Medicaid
Commentary
To Save Medicaid, Hold States Accountable
Taxpayers spent a record $554 billion for Medicaid last year — a 12% rise from 2014 and much higher than forecast. President Obama deserves the credit — and blame — for that rapid increase. And the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services predicts that the program will cost $890 billion ...
Commentary
Aetna’s Obamacare Pullout Means the ‘Insurance Death Spiral’ Has Arrived
Aetna the nation’s fourth-largest health insurer, just decided to stop offering plans on Obamacare’s exchanges in all but four states in 2017. The firm says that it was losing roughly $300 million per year on these policies. And it projected that its losses would only increase, since the share of ...
Commentary
Hillary Won the Nomination, But Bernie Won On Healthcare
Many pundits speculated that Hillary Clinton would devote a significant portion of her Democratic Convention speech to health care. But she dedicated just one sentence to the topic. The reason? Earlier in the week, Bernie Sanders had already laid out her campaign’s position. In exchange for her formal rival’s endorsement, ...
Commentary
A Better Way to Affordable, Quality Health Care
President Obama recently took to the Journal of the American Medical Association to defend his health-care law and recommend additional reforms. Among them? A government-run “public option” designed to compete against insurers on the exchanges. Instead of looking to increase the federal government’s role in health care yet again, he ...
Commentary
Don’t buy the ColoradoCare single payer snake oil
The good people of Colorado must be smoking something these days. That’s the only explanation for the decision by 156,000 of the state’s more than 3 million registered voters to endorse a November ballot initiative that would create a statewide single-payer health care system. Patients in single-payer systems elsewhere must ...
Commentary
Pulling The Plug On ObamaCare’s Life Support
Health insurance premiums have risen rapidly in the three years since the launch of ObamaCare’s exchanges, despite the law’s multibillion-dollar efforts to keep a lid on them. ObamaCare created three mechanisms for bailing out insurers if they lost too much money through the exchanges — the so-called risk corridor, risk ...
Commentary
High-risk pools: the life jacket U.S. health care needs
Obamacare guarantees all Americans health insurance. But it doesn’t guarantee that coverage will be affordable. That’s becoming a bit of a problem. This year, premiums were up an average of 8 percent. In many states, double-digit premium hikes were the norm. Next year, they’re likely to be even bigger, according ...
Commentary
The GOP’s Obamacare Replacement: Better Than Good
Last week, the GOP kept a promise to the American people by delivering a replacement plan for Obamacare. The plan — part of the party’s “A Better Way” campaign — was unveiled by House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc. “What we are laying out today is a first-time-in-six-years consensus by the ...
Commentary
Medicare Drug Reimbursement Cuts Are Backdoor Rationing
Imagine being denied treatment for cancer because Washington bureaucrats decided that a cutting-edge new therapy that could cure you just wasn’t “cost effective.” That’s already happening in Britain under its government-run health care system, the National Health Service. And Medicare officials are poised to bring similar policies here. The NHS’s ...
Commentary
Obamacare is Failing–On Purpose?
Obamacare’s exchanges could soon be out of health insurers. This month, UnitedHealth – the largest U.S. insurer — announced that it would no longer sell exchange plans in New Jersey in 2017. It has now withdrawn from 27 states. Last year, UnitedHealth lost about $475 million on the exchanges; this ...
To Save Medicaid, Hold States Accountable
Taxpayers spent a record $554 billion for Medicaid last year — a 12% rise from 2014 and much higher than forecast. President Obama deserves the credit — and blame — for that rapid increase. And the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services predicts that the program will cost $890 billion ...
Aetna’s Obamacare Pullout Means the ‘Insurance Death Spiral’ Has Arrived
Aetna the nation’s fourth-largest health insurer, just decided to stop offering plans on Obamacare’s exchanges in all but four states in 2017. The firm says that it was losing roughly $300 million per year on these policies. And it projected that its losses would only increase, since the share of ...
Hillary Won the Nomination, But Bernie Won On Healthcare
Many pundits speculated that Hillary Clinton would devote a significant portion of her Democratic Convention speech to health care. But she dedicated just one sentence to the topic. The reason? Earlier in the week, Bernie Sanders had already laid out her campaign’s position. In exchange for her formal rival’s endorsement, ...
A Better Way to Affordable, Quality Health Care
President Obama recently took to the Journal of the American Medical Association to defend his health-care law and recommend additional reforms. Among them? A government-run “public option” designed to compete against insurers on the exchanges. Instead of looking to increase the federal government’s role in health care yet again, he ...
Don’t buy the ColoradoCare single payer snake oil
The good people of Colorado must be smoking something these days. That’s the only explanation for the decision by 156,000 of the state’s more than 3 million registered voters to endorse a November ballot initiative that would create a statewide single-payer health care system. Patients in single-payer systems elsewhere must ...
Pulling The Plug On ObamaCare’s Life Support
Health insurance premiums have risen rapidly in the three years since the launch of ObamaCare’s exchanges, despite the law’s multibillion-dollar efforts to keep a lid on them. ObamaCare created three mechanisms for bailing out insurers if they lost too much money through the exchanges — the so-called risk corridor, risk ...
High-risk pools: the life jacket U.S. health care needs
Obamacare guarantees all Americans health insurance. But it doesn’t guarantee that coverage will be affordable. That’s becoming a bit of a problem. This year, premiums were up an average of 8 percent. In many states, double-digit premium hikes were the norm. Next year, they’re likely to be even bigger, according ...
The GOP’s Obamacare Replacement: Better Than Good
Last week, the GOP kept a promise to the American people by delivering a replacement plan for Obamacare. The plan — part of the party’s “A Better Way” campaign — was unveiled by House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc. “What we are laying out today is a first-time-in-six-years consensus by the ...
Medicare Drug Reimbursement Cuts Are Backdoor Rationing
Imagine being denied treatment for cancer because Washington bureaucrats decided that a cutting-edge new therapy that could cure you just wasn’t “cost effective.” That’s already happening in Britain under its government-run health care system, the National Health Service. And Medicare officials are poised to bring similar policies here. The NHS’s ...
Obamacare is Failing–On Purpose?
Obamacare’s exchanges could soon be out of health insurers. This month, UnitedHealth – the largest U.S. insurer — announced that it would no longer sell exchange plans in New Jersey in 2017. It has now withdrawn from 27 states. Last year, UnitedHealth lost about $475 million on the exchanges; this ...
