The NYT reported on the worsening delivery record at the Postal Service as it makes plans for further job cuts and the shutdown of hundreds of processing centers. At one point the article told readers:
“A decline in mail volume, particularly first-class mail, which accounts for the bulk of revenue, has produced steady losses for the Postal Service — an average of $1 billion a month in the first half of the fiscal year — and forced it to propose closing about half its processing centers and cutting hundreds of thousands of jobs.”
Actually, the biggest factor in this loss is the requirement that Congress put into law in 2006 that the Postal Service prefund its retiree health benefits. Prior to this date, the Postal Service was following the practice that prevailed in the private sector of paying for retiree health benefits out of current income. Not only did Congress require that the Postal Service prefund its system, it also required a very rapid rate of build-up (10 years) and that make much more pessimistic assumptions about costs than private funds. In addition, the Postal Service is handicapped by the fact that it can only invest in public debt, unlike private funds that can invest in equities and other higher yielding assets.
The NYT reported on the worsening delivery record at the Postal Service as it makes plans for further job cuts and the shutdown of hundreds of processing centers. At one point the article told readers:
“A decline in mail volume, particularly first-class mail, which accounts for the bulk of revenue, has produced steady losses for the Postal Service — an average of $1 billion a month in the first half of the fiscal year — and forced it to propose closing about half its processing centers and cutting hundreds of thousands of jobs.”
Actually, the biggest factor in this loss is the requirement that Congress put into law in 2006 that the Postal Service prefund its retiree health benefits. Prior to this date, the Postal Service was following the practice that prevailed in the private sector of paying for retiree health benefits out of current income. Not only did Congress require that the Postal Service prefund its system, it also required a very rapid rate of build-up (10 years) and that make much more pessimistic assumptions about costs than private funds. In addition, the Postal Service is handicapped by the fact that it can only invest in public debt, unlike private funds that can invest in equities and other higher yielding assets.
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The NYT Magazine has a piece discussing Greece prospects for increasing its exports. While it will certainly have to increase its exports to have a sustainable trade deficit, it is worth noting that a lack of exports was not Greece main problem.
From the inception of the euro in 1998 until the crisis hit in 2008, there was only one year in which Greece’s exports fell (2002). In three years, exports grew at a double digit rate.
Greece has a serious trade deficit because its imports grew even more rapidly. The return to sustainable deficits will almost certainly mean that Greeks will again have to produce domestically some of the items that now import and do without others (e.g. fewer Mercedes).
Fifteen years ago the country had sustainable trade deficits. Its exports are considerably higher today than they were then. This should mean that there is considerable room for adjustment on the import side.
The NYT Magazine has a piece discussing Greece prospects for increasing its exports. While it will certainly have to increase its exports to have a sustainable trade deficit, it is worth noting that a lack of exports was not Greece main problem.
From the inception of the euro in 1998 until the crisis hit in 2008, there was only one year in which Greece’s exports fell (2002). In three years, exports grew at a double digit rate.
Greece has a serious trade deficit because its imports grew even more rapidly. The return to sustainable deficits will almost certainly mean that Greeks will again have to produce domestically some of the items that now import and do without others (e.g. fewer Mercedes).
Fifteen years ago the country had sustainable trade deficits. Its exports are considerably higher today than they were then. This should mean that there is considerable room for adjustment on the import side.
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In his column today George Will argued that teachers in Chicago were being reasonable in objecting to the large implicit pay cuts that would result if they were required to put in roughly 30 percent more hours for no increase in pay. However, he also implied that teachers in Chicago are currently overpaid.
This is not clear. Government workers in general get roughly the same compensation as private sector workers after adjusting for education and experience. Will refers to the generous pensions that Chicago teachers receive without having to make an employee contribution. However, this benefit is compensation for a wage that is lower than comparably educated private sector workers.
Will also is in error in taking Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s assertion at face value, that more charter schools will improve the quality of education. At this point there is considerable research that shows that students in charter schools perform no better on average than students in public schools. Presumably Emanuel is aware of this research, which suggests that he has some other motive for his confrontation with the teachers union.
It is also worth noting that if Mayor Emanuel is correct that Chicago’s schools are in awful shape then it speaks poorly of the person who ran them for almost a decade, President Obama’s education secretary Arne Duncan.
