In this week’s Heritage in Focus, expert Bob Moffit discusses how Obamacare ends Medicare as we know it. Click here to listen. How does the health reform law break up traditional Medicare? What’s a better way to fix Medicare? And how much could we save by bringing free market reforms to it? Be sure to hear Dr. Moffit answer these questions and more!
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently released a report that reviewed 10 Medicare demonstrations designed with the intention of reducing spending and improving quality of care. Unfortunately, the demonstrations did not produce the desired results. The CBO report concluded, “The results of the demonstrations illustrate the challenges of developing, implementing, and evaluating policies that reduce Medicare expenditures while improving or maintaining quality of care.” However, Heritage policy analyst Kathryn Nix has analyzed research that shows that the answer to the challenge is right under everyone’s nose: the private market. Nix …
It may be only a few days since Congress began its new session, but it has already done some decent work. This week, the House Ways and Means Committee held the markup of H.R. 1173, which would repeal the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act. The CLASS Act is a government-run long-term care insurance program and a major failure of Obamacare. It has been described in a variety of degrading ways, most notably as unsustainable, an insurance death spiral, and a ponzi scheme of the first order. As …
Dark clouds hover over the nation’s finances and threaten a perfect storm of massive debt and crushing taxation unless Congress starts acting—soon. Washington must demonstrate that it is serious about reining in ever-rising spending and reducing annual deficits. Passing commonsense reforms to our major entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security), the main drivers of future spending and annual deficits, is crucial. As the population ages and health care costs rise, spending on entitlements is projected to more than double by 2050, as this Heritage Budget Chart Book chart shows. …
The Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently published its annual estimate of U.S. health spending in the journal Health Affairs. The report shows that growth in health spending remained slow in 2010. Medical expenditures grew at an annual rate of 3.9 percent, up just 0.1 percent from 2009. However, the slow growth doesn’t represent a decrease in health care costs, but a reduction in utilization and intensity of medicine. People are choosing the less costly alternative of avoiding the doctor and not …
Medicare is in dire need of reform. This week’s chart illustrates why the entitlement program is the largest driver of long-term runaway deficits. With the country’s population aging and increasingly dependent on health care, Medicare’s cost to taxpayers is projected to rise from $522.8 billion in 2010 to $932 billion in 2020. The Heritage Foundation has long championed reforms for Medicare, most recently as part of Saving the American Dream. Heritage’s Bob Moffit recently outlined a two-stage approach to reform. The first step is saving the current program, then moving …
Support for Obamacare sunk to 29 percent in the latest Associated Press poll. The widespread dissatisfaction with President Obama’s signature achievement is one reason Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) has developed health care reform that puts patients first rather than government. Price, chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, understands health care better than most. Before coming to Congress, he spent nearly 20 years in private practice as an orthopedic surgeon. He’s now using the lessons from that experience to undo the damage of Obamacare by promoting a plan called the …
Yesterday, the Administration released data from the 2011 National Health Interview Survey that shows, among other things, that the number of uninsured young adults declined over the last year. In a short press release, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) touted this as evidence that Obamacare is working, specifically attributing increased coverage of young adults age 19–25 to the Obamacare provision allowing those individuals to stay on their parents’ health plans. Undoubtedly, it’s true that some of those individuals did get coverage due to that provision, but HHS …
Medicare faces a dismal future that could threaten its very existence. In two recent papers, Stuart Butler, Ph.D., and Robert Moffit, Ph.D. of the new Heritage Center for Policy Innovation analyze the problem and offer detailed solutions on how to reverse course. Butler explains that many objections to Medicare reform are fueled by myths. For instance, many Americans believe that seniors have paid for their own Medicare through payroll taxes. But in reality, only Medicare Part A is financed through payroll taxes. Parts B and D are voluntary and financed …
As the fight continues against the one-size-fits-all changes enacted under Obamacare, some states continue to work on health care reform specific to the needs of their residents. Florida is one such state. Its Medicaid Reform Pilot passed with bipartisan support in 2005 and has been implemented in five counties over the last five years. It has been a remarkable success, shifting a failing government health program away from the status quo of top-down micromanagement toward consumer-driven, patient-centered care. In a detailed analysis written for The Heritage Foundation, Tarren Bragdon, CEO …
