Posted: April 11th, 2015

Public Policy

Public Policy

Order Description

The assignment: Your boss, a moderate member of Congress, is concerned that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) doesn’t do enough to control long-term costs for Medicare for the federal budget, employers, individuals, and families. She wants to introduce legislation as soon as possible to rework the ACA so that costs will be brought under control for the Medicare program. Your job is to write a memo to her discussing the pros and cons of the status quo (what is already in the ACA) and TWO policy alternatives for the Medicare program that she could introduce in Congress, using economic principles that we have discussed in class. Then, choose the best option based on your analysis to recommend to your boss. You can select the status quo as the best option.

To focus your memo on one general topic area, you should compare three alternatives (one of which is the status quo) that would fall under one of the following category.policy areas (listed in bullet points) is available from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) document listed in the “Source material” section (below). You are not limited to ideas presented in this KFF document, but it may be easiest to draw from them.
1. Medicare Eligibility, Beneficiary Costs, and Program Financing
• Age of Eligibility
• Beneficiary Cost Sharing
• Beneficiary Premiums
• Revenues

Source material: This assignment is a critical thinking project, NOT a major research project. You may use the following sources:

1. A Kaiser Family Foundation summary of Medicare policy options
Kaiser Family Foundation. Policy Options to Sustain Medicare for the Future. Available at: http://www.kff.org/medicare/upload/8402.pdf.
2. The ACA itself:
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Public Law No. 111-148. 2010. Available at: http://www.ncsl.org/documents/health/ppaca-consolidated.pdf.

3. A CBO analysis of the ACA
Congressional Budget Office. CBO’s Analysis of the Major Health Care Legislation Enacted in March 2010. Statement of Douglas W. Elmendorf, Director. Testimony before the Subcommittee on Health, Committee on Energy and Commerce, U.S. House of Representatives. March 30, 2011. Available at: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/121xx/doc12119/03-30-healthcarelegislation.pdf.

4. Any reading from the syllabus, including:
Kaiser Family Foundation. Summary of New Health Reform Law. Available at: http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/8061.pdf.

Format:

4-5 pages, double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point Calibri font, limit 1500 words (including footnotes, but not references). The memo should include the following sections, and we’ve listed approximate page-lengths for each.

Heading (0.25 pgs)
• To: to whom you are addressing the memo