On February 25th, the White House has proposed a bipartisan, half-day televised summit on health care. It is unclear as to whether this is a publicity stunt by the Obama Administration or a good faith effort to negotiate with Republicans to come up with a bipartisan health care reform bill. The Washington Post reports today many Republicans are pushing back and urging the White House to scrap Obamacare as a precondition to any negotiation. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) sent a letter to White …
Right before the Super Bowl, President Barack Obama spoke about health care reform with CBS News’ Katie Couric: “I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward.” According to aides, the President envisions a half-day meeting on February 25th held in Blair House (a building across the street from the White House) presumably televised by C-SPAN. President Obama’s conciliatory rhetoric aside, everyone knows this publicity stunt has nothing to do …
For the past several months, Washington has exhausted every possible method to pass a health care bill designed to increase government’s control over health care. They haven’t been successful yet, but that may not matter: even without Obamacare, government health spending is set to increase far faster than private health expenditures, surpassing the private sector as soon as 2012. Today the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released its projections of national health expenditures for the next ten years. The report shows that spending by the public sector grew much …
Most Americans now believe that major health care legislation will not pass this year. But as Heritage Vice President Stuart Butler explains in The New England Journal Medicine one seemingly minor proposal in the Senate health care bill could end up having huge repercussions for our entire health care system: The Senate legislation contains strong directives to the OPM, requiring it to negotiate medical-loss ratios (the percentage of premiums that insurers actually spend on medical care for enrollees), minimum benefits, profit margins, premiums, and “such other terms and conditions of …
Yesterday the U.S. Constitution and federalism won a key battle. The Virginia Senate, which has a Democrat Majority, passed a bill prohibiting a requirement for Virginians to purchase health-care insurance. Five Democrats from swing districts joined all of the Senate Republicans in voting in favor of the measure. And with a Republican State House and Governor, this bill is expected to make it into law. Some would argue that the legislative implications are negligible as the federal government, if it wants, can override state law and that an individual mandate …
The United States health care system is not nearly as free market and consumer driven as it should be. And while government continues to slowly takeover our health care system, and Obamacare would fast-forward that development, the U.S. system is still more free than the Canadian “single-payer” system. And how is government run health care working for Canada? This past summer the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority considered cutting more than 6,000 surgeries to make up for a $200 million budget shortfall. British Columbia Medical Association president Dr. Brian Brodie called …
President Barack Obama asked Congress not to “walk away” from health care reform in his State of the Union address and to send him ideas for improving health care. Heritage’s Bob Moffit, director of the Center for Health Policy Studies, says there’s a problem with the Congressional health care plan the President would like to sign – the American people don’t want it. Moffit also has three specific ideas for health care reform that Congress should consider. Watch the video below, then join the debate in our comments forum:
Media reports that Obamacare is near death are premature. And, if the past is any guide, flat out wrong. It is possible for the Administration to lose politically in pushing its federal takeover of health care, and yet win the policy battle. Consider the fate of Clintoncare bill of the 1990s. This similarity is not at all a good thing for conservatives. In fact, President Clinton, on an incremental basis, quietly and effectively beat the tar out of hapless congressional Republicans on health care. Unnoticed by a public hostile to …
To understand the dangers of a government takeover of health care, America should study Britain’s system, which exemplifies the shortcomings of heavily regulated, nationalized health care. A recent report by Robin Harris of the Heritage Foundation outlines the deterioration of Britain’s health care system due to years of liberal health policy marked by heavy concentration of power, higher taxes and the proliferation of rules and restrictions by the National Health Service (NHS). The NHS is Britain’s government-run health care system. It acts as a single-payer system which originated with the …
According to the Associated Press, an increasing number of state legislatures have begun considering legislation that would prohibit the imposition of the individual mandate — a feature of both the current House and Senate bills. The individual mandate, an attempt to keep the costs of the reform package in line by forcing all citizens to purchase health insurance, has concerned many Americans and has led to a public backlash against the proposal.
