Somebody at TIME Hasn't Done Their Homework

That somebody is Kate Pickert, who wrote about the excise tax at TIME's "Swampland" blog. Editors will be editors, so we can't necessarily blame her for the piece's misleading title: "Who Should Pay for Health Care Reform - the Rich or the Richly Insured?" [1] But she calls the plans affected "generous." If she had read two papers published last week in the respected journal Health Affairs, [2]she would know that many of the health plans that exceed the tax's trigger point are not "generous." A number of others factors drive a health plan's cost, and "generosity" of benefit only accounts for 3.7% of the difference. (Gabel et al.)

She also writes: "Many health care economists ... cite the Cadillac tax as one of the few provisions most likely to bend the cost curve. They say that having the Cadillac tax looming will lead employers to cut back on price of the insurance plans they offer to employees." Ah, but they hadn't seen those Health Affairs studies yet ...

"While it may sound cold to say that people should make some health care decisions based on cost," adds Pickert, "this is one of the real purposes behind health reform that proponents don't spend a lot of time talking about." She's right - it is an unspoken argument for these types of reforms - but if it's based on flawed data it needs to be changed. And if the plans being affected aren't particularly generous, than needed benefits are likely to be cut in response.

And she's overly apologetic for what she calls "lots of numbers and wonk," too, if you ask me. Don't apologize, Ms. Pickert! We love numbers and wonk. (Although we believe that "wonk" is a term for policy-obsessed individuals; perhaps the noun you seek is "wonkery.") By any other name, however, bring it on! And we hope to see you write about those new studies very, very soon.

(For easy reference, that link is here [2].)