Medicaid
Business & Economics
Mountaineer Perspectives
As West Virginia celebrates its 146th birthday, residents ponder meaning, relevance of Montani Semper Liberi. Emblazoned upon the state flag and seal, the Latin phrase Montani Semper Liberi means “Mountaineers are always free.” Although West Virginians see the motto every time they look at a state flag, how often do ...
Health Care
Health Care’s Future: Mexican Medical Tourism for Californians?
Immigrants continue to show up in California, where many become part of our 18.5 percent uninsured population. A more neglected story is traffic the other way, California residents crossing the border for treatment in Mexico, outlined in new research by Steven P. Wallace of UCLA. Professor Wallace and colleagues conclude ...
Commentary
How to Bankrupt a Country
What if you found that your personal income this year will be $55,000, but you will spend $100,000 — even though you had no prior savings? And what if next year’s picture looked similar, and the year after that, and so on? If President Obama were your personal financial advisor, ...
Commentary
Health care reform takes center stage
Congress is bent on passing health care reform legislation this year, but Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, predicts it will fall short of what he and other Democrats want — a single-payer system. “We don’t have the votes for single-payer, which I support,” said Miller, chairman of the House Education and ...
Commentary
Obama Lies About Health Care
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Obama is out in Green Bay today, and he’s doing a town hall meeting on socialized medicine, government health care. The reason he’s out there doing this is because the polling on this is not looking good. Conservatives for Patients’ Rights is a group that’s stopping Obama, ...
Health Care
Overdosing on Obama Healthcare
George Stephanopoulos informed ABC television watchers on May 11 that this is “probably the best chance we’ve had in 15 or 16 years to actually get a comprehensive health care plan through.” The major difference between now and 1994, when the Clinton administration failed to push through its healthcare overhaul, ...
Health Care
Medicare Costs Have Risen Far More than the Costs of Private Health Care
As Americans contemplate a significant expansion of government’s role in health care, in the form of the Medicare-like “public option” proposed by President Obama, we must consider how successful Medicare has been at controlling costs in relation to privately purchased health care. This analysis takes all health spending in the ...
Commentary
New Entry for Worst Study of the Year Award
As with previous studies of medical bankruptcy, this study puts forward a number of definitions of “medical bankruptcy” and defines any bankruptcy with any one of these conditions as suffering medical bankruptcy. The one that immediately stands out is “medical bills over $5,000 or 10 percent of household income on ...
Business & Economics
Curing the Healthcare Maladies in the Stimulus Package
As a psychiatrist, I’ve observed that people generally make bad decisions when they’re rushed and in crisis. Politicians, unfortunately, often fail to recognize this aspect of human nature. Clearly, we are in an economic crisis, which makes me immediately fearful of politicians’ proposed cures. In rushing to stimulate the economy—a ...
Commentary
The End of Medical Miracles?
Scientific discoveries are neither inevitable nor predictable Americans have, at best, a love-hate relationship with the life-sciences industry—the term for the sector of the economy that produces pharmaceuticals, biologics (like vaccines), and medical devices. These days, the mere mention of a pharmaceutical manufacturer seems to elicit gut-level hostility. Journalists, operating ...
Mountaineer Perspectives
As West Virginia celebrates its 146th birthday, residents ponder meaning, relevance of Montani Semper Liberi. Emblazoned upon the state flag and seal, the Latin phrase Montani Semper Liberi means “Mountaineers are always free.” Although West Virginians see the motto every time they look at a state flag, how often do ...
Health Care’s Future: Mexican Medical Tourism for Californians?
Immigrants continue to show up in California, where many become part of our 18.5 percent uninsured population. A more neglected story is traffic the other way, California residents crossing the border for treatment in Mexico, outlined in new research by Steven P. Wallace of UCLA. Professor Wallace and colleagues conclude ...
How to Bankrupt a Country
What if you found that your personal income this year will be $55,000, but you will spend $100,000 — even though you had no prior savings? And what if next year’s picture looked similar, and the year after that, and so on? If President Obama were your personal financial advisor, ...
Health care reform takes center stage
Congress is bent on passing health care reform legislation this year, but Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, predicts it will fall short of what he and other Democrats want — a single-payer system. “We don’t have the votes for single-payer, which I support,” said Miller, chairman of the House Education and ...
Obama Lies About Health Care
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Obama is out in Green Bay today, and he’s doing a town hall meeting on socialized medicine, government health care. The reason he’s out there doing this is because the polling on this is not looking good. Conservatives for Patients’ Rights is a group that’s stopping Obama, ...
Overdosing on Obama Healthcare
George Stephanopoulos informed ABC television watchers on May 11 that this is “probably the best chance we’ve had in 15 or 16 years to actually get a comprehensive health care plan through.” The major difference between now and 1994, when the Clinton administration failed to push through its healthcare overhaul, ...
Medicare Costs Have Risen Far More than the Costs of Private Health Care
As Americans contemplate a significant expansion of government’s role in health care, in the form of the Medicare-like “public option” proposed by President Obama, we must consider how successful Medicare has been at controlling costs in relation to privately purchased health care. This analysis takes all health spending in the ...
New Entry for Worst Study of the Year Award
As with previous studies of medical bankruptcy, this study puts forward a number of definitions of “medical bankruptcy” and defines any bankruptcy with any one of these conditions as suffering medical bankruptcy. The one that immediately stands out is “medical bills over $5,000 or 10 percent of household income on ...
Curing the Healthcare Maladies in the Stimulus Package
As a psychiatrist, I’ve observed that people generally make bad decisions when they’re rushed and in crisis. Politicians, unfortunately, often fail to recognize this aspect of human nature. Clearly, we are in an economic crisis, which makes me immediately fearful of politicians’ proposed cures. In rushing to stimulate the economy—a ...
The End of Medical Miracles?
Scientific discoveries are neither inevitable nor predictable Americans have, at best, a love-hate relationship with the life-sciences industry—the term for the sector of the economy that produces pharmaceuticals, biologics (like vaccines), and medical devices. These days, the mere mention of a pharmaceutical manufacturer seems to elicit gut-level hostility. Journalists, operating ...
