President Obama, who had previously opposed an individual mandate for health insurance, has now opened the door to including such a legal requirement as a central feature of health care reform. An excellent explanation of the difficulties involved in the implementation of such a mandate was recently outlined in a New England Journal of Medicine article, “Universal Coverage One Head at a Time—The Risks and Benefits of Individual Health Insurance Mandates” published last year by Sherry Glied, Ph.D. Dr. Glied has just been nominated to serve as the Assistant Secretary …
Last year, then-candidate Barack Obama told a rally in Albuquerque, “If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system.” Earlier this month in Chicago, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) told a rally of government-run health care supporters: “I know many of you here today are single payer advocates and so am I … and those of us who are pushing for a public health insurance don’t disagree with this goal. This is not a principled fight. This is a fight about strategy for getting there …
A front-page Washington Post story reports today that there are $1.3 million people without health insurance in New Jersey. According to the Post, as a result of uninsured people receiving care without adequate reimbursement by the state, six hospitals have closed and half of those remaining open are operating at a loss. The Post then goes on to identify some reasons the situation in New Jersey is so dire, including “underfunding of Medicaid and Medicare,” “state budget cuts,” “the proliferation in recent years of ambulatory care centers,” and even “illegal …
Recently our leaders have told us: The New York Times, April 15, 2008: Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, said he had come to realize that Congress made a mistake in backing biofuels, not anticipating the impact on food costs. He said Congress needed to reconsider its policy, though he acknowledged that would be difficult. “If there was a secret vote, there is a pretty large number of people who would like to reassess what we are doing,” he said. The Hill, April 28, 2008: Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin …
There is no such thing as a free lunch. The more mandates you cram into health insurance, the more costly it is, and the more uninsured there will be. If the House’s version of the Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act becomes law, it passed last night, the CBO estimates that private insurers will be saddled with $3 billion in new annual mandates by 2012. The worst part of the House bill is the codification by reference of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) which includes the …
