The President’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is not set to release its final recommendations on how best to tackle deficit spending and entitlement reform until December 1. However, several of its members have already gone public with proposals to reduce runaway spending and put Medicare and Medicaid, two of the fastest-growing entitlement programs, on the road to solvency. The commission co-chairs, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, released a report that takes several positive steps in reforming Medicare, including opting to repeal the Sustainable Growth Formula. Alice Rivlin …
Last Thursday, a who’s who of the progressive movement met for a conference call organized by Families USA and hosted by the advocacy group for government-run health care, The Herndon Alliance. The Alliance’s partners include AARP, AFL-CIO, SEIU, MoveOn and La Raza, among many others. Democratic pollsters John Anzalone, Celinda Lake and Stan Greenberg were the call’s main event, and they were there to deliver some bad news. Politico reports: “Democrats are acknowledging the failure of their predictions that the health care legislation would grow more popular after its passage, …
There’s a lot of talk these days about patient-centered health care reform. Before Obamacare, health care revolved around employers, and little has changed since passage of the new law. This is primarily due to federal policy regarding the tax treatment of employer-sponsored insurance, which was left untouched by the federal overhaul. In recent research, Heritage’s Gregg Girvan explains how this system has led to one-size-fits-all employer-based plans that offer “little or no personal choice; little or no portability of coverage in a rapidly changing economy where workers are changing jobs …
Car insurance doesn’t pay to fill up your gas tank, why does health insurance pay for your flu shot? ABC’s John Stossel explores how third-party payments are driving up are nation’s health care costs: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WnS96NVlMI[/youtube] Obamacare would only make the status quo worse. Heritage scholars Bob Moffit and Nina Owcharenko explained how when Obama first unveiled his plan last year: The current structure of third-party payments—which Senator Obama wants to preserve—creates serious problems in the delivery of care. In this system, insurers and medical professionals have little direct accountability to …
David Leonhardt reports in today’s New York Times: You might think, then, that a central goal of health reform would be to offer people more choice. But it isn’t. Real choice is not part of the bills moving through the Democratic-led Congress; even if the much-debated government-run insurance plan was created, it would not be available to most people who already have coverage. Republicans, meanwhile, have shown no interest in making insurance choice part of a compromise they could accept. Both parties are protecting the insurers. This is only half …
President Barack Obama consistently accuses Americans who are skeptical about his health care plan of supporting the stats quo. Like much of what Obama says about health care, this simply isn’t true. Whole Foods co-founder and CEO has a must-read op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal outlining eight market friendly health care reforms including: Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs). Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax …
Campaigning for his health care plan yesterday, President Barack Obama told a Green Bay, Wisconsin audience: “Right now a number of my Republican friends have said, ‘We can’t support anything with a public option.’ It’s not clear that it’s based on any evidence as much as it is their thinking, their fear, that somehow once you have a public plan that government will take over the entire health care system.” In fact, the opposite is true. It is President Obama who is operating on rhetoric without any evidence to back …
New legislation introduced by Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Richard Burr (R-NC) features several important conservative principles for health-care reform that would allow free-market solutions to take root in the broken U.S. health care system, and give patients more decision-making power with their health care dollars. A corresponding bill also was introduced in the House this week by Reps. Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Paul Ryan (R-WI). It’s the first health-care reform package that has been introduced in the current Congress. Several Democratic congressional members are expected to introduce their versions …
Former U.S. Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) has a heart felt plea for “health care reform now” on the Washington Post op-ed page today. And it is true, the American people want health care reform. But the op-ed is strikingly devoid of details, and the one it does include, “universal health care” is not encouraging. Conservatives are the first to admit that there are major problems with our current health care system, especially the accelerating government takeover of health care spending. There are alternatives to government run health care. The health …
Lesbians who want artificial insemination should rally to support greater choice in health care. That’s the real story of the recent California Supreme Court decision Benitez v. North Coast Women’s Care Medical Group. In Benitez (pdf), the California Supreme Court was forced to decide which is more important: the ability of a lesbian to receive artificial insemination at a particular health clinic, or the religious views of her fertility doctors that a child shouldn’t be brought into the world without a mother and a father. To its credit, the Court …
