Medicare
Commentary
Wait times and single-payer health care
The Veterans Affairs scandal may seem like it can’t get any worse – yet bad news continues to mount. An audit of the VA hospital system has revealed that over 57,000 patients have been forced to wait at least 90 days for an appointment. More than 63,000 patients in the ...
Commentary
Employer Health Insurance: A Bargain Compared to Government-Sponsored Coverage
After years of slowing growth, employer health costs are forecast to climb at a faster pace next year, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Even with that projected growth, employers are spending much less per person than is the government about 60 percent less, concludes a new study from the American Health ...
Commentary
Healthcare’s Problem Is Not High Drug Prices
Is $84,000 too much to pay to save a life? That’s a question worth asking now that the insurance industry has declared war on what it has deemed outrageous prices for new specialty drugs. In this case, the complaints focus on Sovaldi, a breakthrough treatment that gives three million people ...
Commentary
The High and Rising Costs of the HealthCare.gov Fiasco
The final verdict on Obamacare has yet to be written. But earlier this month, Republican staffers from the Senate Finance and Judiciary Committees offered a first installment on the botched rollout of the federal health insurance exchange HealthCare.gov. It wasnt pretty. The Committees 34-page report explains just how bad ...
Commentary
Repeal and Replace Remains the Goal
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently admitted that it has no idea what Obamacare will end up costing taxpayers. The budget agency has quietly gone back on its initial claim that the law would lower the deficit by $120 billion over the next decade. The reason? It cant track the ...
Commentary
Drug Discount Program Drives up Costs, Discounts the Poor
American cancer patients have never had a better chance of beating the disease than they do today. In the last quarter-century, cancer death rates have declined by more than one-fifth. But these gains in the fight against cancer havent come cheaply. Cancer drug prices have doubled in the past decade. ...
Commentary
Obamacare Increases Large Employers’ Health Costs
Employer-provided health insurance may not be long for this world. According to a new report from S&P Capital IQ, 90 percent of American workers who receive health insurance from large companies will instead get coverage through Obamacares exchanges by 2020. For that, patients many of whom no doubt like ...
Commentary
Health Costs Resume Their Rise
Americas health cost crisis is no longer in remission. Last week, the U.S. Commerce Departments Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) announced that healthcare spending had risen 9.9 percent in the first quarter of 2014 the largest quarterly increase in more than 30 years. The BEAs estimate comes on the ...
Commentary
The Pipes Proviso
When our oldest daughter was in second grade her best friend was a classmate who was the daughter of an ophthalmologist from Canada. He devoted much of his practice to treating Medicaid patients at the county hospital. The family moved to Ottawa at the end of the school year and ...
Commentary
This Is Obamacare ‘Working The Way It Should?’
At a town hall meeting earlier this month, President Obama declared that his signature health reform law is working the way it should. Thats news to employers, who are facing higher health costs and staggering administrative burdens thanks to the law. Theyve responded in part by cutting hours and cancelling ...
Wait times and single-payer health care
The Veterans Affairs scandal may seem like it can’t get any worse – yet bad news continues to mount. An audit of the VA hospital system has revealed that over 57,000 patients have been forced to wait at least 90 days for an appointment. More than 63,000 patients in the ...
Employer Health Insurance: A Bargain Compared to Government-Sponsored Coverage
After years of slowing growth, employer health costs are forecast to climb at a faster pace next year, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Even with that projected growth, employers are spending much less per person than is the government about 60 percent less, concludes a new study from the American Health ...
Healthcare’s Problem Is Not High Drug Prices
Is $84,000 too much to pay to save a life? That’s a question worth asking now that the insurance industry has declared war on what it has deemed outrageous prices for new specialty drugs. In this case, the complaints focus on Sovaldi, a breakthrough treatment that gives three million people ...
The High and Rising Costs of the HealthCare.gov Fiasco
The final verdict on Obamacare has yet to be written. But earlier this month, Republican staffers from the Senate Finance and Judiciary Committees offered a first installment on the botched rollout of the federal health insurance exchange HealthCare.gov. It wasnt pretty. The Committees 34-page report explains just how bad ...
Repeal and Replace Remains the Goal
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently admitted that it has no idea what Obamacare will end up costing taxpayers. The budget agency has quietly gone back on its initial claim that the law would lower the deficit by $120 billion over the next decade. The reason? It cant track the ...
Drug Discount Program Drives up Costs, Discounts the Poor
American cancer patients have never had a better chance of beating the disease than they do today. In the last quarter-century, cancer death rates have declined by more than one-fifth. But these gains in the fight against cancer havent come cheaply. Cancer drug prices have doubled in the past decade. ...
Obamacare Increases Large Employers’ Health Costs
Employer-provided health insurance may not be long for this world. According to a new report from S&P Capital IQ, 90 percent of American workers who receive health insurance from large companies will instead get coverage through Obamacares exchanges by 2020. For that, patients many of whom no doubt like ...
Health Costs Resume Their Rise
Americas health cost crisis is no longer in remission. Last week, the U.S. Commerce Departments Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) announced that healthcare spending had risen 9.9 percent in the first quarter of 2014 the largest quarterly increase in more than 30 years. The BEAs estimate comes on the ...
The Pipes Proviso
When our oldest daughter was in second grade her best friend was a classmate who was the daughter of an ophthalmologist from Canada. He devoted much of his practice to treating Medicaid patients at the county hospital. The family moved to Ottawa at the end of the school year and ...
This Is Obamacare ‘Working The Way It Should?’
At a town hall meeting earlier this month, President Obama declared that his signature health reform law is working the way it should. Thats news to employers, who are facing higher health costs and staggering administrative burdens thanks to the law. Theyve responded in part by cutting hours and cancelling ...
