Health Care
Commentary
Massachusetts Health Reform: Can the Last Smoker Cover the Last Uninsured Bay Stater?
The Boston Globe ran a story about the 2nd anniversary of former Governor Romney’s signing Chapter 58, the landmark Massachusetts health “reform”, which resulted in a joint individual and employer mandate to purchase insurance. According to the Globe, it’s still a “work in progress.” What “progress” remains to be done? ...
California
California’s Physicians: Do They Know Who the Enemy Is?
The California Medical Association is supporting a bill that will reduce competition amongst the state’s health plans, which will have the secondary effect of reducing doctors’ negotiating position with respect to health plans and, therefore, likely lower physicians’ remuneration. How’s that for short-sighted? The CMA has been duped by state ...
California
California Legislature About to Jack Up Rates on Individual Health Insurance
The California Assembly health committee has just voted thumbs-up to two bills that will increase the cost of individually purchased health insurance in the Golden State. Probably the least harmful is AB 2459, which prevents a health plan from rescinding an individual health policy six months after enrolling an individual, ...
California
Governor has good plans for uninsured
In the wake of the Massachusetts health reform and California’s recent attempt at an overhaul, more states are jumping on the bandwagon to “cover the uninsured.” That can be a tricky matter, like health reform in general. Gov. Charlie Crist’s 2008-09 budget includes a few costly reforms including expanded coverage ...
Commentary
The Uninsured Are Not Causing the ER “Crisis”
When it comes to arguments for “universal” health care in America, the hardest myth to kill seems to be the one that goes like this: “Uninsured people do not have access to primary care physicians. Therefore, they wait until their symptoms are severe, then go to the ER, and don’t ...
Commentary
Is Dr. Robert Jarvik Public Health Enemy Number 1?
There was quite an uproar when the politicians who decide what information Americans may or may not see attacked Pfizer for using a certain physician in its ad campaign for Lipitor, the popular anti-cholesterol pill. Remarkably, the spokesperson, Dr. Robert Jarvik, was the inventor of the first artificial heart. Apparently, ...
Commentary
Cost-Plus Medi-Cal Pricing in California’s Nursing Homes: What Were They Thinking?
Or, it might be more accurate to say, a deterioration in care, but I think there are other variables at work here that the research might not have analysed. The research in question is a 100-page study of the consequences of AB-1629, a 2004 California law that changed how Medi-Cal ...
Health Care
Why Consumer-Driven Health Care is Crashing on the Shoals of Medicare
Last month’s Medicare Trustees’ report confirms that Medicare is going bankrupt faster than Social Security, even though they serve the same population. Social Security subsidizes demand by seniors for all goods and services, whereas Medicare subsidizes the supply of health goods and services to seniors at fixed prices, which creates ...
Commentary
Re-opening a Community Hospital: Why Are Activists Still Blocking It?
Only one, small, for-profit hospital has stepped forward to take the risk of re-opening a Los Angeles County community hospital that had such an atrocious record that the County closed it last August. Recognizing its own incompetence, the County Board of Supervisors decided that the hospital should not re-open under ...
Commentary
Bay State model bodes ill for the nation
Sunday Republican (Springfield, MA), April 6, 2008 Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are creating quite a spectacle as they joust over the minutia of their respective health care plans in their attempts to secure the Democratic vote. To witness the real action in health care politics and policy – and ...
Massachusetts Health Reform: Can the Last Smoker Cover the Last Uninsured Bay Stater?
The Boston Globe ran a story about the 2nd anniversary of former Governor Romney’s signing Chapter 58, the landmark Massachusetts health “reform”, which resulted in a joint individual and employer mandate to purchase insurance. According to the Globe, it’s still a “work in progress.” What “progress” remains to be done? ...
California’s Physicians: Do They Know Who the Enemy Is?
The California Medical Association is supporting a bill that will reduce competition amongst the state’s health plans, which will have the secondary effect of reducing doctors’ negotiating position with respect to health plans and, therefore, likely lower physicians’ remuneration. How’s that for short-sighted? The CMA has been duped by state ...
California Legislature About to Jack Up Rates on Individual Health Insurance
The California Assembly health committee has just voted thumbs-up to two bills that will increase the cost of individually purchased health insurance in the Golden State. Probably the least harmful is AB 2459, which prevents a health plan from rescinding an individual health policy six months after enrolling an individual, ...
Governor has good plans for uninsured
In the wake of the Massachusetts health reform and California’s recent attempt at an overhaul, more states are jumping on the bandwagon to “cover the uninsured.” That can be a tricky matter, like health reform in general. Gov. Charlie Crist’s 2008-09 budget includes a few costly reforms including expanded coverage ...
The Uninsured Are Not Causing the ER “Crisis”
When it comes to arguments for “universal” health care in America, the hardest myth to kill seems to be the one that goes like this: “Uninsured people do not have access to primary care physicians. Therefore, they wait until their symptoms are severe, then go to the ER, and don’t ...
Is Dr. Robert Jarvik Public Health Enemy Number 1?
There was quite an uproar when the politicians who decide what information Americans may or may not see attacked Pfizer for using a certain physician in its ad campaign for Lipitor, the popular anti-cholesterol pill. Remarkably, the spokesperson, Dr. Robert Jarvik, was the inventor of the first artificial heart. Apparently, ...
Cost-Plus Medi-Cal Pricing in California’s Nursing Homes: What Were They Thinking?
Or, it might be more accurate to say, a deterioration in care, but I think there are other variables at work here that the research might not have analysed. The research in question is a 100-page study of the consequences of AB-1629, a 2004 California law that changed how Medi-Cal ...
Why Consumer-Driven Health Care is Crashing on the Shoals of Medicare
Last month’s Medicare Trustees’ report confirms that Medicare is going bankrupt faster than Social Security, even though they serve the same population. Social Security subsidizes demand by seniors for all goods and services, whereas Medicare subsidizes the supply of health goods and services to seniors at fixed prices, which creates ...
Re-opening a Community Hospital: Why Are Activists Still Blocking It?
Only one, small, for-profit hospital has stepped forward to take the risk of re-opening a Los Angeles County community hospital that had such an atrocious record that the County closed it last August. Recognizing its own incompetence, the County Board of Supervisors decided that the hospital should not re-open under ...
Bay State model bodes ill for the nation
Sunday Republican (Springfield, MA), April 6, 2008 Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are creating quite a spectacle as they joust over the minutia of their respective health care plans in their attempts to secure the Democratic vote. To witness the real action in health care politics and policy – and ...
