Recent Articles

“The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said it’s not clear that the $8.3 billion Medicare Advantage bonus program will improve quality because most of the money is going to plans just rated average. The auditors did find, however, that the bonuses would temporarily ease the pain of unpopular cuts to insurance plans under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law.”

“The most oppressive aspects of the ObamaCare law don’t kick in until after the 2012 election, when the president will no longer be answerable to voters… But certain voters would surely notice one highly painful part of the law before then — namely, the way it guts the popular Medicare Advantage program… But the administration’s devised a way to postpone the pain one more year, getting Obama past his last election; it plans to spend $8 billion to temporarily restore Medicare Advantage funds so that seniors in key markets don’t lose their trusted insurance program in the middle of Obama’s re-election bid.”

“Two years into the law’s implementation, conservative emissaries have contributed to impressive stats. Almost all red states are holding off on exchange legislation at least until the Supreme Court decides on the Affordable Care Act, and in most of those states, exchange-building legislation has crawled to a stop.”

“Last week the Mercatus Center published my study showing that the health care law of 2010 (the ACA) will add at least $340 billion to federal deficits over the next ten years, and more than $1.15 trillion to net federal spending. The study has received a great deal of attention, which has highlighted the need for wider public understanding of federal budget procedures. In this article I will explain some of those budget rules while further substantiating that my basic conclusion is correct.”

“But it is telling that this progressive champion of higher taxes, who delivers viral mini monologues about the greatness of giving back and paying one’s corporate fair share in exchange for valuable government services, can so easily transform her Senate campaign into a vehicle for obvious industry talking points. This is one of the reasons why the cost savings schemes in the 2010 health care overhaul probably won’t work. Those provisions generally save money by either taxing someone’s benefits (specifically the sort of expensive health plans held by many union members) or reducing someone’s payments (higher payments to Medicare advantage plans).”

“President Obama’s new health-care law will be his greatest liability as he attempts to once again win the critical swing state of Virginia, Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) warned Wednesday. ‘I’ll be real frank here,’ Webb said at a breakfast organized by Bloomberg News. ‘I think that the manner in which the health-care reform issue was put in front of the Congress, the way that the issue was dealt with by the White House, cost Obama a lot of credibility as a leader.'”

“As part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Congress directed the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to penalize hospitals with ‘worse than expected’ 30-day readmission rates. This part of the law has stimulated hospitals, professional societies, and independent organizations to invest substantial resources in finding and implementing solutions for the ‘readmissions problem.’ Although a focus on readmissions may have good face validity, we believe that policymakers’ emphasis on 30-day readmissions is misguided, for three reasons.”

“A majority of young doctors feel pessimistic about the future of the U.S. healthcare system, with the new healthcare law cited as the main reason, according to a survey released to Reuters on Wednesday.
Nearly half of the 500 doctors surveyed think the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement, will have a negative effect on their practices, compared with 23 percent who think it will be positive.”

“The biggest flaw in the Obama approach to bundling is that the administration is lumping the doctors’ services along with the cost of the technology that physicians use to treat patients and paying for both in the same ‘bundled’ payment. That means that if a physician chooses to use newer but pricier drugs to treat a cancer, for example, then the cost of the medicines will come out of the doctors’ bottom line.”

“President Obama was once a lecturer on constitutional law, but he appears to be a little rusty. Most of what he has said recently about the Supreme Court case challenging the constitutionality of the health-care law he signed has been ill-informed.”