Commentary
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 ...
Commentary
States are grumbling about Medicaid work requirements. Taxpayers shouldn’t.
States are grumbling about the cost of implementing new work requirements for working-age Medicaid beneficiaries. “[I]t’s taking a significant amount of financial resources away from a system that people depend on,” Marvin B. Figueroa, the Virginia secretary of Health and Human Services, recently said. But that argument gets the issue ...
Commentary
Trump Takes Aim: Hospitals’ Pricey Lack of Transparency
Earlier this month, federal regulators put more than 500 hospitals on notice for failing to properly disclose what they charge for common procedures and services. The warnings are the latest step in President Trump’s long-running effort to bring greater price transparency to healthcare. It’s a fight worth having. Click to ...
Commentary
Healthcare costs keep rising. Hospitals are a big reason why.
Congress recently hauled CEOs from some of the nation’s largest hospital systems to Capitol Hill to answer for America’s soaring healthcare costs. And lawmakers didn’t pull their punches. House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., accused hospitals of building “empires” and told executives that the prices they charge patients ...
Commentary
The Real Lesson Of America’s Rising Uninsured Rate
The number of uninsured Americans ticked upward to 26.7 million in 2024, according to an analysis published this month by KFF. The report’s authors attribute that trend to the “high cost of private insurance and limited availability of public coverage.” Unpack the numbers, though, and the situation becomes more complicated. ...
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 ...
States are grumbling about Medicaid work requirements. Taxpayers shouldn’t.
States are grumbling about the cost of implementing new work requirements for working-age Medicaid beneficiaries. “[I]t’s taking a significant amount of financial resources away from a system that people depend on,” Marvin B. Figueroa, the Virginia secretary of Health and Human Services, recently said. But that argument gets the issue ...
Trump Takes Aim: Hospitals’ Pricey Lack of Transparency
Earlier this month, federal regulators put more than 500 hospitals on notice for failing to properly disclose what they charge for common procedures and services. The warnings are the latest step in President Trump’s long-running effort to bring greater price transparency to healthcare. It’s a fight worth having. Click to ...
Healthcare costs keep rising. Hospitals are a big reason why.
Congress recently hauled CEOs from some of the nation’s largest hospital systems to Capitol Hill to answer for America’s soaring healthcare costs. And lawmakers didn’t pull their punches. House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., accused hospitals of building “empires” and told executives that the prices they charge patients ...
The Real Lesson Of America’s Rising Uninsured Rate
The number of uninsured Americans ticked upward to 26.7 million in 2024, according to an analysis published this month by KFF. The report’s authors attribute that trend to the “high cost of private insurance and limited availability of public coverage.” Unpack the numbers, though, and the situation becomes more complicated. ...