A backroom deal made during the writing of Obamacare will harm seniors and the poor, according to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). During their closed-room dealings with the Obama Administration, the hospital industry’s lobbyists agreed to support Obamacare—provided that the law placed restrictions on physician-owned “specialty” hospitals, noted WSJ. These …
While Members of Congress are arguing about defunding parts of Obamacare, the rubber is meeting the road in the states. Governors and state legislatures are sweating decisions about setting up government health care exchanges and expanding the Medicaid program. While the offer of additional federal money for Medicaid is tempting …
A California pharmaceutical company that has received federal subsidies under the Obama Administration agreed to pay $11.4 million last week to settle allegations that it bribed medical professionals to prescribe and sell its drugs. The allegation was detailed in a civil complaint filed in federal court in March 2009. The …
Heritage’s Kevin Dayaratna finds in a recent survey of academic literature that “Medicaid’s so-called safety net cripples the very people it is designed to help.” The structural flaws in the program produce a cascade of failures, starting with underpaid and overburdened doctors, which produces longer waits for care, in turn …
Medicare is an emotionally charged program because it provides health insurance coverage for the elderly. But Medicaid covers America’s poor and disabled—and no one wants to see them harmed, either. However, like Medicare, Medicaid is also in desperate need of reform if it is to continue serving the people it …
A new study reveals that nearly one-third of doctors nationwide are unwilling to accept new Medicaid patients. The reason is that the government doesn’t pay enough to cover the cost of treating them. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Office of the Actuary, Medicaid physicians were paid …
Obamacare changes the health care system in several ways that harm physicians. It also fails to address the pivotal issues facing physicians today—for example, low government reimbursement rates that fail to cover the cost of care, or the need for state-by-state medical malpractice reform. It should have come as a …
The American Medical Association lost 5 percent of its membership last year as the physician group faced fallout from its endorsement of Obamacare and refusal to retreat from the law’s most controversial provisions. As physicians and medical school students back away from the well-known organization, they’re turning to upstarts like …
