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Health Care BLOG |
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Health-Care Reform: Where Do We Go From Here?
By: Sally C. Pipes
10.14.2009
President Obama has been committed to health-care reform since he became a player in the 2008 presidential race. In fact, it was his top domestic-policy issue during the campaign.
Now nine months into his presidency, he is still very resolute about getting a health-care-reform package passed before the end of this year. So far, he has given 29 speeches — and in each talk he keeps reiterating that his goal is universal coverage for all Americans. He wants to reduce the cost of health care (now about 16 percent of the nation’s GDP) and to decrease the number of uninsured (about 46.3 million, according to the Census Bureau). These two goals are not compatible.
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They Just Don’t Learn
By: Benjamin Zycher, Ph.D
10.14.2009
Perceived crisis can make for very bad judgment, and nowhere is that eternal truth more prominent than inside the Beltway. With the arrival of The One and absolute Democratic control of Congress, the groups that provide actual health care and insurance services — the doctors, the hospitals, the producers of drugs and devices, the insurers — knew that the thieves would view them, Willie Sutton–style, as the places where the money is to be found. And so they began to run around in circles like a guy whose mistress was in the bathroom when his wife came home a day early from a visit to her mother.
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Insurance 'Reform' Equals Single-Payer
By: Benjamin Zycher, Ph.D
10.9.2009
In one of the more amusing dimensions of the Beltway death struggle over the massive transfers of wealth to be gained or sacrificed by various groups through health-care "reform," the large health-industry players — honestly believing all this year that they could stay off the menu by buying a seat at the table — suddenly have discovered themselves in the frying pan nonetheless. And who'd a thunk it? After all, no way no how would people with decades of experience in Congress, on K Street, or simply reading a newspaper recognize that "deals" with the White House are unenforceable in Congress. Or that "deals" with one Congressional Rebbe might not appear kosher to another. Or that a certain Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning president might not in the final analysis actually veto a bill promising enormous political benefits merely because it violates some deal cut months earlier with interest groups whose political popularity might not be sterling, notwithstanding the incontrovertible fact that his word is his bond.
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The Death of Employer-Based Benefits Is Nigher Than I Thought
By: John R. Graham
10.9.2009
Yesterday, I pointed out that the "excise tax" for not maintaining (what we call today) continuous, creditable coverage would be much lower (maximum $1,900) than the annual premiums for a health-insurance policy. I concluded that Tower Perrins' September survey of employers, which reported that less than half of employers would continue to offer health benefits if the "pay or play" fine was lower than the cost of health benefits, informs us that we will experience a massive shedding of employer-based health benefits.
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Employer-Based Health Benefits: The Death Spiral Is Nigh
By: John R. Graham
10.8.2009
There can be little doubt that employers will move quickly to socialize the costs of health "reform" by dropping health benefits and sacrificing their employees to the new government-run health plan. The Baucus bill proposes to levy a fine of $1,900 on individuals who do not buy qualifying insurance, and maybe even send them to jail. Nor is it clear that employees will mind being dropped, as long as employers increase their cash wages by more than the amount of the fine.
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Taxing Baucus
By: Benjamin Zycher, Ph.D
10.8.2009
Mike Tanner of Cato and I (separately) have looked at the CBO analysis of the Baucus markup (which is not a bill), and have reached much the same conclusions. The headlines will tell us that it will cost $829 billion (that is, less than $900 billion) over ten years, and will reduce the cumulative deficit by $81 billion.
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Jindal's Poll-Driven Health-Reform 'Ideas'
By: John R. Graham
10.6.2009
Yesterday's Washington Post ran a column by Gov. Bobby Jindal (R., La.), in which he chastised "so-called Republican strategists" for conceding health care to the Democrats. So far, so good: But this is not a new complaint. In the 1980s, John Sununu, as chief of staff to President Reagan, is reputed to have dismissed Prof. Alain Enthoven with a curt: "If the American people want health care, they'll vote Democrat."
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Total Records: 18
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Health Care
