Health Care Innovation
Commentary
It’s Time For Medicare To Move Beyond Location, Location, Location
What’s the difference between getting an x-ray at the hospital and getting one at the doctor’s office? The former could cost a lot more than the latter. Medicare often reimburses hospitals more than it pays doctor’s offices for the same procedure. Hospitals claim these payment differentials are necessary because they are subject ...
Commentary
Medi-Cal Bad Idea for Golden State from the Start
Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., is now learning fortunes can change quickly in the Golden State. Less than a year ago, Newsom was celebrating a projected $100 billion budget surplus — a fiscal boon that prompted the governor and legislature to craft a budget exceeding $300 billion. Now, California faces a $22.5 billion ...
Commentary
Shouldn’t doctors be allowed to own hospitals?
Experts from the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission , and the American Medical Association just released a paper urging Congress to peel back the Affordable Care Act’s restrictions on creating and expanding physician-owned hospitals. Their analysis is correct. Such hospitals inject much-needed competition into the healthcare market. Consequently, repealing restrictions on them could help ...
Commentary
The Time Has Come For Expanding Health Savings Accounts
The House of Representatives returns to Washington this week. Some of the chamber’s Republicans have begun to make noise about health reform. In a recent opinion piece for The Hill, Rep. Michael Burgess, a medical doctor from Texas, and co-author Eric Hargan, an official at the Department of Health and Human Services during the ...
Commentary
A Short-Term Solution To Our Long-Term Health Insurance Affordability Problems
President Biden hit the road last week to castigate Republicans for supposedly proposing to make healthcare more expensive. The president is upset that Republicans want to undo the innovation-destroying price controls on prescription drugs included in Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act and rein in the billions of dollars in subsidies he’s handing out ...
Commentary
Nothing Life Giving About ‘Quality Adjusted’
Should the government put a price on human life? The new head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., doesn’t think so. She recently introduced legislation alongside several of her colleagues to ban the use of “quality-adjusted life years,” or QALYs, in federal healthcare programs. A QALY ...
Commentary
States are turning to the public healthcare option. They shouldn’t.
One month into the new Congress and it’s already clear that neither party will make much progress advancing their vision for healthcare reform. States are grabbing the baton. Colorado, Nevada, and Washington have all passed laws establishing a public health insurance option. Others, such as New Mexico and Minnesota, are ...
Commentary
How one bad law drives hospital consolidation and high health care costs
Americans are getting squeezed by rising health care costs. The latest numbers from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services show that patient out-of-pocket spending increased by 10.4% in 2021, a rate not seen for more than three decades. The cost of monthly health insurance premiums also leapt, by 6.5%. ...
Commentary
Transparency Is A Necessary First Step Toward A Better Healthcare System
The U.S. Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services has issued a new joint federal rule. Another federal mandate is hardly newsworthy, but one devised under the Trump Administration and eagerly implemented by the Biden Administration is certainly unique. Beyond the politics, the Transparency in Coverage rule, while not ...
Commentary
Don’t Buy Progressives’ Medical Debt Myth
More than four in ten adults have medical debt, according to recent research from the Kaiser Family Foundation. That has prompted several states to take action. Arizona voters recently approved a ballot measure capping interest rates on medical debt and protecting more personal property from creditors. New York has enacted legislation prohibiting healthcare providers from placing ...
It’s Time For Medicare To Move Beyond Location, Location, Location
What’s the difference between getting an x-ray at the hospital and getting one at the doctor’s office? The former could cost a lot more than the latter. Medicare often reimburses hospitals more than it pays doctor’s offices for the same procedure. Hospitals claim these payment differentials are necessary because they are subject ...
Medi-Cal Bad Idea for Golden State from the Start
Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., is now learning fortunes can change quickly in the Golden State. Less than a year ago, Newsom was celebrating a projected $100 billion budget surplus — a fiscal boon that prompted the governor and legislature to craft a budget exceeding $300 billion. Now, California faces a $22.5 billion ...
Shouldn’t doctors be allowed to own hospitals?
Experts from the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission , and the American Medical Association just released a paper urging Congress to peel back the Affordable Care Act’s restrictions on creating and expanding physician-owned hospitals. Their analysis is correct. Such hospitals inject much-needed competition into the healthcare market. Consequently, repealing restrictions on them could help ...
The Time Has Come For Expanding Health Savings Accounts
The House of Representatives returns to Washington this week. Some of the chamber’s Republicans have begun to make noise about health reform. In a recent opinion piece for The Hill, Rep. Michael Burgess, a medical doctor from Texas, and co-author Eric Hargan, an official at the Department of Health and Human Services during the ...
A Short-Term Solution To Our Long-Term Health Insurance Affordability Problems
President Biden hit the road last week to castigate Republicans for supposedly proposing to make healthcare more expensive. The president is upset that Republicans want to undo the innovation-destroying price controls on prescription drugs included in Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act and rein in the billions of dollars in subsidies he’s handing out ...
Nothing Life Giving About ‘Quality Adjusted’
Should the government put a price on human life? The new head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., doesn’t think so. She recently introduced legislation alongside several of her colleagues to ban the use of “quality-adjusted life years,” or QALYs, in federal healthcare programs. A QALY ...
States are turning to the public healthcare option. They shouldn’t.
One month into the new Congress and it’s already clear that neither party will make much progress advancing their vision for healthcare reform. States are grabbing the baton. Colorado, Nevada, and Washington have all passed laws establishing a public health insurance option. Others, such as New Mexico and Minnesota, are ...
How one bad law drives hospital consolidation and high health care costs
Americans are getting squeezed by rising health care costs. The latest numbers from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services show that patient out-of-pocket spending increased by 10.4% in 2021, a rate not seen for more than three decades. The cost of monthly health insurance premiums also leapt, by 6.5%. ...
Transparency Is A Necessary First Step Toward A Better Healthcare System
The U.S. Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services has issued a new joint federal rule. Another federal mandate is hardly newsworthy, but one devised under the Trump Administration and eagerly implemented by the Biden Administration is certainly unique. Beyond the politics, the Transparency in Coverage rule, while not ...
Don’t Buy Progressives’ Medical Debt Myth
More than four in ten adults have medical debt, according to recent research from the Kaiser Family Foundation. That has prompted several states to take action. Arizona voters recently approved a ballot measure capping interest rates on medical debt and protecting more personal property from creditors. New York has enacted legislation prohibiting healthcare providers from placing ...
