Former Office for Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag recently wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times on the need for medical malpractice reform. Well, kind of. Orszag’s approach has more to do with creating stricter mechanisms to enforce physicians’ compliance with evidence-based guidelines than with reforming the tort system to better protect doctors and patients. Orszag writes, “What’s needed is a much more aggressive national effort to protect doctors who follow evidence-based guidelines. That’s the only way that malpractice reform could broadly promote the adoption of best …
Dr. Donald Berwick may not be a household name yet, but if he is confirmed as the head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the position for which he was nominated by President Obama, he may soon determine the direction of health care of millions of Americans. So what’s the big deal about that? Earlier this week, a Washington Post editorial attributed the ongoing hold-up in Berwick’s confirmation hearing to “partisan politics”, claiming that, “Republicans are seizing on the Berwick nomination as an opportunity to relitigate the health-care …
Doctors are becoming increasingly demoralized. And no wonder! They are losing control over their professional independence and the Washington lobbyists they hire to represent them are collaborators with an increasingly hostile Washington political establishment. While the President repeatedly told Americans that his health agenda would not interfere with their relationship with their doctors, the reality of Obamacare is that government will have an enormous impact on the way physicians practice medicine. There is the very real prospect of many doctors simply giving up or refusing to practice under the government’s …
On Tuesday, September 29th, 2009, the Senate Finance Committee resumed its mark-up of the America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009. The Committee debated many highly contentious issues, including whether to add a government-run health plan to the bill, the role of comparative effectiveness research and rationing, and the scope of the individual mandate. The Defeat of Two Versions of the Public Option. (Rockefeller Amendment C6, Schumer Amendment C1) Senator John Rockefeller (D-WV) and Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) both introduced amendments to Chairman Max Baucus’ (D-MT) health care bill that would …
When President Barack Obama included $1.1 billion for comparative effectiveness research in his economic stimulus bill, we warned that such funding would set the stage for government rationing of your health care: The House and Senate bills would establish a framework and funding for comparative effectiveness research and health information technology. While the Senate’s language is broad and vague, the House language provides further clarity. The House committee report states that “those [items] that are found to be less effective and in some cases, more expensive, will no longer be …
Health-care policy doyenne Sally Pipes, president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute, lived under the Canadian health care system — before moving to the United States in 1991 and becoming a citizen in 2006 — and she’s not excited about America’s health system heading in the same direction. “Understanding health care is like unraveling an onion: There are many tearful moments,” Pipes said at a recent Heritage Lecture about the U.S. health-care reform debate. “When I look at [President Barack] Obama’s plan for health care, I see it leading …
