An employer mandate will result in job loss and it will encourage employers not to hire employees, says John Goodman, President, CEO and the Kellye Wright Fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis...

WASHINGTON EXAMINER

WARDEN PELOSI

Under House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's health care reform bill, Americans who don't maintain acceptable health insurance coverage and who choose not to pay a fine/tax of up to 2.5 percent of income are subject to fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years...

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

CONGRESS WOULD COMPEL YOUNG ADULTS TO BUY HEALTH INSURANCE THEY DON'T NEED

Since about one-third of young adults already reject health insurance at current prices, even more of them would avoid coverage if Congress drives those prices higher, says Aaron Yelowitz, an associate professor of economics at the University of Kentucky...

CATO INSTITUTE

THE HOUSE'S EXPENSIVE MEDICINE

The House health care reform bill is about more than covering the nation's uninsured, it's about remaking the nation's health care system, say observers...

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

MAINE FINDS A HEALTH CARE FIX ELUSIVE

Many of the health care reform proposals circulating on Capitol Hill have already been tried in Maine and failed, say observers...

NEW YORK TIMES

HOW TO CONTROL RISING HEALTH CARE COSTS? INCREASE CONSUMER CHOICE

To lower the costs of health care, we should open up state insurance markets to competition, says Joseph Antos, the Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy at the American Enterprise Institute...

NEW YORK TIMES

The two sectors have two additional common features: (1) the individuals who receive the benefits of the services are separate from the entity that pays for them; and (2) we have completely suppressed the marketplace. As a result, there are no financial rewards for institutions to become excellent. In return for expending greater effort to improve performance, they receive the same (or even less) income.

After the publication of A Nation at Risk about a quarter of a century ago, alarmed reformers decided to study the best schools to determine what they do that works and to use various carrots and sticks to try to get all other schools to do the same. This is what I call the "demand-side approach" to education reform. How well has this approach worked? Miserably.

Continue Reading at John Goodman's Health Blog. 

Epic new spending and taxes, pricier insurance, rationed care, dishonest accounting: The Pelosi health bill has it all, say observers...

WALL STREET JOURNAL

BAUCUS BILL DOES NOT BEND THE COST CURVE

The Baucus health care reform bill will not lower costs but instead add to the deficit, increase total health spending and add costs and deliver little savings to consumers, according to a report from the Lewin Group...

HERITAGE FOUNDATION

THE COSTS OF DEFENSIVE MEDICINE

Doctors say the price of defensive medicine and malpractice insurance accounts for up to 10 percent of health care spending...

ASSOCIATED PRESS

THE PUBLIC'S BEST OPTION: LESS GOVERNMENT, MORE CHOICE

When compulsion takes the place of competition, the result is invariably less choice at higher cost, says columnist Jeff Jacoby...

JEWISH WORLD REVIEW

THE HEALTH CARE DISASTER IN CANADA

We cannot cover 36 million new patients without more doctors and nurses, much less with the declining census of medical professionals the Canadian experience points to, say columnists Dick Morris and Eileen McGann...

JEWISH WORLD REVIEW

THE COMING SHORTAGE OF DOCTORS

Our aging population is challenge enough. Try to get an appointment after health care reform, says Dr. Herbert Pardes, president and CEO of New York Presbyterian Hospital...

WALL STREET JOURNAL

If you are like me you probably have noticed a claim being repeated over and over again, like a steady drumbeat: that Americans spend more, but get less care. The latest, from the Commonwealth Fund (CWF), is published in Health Affairs. According to the journal's press release:

American doctors are significantly behind many of their counterparts elsewhere in providing access to high-quality care and use of health information technology.

According to CWF, U.S. physicians are worse than those other developed countries at providing after-hours care - leaving no choice but the emergency room. Far more than in other countries, U.S. patients have difficulty paying for medications and care and U.S. doctors are more likely to be hampered by insurance coverage restrictions.

"Our weak primary care system puts patients at risk and results in poor health outcomes and higher costs," CWF president Karen Davis told Reuters. Other countries have solved problems the United States is still struggling to conquer, she said. "U.S. primary care lags behind care in other countries on key measures," said a Health Affairs press announcement.

All this had me in a real funk until I discovered through my own prying - and without the aid of any press release - an article in THE VERY SAME JOURNAL that reported on the care actual patients actually receive. You can't imagine how surprised I was.

Continue Reading at John Goodman's Health Blog.

Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a point or two; that's anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries, even some beleaguered ones, say observers...

