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Lawmakers will soon grapple with the fact that sick people are expensive to cover, and someone has to pay. However, we must understand that there is no certain cost to health insurance. What the general discussion about how to cover people in the future is missing is that Obamacare is so flawed that by itself it is…

Practically since Obamacare became law, Republicans in Congress have been promising to repeal it. The law has been consistently unpopular during that time as well. The January edition of the Kaiser Health Tracking Poll shows that those who want to repeal Obamacare outnumber those opposed 48 percent to 47 percent. This is higher than in…

It’s clear that whatever replaces Obamacare must focus on quality and incremental local solutions, not one-size-fits-all government mandates. In this respect, the federal government’s biggest task for replacing Obamacare is to get out of the way and let state policymakers and health care providers innovate. First off, let’s get clear what Americans want: They’d like…

Late last year, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) told a group of senior GOP lawmakers that the person they needed to watch in the Senate in 2017 was Elizabeth. “Elizabeth Warren?” one lawmaker asked. “No,” Mr. Ryan replied, according to a lawmaker in the room, “Elizabeth, the Senate parliamentarian.” Elizabeth MacDonough, the sixth person…

Health policy experts on both the left and the right need to take a deep breath and re-direct their collective energy to suggesting ways to improve the current regulatory environment.  No industry stakeholder can say with a straight-face that the individual health insurance markets are functional.  It is well-accepted that the markets are unbalanced.  And…

President-elect Donald Trump said in a weekend interview that he is nearing completion of a plan to replace President Obama’s signature health-care law with the goal of “insurance for everybody,” while also vowing to force drug companies to negotiate directly with the government on prices in Medicare and Medicaid. Trump declined to reveal specifics in…

Republicans have their best opportunity in a generation to enact a reform plan for health care that moves decisively toward a market-based approach, with far less reliance on federal regulation and control. A reform plan of this kind would represent a dramatic break from decades of policymaking and would be a major component of an…

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday Republicans plan to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law at the same time they approve a GOP replacement plan. “We want to do this at the same time, and in some cases in the same bill,” Ryan said during a town hall in Washington sponsored by CNN and…

Congress has begun the work of replacing the Affordable Care Act, and that means lawmakers will soon face the thorny dilemma that confronts every effort to overhaul health insurance: Sick people are expensive to cover, and someone has to pay. The 2010 health law, also known as Obamacare, forced insurers to sell coverage to anyone,…

The American health care system is not like a normal market. When you make most health care decisions, you don’t get much information on comparative cost and quality; the personal bill you get is only vaguely related to the services; the expense is often determined by how many procedures are done, not whether the problem…