Finally, Will is confused about the affiliation of the Chicago Teachers Union. He begins his column by telling readers:
“The name of the nation’s largest labor union — the National Education Association — seems calculated to blur the fact that it is a teachers union. In this blunt city, however, the teachers union candidly calls itself the Chicago Teachers Union.”
The reason why the teachers union in Chicago is so blunt is that it is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, not the National Education Association.
In his column today George Will argued that teachers in Chicago were being reasonable in objecting to the large implicit pay cuts that would result if they were required to put in roughly 30 percent more hours for no increase in pay. However, he also implied that teachers in Chicago are currently overpaid.
This is not clear. Government workers in general get roughly the same compensation as private sector workers after adjusting for education and experience. Will refers to the generous pensions that Chicago teachers receive without having to make an employee contribution. However, this benefit is compensation for a wage that is lower than comparably educated private sector workers.
Will also is in error in taking Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s assertion at face value, that more charter schools will improve the quality of education. At this point there is considerable research that shows that students in charter schools perform no better on average than students in public schools. Presumably Emanuel is aware of this research, which suggests that he has some other motive for his confrontation with the teachers union.
It is also worth noting that if Mayor Emanuel is correct that Chicago’s schools are in awful shape then it speaks poorly of the person who ran them for almost a decade, President Obama’s education secretary Arne Duncan.
Finally, Will is confused about the affiliation of the Chicago Teachers Union. He begins his column by telling readers:
“The name of the nation’s largest labor union — the National Education Association — seems calculated to blur the fact that it is a teachers union. In this blunt city, however, the teachers union candidly calls itself the Chicago Teachers Union.”
The reason why the teachers union in Chicago is so blunt is that it is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, not the National Education Association.
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The solution to the euro zone crisis is a topic that is hotly debated among economists. Some have argued that the debt troubled countries in the periphery must undergo years of austerity and high unemployment with the idea that this will eventually lower wages and prices enough to allow them to regain competitiveness with Germany and other countries in northern Europe. Other economists have maintained that the only practical solution is for the Germany and other northern European countries to have a period of moderately higher inflation (e.g. 4-5 percent) so that the peripheral countries could regain competitiveness by having very low inflation rates.
It is possible to find many people in both camps as well as some who have not made up their mind. However, in effort to clear up the confusion, a New York Times piece profiling Mario Draghi and his role at the ECB gave us the answer. The article told readers:
“The sweet spot Mr. Draghi must negotiate now is between the monetary hawks, especially in Germany, who say he has abused his power by going far beyond his inflation-fighting mandate, and the soft-money doves who say his failure is not going far enough to rescue the euro.
“Mr. Draghi in turn has urged politicians to do more, dismayed by the way they eased up on their reform drives once the flood of cheap loans to banks calmed markets for a few months. The lesson was that big injections of cash from the European Central Bank produce little more than a sugar high unless they are accompanied by fundamental reforms to the currency union’s architecture, changes that would convince investors that the euro zone is built for the long haul.”
Okay, so the NYT says the key is fundamental reforms. It might be helpful if the paper explained how it reached this conclusion and what evidence it has for its position. For example, are there any cases where countries have successfully pursued these “fundamental reforms” within a currency union to regain competitiveness? (Ireland, a one-time poster child for advocates of fundamental reforms, just saw its unemployment rate rise to 14.9 percent, a new high for the downturn.)
The sort of pronouncements about the best cure for the crisis are best left for the opinion section or expressed as statements from people involved in the debate. While the NYT’s reporters and editors are undoubtedly quite competent at their job, readers may not want to accept on faith their assertions about what needs to be done to end the debt crisis in Europe.
The solution to the euro zone crisis is a topic that is hotly debated among economists. Some have argued that the debt troubled countries in the periphery must undergo years of austerity and high unemployment with the idea that this will eventually lower wages and prices enough to allow them to regain competitiveness with Germany and other countries in northern Europe. Other economists have maintained that the only practical solution is for the Germany and other northern European countries to have a period of moderately higher inflation (e.g. 4-5 percent) so that the peripheral countries could regain competitiveness by having very low inflation rates.
It is possible to find many people in both camps as well as some who have not made up their mind. However, in effort to clear up the confusion, a New York Times piece profiling Mario Draghi and his role at the ECB gave us the answer. The article told readers:
“The sweet spot Mr. Draghi must negotiate now is between the monetary hawks, especially in Germany, who say he has abused his power by going far beyond his inflation-fighting mandate, and the soft-money doves who say his failure is not going far enough to rescue the euro.
