Kaiser Compares Premium Support Proposals

For those of you who have had trouble keeping track of the many premium support proposals that have come out over the past year, the Kaiser Family Foundation has a handy comparison chart of the most prominent ones.

The chart includes four plans: House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan's (R-WI) plan from the April House Budget Resolution, the Ryan-Wyden proposal from last December, the Domenici-Rivlin plan, and the Coburn-Burr "Seniors' Choice Act." The chart compares many aspects of each plan, including limits on spending growth, the role of traditional Medicare, cost-sharing, the benefits package, payment adjustments for health status and income, and many others. Obviously, the fundamental mechanism of premium support is constant in each plan--having health plans compete for the ability to offer coverage while seniors received a fixed payment to purchase health insurance--but details vary widely. Also, the chart compares all of these plans to current Medicare including the changes in the Affordable Care Act.

So if you need a reminder of which plans (for example) keep traditional Medicare, explicitly limit spending growth, or change traditional Medicare cost-sharing, be sure to check out Kaiser's chart in order to clear up confusion among the premium support plans.

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Recent Student Loan Actions Forgo $5 Billion in Repayments

The Department of Education announced last week a six-month extension of automatic forbearance to all borrowers enrolled in the SAVE income-driven repayment plan while it is being challenged in courts, adding that they will forgive any unpaid accrued interest during that time. We estimate that the Department of Education is forgoing roughly $500 million of repayments per month, meaning that this extension would result in $3 billion in forgone payments, bringing the total amount up to $5 billion. Importantly, much of those payments will instead be paid later, and so the net cost would be some fraction of that $5 billion.

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