Health Care
Commentary
U.S. Has the Worst Health Care? Not By a Long Shot
Few complaints about the U.S. healthcare system are as common as the claim that we spend too much on health care and get too little for all that spending in return especially compared to other industrialized nations. A new Commonwealth Fund report is the latest to indict U.S. health ...
Sally C. Pipes
July 14, 2014
Commentary
Healthcare’s Problem Is Not High Drug Prices
Is $84,000 too much to pay to save a life? That’s a question worth asking now that the insurance industry has declared war on what it has deemed outrageous prices for new specialty drugs. In this case, the complaints focus on Sovaldi, a breakthrough treatment that gives three million people ...
Sally C. Pipes
July 10, 2014
Commentary
How ObamaCare will kill job-based plans
Americans aren’t all that optimistic about ObamaCare, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll: Fifty-seven percent say the law isn’t working as planned. That number will shoot even higher if employer health insurance vanishes, as an S&P Capital IQ report predicts. The financial-research firm forecasts that 90 percent of ...
Sally C. Pipes
July 3, 2014
Commentary
The High and Rising Costs of the HealthCare.gov Fiasco
The final verdict on Obamacare has yet to be written. But earlier this month, Republican staffers from the Senate Finance and Judiciary Committees offered a first installment on the botched rollout of the federal health insurance exchange HealthCare.gov. It wasnt pretty. The Committees 34-page report explains just how bad ...
Sally C. Pipes
June 30, 2014
California
Covered California’s Big Budget Blowout Is Coming
Only by Obamacares standards could Covered California, Sacramentos state-run Obamacare exchange, be considered a success. Outside California, Obamacare is fading fast in the states. Some led by Oregon and Maryland intend to abandon their Obamacare health-insurance exchanges and let the federal government takeover. Covered California, however, is firing ...
John R. Graham
June 26, 2014
Commentary
State healthcare exchanges show flaws of Obamacare
Obamacare‘s most loyal proponents are dropping like flies. Of the 14 states and the District of Columbia that established their own health insurance exchanges, no less than seven remain completely broken or dysfunctional. One has already been taken over by the federal government. The others may soon be. Obamacare envisioned ...
Sally C. Pipes
June 26, 2014
Commentary
Repeal and Replace Remains the Goal
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently admitted that it has no idea what Obamacare will end up costing taxpayers. The budget agency has quietly gone back on its initial claim that the law would lower the deficit by $120 billion over the next decade. The reason? It cant track the ...
Sally C. Pipes
June 25, 2014
Drug Pricing
Hospitals Making Hundreds of Millions Off Program for Poor
Affluent hospitals are ginning up hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains every year by exploiting a federal health care program intended to help poor and vulnerable Americans. That’s the conclusion of a report from the inspector general at the federal Department of Health and Human Services. The hospitals ...
Sally C. Pipes
June 25, 2014
Commentary
Even the Labor Unions Are Souring on Obamacare
President Obama’s health reform law may have claimed a new victim organized labor. Thanks to Obamacare, labor unions are facing higher health insurance costs as well as steeper out-of-pocket bills and wage cuts. Consequently, these erstwhile allies of the president appear to be signing on with the majority ...
Sally C. Pipes
June 16, 2014
Health Care
Why Pharmaceutical Prices Drop Once Drugs Are Off-Patent
Today PRI released the new report The Economics of Pharmaceutical Pricing by PRI senior fellow Wayne Winegarden, Ph.D. The study examines the market forces influencing the often dramatic price differences in pharmaceutical drugs before and after their patents expire. Some critics erroneously see the sharp declines in the prices of ...
Wayne Winegarden
June 9, 2014
U.S. Has the Worst Health Care? Not By a Long Shot
Few complaints about the U.S. healthcare system are as common as the claim that we spend too much on health care and get too little for all that spending in return especially compared to other industrialized nations. A new Commonwealth Fund report is the latest to indict U.S. health ...
Healthcare’s Problem Is Not High Drug Prices
Is $84,000 too much to pay to save a life? That’s a question worth asking now that the insurance industry has declared war on what it has deemed outrageous prices for new specialty drugs. In this case, the complaints focus on Sovaldi, a breakthrough treatment that gives three million people ...
How ObamaCare will kill job-based plans
Americans aren’t all that optimistic about ObamaCare, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll: Fifty-seven percent say the law isn’t working as planned. That number will shoot even higher if employer health insurance vanishes, as an S&P Capital IQ report predicts. The financial-research firm forecasts that 90 percent of ...
The High and Rising Costs of the HealthCare.gov Fiasco
The final verdict on Obamacare has yet to be written. But earlier this month, Republican staffers from the Senate Finance and Judiciary Committees offered a first installment on the botched rollout of the federal health insurance exchange HealthCare.gov. It wasnt pretty. The Committees 34-page report explains just how bad ...
Covered California’s Big Budget Blowout Is Coming
Only by Obamacares standards could Covered California, Sacramentos state-run Obamacare exchange, be considered a success. Outside California, Obamacare is fading fast in the states. Some led by Oregon and Maryland intend to abandon their Obamacare health-insurance exchanges and let the federal government takeover. Covered California, however, is firing ...
State healthcare exchanges show flaws of Obamacare
Obamacare‘s most loyal proponents are dropping like flies. Of the 14 states and the District of Columbia that established their own health insurance exchanges, no less than seven remain completely broken or dysfunctional. One has already been taken over by the federal government. The others may soon be. Obamacare envisioned ...
Repeal and Replace Remains the Goal
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently admitted that it has no idea what Obamacare will end up costing taxpayers. The budget agency has quietly gone back on its initial claim that the law would lower the deficit by $120 billion over the next decade. The reason? It cant track the ...
Hospitals Making Hundreds of Millions Off Program for Poor
Affluent hospitals are ginning up hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains every year by exploiting a federal health care program intended to help poor and vulnerable Americans. That’s the conclusion of a report from the inspector general at the federal Department of Health and Human Services. The hospitals ...
Even the Labor Unions Are Souring on Obamacare
President Obama’s health reform law may have claimed a new victim organized labor. Thanks to Obamacare, labor unions are facing higher health insurance costs as well as steeper out-of-pocket bills and wage cuts. Consequently, these erstwhile allies of the president appear to be signing on with the majority ...
Why Pharmaceutical Prices Drop Once Drugs Are Off-Patent
Today PRI released the new report The Economics of Pharmaceutical Pricing by PRI senior fellow Wayne Winegarden, Ph.D. The study examines the market forces influencing the often dramatic price differences in pharmaceutical drugs before and after their patents expire. Some critics erroneously see the sharp declines in the prices of ...