“Mr. Draghi in turn has urged politicians to do more, dismayed by the way they eased up on their reform drives once the flood of cheap loans to banks calmed markets for a few months. The lesson was that big injections of cash from the European Central Bank produce little more than a sugar high unless they are accompanied by fundamental reforms to the currency union’s architecture, changes that would convince investors that the euro zone is built for the long haul.”
Okay, so the NYT says the key is fundamental reforms. It might be helpful if the paper explained how it reached this conclusion and what evidence it has for its position. For example, are there any cases where countries have successfully pursued these “fundamental reforms” within a currency union to regain competitiveness? (Ireland, a one-time poster child for advocates of fundamental reforms, just saw its unemployment rate rise to 14.9 percent, a new high for the downturn.)
The sort of pronouncements about the best cure for the crisis are best left for the opinion section or expressed as statements from people involved in the debate. While the NYT’s reporters and editors are undoubtedly quite competent at their job, readers may not want to accept on faith their assertions about what needs to be done to end the debt crisis in Europe.
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The media waste far too much time reporting on various consumer confidence measures. These really are not a very good indicator of anything, they often just reflect the tone of reporting in recent weeks.
This is especially true of the future expectations index. This index is very volatile. Consumption is not. What does that tell us?
The current conditions measure is a bit better, but it is more a contemporaneous measure that a predictive one. In other words, if people are buying a lot this month, odds are that their confidence is high, but high confidence in June won’t tell us how much people will buy in July.
Anyhow, the June car sales numbers came out yesterday and, as the Post tells us, they were surprisingly strong given the weak confidence measures. If there was ever a category of consumption that should be driven by confidence it has to be car sales. After all, it is pretty rare that someone can’t put off the decision to buy a car for another six months. Also, people who are fearful about their economic prospects could always opt to buy a used car instead of a new one.
Anyhow, that does not seem to have been happening in June. People were buying cars at a pretty healthy rate even as they were telling the survey takers that they were worried about the economy. Remember this the next time you see a big story about consumer confidence rising or falling.
The media waste far too much time reporting on various consumer confidence measures. These really are not a very good indicator of anything, they often just reflect the tone of reporting in recent weeks.
This is especially true of the future expectations index. This index is very volatile. Consumption is not. What does that tell us?
The current conditions measure is a bit better, but it is more a contemporaneous measure that a predictive one. In other words, if people are buying a lot this month, odds are that their confidence is high, but high confidence in June won’t tell us how much people will buy in July.
Anyhow, the June car sales numbers came out yesterday and, as the Post tells us, they were surprisingly strong given the weak confidence measures. If there was ever a category of consumption that should be driven by confidence it has to be car sales. After all, it is pretty rare that someone can’t put off the decision to buy a car for another six months. Also, people who are fearful about their economic prospects could always opt to buy a used car instead of a new one.
Anyhow, that does not seem to have been happening in June. People were buying cars at a pretty healthy rate even as they were telling the survey takers that they were worried about the economy. Remember this the next time you see a big story about consumer confidence rising or falling.
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Today GlaxoSmithKline is offering up evidence, coughing up $3 billion as a fine for having lied about the safety and effectiveness of several of its big drugs. Yes, this is the incentive that we give to drug companies when the government grants patent monopolies that allow them to sell drugs for hundreds or even thousands of times the cost of production.
Economic theory predicts that this form of government intervention will lead to enormous economic distortions, including the sorts of misrepresentations about the quality of drugs that GlaxoSmithKline fessed up to yesterday. Why can’t the NYT or anyone else ever mention this fact. When there were shortages of milk and meat in the Soviet Union were they prohibited from mentioning that it might have something to do with central planning?
Today GlaxoSmithKline is offering up evidence, coughing up $3 billion as a fine for having lied about the safety and effectiveness of several of its big drugs. Yes, this is the incentive that we give to drug companies when the government grants patent monopolies that allow them to sell drugs for hundreds or even thousands of times the cost of production.
