Obamacare

Earlier this month, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced that it may ask the Food and Drug Administration to allow it to market the cholesterol-lowering statin Lipitor over the counter after its patent expires in November. The FDA has not yet signaled whether it would approve Pfizer’s proposal. And some doctors ...

The new health care law encourages state politicians to increase their interference with health insurance premiums, an underreported aspect of Obamacare with consequences for patients and health plans alike. Obamacare distributes federal grants that encourage states’ insurance departments to increase their power to dictate insurance premiums. States are responding by ...

It’s time to add yet another study to the growing list of research showing that ObamaCare isn’t delivering on its grand promises. In the July issue of the journal Health Affairs, Medicare’s actuaries released new estimates of the rate of growth of national health costs. Surprise, surprise — they’re projected ...

Faced with spiraling statewide health costs, Massachusetts passed a law in 2008 mandating the state’s attorney general to issue annual reports with recommendations on how to keep a lid on spending. On June 22, Martha Coakley released her latest report, which recommended that the state impose price controls on medical ...

One of the most remarkable outcomes of ObamaCare is how the stock market has treated commercial health plans, which have rallied significantly. In the two years between the 2008 and 2010 elections, the Morgan Stanley Healthcare Payors’ Index rallied 26% (annualized), vs. only 9% for the S&P 500. Outperformance increased ...

Obamacare encourages state politicians to increase their interference with health-insurance premiums. In 2008 Colorado passed a law giving the Division of Insurance the power to deny premium hikes. To enhance this power, known as “prior approval,” Obamacare gave Colorado a $1 million grant last year to hire more insurance analysts ...

The Utah Health Exchange is the model some conservatives believe can be used to push back against Obamacare. Witness the Wall Street Journal (July 16) soundly rejecting regulatory guidance on what the Administration is now calling “Affordable Insurance Exchanges,” but encouraging governors to get on the exchange bandwagon, in the ...

The federal government has produced yet another study stating the obvious about health care — that having insurance coverage is better than not having it. Yet some wonks are hailing this report from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) as “the most important health-care policy experiment since the 1970s.” ...