Health Care
Commentary
Medicare Pays Billions For Obesity’s Consequences. Its GLP-1 Bridge Offers A Better Way
Medicare spends billions of dollars each year treating heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, cancer and other illnesses caused or worsened by obesity. Yet for decades, federal law has barred the program from covering medicines prescribed to treat obesity itself. In other words, Medicare has been willing to pay for the ...
Commentary
Why Are States Taxing Companies for Hiring Poor People?
The Garden State has become the first state to penalize companies for employing Medicaid beneficiaries. Under legislation signed June 30 by Gov. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., companies with at least 50 employees will pay an annual fee between $325 and $725 for every worker or dependent of a worker enrolled in ...
Commentary
Approach online weight-loss drug offers with skepticism
If you’ve spent any time on social media lately, you’ve probably seen the ads. Lose weight fast. Get access to GLP-1s. Skip the doctor’s office. Delivered right to your door. For millions of Americans looking to lose weight, the promise is understandably appealing. These remarkable drugs, which include Ozempic, Wegovy, ...
Health Care
New PRI Study: California’s Medi-Cal Crisis Leaves Taxpayers Paying for Fraud, Waste, and Runaway Costs
SACRAMENTO – Just weeks after California approved a record state budget of $351.7 billion for fiscal year 2026-27 that scaled back portions of its Medi-Cal expansion because of soaring costs, and as the federal government announced it was pausing $867.5 million in Medicaid payments to California, the Pacific Research Institute ...
Commentary
Don’t Blame Breakthrough Drugs for Costs, Fix Hospital Market
America’s healthcare tab has hit a new record. According to federal data published late last month, national health expenditures climbed to nearly $5.7 trillion in 2025, an increase of 7.3% over the previous year. The report noted that retail prescription drug spending rose 11%, driven in part by increased use ...
Commentary
The hidden contracts keeping hospital prices high
Hospital prices have more than tripled since 2000, rising over twice as fast as overall inflation. A new White House Council of Economic Advisers report helps explain why. Dominant hospital systems have quietly insulated themselves from competition through restrictive contract terms. The three practices are known as anti-steering, anti-tiering, and ...
Commentary
Trump’s Push for Healthcare Transparency, Starting With Hospital Prices, Can Go Even Further
The Trump administration is making hospital price transparency a centerpiece of its Make America Healthy Again agenda — and it has a chance to go even further toward achieving this goal. Earlier this month, federal regulators warned more than 500 hospitals that they could be violating federal requirements to disclose ...
Commentary
Medicare Takes A Smart Step Toward Site-Neutral Payments
One of Medicare’s most puzzling rules has nothing to do with the care patients receive. For many routine outpatient services, it pays substantially more when care is delivered in a hospital-owned facility than when the exact same service is performed in an independent physician’s office or ambulatory surgery center. This ...
Commentary
ACA’s Patient Choice Boondoggle Not Aging Well
In an interview prior to the recent official opening of his presidential library, former President Barack Obama was asked to name his greatest accomplishment. The first thing that came to mind was the Affordable Care Act (ACA). As he put it, “For all the resistance from our political opposition, the ...
Commentary
Trump’s healthcare fraud crackdown is paying off
Federal prosecutors recently announced that they’d charged 455 defendants in connection with more than $6.5 billion in alleged fraud involving Medicare, Medicaid, and other public healthcare programs. The news serves as a vivid reminder of just how much taxpayer money can disappear when oversight falls short. According to the Justice ...
Medicare Pays Billions For Obesity’s Consequences. Its GLP-1 Bridge Offers A Better Way
Medicare spends billions of dollars each year treating heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, cancer and other illnesses caused or worsened by obesity. Yet for decades, federal law has barred the program from covering medicines prescribed to treat obesity itself. In other words, Medicare has been willing to pay for the ...
Why Are States Taxing Companies for Hiring Poor People?
The Garden State has become the first state to penalize companies for employing Medicaid beneficiaries. Under legislation signed June 30 by Gov. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., companies with at least 50 employees will pay an annual fee between $325 and $725 for every worker or dependent of a worker enrolled in ...
Approach online weight-loss drug offers with skepticism
If you’ve spent any time on social media lately, you’ve probably seen the ads. Lose weight fast. Get access to GLP-1s. Skip the doctor’s office. Delivered right to your door. For millions of Americans looking to lose weight, the promise is understandably appealing. These remarkable drugs, which include Ozempic, Wegovy, ...
New PRI Study: California’s Medi-Cal Crisis Leaves Taxpayers Paying for Fraud, Waste, and Runaway Costs
SACRAMENTO – Just weeks after California approved a record state budget of $351.7 billion for fiscal year 2026-27 that scaled back portions of its Medi-Cal expansion because of soaring costs, and as the federal government announced it was pausing $867.5 million in Medicaid payments to California, the Pacific Research Institute ...
Don’t Blame Breakthrough Drugs for Costs, Fix Hospital Market
America’s healthcare tab has hit a new record. According to federal data published late last month, national health expenditures climbed to nearly $5.7 trillion in 2025, an increase of 7.3% over the previous year. The report noted that retail prescription drug spending rose 11%, driven in part by increased use ...
The hidden contracts keeping hospital prices high
Hospital prices have more than tripled since 2000, rising over twice as fast as overall inflation. A new White House Council of Economic Advisers report helps explain why. Dominant hospital systems have quietly insulated themselves from competition through restrictive contract terms. The three practices are known as anti-steering, anti-tiering, and ...
Trump’s Push for Healthcare Transparency, Starting With Hospital Prices, Can Go Even Further
The Trump administration is making hospital price transparency a centerpiece of its Make America Healthy Again agenda — and it has a chance to go even further toward achieving this goal. Earlier this month, federal regulators warned more than 500 hospitals that they could be violating federal requirements to disclose ...
Medicare Takes A Smart Step Toward Site-Neutral Payments
One of Medicare’s most puzzling rules has nothing to do with the care patients receive. For many routine outpatient services, it pays substantially more when care is delivered in a hospital-owned facility than when the exact same service is performed in an independent physician’s office or ambulatory surgery center. This ...
ACA’s Patient Choice Boondoggle Not Aging Well
In an interview prior to the recent official opening of his presidential library, former President Barack Obama was asked to name his greatest accomplishment. The first thing that came to mind was the Affordable Care Act (ACA). As he put it, “For all the resistance from our political opposition, the ...
Trump’s healthcare fraud crackdown is paying off
Federal prosecutors recently announced that they’d charged 455 defendants in connection with more than $6.5 billion in alleged fraud involving Medicare, Medicaid, and other public healthcare programs. The news serves as a vivid reminder of just how much taxpayer money can disappear when oversight falls short. According to the Justice ...