health Reform and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on the effects of health IT. The video from the event is posted here .
CBO issued a letter today reviewing options to offset price increases experienced by low- and moderate-income households under a cap-and-trade program for carbon dioxide emissions.
I delivered testimony today before the Senate Finance Committee on CBO's long-term budget outlook and options for slowing the growth of health care costs. Under any plausible scenario, the federal budget is on an unsustainable paththat is, federal debt will grow much faster than the economy over the long run.