Voter ID Laws and Biased Information from Local Election Officials

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Michael Morrison

What Do I Need to Vote? Bias in Information Provision by Local Election Officials

Abstract

The adoption of voter identification (ID) requirements has raised concerns that these laws differentially reduce turnout among minorities. We use a field experiment to investigate one mechanism by which these laws could reduce turnout: differential information provision about voting requirements to minorities. We contact over 7,000 local election administrators in 48 states and observe that they provide different information about ID requirements to voters of different putative ethnicities. Emails sent from Latino aliases are significantly less likely to receive any response from local election officials than non-Latino white aliases and receive responses of lower quality. This raises concerns about the effect of voter ID laws on access to the franchise and about bias in the provision of information by local bureaucrats more generally.

From the conclusion section:

“These findings have important implications for debates about voter ID laws, and indeed for any changes to voting requirements or elections administration. The behavior of the local officials tasked with implementing reforms has been shown to affect the impact of new electoral rules (Burden et al. 2010, 2011) and previous research has also shown that changes to voting procedures can decrease turnout by increasing the information costs to voting (Brady and McNulty 2011, McNulty et al. 2009, Vercellotti and Andersen 2009). Our results indicate that changes to existing voting regulations are likely to differentially increase information costs for Latino voters because public officials are less responsive to their inquiries than to non-Latinos. That we find officials respond at lower rates to Latinos even when asked a question requiring a single word answer (“No”) suggests that public officials can be biased even on topics not associated with ethnicity in public discourse and for which the costs of response are exceptionally low. While local election officials interact with constituents by means beyond email, email is an increasingly common form of constituent interaction (Smith 2009, Smith et al. 2010), and similar bias can occur in other forms of communication where local officials have discretion to reply, or to reply accurately (such as with letters, phone calls, etc.). Future reforms to electoral rules should include serious efforts to disseminate information to voters of all ethnic and socio-economic groups to offset potential bias in information provision at an individual level.”

Reference

Faller, Julie K., Nathan, Noah L., and White, Ariel R. (2013). What Do I Need to Vote? Bias in Information Provision by Local Election Officials. Harvard University, Department of Government. Preliminary draft.

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The Economist Says Europe’s Leaders are Sleepwalking through an Economic Wasteland

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Michael Morrison

John Micklethwait, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, summarizes an article in The Economist:

“Many people would like to believe that the euro crisis is over. In reality, Europe’s leaders are sleepwalking through an economic wasteland. If they do not act, the euro zone faces stagnation or break-up, or possibly both. Our cover leader in Europe this week urges the sleepwalkers to wake up.”

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How to Save Billions in Medicare: Allow Medicare to Negotiate Drug Prices with Big Pharma

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Michael Morrison

The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare summarizes a cost effective strategy to save billions  in Medicare expenses for beneficiaries and the federal government.

Price Negotiation Would Dramatically Lower the Cost of Prescription Drugs for Medicare Beneficiaries

“The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare has long advocated for a government-administered Part D benefit with negotiated drug prices. However, a provision in the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA), known as the “noninterference” provision, expressly prohibits the Medicare program from directly negotiating lower prescription drug prices with pharmaceutical manufacturers. Today, over 3,000 private plans enter into negotiations with pharmaceutical manufacturers to deliver Medicare Part D benefits. Each plan tries to attract a large enough number of customers so they have more leverage to negotiate lower prices with manufacturers. Establishing Medicare as the collective buyer of prescription drugs – rather than thousands of individual private plans – would better harness the purchasing power of Medicare’s 43 million beneficiaries and substantially lower prices.

National Committee Position

The National Committee is committed to finding ways to improve the prescription drug law. One of the most significant improvements we can make is to allow the traditional Medicare program to offer its own government-administered Part D plan with drug prices negotiated directly with pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Medicare beneficiaries deserve the same low prices that veterans and others receive through negotiations between the federal government and drug companies. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) achieves significant discounts on generic and brand-name prescription drugs by negotiating directly with pharmaceutical manufacturers on behalf of its five million beneficiaries. One study by Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that, on average, the VA pays only about 42 percent of the Average Wholesale Price (AWP) – or the suggested list price – for brand-name drugs.

