Health Care

Commentary

Let seniors control Medicare’s exploding expenses

This year, Medicare will begin paying out more in benefits than it collects in payroll taxes. If trends continue, the so-called trust fund will bust by 2019. This is all according to the Medicare Board of Trustees, who recently warned that the “projected long run program costs are not sustainable ...
Commentary

Massachusetts Health Reform: More Money, Please

…..but it’s a pretty good bet. One can never really be sure one’s right on public policy until the New York Times weighs in on the issue. And so it has, giving the thumbs up to Massachusetts’ two-year old health reform, which largely consisted of ordering its residents to buy ...
Commentary

Intelligence Squared U.S. Moves to Rockefeller University to Accommodate Sold Out Audiences

Marketwire, June 16, 2008 NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire – June 16, 2008) – Intelligence Squared U.S., the Oxford style debate series sponsored by The Rosenkranz Foundation, today announced that its third year of sold out public debates will move to Rockefeller University’s Caspary Auditorium beginning with the fall season in September ...
Commentary

Families USA’s “Failing Grades” Gets A Failing Grade

Families USA has found itself a great line of business: make up a quick and easy number to demonstrate how awful private health care is, and then replicate the made-up number for each state. We’ve already learned that 3,100 Californians supposedly die every year because of uninsurance; and that Medicaid ...
Commentary

Will the University of California take over “Killer King”?

Finally, California’s mainstream media has run a story that allows me to address two of my favorite bugbears: Los Angeles’ Martin Luther King, Jr.-Harbor Hospital, and San Francisco’s Health Access Plan! Apparently, Gov. Schwarzenegger and other politicians are quarterbacking an effort for the University of California medical system to take ...
California

Hold on to Your Hats: A Good Health Bill Might Actually Pass in California

New bills in the New York legislature are designed to prevent inducements to switch prescriptions. But what about a bill to improve patients’ likelihood of sticking with the therapy they were first prescribed? According to a recent literature review in the Archives of Internal Medicine, 20% to 50% of chronically ...
Commentary

In a Time of Economic Trouble, Which Presidential Health Reform is Good Medicine?

With the specter of a serious recession looming, many Americans fear unemployment and loss of health coverage. Economists anticipate that the unemployment rate will jump from 6 percent up to 8 or 9 percent. Because most working people are entirely dependent upon their employer for health benefits, thousands will likely ...
Commentary

Commonwealth Fund’s Count of “Underinsured”: Lifting the Carpet

Once again, the scholars at the Commonwealth Fund have scared the bejayzus out of the mainstream media with their latest reckoning that over 25 million Americans are “underinsured”. While the 2007 numbers look worse than the previous ones from 2003 (when the estimate was only 15.6 million), the problems with ...
Commentary

Schwarzenegger Supporter Advocates Government Monopoly Health Care

One of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s reasons for his Health Care Deforminator ABX1 1, which would have imposed a massive tax hike to fund “universal” private health care, was that it would short circuit calls for single-payer, government-monopoly, “universal” health care. Indeed, Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed a single-payer bill, SB-840, in September 2006. ...
Commentary

A Primer for Follow-On Biologics

Generic drugs are chemically identical to their brand-name counterparts. And they cost about 70 percent less. That’s why, with healthcare costs escalating, policymakers want to expand the use of generics. As part of that effort, the Senate is considering a measure that would allow the generic drug industry to produce ...
Commentary

Let seniors control Medicare’s exploding expenses

This year, Medicare will begin paying out more in benefits than it collects in payroll taxes. If trends continue, the so-called trust fund will bust by 2019. This is all according to the Medicare Board of Trustees, who recently warned that the “projected long run program costs are not sustainable ...
Commentary

Massachusetts Health Reform: More Money, Please

…..but it’s a pretty good bet. One can never really be sure one’s right on public policy until the New York Times weighs in on the issue. And so it has, giving the thumbs up to Massachusetts’ two-year old health reform, which largely consisted of ordering its residents to buy ...
Commentary

Intelligence Squared U.S. Moves to Rockefeller University to Accommodate Sold Out Audiences

Marketwire, June 16, 2008 NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire – June 16, 2008) – Intelligence Squared U.S., the Oxford style debate series sponsored by The Rosenkranz Foundation, today announced that its third year of sold out public debates will move to Rockefeller University’s Caspary Auditorium beginning with the fall season in September ...
Commentary

Families USA’s “Failing Grades” Gets A Failing Grade

Families USA has found itself a great line of business: make up a quick and easy number to demonstrate how awful private health care is, and then replicate the made-up number for each state. We’ve already learned that 3,100 Californians supposedly die every year because of uninsurance; and that Medicaid ...
Commentary

Will the University of California take over “Killer King”?

Finally, California’s mainstream media has run a story that allows me to address two of my favorite bugbears: Los Angeles’ Martin Luther King, Jr.-Harbor Hospital, and San Francisco’s Health Access Plan! Apparently, Gov. Schwarzenegger and other politicians are quarterbacking an effort for the University of California medical system to take ...
California

Hold on to Your Hats: A Good Health Bill Might Actually Pass in California

New bills in the New York legislature are designed to prevent inducements to switch prescriptions. But what about a bill to improve patients’ likelihood of sticking with the therapy they were first prescribed? According to a recent literature review in the Archives of Internal Medicine, 20% to 50% of chronically ...
Commentary

In a Time of Economic Trouble, Which Presidential Health Reform is Good Medicine?

With the specter of a serious recession looming, many Americans fear unemployment and loss of health coverage. Economists anticipate that the unemployment rate will jump from 6 percent up to 8 or 9 percent. Because most working people are entirely dependent upon their employer for health benefits, thousands will likely ...
Commentary

Commonwealth Fund’s Count of “Underinsured”: Lifting the Carpet

Once again, the scholars at the Commonwealth Fund have scared the bejayzus out of the mainstream media with their latest reckoning that over 25 million Americans are “underinsured”. While the 2007 numbers look worse than the previous ones from 2003 (when the estimate was only 15.6 million), the problems with ...
Commentary

Schwarzenegger Supporter Advocates Government Monopoly Health Care

One of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s reasons for his Health Care Deforminator ABX1 1, which would have imposed a massive tax hike to fund “universal” private health care, was that it would short circuit calls for single-payer, government-monopoly, “universal” health care. Indeed, Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed a single-payer bill, SB-840, in September 2006. ...
Commentary

A Primer for Follow-On Biologics

Generic drugs are chemically identical to their brand-name counterparts. And they cost about 70 percent less. That’s why, with healthcare costs escalating, policymakers want to expand the use of generics. As part of that effort, the Senate is considering a measure that would allow the generic drug industry to produce ...
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