Recent Articles

When it comes to providing affordable health care to the people of Maine, Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King are worse than out of touch—they are downright dangerous. After Maine expanded Medicaid to childless adults in 2002 under then-Gov. King, the program nearly bankrupted our state. But now Ms. Collins and Mr. King are pushing…

The repeal and replace effort has failed for now. Republicans will move on to tax reform. It remains to be seen what they accomplish in an effort that is arguably at least as complicated as health reform. Ironically, Senator John McCain, the man whose thumbs down deep-sixed the frantic effort to find a way to get something resembling Obamacare…

President Donald Trump has recently twhreatened (that’s a threat communicated via Twitter) to stop payments of billions of dollars out of the federal treasury that have been going to insurance companies selling health insurance policies on the Exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act. Indeed, rumors are circulating that he may order a stop as early as…

In Part 1, we learned that real per capita health spending saw a 25-fold increase the 8 decades starting in 1929 even as real per capita GDP grew only 5-fold during the same period. Whereas the previous post looked at cost trends in broad 20-year snapshots, today’s post looks at that extraordinary growth in health spending…

With Republican repeal-and-replace efforts temporarily sidelined, now is a good time to step back and take a big picture view of exactly how we got into the mess we are now in regarding health care.  What should be clear to people of all political persuasions is that Obamacare did not solve America’s health care woes.…

Senate Republicans couldn’t agree on a way to repeal and replace Obamacare. So now they’re contemplating a totally different approach: Blow it up and let the states sort it out. The latest attempt to resuscitate the GOP’s repeal bid would reshape the nation’s health care system by sharply curtailing the federal government’s role and placing…

With the House on recess and the Senate’s leader saying it’s time to move on, a bipartisan group of more than 40 House members said Monday that Congress needs to act quickly to stabilize the individual health insurance market. A five-point plan from the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus would abandon any pretense of repealing the Affordable…

A coalition of roughly 40 House Republicans and Democrats plan to unveil a slate of Obamacare fixes Monday they hope will gain traction after the Senate’s effort to repeal the law imploded. The Problem Solvers caucus, led by Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) and Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), is fronting the effort to stabilize the ACA markets, according…

The Federalist: Surely there are some Democratic Senators who want to work on bipartisan fixes to Obamacare. Why are they not coming to the table? Grace-Marie Turner: That’s actually what Senator Chuck Schumer said in an impassioned speech before Tuesday’s vote on the Senate floor: “Let us work in a bipartisan nature.” But sadly it’s…

Congress’s last-ditch attempt to pass a “skinny” bill to kill a few pieces of the health law — many of which Trump could have abolished himself with an executive order — collapsed. In the intervening six months, Republicans were bedeviled by an enormous backlash from a public that suddenly decided it likes the health care…