While VA beneficiaries enjoy some of the best prices on prescription drugs negotiated by the federal government, other federal departments also receive significant discounts on prescription drugs through price negotiation. For example, CBO found that drug prices negotiated through the Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) are 53% of the AWP.  FSS prices are available to all government agencies (including the VA, the Department of Defense, the Public Health Service, the Bureau of Prisons, and other federal agencies and institutions) when they purchase prescription drugs.

Seniors pay more for prescription drugs under Medicare Part D than veterans pay for prescription drugs under their federally-negotiated plan. One study by Families USA found that the VA negotiated substantially lower prices for the top 20 drugs used by seniors, compared to private Medicare Part D plans.  Specifically, they found that the lowest VA price is lower than the lowest Medicare prescription drug plan price for 19 of the top 20 drugs. Based on an analysis of median prices, Families USA also found that the lowest price offered by any Medicare prescription drug plan is at least $260.70, or 48.2%, higher than the lowest price available through the VA.

Another study by the minority staff at the House Government Reform Committee found that drug prices under Medicare Part D’s private plans exceed federally-negotiated prices, Canadian prices, Drugstore.com prices, and Costco prices.  Their study showed that the average prices offered by the ten leading private Medicare drug plans are 84% higher than federally negotiated prices (Federal Supply Schedule), 61% higher than Canadian prices, 3.5% higher than Drugstore.com prices, and 2.9% higher than Costco prices.

A Medicare-operated Part D plan with drug prices directly negotiated with pharmaceutical companies will deliver billions of dollars in savings. Research by respected economist Dean Baker shows that the federal government and Medicare beneficiaries would save $600 billion between 2006 and 2013 if Medicare were allowed to directly offer a Part D benefit and to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical manufacturers.  Such significant savings could be used to close Part D’s donut hole and to lower cost-sharing for Medicare beneficiaries.

Conclusion

Medicare beneficiaries should be given the choice to get their prescription drug benefit from the traditional Medicare program that they know and trust. Instead, they are forced to deal with an overwhelming number of private plans with varying formularies, premiums, deductibles, and co-pays in order to receive prescription drug coverage. A Medicare-operated plan with negotiated drug prices will restore the social insurance nature of Medicare, deliver substantially lower prices, and give beneficiaries the Part D choice they really want.”

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Medicare Advantage Plans Cost Medicare an Extra $34.1 Billion in 2012

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Michael Morrison

Congress Set Up Medicare Advantage to Compete with Medicare Which Doesn’t Save Money

Physicians for a National Health Plan provides a summary of a new study on the additional costs of Medicare Advantage:

“A Physicians for a National Health Program (http://www.pnhp.org) published online today finds that the private insurance companies that participate in Medicare under the Medicare Advantage program and its predecessors have cost the publicly funded program for the elderly and disabled an extra $282.6 billion since 1985, most of it over the past eight years. In 2012 alone, private insurers were overpaid $34.1 billion.

That’s wasted money that should have been spent on improving patient care, shoring up Medicare’s trust fund or reducing the federal deficit, the researchers say.

…
Medicare has contracted with private insurance plans – previously referred to as Medicare HMOs and now called Medicare Advantage plans – since 1985. Such plans, most of them for-profit, currently cover about 27 percent of Medicare enrollees and have been growing at a fast clip. UnitedHealth and Humana are among the largest players in this market, and together operate about one-third of such plans.

Medicare pays these privately run plans a set “premium” per enrollee for hospital and physician services (averaging $10,123 in 2012) based on a prediction of how costly the enrollee’s care will be.

The authors find that private insurers have four strategies that make them more costly than the traditional Medicare program.

1. Private plans cherry-pick healthier beneficiaries who cost less to care for, guaranteeing large profits. Although private plans must accept all seniors who choose to enroll, they cherry-pick by selectively recruiting the healthiest seniors through advertising, office location, etc. They also induce sicker ones to disenroll by making expensive care inconvenient.

