Medicare

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 isn’t 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 wasn’t 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 can’t 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 haven’t come cheaply. Cancer drug prices have doubled in the past decade. ...
Commentary

Obamacare Increases Large Employers’ Health Costs

Employer-provided health insurance may not be long for this world. According to a new report from S&P Capital IQ, 90 percent of American workers who receive health insurance from large companies will instead get coverage through Obamacare’s exchanges by 2020. For that, patients — many of whom no doubt like ...
Commentary

Health Costs Resume Their Rise

America’s health cost crisis is no longer in remission. Last week, the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) announced that healthcare spending had risen 9.9 percent in the first quarter of 2014 — the largest quarterly increase in more than 30 years. The BEA’s estimate comes on the ...
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 isn’t 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 wasn’t 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 can’t 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 haven’t come cheaply. Cancer drug prices have doubled in the past decade. ...
Commentary

Obamacare Increases Large Employers’ Health Costs

Employer-provided health insurance may not be long for this world. According to a new report from S&P Capital IQ, 90 percent of American workers who receive health insurance from large companies will instead get coverage through Obamacare’s exchanges by 2020. For that, patients — many of whom no doubt like ...
Commentary

Health Costs Resume Their Rise

America’s health cost crisis is no longer in remission. Last week, the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) announced that healthcare spending had risen 9.9 percent in the first quarter of 2014 — the largest quarterly increase in more than 30 years. The BEA’s estimate comes on the ...
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