Recent Articles

Congress’ decision to suspend the Affordable Care Act’s tax on health insurers for one year will cost the government $13.9 billion, funding that normally would go to cover subsidies for low-income enrollees and other functions of the law. The CMS, therefore, expects insurance companies to keep their premiums in check when they file 2017 rates…

While many Americans are obsessively following the presidential primary campaign, health policy experts are concerned about little-noticed Republican primary contests for state legislative seats that could determine the fate of Medicaid expansion in Arkansas and other states. In Arkansas, Tuesday’s elections include several primary contests pitting Republican state lawmakers who voted for Medicaid expansion to…

The vast majority of Americans have not benefited from Obamacare, according to a poll released by National Public Radio, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Monday. 56 percent of Americans polled said they don’t believe the Affordable Care Act has directly impacted them. Of those surveyed who…

Senator Rubio is proposing to fix a longstanding problem in federal tax law. He wants to make sure that all Americans get a comparable tax break for health insurance, regardless of whether or not they get their insurance through their place of work. For many years, federal law conferred a generous tax break for health…

The State Department released the last batch of Hillary Clinton’s emails on Monday, and the exercise has been instructive about her recklessness with classified material. But as a side note, we ought to memorialize what President Obama’s aides were telling Mrs. Clinton about the Affordable Care Act, which was the opposite of what their boss…

The insurance industry must be kicking itself for backing ObamaCare. Several have since posted big losses and it looks like Blue Cross Blue Shield got the losing end of the stick, too. Fitch Ratings looked at nearly three dozen BCBS companies and found that 23 saw a decline in earnings that totaled $1.9 billion in…

When pressed during last Thursday night’s campaign debate in Houston for details of his proposed plans for replacing Obamacare after it is repealed, presidential candidate Donald Trump (?-NY) once again sputtered out something about eliminating “those lines” that states draw in regulating health insurance. What that exactly means involves some Trump-Land-to- Policy-World translation, and a…

Cato’s Michael Cannon has doubled down in his latest Forbes column on his outrageous claim that,“Yes, Marco Rubio’s Obamacare Replacement Plan — Tax Credits — Is An Individual Mandate.” Sen. Rubio’s health policy plan provides an advanceable, refundable tax credit that can be used to purchase insurance. This idea is a centerpiece of free-market health…

In a major win for the industry, health insurers will not be forced to have minimum quantitative standards when designing their networks of hospitals and doctors for 2017, nor will they have to offer standardized options for health plans. The CMS released a sweeping final rule (PDF) Monday afternoon that solidifies the Affordable Care Act’s…

Co-ops created under ObamaCare reported net assets despite losing millions because they used an accounting trick approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Tax filings for 18 co-ops, including nine that collapsed in 2015, also revealed that co-op CEOs were paid handsomely before many had to shut down. In July 2015, the Centers…