Conservatives, including The Heritage Foundation, support reforming Medicare to provide seniors with a defined contribution to apply to the health care plan of their choice. This approach would address the program’s insolvency, and it is superior to other options—including the President’s plan to allow an unelected board of officials to …
Conservatives should beware of policies that simply meet a budget target number without considering whether the underlying policy changes move a program in the right direction. Case in point: the Medicaid blend rate, which would replace the various federal matching rates for different categories of enrollees with one unified federal …
This morning, the House Budget Committee invited Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to a hearing on the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), the left’s weapon of choice for tackling Medicare’s $38 trillion in unfunded promises to America’s seniors. Both sides of the debate agree that extensive reductions to …
Yesterday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released its proposed regulations for the Obamacare version of health insurance exchanges. State lawmakers are a key audience for these regulations, which is why HHS wrapped its announcement in talk of “state flexibility.” In truth, the proposed regulations don’t give states …
Red Alert! Conservatives in Congress and elsewhere should be warned: The Administration’s latest signal for “compromise” may end up as little more than an expansion of existing bad policy, rather than a serious effort to enact substantive reforms. And only substantive reforms can change the perverse incentives that plague giant …
The Hill reports that conservatives in Congress are considering extending Medicaid drug rebates to low-income seniors participating in the Medicare prescription drug program (Part D) as part of a deficit reduction deal to increase the debt limit. Transforming certain federal health programs—i.e., Medicare and Medicaid—is crucial to making a meaningful …
The literature on the quality of Medicaid has mixed findings—some shows that having Medicaid is better than being uninsured; some shows the opposite. But virtually all of these studies suffer from a statistical issue that makes it impossible to tell whether or not it’s Medicaid or something else driving the …
The Wall Street Journal recently reported on bureaucratic barriers for patients covered by both Medicare and Medicaid. These two programs serve the elderly and the poor, respectively, and people who fall into both categories—the “dual-eligibles”—should get better-quality care with more efficient taxpayer spending. According to the WSJ, an estimated 9.7 …
The recent McKinsey survey showing that 30 percent of employers would drop coverage shouldn’t be controversial. Economists have consistently shown how an employer mandate will negatively affect employment and wages. In fact, even the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) concede such affects. Answering critics’ calls, McKinsey released the details of its …
Senator Jim DeMint (R–SC) and 12 of his Senate Republican colleagues recently introduced the Retirement Freedom Act. The bill would allow senior citizens to buy a better health plan than traditional Medicare, if they wish to do so, without having to give up their Social Security benefits. Today, if a …
