Medicare
Business & Economics
The impacts of raising San Francisco’s minimum wage to $15
On Nov. 4 San Francisco voters are being asked to approve Proposition J, a measure which increases the minimum wage in San Francisco to $15 per hour by 2018 from the current city rate of $10.74. San Franciscans should think carefully before approving this measure. When a business hires an ...
Commentary
The Bungling of Bundled Payments
Obamacares two chief goals were to cut the number of uninsured and reduce the cost of health care. At least one of the laws primary ways of fulfilling the latter goal appears to be failing. The RAND Corporation recently examined a pilot effort by several California hospitals to replace their ...
Commentary
In Federal Drug Program, Hospitals and Pharmacies Use the Poor to Get Rich
Telling the truth about wasteful healthcare spending is dangerous. Too many people are invested in the status quo to admit that a program isnt working, or worse, being exploited. Recently, defenders of the deeply problematic 340B drug discount program came out swinging. On July 29, Doctors Robert Chapman and Andres ...
Commentary
No, Really — Employer Health Insurance Is Better Than Government Care
Who knew the cost disparities between employer and government health insurance could be so exciting? Last week, Princeton economics professor Uwe Reinhardt took issue with my July 28 column Employer Health Insurance: A Bargain Compared to Government-Sponsored Coverage. In my piece, I unpacked the numbers from a new American ...
Commentary
Wait times and single-payer health care
The Veterans Affairs scandal may seem like it can’t get any worse – yet bad news continues to mount. An audit of the VA hospital system has revealed that over 57,000 patients have been forced to wait at least 90 days for an appointment. More than 63,000 patients in the ...
Commentary
Employer Health Insurance: A Bargain Compared to Government-Sponsored Coverage
After years of slowing growth, employer health costs are forecast to climb at a faster pace next year, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Even with that projected growth, employers are spending much less per person than is the government about 60 percent less, concludes a new study from the American Health ...
Commentary
Healthcare’s Problem Is Not High Drug Prices
Is $84,000 too much to pay to save a life? That’s a question worth asking now that the insurance industry has declared war on what it has deemed outrageous prices for new specialty drugs. In this case, the complaints focus on Sovaldi, a breakthrough treatment that gives three million people ...
Commentary
The High and Rising Costs of the HealthCare.gov Fiasco
The final verdict on Obamacare has yet to be written. But earlier this month, Republican staffers from the Senate Finance and Judiciary Committees offered a first installment on the botched rollout of the federal health insurance exchange HealthCare.gov. It wasnt pretty. The Committees 34-page report explains just how bad ...
Commentary
Repeal and Replace Remains the Goal
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently admitted that it has no idea what Obamacare will end up costing taxpayers. The budget agency has quietly gone back on its initial claim that the law would lower the deficit by $120 billion over the next decade. The reason? It cant track the ...
Commentary
Drug Discount Program Drives up Costs, Discounts the Poor
American cancer patients have never had a better chance of beating the disease than they do today. In the last quarter-century, cancer death rates have declined by more than one-fifth. But these gains in the fight against cancer havent come cheaply. Cancer drug prices have doubled in the past decade. ...
The impacts of raising San Francisco’s minimum wage to $15
On Nov. 4 San Francisco voters are being asked to approve Proposition J, a measure which increases the minimum wage in San Francisco to $15 per hour by 2018 from the current city rate of $10.74. San Franciscans should think carefully before approving this measure. When a business hires an ...
The Bungling of Bundled Payments
Obamacares two chief goals were to cut the number of uninsured and reduce the cost of health care. At least one of the laws primary ways of fulfilling the latter goal appears to be failing. The RAND Corporation recently examined a pilot effort by several California hospitals to replace their ...
In Federal Drug Program, Hospitals and Pharmacies Use the Poor to Get Rich
Telling the truth about wasteful healthcare spending is dangerous. Too many people are invested in the status quo to admit that a program isnt working, or worse, being exploited. Recently, defenders of the deeply problematic 340B drug discount program came out swinging. On July 29, Doctors Robert Chapman and Andres ...
No, Really — Employer Health Insurance Is Better Than Government Care
Who knew the cost disparities between employer and government health insurance could be so exciting? Last week, Princeton economics professor Uwe Reinhardt took issue with my July 28 column Employer Health Insurance: A Bargain Compared to Government-Sponsored Coverage. In my piece, I unpacked the numbers from a new American ...
Wait times and single-payer health care
The Veterans Affairs scandal may seem like it can’t get any worse – yet bad news continues to mount. An audit of the VA hospital system has revealed that over 57,000 patients have been forced to wait at least 90 days for an appointment. More than 63,000 patients in the ...
Employer Health Insurance: A Bargain Compared to Government-Sponsored Coverage
After years of slowing growth, employer health costs are forecast to climb at a faster pace next year, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Even with that projected growth, employers are spending much less per person than is the government about 60 percent less, concludes a new study from the American Health ...
Healthcare’s Problem Is Not High Drug Prices
Is $84,000 too much to pay to save a life? That’s a question worth asking now that the insurance industry has declared war on what it has deemed outrageous prices for new specialty drugs. In this case, the complaints focus on Sovaldi, a breakthrough treatment that gives three million people ...
The High and Rising Costs of the HealthCare.gov Fiasco
The final verdict on Obamacare has yet to be written. But earlier this month, Republican staffers from the Senate Finance and Judiciary Committees offered a first installment on the botched rollout of the federal health insurance exchange HealthCare.gov. It wasnt pretty. The Committees 34-page report explains just how bad ...
Repeal and Replace Remains the Goal
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently admitted that it has no idea what Obamacare will end up costing taxpayers. The budget agency has quietly gone back on its initial claim that the law would lower the deficit by $120 billion over the next decade. The reason? It cant track the ...
Drug Discount Program Drives up Costs, Discounts the Poor
American cancer patients have never had a better chance of beating the disease than they do today. In the last quarter-century, cancer death rates have declined by more than one-fifth. But these gains in the fight against cancer havent come cheaply. Cancer drug prices have doubled in the past decade. ...