2. They recruit otherwise healthy seniors with very mild (and inexpensive) cases of sometimes serious conditions – automatically triggering higher premiums for these beneficiaries from the risk-adjustment scheme implemented in 2004, but escaping payments for expensive care. For instance, many seniors have very mild cases of arthritis, heart failure and bronchitis that require little or no treatment.

3. They enroll patients who get most of their care free at the Veteran’s Administration.

4. They heavily lobby Congress to raise their reimbursement. The insurance industry successfully induced Congress and the Bush administration to add bonus payments to Medicare Advantage premiums beginning in 2003.

Since the study was completed, the industry has again successfully lobbied the administration to raise payments to Medicare Advantage plans, reversing a planned cut of 2.2 percent in reimbursement rates and instead obtaining a 3.3 percent increase. Stock prices of private insurers soared over the announcement.

“We’ve long known that Medicare has been paying private insurers more than if their enrollees had stayed in traditional fee-for-service Medicare, but no one had added up the total extra cost to the taxpayer since contracting with private insurers began 27 years ago,” said Dr. Ida Hellander, lead author of the study. “Nor has anyone systematically examined the many ways that private insurers have gamed the system to maximize their bottom line at taxpayers’ expense.”

“In 2012 alone, private insurers are being overpaid $34.1 billion, or $2,526 per Medicare Advantage enrollee,” Hellander said.

Co-author Dr. Steffie Woolhandler said: “It’s clear that having Medicare Advantage programs compete with Medicare doesn’t save us money. In fact the opposite is the case. The private plans only add waste, and the aggregate waste is staggering – enough to be a significant drag on the economy.

“It’s time we look to proven, cost-effective ways of providing high-quality care to Medicare’s beneficiaries and to the entire population,” Woolhandler said. “That emeans taking a fresh look at the single-payer model of reform.”

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Do Extended Unemployment Benefits Lengthen Unemployment Spells?

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Michael Morrison

Abstract

In response to the Great Recession and sustained labor market downturn, the availability of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits was extended to new historical highs in the United States, up to 99 weeks as of late 2009 into 2012. We exploit variation in the timing and size of UI benefits extensions across states to estimate the overall impact of these extensions on unemployment duration, comparing the experience with the prior extension of benefits (up to 72 weeks) during the much milder downturn in the early 2000s. Using monthly matched individual data from the U.S. Current Population Survey (CPS) for the periods 2000-2005 and 2007-2012, we estimate the effects of UI extensions on unemployment transitions and duration. We rely on individual variation in benefits availability based on the duration of unemployment spells and the length of UI benefits available in the state and month, conditional on state economic conditions and individual characteristics. We end a small but statistically significant reduction in the unemployment exit rate and a small increase in the expected duration of unemployment arising from both sets of UI extensions. The effect on exits and duration is primarily due to a reduction in exits from the labor force rather than a decrease in exits to employment (the job ending rate). The magnitude of the overall effect on exits and duration is similar across the two episodes of benefit extensions. Although the overall effect of UI extensions on exits from unemployment is small, it implies a substantial effect of extended benefits on the steady-state share of unemployment in the cross-section that is long-term. 

Reference

Farber, Henry S. and Valletta, Robert G. (2013). Do Extended Unemployment Benefits Lengthen Unemployment Spells? Evidence from Recent Cycles in the U.S. Labor Market. Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Working Paper 2013-09.

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Federal Reserve Bank of New York: Snapshot of Student Indebtedness

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Michael Morrison

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has released the most recent Household Debt and Credit Report depicting household trends in borrowing and indebtedness. I find the following data on student indebtedness to be of important interest.

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Sequestering Meals on Wheels Could Cost the Nation $489 Million per Year through Increased Costs to Medicaid

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Michael Morrison

The Center for Effective Government finds Meals on Wheels sequestration could cost taxpayers $489 million per year through increased costs to Medicaid.

