Recent Articles

“The percentage of American adults who lack health insurance coverage has not only increased during the presidency of Barack Obama, but it has continued to increase since Obama signed his signature piece of legislation last year mandating that by 2014 every American carry health insurance, according to a Gallup survey released today.”

The Obama White House is grappling with an unusual reality as next year’s election looms: the signature domestic achievement of the president’s first term seems, at best, as much of a liability as an asset… Friday’s news that the economy added zero jobs for the month of August only deepens Obama’s problem.
Republicans, who opposed healthcare reform from the beginning, are bullish on the issue.”

“The health insurance rate-review regulation included in last year’s health care overhaul goes into effect this week… So how will it be determined if insurers are engaged in a ‘pattern or practice’ of ‘excessive or unjustified’ increases? However the authorities want. As CRS notes, ‘the terms “pattern” and “practice” are not defined by law.’ If those recommendations are anything like previous state-based efforts to regulate health insurance, they’ll probably be inconsistent and inscrutable.”

“President Obama also promised that premiums wouldn’t rise under Obamacare. The law, we were told, was going to lower premiums for families by as much as $2,500. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality analyzed the ten largest states’ average premiums in 2010. On average, the premiums for a family plan rose 6.5 percent. Here in Texas, the average premium for a family plan jumped by more than $1,000.”

“Expensive technologies like proton beam therapy and hot chemo baths are among the reasons America’s health care spending is rising at an unsustainable clip and making the federal deficit so hard to tame.
But two of the nation’s top health care economists are expressing doubts that accountable care organizations — one of Obama administration’s most-hyped mechanisms to save money — will be able to overcome the medical system’s lust for the new new thing.”

“The best thing that Congress can do to unleash jobs creation is to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
The law is discouraging businesses from hiring. According to a recent U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey, 39 percent of small business owners say the law is either their greatest or second-greatest obstacle to new hiring.
The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Dennis Lockhart, says that ‘prominent’ among the obstacles to hiring is the ‘lack of clarity about the cost implications’ of the legislation.”

“In the early months of 2010, the economy was starting to show signs of life after the recession. Then Congress passed the president’s health-overhaul law. Debate over the ObamaCare law’s potential impact on hiring and the economy has been fierce from the start. The president promised it would be a boon to both; then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the law would create 400,000 jobs ‘almost immediately.’ Others argued the law would make businesses much less likely to hire new workers. That debate should now be over.”

“That law’s supposed beneficiaries are the uninsured. Yet 61 percent of them think the law will either not help them or will hurt them (see pie chart below). The main takeaway: Congress can repeal ObamaCare and its supposed beneficiaries won’t even care.”

“President Obama says he wants a grand bargain on the budget with no ideological ‘lines in the sand.’ Yet he insists that the costliest and most controversial program in decades — the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) — be taken off the table. That won’t fly. Congress should unwind the health law in three quick steps: freeze, investigate and replace.”

“‘Accountable care organizations’ is the health wonk phrase du jour. Obamacare’s advocates point to its support for ACOs as one of the important cost-control initiatives in the law. Except that, like nearly everything about Obamacare, the truth isn’t so simple. It turns out that the government’s idea of an accountable care organization is completely unworkable, to the point where nearly all leading health providers have declared it dead on arrival.”