Medicaid
California
California Benefits Mandate Mania: 85,000 To Lose Health Insurance
What is the point of passing a law that requires independent analyses of the costs of mandating which benefits health plans must cover, if the lawmakers are then free to ignore the results of the independent analyses? The California Legislature is considering ten bills mandating benefits that will cost $2.7 ...
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
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 ...
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 ...
Commentary
There is good in drug advertising
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
Corruption & Waste in New Jersey’s State Health Plans
Back in September, President Bush held the line on Congressional Democrats’ (and many Republicans’) irresponsible plan to make more American kids dependent on government health care. Congress proposed to expand SCHIP (state government health insurance program) grants into the middle class, which drew a rare response of relative fiscal responsibility ...
Business & Economics
Alaska’s Tort Gold Rush Stalls: Eli Lilly Shakedown Stumbles
Back in 2006, Alaska’s Attorney-General (like many others) decided he could mine some gold from a successful drug company: in this case, Eli Lilly & Co. Zyprexa, a successful psychiatric drug from Lilly, has also been associated with the side effect of obesity. Alaska alleged that Lilly was slow to ...
Health Care
Ranking Health Care in the States: Promises and Pitfalls
As the scribbler of the U.S. Index of Health Ownership, the only piece of health policy research that ranks states’ laws and regulations according to the principles of free markets and individual choice, I always look forward to the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality’s State Snapshots, which derive from ...
California Benefits Mandate Mania: 85,000 To Lose Health Insurance
What is the point of passing a law that requires independent analyses of the costs of mandating which benefits health plans must cover, if the lawmakers are then free to ignore the results of the independent analyses? The California Legislature is considering ten bills mandating benefits that will cost $2.7 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
There is good in drug advertising
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, ...
Corruption & Waste in New Jersey’s State Health Plans
Back in September, President Bush held the line on Congressional Democrats’ (and many Republicans’) irresponsible plan to make more American kids dependent on government health care. Congress proposed to expand SCHIP (state government health insurance program) grants into the middle class, which drew a rare response of relative fiscal responsibility ...
Alaska’s Tort Gold Rush Stalls: Eli Lilly Shakedown Stumbles
Back in 2006, Alaska’s Attorney-General (like many others) decided he could mine some gold from a successful drug company: in this case, Eli Lilly & Co. Zyprexa, a successful psychiatric drug from Lilly, has also been associated with the side effect of obesity. Alaska alleged that Lilly was slow to ...
Ranking Health Care in the States: Promises and Pitfalls
As the scribbler of the U.S. Index of Health Ownership, the only piece of health policy research that ranks states’ laws and regulations according to the principles of free markets and individual choice, I always look forward to the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality’s State Snapshots, which derive from ...
