Health policy analysts have long known that Medicare spends much more per patient in some parts of the country than in others, even after accounting for regional differences in prices and other health measures. Many assume that Medicare spending and utilization patterns are representative of the health care system as…
Abstract: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act substantially alters Medicare Advantage and, as a consequence, reduces the access of senior citizens and the disabled to quality health care by restricting and worsening the health care plan options available to them. Lower-income beneficiaries, Hispanics,…
Under House Reconciliation Act of 2010 (H.R. 4872), employers will face even greater penalties than mandated by earlier versions of “health care reform” legislation, such as H.R. 3590. Specifically, employers with more than 50 workers that do not offer a “qualified” health plan or pay 60 percent of health insurance…
Abstract: Contrary to their stated intent, the health care reform bills passed by the House and Senate would substantially increase health care spending if either became law. Based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what drives health care spending, these bills exacerbate many of the inefficiencies in the…
The Senate health care bill passed on December 24 does not contain an explicit “public option.” It does, however, still include provisions that could put private health plans out of business. Specially, the bill would: Give federal regulators…
Abstract: The Senate health care bill would overhaul the entire health care sector of the U.S. economy by erecting massive federal controls over private health insurance, dictating the content of insurance benefit packages and the use of medical treatments, procedures, and medical devices. It would alter…
The Senate health care bill includes a well-known "employer mandate" provision that would require employers to either offer a "qualified" health plan and pay 60 percent of the premium or pay an annual tax penalty of $750 per full-time employee. What is less well-known is that the provision would also…
Suppose you wanted to prevent single parents and people from lower-income families from getting a job. How about imposing a $3,000 tax penalty on any employer who hired such a person instead of an equally qualified, equally paid person from a higher-income family? Would that do the trick? …
One of the most-discussed issues in the health care reform debate is whether to include a government-run, "public option" health plan. President Obama says a government plan is necessary to "keep insurance companies honest," but opponents -- and even some proponents of the public option -- say that…
The health care bills currently under active consideration in Congress would substantially modify the Medicare Advantage (MA) program, imposing deep benefit cuts to partially offset new non-Medicare entitlement spending while reducing health plan choices for seniors and bending the cost curve in the wrong direction. Over 9.9 million seniors…
In a recent New York Times column titled, “How an Insurance Mandate Could Leave Many Worse Off,” George Mason University...…
Recent media reports tout a forthcoming study in the American Journal of Medicine claiming that medical bills are...…
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