Uncategorized
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 ...
Commentary
The Pipes Proviso
When our oldest daughter was in second grade her best friend was a classmate who was the daughter of an ophthalmologist from Canada. He devoted much of his practice to treating Medicaid patients at the county hospital. The family moved to Ottawa at the end of the school year and ...
Commentary
Michael Moore Is Right: Obamacare Is Awful, But Single-Payer Would Be Much Worse
Obamacare is awful, filmmaker Michael Moore recently wrote in the New York Times. He went on to say that President Obama knew in his heart that a single-payer, Medicare-for-all model was the true way to go. Moores been preaching the single-payer gospel for years, most famously in his 2007 documentary ...
Commentary
The indispensable man revisited
We are in San Francisco visiting daughter number two, who is working here for a start-up. We picked this weekend to visit so that we could attend the gala annual dinner held by the Pacific Research Institute. This years dinner honored George Shultz. Charles Krauthammer was the featured speaker and, ...
Commentary
Gov. Deval Patrick’s New Health Law Is Flat-Out Dangerous
Beacon Hill was the scene of great fanfare earlier this month when Governor Deval Patrick signed controversial new healthcare reform legislation into law. The governor proudly proclaimed that Massachusetts was the first to crack the code on the problem of ever-increasing healthcare costs. The mood outside the statehouse, however, has ...
Commentary
The CBO Just Rendered Its Verdict On The Cost Of Obamacare, And It Isn’t Pretty
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just rendered its latest opinion on the cost of Obamacare following the Supreme Courts decision to uphold most of the law back in June. The numbers arent pretty. Despite breathless media reports of additional savings, the governments bean counters actually exposed several flaws in the ...
Commentary
The New Resident Duty Hours Fail
A year ago, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) changed the rules governing the schedules of medical residents. The new work hours were intended to curb resident fatigue, which the Institute of Medicine (IOM) had previously concluded was contributing to medical errors and accidents. But the new duty ...
Inflation
User Fees for Medical Devices: Third Time Lucky?
President Obama just signed the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act. The Act includes the third authorisation of user fees, paid by the medical-device industry to the FDA, so that the FDA can improve its performance in licensing new medical devices. The FDAs process has long been unsatisfactory. ...
Medicaid
If Health Spending is Increasing Slower, Why Are Premiums Rising Faster?
Key Points: The rate of increase in private health spending has dropped significantly since the financial crisis hit in 2008, although government programs like Medicare and Medicaid have continued along their unsustainable path. However, administrative costs and private premiums began to increase immediately upon President Obama’s enacting the Patient Protection ...
Commentary
The education victimizers in chief
When masses of unionized school teachers recently stormed into the state Capitol to protest in favor of higher taxes, they painted themselves as victims of Sacramento politics. Behind this scripted and bombastic street theater, the reality is that powerful and wealthy teachers unions are the victimizers in chief in 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 ...
The Pipes Proviso
When our oldest daughter was in second grade her best friend was a classmate who was the daughter of an ophthalmologist from Canada. He devoted much of his practice to treating Medicaid patients at the county hospital. The family moved to Ottawa at the end of the school year and ...
Michael Moore Is Right: Obamacare Is Awful, But Single-Payer Would Be Much Worse
Obamacare is awful, filmmaker Michael Moore recently wrote in the New York Times. He went on to say that President Obama knew in his heart that a single-payer, Medicare-for-all model was the true way to go. Moores been preaching the single-payer gospel for years, most famously in his 2007 documentary ...
The indispensable man revisited
We are in San Francisco visiting daughter number two, who is working here for a start-up. We picked this weekend to visit so that we could attend the gala annual dinner held by the Pacific Research Institute. This years dinner honored George Shultz. Charles Krauthammer was the featured speaker and, ...
Gov. Deval Patrick’s New Health Law Is Flat-Out Dangerous
Beacon Hill was the scene of great fanfare earlier this month when Governor Deval Patrick signed controversial new healthcare reform legislation into law. The governor proudly proclaimed that Massachusetts was the first to crack the code on the problem of ever-increasing healthcare costs. The mood outside the statehouse, however, has ...
The CBO Just Rendered Its Verdict On The Cost Of Obamacare, And It Isn’t Pretty
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just rendered its latest opinion on the cost of Obamacare following the Supreme Courts decision to uphold most of the law back in June. The numbers arent pretty. Despite breathless media reports of additional savings, the governments bean counters actually exposed several flaws in the ...
The New Resident Duty Hours Fail
A year ago, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) changed the rules governing the schedules of medical residents. The new work hours were intended to curb resident fatigue, which the Institute of Medicine (IOM) had previously concluded was contributing to medical errors and accidents. But the new duty ...
User Fees for Medical Devices: Third Time Lucky?
President Obama just signed the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act. The Act includes the third authorisation of user fees, paid by the medical-device industry to the FDA, so that the FDA can improve its performance in licensing new medical devices. The FDAs process has long been unsatisfactory. ...
If Health Spending is Increasing Slower, Why Are Premiums Rising Faster?
Key Points: The rate of increase in private health spending has dropped significantly since the financial crisis hit in 2008, although government programs like Medicare and Medicaid have continued along their unsustainable path. However, administrative costs and private premiums began to increase immediately upon President Obama’s enacting the Patient Protection ...
The education victimizers in chief
When masses of unionized school teachers recently stormed into the state Capitol to protest in favor of higher taxes, they painted themselves as victims of Sacramento politics. Behind this scripted and bombastic street theater, the reality is that powerful and wealthy teachers unions are the victimizers in chief in the ...