Economic theory predicts that this form of government intervention will lead to enormous economic distortions, including the sorts of misrepresentations about the quality of drugs that GlaxoSmithKline fessed up to yesterday. Why can’t the NYT or anyone else ever mention this fact. When there were shortages of milk and meat in the Soviet Union were they prohibited from mentioning that it might have something to do with central planning?
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Steven Pearlstein has a lengthy and somewhat confused discussion of offshoring in his Post column today. First of all, the discussion would be much more straightforward if it just referred to trade. There is no theoretical difference between the impact of imports through trade in general and the impact of outsourcing. It makes little difference to the U.S. economy whether a Chinese manufacturer sells computers to retail stores in the United States like Wal-Mart and Costco, or if Apple contracts with a Chinese manufacturer to produce computers that it will sell to Wal-Mart and Costco. By treating outsourcing as a special entity that is distinct from trade, Pearlstein creates unnecessary confusion.
This unnecessary confusion prevents the piece from getting any clear grip on the issues involved. At one point it tells readers:
“For economists, the theoretical argument in favor of offshoring is that, like all other forms of specialization and exchange, it is a win-win proposition for all the countries involved. But the theory is based on a number of assumptions, one of which is that trade is reasonably balanced — that once we started importing more goods and services from the rest of the world, the rest of the world will use that extra income to buy equal amounts of goods and services from us. Years of large and growing trade deficits have now called that assumption into question.
There is a vigorous debate among economists about how many jobs are forgone by running a persistent $500 billion annual trade deficit. There are some purists who would say none, but a lot of studies put the number at a couple of million.”
This is wrong. Economists would in principle say that the country is benefitting from trade even if it is very far from balanced if the economy is fully employed. Given economists standard assumptions about the efficiency of markets, the U.S. economy could benefit from trade even if it had a trade deficit of 6 percent of GDP ($900 billion in today’s economy) as it did in 2006. The argument would be that the country was taking advantage of low-priced goods and services from abroad in order to build up its domestic capital stock, both physical and human. Of course that is a hard argument to make about the housing bubble years, but that would be the standard economic argument about trade.
When the economy is below full employment, as most economists would concede today, then a trade deficit costs jobs. There is not much ambiguity about this fact.
More generally, the argument is that trade redistributes jobs. The current pattern of trade has cost the jobs of millions of manufacturing workers driving down the wages of large segments of the workforce.
This fact makes it difficult to understand Pearlstein’s concern that:
“But now that many categories of high tech have moved virtually all production offshore, companies are finding that they also need to move more and more of engineering and design work overseas as well.”
Moving engineering and design work overseas would imply savings to consumers in exactly the same way as moving manufacturing operations overseas provided savings to consumers. It is not clear why Pearlstein doesn’t want to see consumers save money. The lower cost of products due to cheaper engineering and design services would free up money to buy other goods thereby leading to more economic growth.
Unless the intent to redistribute income from manufacturing workers to more highly-educated workers, there is no more reason to oppose the offshoring of highly skilled jobs than there is to oppose the offshoring of manufacturing jobs.
Steven Pearlstein has a lengthy and somewhat confused discussion of offshoring in his Post column today. First of all, the discussion would be much more straightforward if it just referred to trade. There is no theoretical difference between the impact of imports through trade in general and the impact of outsourcing. It makes little difference to the U.S. economy whether a Chinese manufacturer sells computers to retail stores in the United States like Wal-Mart and Costco, or if Apple contracts with a Chinese manufacturer to produce computers that it will sell to Wal-Mart and Costco. By treating outsourcing as a special entity that is distinct from trade, Pearlstein creates unnecessary confusion.
This unnecessary confusion prevents the piece from getting any clear grip on the issues involved. At one point it tells readers:
“For economists, the theoretical argument in favor of offshoring is that, like all other forms of specialization and exchange, it is a win-win proposition for all the countries involved. But the theory is based on a number of assumptions, one of which is that trade is reasonably balanced — that once we started importing more goods and services from the rest of the world, the rest of the world will use that extra income to buy equal amounts of goods and services from us. Years of large and growing trade deficits have now called that assumption into question.
There is a vigorous debate among economists about how many jobs are forgone by running a persistent $500 billion annual trade deficit. There are some purists who would say none, but a lot of studies put the number at a couple of million.”
