At the time of its enactment in 2003, the Medicare drug benefit—known as Medicare Part D—had many critics. Some said the program, which is built on consumer choice and vigorous competition among private plan options, wouldn’t work because private plans would decline to participate. Others said seniors wouldn’t sign up for the voluntary benefit because the competitive structure would be too complex. Still others said the program would explode in costs without government-regulated price controls. All of these predictions were dead wrong. The program is now in its sixth year …
Any time Congress creates a health care entitlement, it “crowds out” (i.e., displaces) private coverage, replacing private sector spending with increased taxpayer spending. The end result: Private spending and coverage contract while government entitlements, dependency, and spending grow. Since the enactment of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, many conservatives in Congress and elsewhere have been impressed with Medicare Part D’s performance in delivering high-quality drug coverage through intense private competition. Private sector drug delivery is indeed a positive feature of the 2003 law. Nonetheless, the Bush Administration and the …
“If you like your health care plan you can keep it.” This was a mantra from President Obama throughout the health care debate. The President also promised that his health care overhaul would not affect seniors’ benefits. But, despite all the promises, a new report from Avalere Health shows that, in addition to the upheaval caused by Obamacare, the Medicare bureaucracy is taking administrative steps to change the Medicare drug program that will have adverse impact on seniors’ choices. Millions of seniors will have to switch their prescription drug plans …
“Deeming” and “reconciliation” are hardly household words, but for the next week Americans will come to know them as key procedural maneuvers that could push Obamacare across the finish line. But while they might deliver a bill to President Obama’s desk, they will also make it easier to repeal the measure, says former White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove. On the road for his “Courage and Consequence” book tour, Rove chatted with The Heritage Foundation about Obamacare, his defense of President George W. Bush’s conservatism, the growth of …
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvHPTq3L4Y4[/youtube] David Goldhill is President and CEO of the Game Show Network and has run numerous businesses during his career. When his father died of a hospital-borne infection two years ago he began researching the entire U.S. health care system, analyzing it with the keen eye of a businessman. What he learned is that intermediaries like insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid distort a system that is supposed to provide health care to individuals into one that serves faceless and, largely, uncaring bureaucracies. Case in point: 100,000 people die every year in America …
Obamacare: Day Three of Senate Finance Committee Hearings On Thursday, September 24th, the Senate Finance Committee continued to vote on amendments to the “Chairman’s Mark” of the America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009. As the committee continues to consider more than 500 amendments, it is becoming clear that Senators are directly undercutting the high profile promises that President Obama made to the American people in his widely broadcasted address to Congress on September 9, 2009. Consider several health policy decisions made by members of the Senate Finance Committee: Cutting Medicare …
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a preliminary analysis of the proposed changes to Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit for seniors, under the Ways and Means version of H.R. 3200, the House Democrats’ health care bill. The bill would make a number of changes to the Medicare program and its drug benefit, including phasing out the infamous doughnut hole or gap in drug coverage that some seniors have run up against. In a recent letter, the CBO estimated: “That enacting the proposed changes would lead to an average …
Last Sunday, in an appearance on FOX News Sunday with Chris Wallace, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) repeated yet another justification for including a “public plan” option in health care legislation. Since other advocates of a public plan have recently been offering the same justification, it is worth taking a moment to point out that the claim is factually incorrect. HOYER: Chris, can I just say something? When they adopted a prescription drug program, they provided for the possibility of a public option in their own plan if it …
