Health Care

Commentary

Annual Medicare Fraud: $60 Billion; Annual Profits of Top Ten Insurance Companies: $8 billion

Well, let’s see…. Last year, the profits of the ten largest insurance companies in America were just over $8 billion — combined. No single insurance company made even five percent of what Medicare reportedly loses in fraud. While we’re making comparisons, in its real first ten years (2014-23), the Senate ...
Commentary

ObamaCare Has Already Driven Up Private Health Insurance Premiums

The Obama Administration has been attacking perfectly credible studies commissioned by AHIP, BCBSA, and WellPoint explaining why the proposed “reform” will drive up premiums for privately insured Americans. Yet, let’s not lose track of the fact that the Administration and the Congress have already taken steps to drive up the ...
Commentary

The American People Don’t Want Obamacare (and They Want It Less All the Time)

Back in June, four national polls — Rasmussen, NBC/WSJ, Democracy Corps, and CNN — showed what Americans thought of Obamacare then. By a margin of 4.3 percent (44.3 percent to 40 percent), they supported it. So the drop in support for Obamacare has been 12.8 percent in five months. And ...
Commentary

An Incredibly Out of Control Health Bill

H.R. 3200, the bill that drove us crazy all summer, clocked in at 2,454 pages as reported out of committee. However, it was introduced at 1,017 pages. The ratio, 2.41, suggests that the bill to be voted on by Veterans’ Day will be at least 4,801 pages. And remember: H.R. ...
Commentary

$1T reform for 5%

THE health-care-reform debate is plagued by different numbers on how many Americans lack health insurance, but we actually have excellent data on the question: Ninety percent of Americans are insured, according to the Census — and even the president more or less concurs. The Census is the source for the ...
Commentary

Do We All Need to Be Like Massachusetts?

2. If it is instead a miserable failure, then why would we want to impose that failure from coast to coast? 3. If people can’t at all agree as to whether it’s a success or failure, which seems to be the case, then why not let the states that like ...
Commentary

NY Settlement on Out-of-Network Charges & Government Price Fixing

Folks who follow that previous thread will note that I am not a fan of the way insurers calculated UCRs, but that’s not because I think there’s a conflict of interest in their doing so. Rather, it’s because I think the whole network model is absurd, and an artefact of ...
Commentary

Six Years of Farce

So there we have it. Freebies for me, higher taxes for thee. You can take the guy out of Hollywood, but you can’t . . . This blog post originally appeared on National Review’s “Critical Condition.”
Commentary

Bringing Back the Lightning Rod: The ‘Public Option’ Returns

But the “public option” is another story. Once again, the Trojan horse is being offered as a “gift” to the American people — only this time with the wrinkle that each state will allegedly get to decide for itself whether or not to open its gates. Four months ago, former ...
Commentary

Centrism Defined

It will be interesting to see how the CBO scores whatever bill emerges on the Senate floor if it contains this little bag of Halloween treats. In any event, two points: First, am I wrong to think that the prospects of health-care socialism in the Senate are a good deal ...
Commentary

Annual Medicare Fraud: $60 Billion; Annual Profits of Top Ten Insurance Companies: $8 billion

Well, let’s see…. Last year, the profits of the ten largest insurance companies in America were just over $8 billion — combined. No single insurance company made even five percent of what Medicare reportedly loses in fraud. While we’re making comparisons, in its real first ten years (2014-23), the Senate ...
Commentary

ObamaCare Has Already Driven Up Private Health Insurance Premiums

The Obama Administration has been attacking perfectly credible studies commissioned by AHIP, BCBSA, and WellPoint explaining why the proposed “reform” will drive up premiums for privately insured Americans. Yet, let’s not lose track of the fact that the Administration and the Congress have already taken steps to drive up the ...
Commentary

The American People Don’t Want Obamacare (and They Want It Less All the Time)

Back in June, four national polls — Rasmussen, NBC/WSJ, Democracy Corps, and CNN — showed what Americans thought of Obamacare then. By a margin of 4.3 percent (44.3 percent to 40 percent), they supported it. So the drop in support for Obamacare has been 12.8 percent in five months. And ...
Commentary

An Incredibly Out of Control Health Bill

H.R. 3200, the bill that drove us crazy all summer, clocked in at 2,454 pages as reported out of committee. However, it was introduced at 1,017 pages. The ratio, 2.41, suggests that the bill to be voted on by Veterans’ Day will be at least 4,801 pages. And remember: H.R. ...
Commentary

$1T reform for 5%

THE health-care-reform debate is plagued by different numbers on how many Americans lack health insurance, but we actually have excellent data on the question: Ninety percent of Americans are insured, according to the Census — and even the president more or less concurs. The Census is the source for the ...
Commentary

Do We All Need to Be Like Massachusetts?

2. If it is instead a miserable failure, then why would we want to impose that failure from coast to coast? 3. If people can’t at all agree as to whether it’s a success or failure, which seems to be the case, then why not let the states that like ...
Commentary

NY Settlement on Out-of-Network Charges & Government Price Fixing

Folks who follow that previous thread will note that I am not a fan of the way insurers calculated UCRs, but that’s not because I think there’s a conflict of interest in their doing so. Rather, it’s because I think the whole network model is absurd, and an artefact of ...
Commentary

Six Years of Farce

So there we have it. Freebies for me, higher taxes for thee. You can take the guy out of Hollywood, but you can’t . . . This blog post originally appeared on National Review’s “Critical Condition.”
Commentary

Bringing Back the Lightning Rod: The ‘Public Option’ Returns

But the “public option” is another story. Once again, the Trojan horse is being offered as a “gift” to the American people — only this time with the wrinkle that each state will allegedly get to decide for itself whether or not to open its gates. Four months ago, former ...
Commentary

Centrism Defined

It will be interesting to see how the CBO scores whatever bill emerges on the Senate floor if it contains this little bag of Halloween treats. In any event, two points: First, am I wrong to think that the prospects of health-care socialism in the Senate are a good deal ...
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