This is wrong. Economists would in principle say that the country is benefitting from trade even if it is very far from balanced if the economy is fully employed. Given economists standard assumptions about the efficiency of markets, the U.S. economy could benefit from trade even if it had a trade deficit of 6 percent of GDP ($900 billion in today’s economy) as it did in 2006. The argument would be that the country was taking advantage of low-priced goods and services from abroad in order to build up its domestic capital stock, both physical and human. Of course that is a hard argument to make about the housing bubble years, but that would be the standard economic argument about trade.
When the economy is below full employment, as most economists would concede today, then a trade deficit costs jobs. There is not much ambiguity about this fact.
More generally, the argument is that trade redistributes jobs. The current pattern of trade has cost the jobs of millions of manufacturing workers driving down the wages of large segments of the workforce.
This fact makes it difficult to understand Pearlstein’s concern that:
“But now that many categories of high tech have moved virtually all production offshore, companies are finding that they also need to move more and more of engineering and design work overseas as well.”
Moving engineering and design work overseas would imply savings to consumers in exactly the same way as moving manufacturing operations overseas provided savings to consumers. It is not clear why Pearlstein doesn’t want to see consumers save money. The lower cost of products due to cheaper engineering and design services would free up money to buy other goods thereby leading to more economic growth.
Unless the intent to redistribute income from manufacturing workers to more highly-educated workers, there is no more reason to oppose the offshoring of highly skilled jobs than there is to oppose the offshoring of manufacturing jobs.
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The Washington Post is heavily invested in NAFTA. At the time of the debate it abandoned any pretext of being an objective newspaper, allowing both its opinion and news pages to be overwhelmingly dominated by proponents of the agreement. Since its passage the Post has refused to acknowledge that the agreement has had the intended effect in the United States of lowering the wages of manufacturing workers. (This is textbook economics. By putting U.S. manufacturing workers into more direct competition with their low-paid counterparts in Mexico, the result is that wages of manufacturing workers in the United States fall.)
The Post also refuses to acknowledge that the deal has failed to improve Mexico’s growth. In fact, a lead Post editorial in December 2007 told readers that Mexico’s GDP had quadrupled since 1988, which it attributed to the benefits of NAFTA. The actual increase over this 19 year period was 83 percent, which put Mexico near the bottom in growth for Latin American countries.
The Post’s prohibition of honest discussion of Mexico’s economy is apparently continuing. In a piece on Mexico’s elections today, the Post told readers:
“But annual growth during Calderon’s six years has averaged a middling 2 percent.”
This statement gives a whole new meaning to word “middling.” If we turn to the IMF’s data and look at per capita GDP growth in the years 2006-2011, we find that on average Mexico’s per capital GDP shrank by 0.1 percent annually over this period. This is not middling; this performance places Mexico dead last among Latin American countries (several countries in the Caribbean did worse.)
For some reference points, per capita growth in Argentina averaged 5.8 percent, Bolivia 2.8 percent, Brazil 3.1 percent, Ecuador 2.6 percent, and Peru 5.6 percent. There is nothing middling about Mexico’s economic performance over this period; it was bad.
The Washington Post is heavily invested in NAFTA. At the time of the debate it abandoned any pretext of being an objective newspaper, allowing both its opinion and news pages to be overwhelmingly dominated by proponents of the agreement. Since its passage the Post has refused to acknowledge that the agreement has had the intended effect in the United States of lowering the wages of manufacturing workers. (This is textbook economics. By putting U.S. manufacturing workers into more direct competition with their low-paid counterparts in Mexico, the result is that wages of manufacturing workers in the United States fall.)
The Post also refuses to acknowledge that the deal has failed to improve Mexico’s growth. In fact, a lead Post editorial in December 2007 told readers that Mexico’s GDP had quadrupled since 1988, which it attributed to the benefits of NAFTA. The actual increase over this 19 year period was 83 percent, which put Mexico near the bottom in growth for Latin American countries.
The Post’s prohibition of honest discussion of Mexico’s economy is apparently continuing. In a piece on Mexico’s elections today, the Post told readers:
“But annual growth during Calderon’s six years has averaged a middling 2 percent.”
This statement gives a whole new meaning to word “middling.” If we turn to the IMF’s data and look at per capita GDP growth in the years 2006-2011, we find that on average Mexico’s per capital GDP shrank by 0.1 percent annually over this period. This is not middling; this performance places Mexico dead last among Latin American countries (several countries in the Caribbean did worse.)
