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Double Your Premiums
By: Sally C. Pipes
1.26.2010
Discord within the Democrats’ ranks offers Americans a renewed opportunity to learn about the sweeping changes augured by the congressional reform package. What they’ll discover is a bill that hikes taxes to pay for “reform,” making health care more expensive and less responsive to patients’ needs.
New insurance regulations form the core of the reform plan. Paramount among these new rules is an individual mandate, which would require all Americans to maintain coverage. Proponents of the idea claim that it will bring healthy, previously uninsured young people into the insurance pool. Premiums from these folks would help lower the premiums of older, sicker Americans — or so the thinking goes.
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Forget the 'Cornhusker Kickback': Senate Medicaid Deal a Recipe for Fraud
By: John R. Graham
1.21.2010
People were rightly upset when they learned about the "Cornhusker Kickback," the deal whereby Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska sold his vote in favor of the Senate's health bill in exchange for his state never having to pay for any of the Medicaid expansion in the bill.
However, the biggest problem with the Medicaid expansion in the Senate health bill is not the “Cornhusker Kickback,” but that it leverages an already flawed formula to determine federal payments to state Medicaid programs. The Senate bill would motivate states to invest more resources in recruiting higher income residents into Medicaid, rather than traditionally eligible beneficiaries, including the blind and disabled. The Senate bill also gives richer states a bigger Medicaid bailout than lower income ones. New Hampshire, Maryland, and Connecticut get the biggest handouts, while Mississippi, West Virginia, and Arkansas are short-changed, according to my just-published analysis.
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Obamacare: Time to Start Over
By: Jeffrey H. Anderson, Ph.D
1.21.2010
In the aftermath of the Democrats’ stunning defeat in Massachusetts, Democratic leaders are brainstorming how to get around Scott Brown’s election as the 41st Republican senator. But President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Senator Reid haven’t yet embraced the one course they need to take: Scrap the current bills and start over, with a bipartisan process that proceeds in broad daylight.
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The Rest of The Story
By: Thomas Tanton
1.17.2010
Steve Maviglio touts economic benefits of AB32 and asserts polls show strong support for the economy crippling regulations coming out of the California Air Resources Board. It's good that he's now out of the isolation chamber of Sacramento politics, and may begin to hear common folks' concerns. He claims that global praise for the Governor regarding climate action and strong support from Californians, 66 percent support the law in the last PPIC poll, are devastating harbingers for efforts underway to rationalize the law. That poll was conducted last summer, before the recession's persistence drove thousands more to lose their jobs and their homes to foreclosure.
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Now You Should Be Really Fiscally Afraid in California
By: Steven Greenhut
1.16.2010
After reading a recent article I wrote about growing unfunded liabilities for public employee pensions and health care, a reader told me that it made him want to “burn his eyes out with red hot pokers.” Yes, the current situation – expanding debt, growing government, excessive pay and special privileges for government workers, thanks to union power – is not fun to read about. It can be downright scary, when one considers the financial mess that already is looming.
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From Health 'Reform' to Government-Retiree Bailout
By: John R. Graham
1.15.2010
The behind-closed-doors squabble over the so-called "Cadillac" tax on high-cost health benefits is that it's really about bailing out public-sector-retiree health benefits, especially at the state and local level. Today's New York Times reports that the tax won't hit these folks until 2018. If I were a betting man, I'd guess that that date will be pushed out even farther before this deal sees the light of day.
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More Medicare Patients Dropped
By: John R. Graham
1.13.2010
Yet more news, from the Columbus Dispatch, that Medicare patients are increasingly having difficulty gettting access to care. This blog has had a number of entries (latest one here) discussing the Mayo Clinic's decision to drop patients in traditional Medicare from some of its primary-care practices.
At risk of patting myself on the back, this is what I anticipated in my recently published study of choices in Medicare. Basically, Medicare has three problems: A huge unfunded liability; ineffective reimbursements to providers (which are a result of centralized price-fixing by the government, which cause providers to shift costs to private payers); and lack of access.
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A Choice Between the President and the Future
By: Jeffrey H. Anderson, Ph.D
1.11.2010
The Congressional Budget Office has just announced that “the federal budget deficit was about $390 billion in the first quarter of fiscal year 2010,” which is “$56 billion more than the shortfall in the same period in fiscal year 2009.”
In other words, we are running up an even higher deficit than we did last year, when we racked up the highest current-dollar deficit in U.S. history, the highest inflation-adjusted deficit in U.S. history, and the highest deficit as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) except for during the Civil War, World War I, and World War II (higher even than during the Great Depression).
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Rethinking Big ED
By: Vicki E. Murray, Ph.D
1.11.2010
In today's Wall Street Journal Clark S. Judge offers his top 10 tips for a winning political strategy urging readers to, "Take a lesson from Ronald Reagan and emphasize that your programs are based on consistent principles leading to a hopeful future for all Americans." One area failing this litmus test is the Department of Education-and we have even more reason today than 20 years ago to ponder whether Big ED has delivered on its promises. We'll recall that in 1980 Ronald Reagan asked voters, "Are you better off than you were fours years ago?" Modern readers should ask whether today's students will be as well educated as previous generations. Evidence is not encouraging.
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Whatever Happened to Informed Consent?
By: Jeffrey H. Anderson, Ph.D
1.7.2010
How much control would Americans have over their own health care and their health-care system if Obamacare is passed? About as much as they have over the process that threatens to yield it.
Polls show double-digit margins opposing Obamacare, far greater opposition among those who feel strongly, two-to-one opposition among seniors, and two-to-one opposition among independents. Yet the administration and its congressional allies couldn't seen to care less. And now they are trying to leave Americans as blind to the process as they are deaf to Americans' concerns.
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Obamacare’s Three Major Hurdles
By: Jeffrey H. Anderson, Ph.D
1.6.2010
The ability to achieve victory largely comes down to one’s determination to win, versus another’s willingness to accept defeat.
United States history is replete with examples of Americans overcoming far greater odds than those currently faced by the opponents of Obamacare. In fact, it’s not clear that Obamacare opponents face long odds at all, or even that they face odds longer than those faced by Obamacare supporters, despite the latter’s grossly premature declarations of victory.
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Seizing the Initiative
By: Jeffrey H. Anderson, Ph.D
1.6.2010
Obamacare may well lose in the House. A host of members maintain personal objections to the legislation and face unhappy constituents. Motivated by a blend of principle and self-preservation — and realizing the folly of marching to their political deaths at the command of a president whose approval rating is hovering below 50 percent — many members may well vote against it. This is especially true of those who voted for the Stupak amendment to prevent public funding for health plans covering abortions. Despite the overwhelming popularity of such a provision, the compromise bill will surely not contain it.
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Would You Like a California Cash Cow or New York Pork With Your Florida Flim Flam?
By: John R. Graham
1.4.2010
California’s recent budget deficits will look bush league relative to the fiscal hurricane that federal health reform will unleash on California and many other states. The problem stems from the expansion of Medicaid, the program for low-income residents, jointly funded by the federal and state governments.
Most observers anticipate that if President Obama does sign a bill this year, it will look more like the Senate bill (an amendment to H.R. 3590), which would pull millions of Americans into government dependency for their access to medical services via an expansion of Medicaid.
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