Recent Articles

The ObamaCare “risk adjustment” program was designed to support health plans with lots of sick, expensive customers by giving them money from plans with healthier customers. The goal is to help keep insurance markets stable by sharing the “risk” of sicker people and removing any incentive for plans to avoid individuals who need more medical care. Such…

In his final State of the Union address, President Obama spent little time discussing health care programs. In sum, the president made one generic reference to Medicare, made no mention of Medicaid, and spent only about 30 seconds discussing his signature health care legislation—the Affordable Care Act—recapping its main purpose and making three claims about…

Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released 2016 exchange enrollment data through the first two months of the three-month open enrollment period. Although nearly one month of open enrollment remains, the new data generally supports my previous findings. Here are seven things you should know about the new data. 1) 2016…

Reconciliation shows repeal is possible. Now is the time to show that replacing ObamaCare is possible too. To do that, Congress should spend the next year building a framework for a patient-centered, market-based alternative that empowers individuals to control the dollars and decisions regarding their health care. Congress must use sound financing, stabilize and liberate the…

In a survey of non-seniors, a New York Times/Kaiser poll found about one-in-five people struggle with medical bills even though they have insurance. Among insured people who reported crushing medical debts, about three-quarters reported putting off vacations, major purchases and cutting back on household spending. Nearly two-thirds used up all or most of their savings. Far…

The Obama administration is promising to crack down on healthcare customers who buy coverage in between enrollment periods to lower costs. Andy Slavitt, acting head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, acknowledged publicly for the first time Monday night that some customers are using loopholes in the enrollment sign-up periods to avoid paying…

iMost of the people who tell you that consumerism can’t work in health care tend to work in health care themselves. But if they were doing such a great job, maybe our health care system wouldn’t be riddled with high costs, fatal medical errors, and hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud. Companies in other…

Among ObamaCare’s few popular features, even among Republicans, is the mandate to cover adult children through age 26 on the insurance plans of their parents. Although sold as a gratuity, somebody must ultimately pay. In a working paper, Gopi Shah Goda and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford and Monica Farid of Harvard find “evidence that employees who were most…

Kentucky’s new Republican governor, Matt Bevin, has notified the Obama administration that he plans to dismantle the state’s ObamaCare marketplace. Bevin, who was sworn in last month, promised to scrap the marketplace, called Kynect, as part of his campaign, but he is now making it official. Bevin’s office said in a statement to WFPL News in…

The health care law is gradually finding its niche as an entitlement for what the Census Bureau defines as the “working class”–lower middle-class families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but instead fall into the sweet spot of ObamaCare’s subsidies. Increasingly, these Americans will find themselves forcibly moved into ObamaCare, even if they currently…