Health Care
Commentary
When State Fails, Community Steps Up for Group Home
Once in a while, a story comes along that really drives home the case against allowing government to control funding for social services. A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a story about a non-profit, Community Link, having to shut down a group home for five developmentally impaired ...
Commentary
Rhode Island Seeks Caps on Medicaid, Will Shift Costs to Emergency Room Patients
In response to an ongoing state budget crisis, Rhode Island Gov. Don Carcieri (R) has requested the federal government relax its strict Medicaid regulations in exchange for caps on state spending and federal contributions to the program. The state’s plan is to cap Medicaid spending at 23 percent of the ...
Commentary
San Francisco Employer Mandate Can Go Forward, Circuit Court Rules
San Francisco’s “pay-or-play” health care mandate will be allowed to continue operating following a ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decreeing the program does not violate federal law governing employee benefit plans. The controversial program, known as Healthy San Francisco, requires every business in San Francisco County ...
Commentary
Government Care Isn’t Promising
Health care reform proposals generally fall into two camps: Those that rely on government to expand access and hold prices down, and those that rely on market competition to lower prices and expand consumer choice. Proponents of government-heavy reform believe that because the health care problem itself is massive and ...
Commentary
Medicare Benefits Fall Short of Employer-Provided Health Care Plans
Employer-provided health plans provide more generous benefits to seniors than Medicare does, according to an analysis conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Lincolnshire, Illinois-based Hewitt Associates. The study compared the traditional fee-for-service Medicare benefit package, including the prescription drug benefit, with typical large employer-provided health plans. The study found ...
Commentary
Medical Licensing Impedes Quality, Affordability of Care
Medical licensing is ineffective and inefficient, and patients would be better served by relying on brand recognition when choosing their doctors, writes Shirley Svorny in a new report for the Cato Institute. “In health care, we haven’t used brand names because people have been trusting licensure,” Svorny told Health Care ...
Commentary
Bush’s Final Medicaid Reform Increases Patient Responsibility
The Bush Administration’s (or the Bush “regime’s”, if you prefer) theme in Medicaid reform has been to give states more flexibility in how they operate their Medicaid programs, despite the federal government paying over half the cost. In its (likely) final hurrah, the Administration recently published Medicaid rules allowing states ...
California
House Committee Considers Tax Breaks for Individual Health Insurance
Health Care News (Heartland Institute), December 1, 2008 Members of the U.S. House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee are debating the merits of enacting tax breaks for individuals who buy private insurance, which would put them on equal tax footing with employers who purchase insurance for their employees. The committee ...
Business & Economics
Impact – November 2008
PRI Ideas in Action – November 2008 Policy Update and Monthly Impact Report PRI continues to impact public policy in California, the nation, and abroad. Click below to view PRI’s recent contributions. Read PDF
Business & Economics
San Francisco Tax Hike Cannot Help Public Health Bureaucracy
Don’t get me wrong: of all the various byzantine agencies that comprise the massive (and growing) government intervention in American health care, counties’ public-health agencies are probably my favorite (or, perhaps to assuage the arch-libertarian readers, “the least harmful”). They do things like inspecting restaurants for cleanliness, watching out for ...
When State Fails, Community Steps Up for Group Home
Once in a while, a story comes along that really drives home the case against allowing government to control funding for social services. A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a story about a non-profit, Community Link, having to shut down a group home for five developmentally impaired ...
Rhode Island Seeks Caps on Medicaid, Will Shift Costs to Emergency Room Patients
In response to an ongoing state budget crisis, Rhode Island Gov. Don Carcieri (R) has requested the federal government relax its strict Medicaid regulations in exchange for caps on state spending and federal contributions to the program. The state’s plan is to cap Medicaid spending at 23 percent of the ...
San Francisco Employer Mandate Can Go Forward, Circuit Court Rules
San Francisco’s “pay-or-play” health care mandate will be allowed to continue operating following a ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decreeing the program does not violate federal law governing employee benefit plans. The controversial program, known as Healthy San Francisco, requires every business in San Francisco County ...
Government Care Isn’t Promising
Health care reform proposals generally fall into two camps: Those that rely on government to expand access and hold prices down, and those that rely on market competition to lower prices and expand consumer choice. Proponents of government-heavy reform believe that because the health care problem itself is massive and ...
Medicare Benefits Fall Short of Employer-Provided Health Care Plans
Employer-provided health plans provide more generous benefits to seniors than Medicare does, according to an analysis conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Lincolnshire, Illinois-based Hewitt Associates. The study compared the traditional fee-for-service Medicare benefit package, including the prescription drug benefit, with typical large employer-provided health plans. The study found ...
Medical Licensing Impedes Quality, Affordability of Care
Medical licensing is ineffective and inefficient, and patients would be better served by relying on brand recognition when choosing their doctors, writes Shirley Svorny in a new report for the Cato Institute. “In health care, we haven’t used brand names because people have been trusting licensure,” Svorny told Health Care ...
Bush’s Final Medicaid Reform Increases Patient Responsibility
The Bush Administration’s (or the Bush “regime’s”, if you prefer) theme in Medicaid reform has been to give states more flexibility in how they operate their Medicaid programs, despite the federal government paying over half the cost. In its (likely) final hurrah, the Administration recently published Medicaid rules allowing states ...
House Committee Considers Tax Breaks for Individual Health Insurance
Health Care News (Heartland Institute), December 1, 2008 Members of the U.S. House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee are debating the merits of enacting tax breaks for individuals who buy private insurance, which would put them on equal tax footing with employers who purchase insurance for their employees. The committee ...
Impact – November 2008
PRI Ideas in Action – November 2008 Policy Update and Monthly Impact Report PRI continues to impact public policy in California, the nation, and abroad. Click below to view PRI’s recent contributions. Read PDF
San Francisco Tax Hike Cannot Help Public Health Bureaucracy
Don’t get me wrong: of all the various byzantine agencies that comprise the massive (and growing) government intervention in American health care, counties’ public-health agencies are probably my favorite (or, perhaps to assuage the arch-libertarian readers, “the least harmful”). They do things like inspecting restaurants for cleanliness, watching out for ...
