Health Care

IN the battle over health reform, one issue has emerged as particularly divisive – the president’s proposed government health plan that would compete with private insurers. U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer recently promised that such a program would be immune to perpetual taxpayer bailouts because he would ensure that it would ...

Government rationing of medical services reality in some states WASHINGTON – As the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress move to provide government-controlled health care on a national level, similar experiments in some states suggest medical care can take a backseat to politics and bureaucratic red tape – resulting in ...

Last November, Arizona’s Proposition 101 was narrowly defeated at the ballot box. Prop 101 would have prevented the government from enrolling people in a government or private health plan against their choice, or otherwise preventing them from spending their own money on their own health care. But good ideas never ...

Mr. Wulsin reports the Congressional Budget Office’s conclusion that private insurers pay providers 20 percent to 30 percent above their costs; Medicare’s payments lay somewhere above or below the line; and Medicaid pays about 20 percent below costs. We call this the cost-shift, which increases private health insurance premiums by ...

The New York Times, May 16, 2009 To the Editor: David Leonhardt claims that research into the effectiveness of different treatment options would “tell us how to reduce spending without damaging people’s health.” Nonsense. Medical-effectiveness research will simply provide the government with cover to ration treatment. That’s exactly what happens ...