Political scientist Jacob Hacker claims in the Washington Post that the “Blue Dog” Democrats’ opposition to Obama’s “public plan” is not in the interests of their constituents – particularly farmers, ranchers, small business owners, and low- and middle-income workers, who would supposedly benefit from premium assistance and from the cost reductions he claims a Medicare-like public plan for the non-elderly would bring, as well as from the requirement that “all but the smallest of employers make a meaningful contribution to the cost of coverage.” On the contrary, it is precisely …
Recent media reports tout a forthcoming study in the American Journal of Medicine claiming that medical bills are responsible for 60% of U.S. personal bankruptcies. Putting aside the overly-generous criteria for counting a bankruptcy as “medical,” the figures reported in the study actually show that even by their criteria, medical bankruptcy is actually dropping. As Megan McArdle points out, the report’s figures indicate that the number of medical bankruptcies dropped from almost 671,000 in 2001, to only 502,000 in 2007. That’s a drop of over 25% in six years. Why, …
Throughout his campaign, then-candidate Obama repeatedly made two promises about health care reform: that if you like your current health plan, you could keep it—and that it would cost about $2,500 per year less. Obama made this pledge on his campaign web site, in the second presidential debate, and in the third debate, : If you have health insurance, then you don’t have to do anything. If you’ve got health insurance through your employer, you can keep your health insurance, keep your choice of doctor, keep your plan. … And …
In his blog, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman launches an unsubstantiated attack on The Heritage Foundation for our June 25 report showing that Medicare administrative costs are higher than those private health plans, not lower, as Krugman has frequently claimed. We find it somewhat encouraging that his only “refutation” to our basic point consists of (a) an ad-hominem-like attack, and (b) an old quote that is doesn’t refute the point of our report — and is incorrect anyway. The point of our paper is that expressing health administrative costs …
Recent press reports, including a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal, have the news that Wal-Mart has signed a letter to President Obama endorsing the idea of an “employer mandate” – a requirement that employers offer health insurance to their employees. Why would Wal-Mart – the nation’s largest employer – endorse such an idea? Simple: It would cripple many of their competitors. Much ink has been spilled on the effect Wal-Mart has on small retailers. Wal-Mart’s large size enables them to extract low prices from manufacturers, and that – …
On Wednesday, the Bipartisan Policy Center – a group led by former senators Howard Baker, Tom Daschle and Bob Dole – released a report describing yet another health care reform proposal that would attempt a compromise between Democrats and Republicans. The proposal is billed as “the culmination of an inclusive year-and-a-half effort that included strategic outreach to key health care stakeholders, a series of state-based public policy forums, and months of personal deliberations by the Leaders.” The proposal [PDF only] is a mixture of repackaged proposals of the past combined …
State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is the federal-state welfare program to provide health insurance for poor children. The House recently passed a major expansion of SCHIP, which is now under consideration in the Senate. Most of the controversy surrounding this expansion has been related to eligibility. Nobody opposes health care for poor children, but the House has removed two critical requirements. First, they removed the requirement to be poor. Second, they removed the requirement to be a child. That’s right – the bill allows states to raise the income …
Everyone in Washington seems to agree that a huge package of “stimulus spending” will get the economy back on track to prosperity. The problem with stimulus spending is that the government has to get the money from somewhere. Every dollar the government spends has to come from either taxing or borrowing, or deliberately causing inflation. One might be tempted to conclude that there is a finite supply of wealth, and government can divide up the pie in different ways, but can’t make it any bigger. This is of course not …
Blogging for the AFL-CIO, Mike Hall extols the benefits of socialized medicine, including: (1) lower heath care costs, and (2) higher health care costs. Here’s how he puts it: The incoming Obama administration is developing a comprehensive plan to address a broad range of health care concerns. The AFL-CIO has not endorsed a specific plan but has established certain principles that any plan should be built around. Reform must secure high-quality health care for all; lower the costs that are now crushing working families and businesses and share responsibility among …
