Commentary
Commentary
Bungled bundling of hospital payments for joint replacements
Federal officials are about to make orthopedic surgery a lot more painful. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services soon may order hospitals in 75 metropolitan regions to change the way they pay health care providers for knee and hip replacements for seniors on Medicare. Instead of paying for each ...
Commentary
Obamacare’s Cadillac Tax Is A Clunker
Consumers are trying to figure out how they’ll absorb the double-digit increases in health insurance premiums that many insurers have announced for next year. American employers, meanwhile, are worried about what will happen to health costs several years out, in 2018. That’s because 2018 is when one of Obamacare’s most ...
Commentary
Obamacare’s latest trend: sticker shock
Americans rank health costs as their top financial concern, according to Gallup. That’s not likely to change anytime soon. Health insurers are requesting massive premium hikes for next year — some in excess of 50 percent. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Affordable Care Act has been driving up ...
California
California’s reckless Medi-Cal expansion a disservice to the poor
California under Obamacare has enrolled three times as many people as originally projected in Medi-Cal, the welfare program that subsidizes low-income Californians’ access to health care. The total is now 12 million, about one-third of the state’s population. The overenrollment is provoking yet another fiscal crisis for the state, which ...
Commentary
The Doctor Won’t See You Now
Only three in ten enrollees in Obamacare’s exchanges report being satisfied with their health coverage, according to a new poll from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. Among the primary reasons for these poor numbers? Many exchange policies limit patients’ choices of doctors and hospitals in order to keep premiums ...
Commentary
Are suburban schools as good as parents think?
Are the Michigan public schools that serve mostly middle-class students performing well? Lots of parents think so. But many middle-class, suburban schools are not as good as parents think. That’s the finding of a new study from the Pacific Research Institute, which found evidence of widespread underachievement in Michigan. The ...
Business & Economics
States Where Regulations Harm Small Businesses The Most
The federal and state governments continue to impose ever-more burdensome regulations on businesses across the country. Overall, in 2014 alone, the Obama Administration imposed an estimated $181.5 billion in proposed and final regulatory costs on the U.S. economy according to a study by the American Action Forum. And, the federal ...
Commentary
A new cost of Obamacare: Surging emergency room usage
A new cost of Obamacare: Surging emergency room usage Emergency room usage has spiked in recent years. That’s the depressing finding from a new survey by the American College of Emergency Physicians — and it’s endangering those who need emergency care. The survey concluded that three in four ER doctors ...
Commentary
Obamacare’s Deficit of Savings
The Congressional Budget Office appears to have delivered a victory to Obamacare’s cheerleaders. The agency’s latest estimate puts the cost of scrapping the law at $137 billion over the next decade. “Any way you slice it, repealing the Affordable Care Act will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the ...
Commentary
HSAs bend cost curve down
AS FOLKS begin to shop for health insurance this fall, they’ll discover that insurance companies are seeking rate increases from 20 to 40 percent or more. Regulators in some states are ordering insurers to hike premiums even further to avoid going bankrupt. But according to a new study from the ...
Bungled bundling of hospital payments for joint replacements
Federal officials are about to make orthopedic surgery a lot more painful. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services soon may order hospitals in 75 metropolitan regions to change the way they pay health care providers for knee and hip replacements for seniors on Medicare. Instead of paying for each ...
Obamacare’s Cadillac Tax Is A Clunker
Consumers are trying to figure out how they’ll absorb the double-digit increases in health insurance premiums that many insurers have announced for next year. American employers, meanwhile, are worried about what will happen to health costs several years out, in 2018. That’s because 2018 is when one of Obamacare’s most ...
Obamacare’s latest trend: sticker shock
Americans rank health costs as their top financial concern, according to Gallup. That’s not likely to change anytime soon. Health insurers are requesting massive premium hikes for next year — some in excess of 50 percent. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Affordable Care Act has been driving up ...
California’s reckless Medi-Cal expansion a disservice to the poor
California under Obamacare has enrolled three times as many people as originally projected in Medi-Cal, the welfare program that subsidizes low-income Californians’ access to health care. The total is now 12 million, about one-third of the state’s population. The overenrollment is provoking yet another fiscal crisis for the state, which ...
The Doctor Won’t See You Now
Only three in ten enrollees in Obamacare’s exchanges report being satisfied with their health coverage, according to a new poll from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. Among the primary reasons for these poor numbers? Many exchange policies limit patients’ choices of doctors and hospitals in order to keep premiums ...
Are suburban schools as good as parents think?
Are the Michigan public schools that serve mostly middle-class students performing well? Lots of parents think so. But many middle-class, suburban schools are not as good as parents think. That’s the finding of a new study from the Pacific Research Institute, which found evidence of widespread underachievement in Michigan. The ...
States Where Regulations Harm Small Businesses The Most
The federal and state governments continue to impose ever-more burdensome regulations on businesses across the country. Overall, in 2014 alone, the Obama Administration imposed an estimated $181.5 billion in proposed and final regulatory costs on the U.S. economy according to a study by the American Action Forum. And, the federal ...
A new cost of Obamacare: Surging emergency room usage
A new cost of Obamacare: Surging emergency room usage Emergency room usage has spiked in recent years. That’s the depressing finding from a new survey by the American College of Emergency Physicians — and it’s endangering those who need emergency care. The survey concluded that three in four ER doctors ...
Obamacare’s Deficit of Savings
The Congressional Budget Office appears to have delivered a victory to Obamacare’s cheerleaders. The agency’s latest estimate puts the cost of scrapping the law at $137 billion over the next decade. “Any way you slice it, repealing the Affordable Care Act will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the ...
HSAs bend cost curve down
AS FOLKS begin to shop for health insurance this fall, they’ll discover that insurance companies are seeking rate increases from 20 to 40 percent or more. Regulators in some states are ordering insurers to hike premiums even further to avoid going bankrupt. But according to a new study from the ...