For some reference points, per capita growth in Argentina averaged 5.8 percent, Bolivia 2.8 percent, Brazil 3.1 percent, Ecuador 2.6 percent, and Peru 5.6 percent. There is nothing middling about Mexico’s economic performance over this period; it was bad.
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There should be an automatic fine of $10,000 for anyone who claims that a dispute between politicians is about philosophy. It should double the second time they say it and go up to $100,000 the third time.
Come on folks, this political science 101. The people that we see in Congress, the White House and elsewhere on the political stage did not get there because of their great philosophical works. They got there by appealing to powerful interest groups. And they stay there by appealing to powerful interest groups. So why are people in the media continually telling us about philosophy.
Glenn Kessler is the most recent sinner in his otherwise fine Fact Check piece on Sarah Palin’s effort to bring back her “death panels” claims about ACA. Kessler notes that Palin now claims that her reference to death panels is the Medicare Independent Payments Advisory Board (IPAB), which she argues will be making life and death decisions about what payments to provide for various treatments.
Kessler comments that IPAB is an effort to contain the rate of cost growth within Medicare which is says is not very different from the system proposed by Republicans. The latter would provide beneficiaries with a voucher (which they like to call “premium support”) whose growth would be restricted to a pace well below the rate of medical cost inflation.
Kessler then tells us:
“the dispute really centers on a philosophical divide between the parties. Democrats would rely on independent experts … Republicans would rely on the insurance marketplace to control costs.”
What makes this is a question of philosophy? Let’s be more concrete. The system put in place under the ACA would put the government in a position where it could squeeze money out of providers. It could specify prices for services and procedures and tell providers take it or leave it. Given the enormous and rapidly growing size of the Medicare market, most would likely take it.
By contrast, the Republican approach surrenders this market power. In fact, it increases by costs by relying on a network of private insurers that we know is less efficient than Medicare. (The Congressional Budget Office and other independent experts have documented this fact numerous times. Like global warming, it is no longer a debatable point.)
Kessler and the Post don’t know anything about Republican’s philosophical beliefs. They do know that they have proposed a Medicare plan that is likely to leave a higher share of Medicare dollars in the hands of insurers and give providers more money for each dollar of services. The paper should just stick with the facts and leave speculation about philosophy to readers.
There should be an automatic fine of $10,000 for anyone who claims that a dispute between politicians is about philosophy. It should double the second time they say it and go up to $100,000 the third time.
Come on folks, this political science 101. The people that we see in Congress, the White House and elsewhere on the political stage did not get there because of their great philosophical works. They got there by appealing to powerful interest groups. And they stay there by appealing to powerful interest groups. So why are people in the media continually telling us about philosophy.
Glenn Kessler is the most recent sinner in his otherwise fine Fact Check piece on Sarah Palin’s effort to bring back her “death panels” claims about ACA. Kessler notes that Palin now claims that her reference to death panels is the Medicare Independent Payments Advisory Board (IPAB), which she argues will be making life and death decisions about what payments to provide for various treatments.
Kessler comments that IPAB is an effort to contain the rate of cost growth within Medicare which is says is not very different from the system proposed by Republicans. The latter would provide beneficiaries with a voucher (which they like to call “premium support”) whose growth would be restricted to a pace well below the rate of medical cost inflation.
Kessler then tells us:
“the dispute really centers on a philosophical divide between the parties. Democrats would rely on independent experts … Republicans would rely on the insurance marketplace to control costs.”
What makes this is a question of philosophy? Let’s be more concrete. The system put in place under the ACA would put the government in a position where it could squeeze money out of providers. It could specify prices for services and procedures and tell providers take it or leave it. Given the enormous and rapidly growing size of the Medicare market, most would likely take it.
By contrast, the Republican approach surrenders this market power. In fact, it increases by costs by relying on a network of private insurers that we know is less efficient than Medicare. (The Congressional Budget Office and other independent experts have documented this fact numerous times. Like global warming, it is no longer a debatable point.)
Kessler and the Post don’t know anything about Republican’s philosophical beliefs. They do know that they have proposed a Medicare plan that is likely to leave a higher share of Medicare dollars in the hands of insurers and give providers more money for each dollar of services. The paper should just stick with the facts and leave speculation about philosophy to readers.
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