“Sequestering Meals on Wheels funds could cost taxpayers far more than it saves. While across-the-board spending cuts that began March 1, called sequestration, are expected to reduce spending on Meals on Wheels programs this year by an estimated $10 million, these savings will be dwarfed by at least $489 million per year in increased spending on Medicaid, both this year and in each subsequent year that sequestration remains in place.

Outside of Washington, waiting lists for Meals on Wheels enrollees have received media attention, but the expected savings have remained largely unquestioned. In reality, cutting Meals on Wheels will very likely increase the federal deficit by increasing the overall cost burden and shifting it to Medicaid, local charities, and other programs.

Overall, Meals on Wheels saves the federal taxpayers money by helping participants live at home instead of living in comparatively expensive nursing homes. The average cost to Medicaid of nursing home care per patient is approximately $57,878 annually.

By contrast, the cost to Medicaid of home care is much lower, approximately $15,371 annually, or $42,507 less than nursing home care. Nationally, according to a survey by the Administration on Aging, as many as “92% [of enrollees] say Meals on Wheels means they can continue to live in their own home.”

Based on these estimates, our analysis suggests that sequestering Meals on Wheels funds will actually cost the U.S. taxpayer $479 million dollars over the seven months it will be implemented during this federal fiscal year, which ends September 30 (see the appendix for details of this estimate). Moreover, because sequestration-related cuts are expected to increase in FY 2014 and beyond, if sequestration is not reversed, Medicaid-related costs will increase even more in those years.”

Reference

Center for Effective Government. (2013). Sequestering Meals on Wheels Could Cost the Nation $489 Million per Year.

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The Impact of Participation in Sports on Educational Attainment

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Michael Morrison

Abstract

We analyze the impact of exercising sports during childhood and adolescence on educational attainment. The theoretical framework is based on models of allocation of time and educational productivity. Using the rich information from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), we apply generalized ordered probit models to estimate the effect of participation in sport activities on secondary school degrees and professional degrees. Even after controlling for important variables and selection into sport, we find strong evidence that the effect of sport on educational attainment is statistically significant and positive. [Emphasis mine]

Reference

Cornelißen, Thomas and Pfeifer, Christian. (2010). The Impact of Participation in Sports on Educational Attainment: New Evidence from Germany. Economics of Education Review, 29 (1), 94-103.

Posted in Graduation Rate, Graduation Rates, Higher Education, Secondary Education | 1 Comment

CBS: Republicans were Source of Inaccurate Benghazi Emails

Posted on May 18, 2013 by Michael Morrison

Via Daily Kos, Jed Lewison:

“From a logical standpoint, it was pretty obvious that Republicans were the source of the inaccurate Benghazi talking point emails reported last Friday by ABC News White House correspondent Jon Karl, but when the actual emails surfaced, Karl did not acknowledge who his sources were.

Now, thanks to Major Garrett of CBS News, we have explicit confirmation that Republicans were behind the false leaks. Garrett reports (my emphasis):

Republicans have charged that the State Department under Hillary Clinton was trying to protect itself from criticism. The White House released the real emails late Wednesday. Here’s what we found when we compared them to the quotes that had been provided by Republicans.

Garrett highlights emails by White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes and State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland. According to Republicans, the emails showed that the White House had executed a coverup not just of the fact that terrorists had conducted the Benghazi attack, but also that the CIA had warned the State Department that al Qaeda was planning the attack.

The reality is that even if the Republicans transcript of the emails had been accurate, it wouldn’t have been a smoking gun to prove their claim that Benghazi is a bona fide scandal. Ironically, now that we know Republicans fabricated the emails, there actually is a scandal worth pursuing: the story of how Republicans dishonestly exploited a national security tragedy to score political points.”

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97.2% of Climate Scientists Endorse the Consensus Position that Humans are Causing Global Warming

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Michael Morrison

“Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW [anthropogenic global warming], 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For both abstract ratings and authors’ self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position on AGW marginally increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.”

Reference

Cook, John et al. (2013). Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature. Environmental Research Letters. 8 024024
doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024

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