Medicare
Commentary
Obamacare Vulnerable to a Real Fraud Problem
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says it canceled the policies only after investigating and confirming that the enrollments were unauthorized. Many involved people enrolled without their knowledge, sometimes by dishonest insurance agents and brokers. Those cancellations are expected to return roughly $2.2 billion in taxpayer-funded subsidies. And there’s ...
Commentary
Medicare for All comes with a human cost voters don’t realize
“Medicare for All” is enjoying a political resurgence. A KFF poll released last week found that two-thirds of Americans support a national health plan — the highest level since the organization began asking about the idea in 2017. But enthusiasm falls when Americans confront some of the trade-offs. Just 24% ...
Commentary
How government policy is killing independent medicine
Independent physicians are disappearing from American healthcare. Increasingly, the doctors patients see are employees of hospital systems or insurance conglomerates. Government policy is the reason for this wave of consolidation. Medicare’s reimbursement rules, payment advantages for hospitals, and distortions embedded in the federal 340B drug discount program have systematically weakened ...
Commentary
Why the DSA’s Medicare-for-All dream threatens us with a real-life nightmare
Single-payer health care is back on the political agenda, pushed by Democratic Socialists and their leftist allies as the answer to Americans’ frustrations with private medical insurers. But while excoriating insurance companies may be good politics, forcing everyone into a government insurance monopoly would be disastrous policy. Today’s insurance market ...
Commentary
Medicare’s Drug Price Controls Could Actually Raise Prices In The Long Run
Four years ago, on August 16, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. Lawmakers promised that letting Medicare set drug prices would save taxpayers more than $100 billion over a decade. New research suggests the IRA may accomplish the opposite in the long run. A study by University ...
Commentary
Medicare’s Drug-Pricing Proposal Carries A Hidden Cost
The Trump administration says it wants to accelerate medical innovation. Yet one new proposal from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services could do just the opposite. The agency has proposed a seemingly technical expansion of Medicare’s prescription drug price control scheme, which was created by the Inflation Reduction Act ...
Commentary
Before embracing Medicare for All, the U.S should look at Britain
American doctors already know how government payment works. Private insurers pay roughly twice what Medicare does. After inflation, Medicare physician payments have fallen 33% since 2001. Medicare for All would spread that underpayment across the entire healthcare system. Every physician would have to accept whatever Washington chose to pay. Patients ...
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
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
Medicare’s ‘efficiency’ cut will reduce access, not costs
Many physicians received another pay cut this year, courtesy of Medicare. Under the program’s new physician fee schedule, Medicare reimbursement for the vast majority of physician-provided services will effectively decline by 2.5%. Medicare officials justify the change as an “efficiency adjustment.” The theory is that doctors have gotten more productive ...
Obamacare Vulnerable to a Real Fraud Problem
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says it canceled the policies only after investigating and confirming that the enrollments were unauthorized. Many involved people enrolled without their knowledge, sometimes by dishonest insurance agents and brokers. Those cancellations are expected to return roughly $2.2 billion in taxpayer-funded subsidies. And there’s ...
Medicare for All comes with a human cost voters don’t realize
“Medicare for All” is enjoying a political resurgence. A KFF poll released last week found that two-thirds of Americans support a national health plan — the highest level since the organization began asking about the idea in 2017. But enthusiasm falls when Americans confront some of the trade-offs. Just 24% ...
How government policy is killing independent medicine
Independent physicians are disappearing from American healthcare. Increasingly, the doctors patients see are employees of hospital systems or insurance conglomerates. Government policy is the reason for this wave of consolidation. Medicare’s reimbursement rules, payment advantages for hospitals, and distortions embedded in the federal 340B drug discount program have systematically weakened ...
Why the DSA’s Medicare-for-All dream threatens us with a real-life nightmare
Single-payer health care is back on the political agenda, pushed by Democratic Socialists and their leftist allies as the answer to Americans’ frustrations with private medical insurers. But while excoriating insurance companies may be good politics, forcing everyone into a government insurance monopoly would be disastrous policy. Today’s insurance market ...
Medicare’s Drug Price Controls Could Actually Raise Prices In The Long Run
Four years ago, on August 16, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. Lawmakers promised that letting Medicare set drug prices would save taxpayers more than $100 billion over a decade. New research suggests the IRA may accomplish the opposite in the long run. A study by University ...
Medicare’s Drug-Pricing Proposal Carries A Hidden Cost
The Trump administration says it wants to accelerate medical innovation. Yet one new proposal from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services could do just the opposite. The agency has proposed a seemingly technical expansion of Medicare’s prescription drug price control scheme, which was created by the Inflation Reduction Act ...
Before embracing Medicare for All, the U.S should look at Britain
American doctors already know how government payment works. Private insurers pay roughly twice what Medicare does. After inflation, Medicare physician payments have fallen 33% since 2001. Medicare for All would spread that underpayment across the entire healthcare system. Every physician would have to accept whatever Washington chose to pay. Patients ...
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 ...
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 ...
Medicare’s ‘efficiency’ cut will reduce access, not costs
Many physicians received another pay cut this year, courtesy of Medicare. Under the program’s new physician fee schedule, Medicare reimbursement for the vast majority of physician-provided services will effectively decline by 2.5%. Medicare officials justify the change as an “efficiency adjustment.” The theory is that doctors have gotten more productive ...