ASSOCIATED PRESS/YAHOO.COM

PUBLIC PLAN MIRAGE

Why would a plan tied to Medicare control health spending, when Medicare hasn't, asks columnist Robert J. Samuelson?...

WASHINGTON POST

THE MALPRACTICE PROBLEM

We can't have health care reform without tort reform, says Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, the associate dean of clinical education at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine...

WEEKLY STANDARD

PENALTIES FOR NO INSURANCE

Taxes or fines could be thousands of dollars a year for individuals and families who don't have health insurance if any of the health care overhauls currently being debated pass, say observers...

ASSOCIATED PRESS/TOWNHALL.COM

THE WELLPOINT REVELATION

Private insurance premiums could triple under ObamaCare, according to report...

WALL STREET JOURNAL

CBO UNDERESTIMATES BENEFITS OF MALPRACTICE REFORM

A full accounting of medical malpractice reforms shows the benefits would be $242 billion a year, says Lawrence J. McQuillan, director of business and economic studies at the Pacific Research Institute...

WALL STREET JOURNAL

"An estimated 17,000 children in the United States might have died unnecessarily over nearly two decades because they didn't have health insurance," said U.S. News and World Report. "The authors estimated that at least 1,000 hospitalized children died each year simply because they lacked insurance," said The New York Times.

They're talking about a Johns Hopkins Children's Center study [gated, but with abstract]. But between the media hype and the actual study is an enormous chasm that separates fact from fiction. In truth, the authors of the study did not establish that anybody, anywhere, died of any cause whatsoever because of a lack of health insurance.

This is only the latest in a series of ridiculous claims that have been injected into the health insurance debate. What follows is a brief review, some of which has appeared earlier at the Health Affairs blog.

Continue Reading at John Goodman's Health Blog.

Middle-income families will face a big marginal tax rate increase under ObamaCare, say observers...

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE/WALL STREET JOURNAL

OBAMACARE PUTS YOU ON WELFARE

Why do ObamaCare supporters want to put 90 million Americans on the welfare rolls?...

HERITAGE FOUNDATION

THE BAUCUS DEATH SPIRAL

If the Baucus bill were to become law, in a couple of years Congress would be forced to take up the issue again to clean up the mess the bill will have created, say observers...

NATIONAL REVIEW

SWISS HEALTH CARE: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

One of the good things about the Swiss health care system is that it is predominantly private; individuals are required to buy insurance and almost all of them do, says John C. Goodman, President, CEO and the Kellye Wright Fellow with the NCPA...

NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS

WHY HEALTH CARE IS SO EXPENSIVE IN NEW YORK

New York's private individual insurance market is among the nation's most expensive and highly regulated, say Stephen T. Parente, a professor of finance at the University of Minnesota, and Tarren Bragdon, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute and chief executive officer of the Maine Heritage Policy Center...

WALL STREET JOURNAL

IF IT'S SO URGENT, WHY WOULD TWO ELECTIONS PASS BEFORE HEALTH REFORM TAKES EFFECT?

By the time Americans experience the effects of ObamaCare (except for the tax increases), not only will President Obama have run for re-election, but so will two-thirds of the senators -- and every House member will have been up for re-election twice, says researcher Robert A. Book...

HERITAGE FOUNDATION

They hate the idea of private Medicare Advantage plans competing with Medicare. They tolerate (but dislike) the "privatization" of Medicaid. They steadfastly resist using S-CHIP or Medicaid funds to pay employer-provided insurance premiums. But they are born-again free enterprisers when it comes to the newly envisioned "health insurance exchange."

The problem is, the competition the leadership has in mind is not real competition. It is artificial, one-price-for-all competition, in which insurers would be barred from charging different buyers different premiums, depending on their expected health care costs. Here is a principle in health economics that is not generally understood, even by most of my colleagues:

Continue Reading at John Goodman's Health Blog.

Hidden in the Senate's health care bill are huge incentives for corporate America to stop covering their workers; if that happens, the deficit could skyrocket, say observers...

FORTUNE/CNNMONEY.COM

OBAMACARE INVADES YOUR WALLET

Instead of reducing the average family's health insurance premiums by $2,500 per year, as President Obama promised, the Baucus health care bill would actually raise them by $4,000 more than they would have been without reform, according to report...

PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS

"REFORM" MEANS YOU PAY MORE FOR HEALTH CARE

The only "savings" under Sen. Baucus's (D-Mont.) health care reform bill would be to those who receive government-paid health care and subsidies at the cost of higher prices for everyone else, says new report...

PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS/HERITAGE FOUNDATION

CBO REPORT RAISES ESTIMATE OF SAVINGS FROM MEDICAL MALPRACTICE REFORM

Tort reform would reduce the nation's health care spending by 0.5 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office...

MEDSCAPE TODAY

TORT REFORM COULD REDUCE MALPRACTICE INSURANCE PREMIUMS BY 10 PERCENT

The annual cost of defensive medicine in 2005 was between $100 billion and $178 billion, according to the National Center for Policy Analysis...

MEDSCAPE TODAY

THINGS THAT PROBABLY WILL BE IN THE HEALTH CARE BILL (BUT SHOULDN'T)

ObamaCare would strengthen the Internal Revenue Service and create over 30 new federal programs, agencies and commissions that would be required to administer the massive new health care entitlement, say observers...

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE

During the debate over Hillary Care, the White House flirted with Germany and France. Michael Moore bounced from Canada to France to England and even Cuba in his movie, SiCKO. A recent documentary praising national health insurance focused on Taiwan. The Physicians for a National Health Program has been perpetually fixated on Canada (the only "single payer" system in the world, other than North Korea). The Commonwealth Fund is continually judging European systems superior to our own. But no one on the left ever mentions Switzerland.

Until now. A front page article in The New York Times the other day extolled the virtue of Swiss health care. Even Paul Krugman had good words to say about it. On the right, Regi Herzlinger has been a consistent champion. Gary Becker and Richard Posner have weighed in with positive assessments.

So what do we think about all this? Here's the good, the bad and the ugly.

Continue Reading at John Goodman's Health Blog

ObamaCare punishes cardiology and oncology to finance general practitioners, say observers...

WALL STREET JOURNAL

THE CONSERVATIVE CASE FOR REFORM

There are 10 ideas that could increase the affordability and quality of health care, says Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R)...

THE WASHINGTON POST

THE LESSON OF STATE HEALTH CARE REFORMS

The major provisions of ObamaCare already have been tried and they've led to increased costs and reduced access to care, says Peter Suderman, an associate editor at Reason magazine...

WALL STREET JOURNAL

MEDICARE: LARGEST DENIER OF HEALTH CARE CLAIMS

The Obama administration calls for a government option to make sure that coverage is not denied any American, yet, Medicare denies more claims than private insurers, according to the AMA's National Health Insurance Report Card...

HERITAGE FOUNDATION

WILL THE COST CURVE BEND, EVEN WITHOUT REFORM?

There are several pieces of evidence that suggest increases in health care might actually moderate significantly, if not decline relative to the gross domestic product, over the next few decades, says Harvard University economist David M. Cutler...

NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE

STATES OF PERSONAL PRIVILEGE

Senators aren't counting on health care reform savings when it comes to their constituents, says author Kimberley A. Strassel...

WALL STREET JOURNAL

In six years, the average family health insurance policy, now projected to cost $25,000, will, in fact, cost $35,000 due to the Obama-Baucus tax, say Dick Morris, a former adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton; and Eileen McGann, an attorney and consultant...

THE HILL

THE BAUCUS HEALTH BILL: A MEDICARE PHYSICIAN PAYMENT SHELL GAME

Fixing the Medicare physician payment fee schedule would cost $200 billion over 10 years, says researcher Dennis G. Smith...

HERITAGE FOUNDATION

LAWSUIT ABUSE REFORM IS WORKING FOR FLORIDA

Applied nationwide, lawsuit abuse reform could shave billions of dollars off the nation's health care bills while improving the quality of patient care, says N. Michael Helvacian, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis...

WASHINGTON EXAMINER

HEALTH CO-OPS AREN"T THE ANSWER

If we want greater competition in health care, then we should allow health plans to compete across state lines and reduce the number of mandated benefits states impose on them, says Dr. William Winkenwerder, a health care consultant...

WALL STREET JOURNAL

SWISS HEALTH CARE THRIVES WITHOUT PUBLIC OPTION

As a potential model for the United States, the Swiss health care system involves some important trade-offs that American consumers, insurers and health care providers might find hard to swallow, say observers...

NEW YORK TIMES

EMPOWER PATIENTS FIRST ACT: ANOTHER SERIOUS CONSERVATIVE HEALTH PLAN

Rep. Tom Price's (R-Ga.) "Empower Patients First Act," would fix the unfairness in the tax treatment of health insurance by extending a tax credit or deduction to those without employer-sponsored insurance...

HERITAGE FOUNDATION

States are demonstrating that tort reform lowers health care costs, expands access and creates jobs, says Matt Blunt (R), a former governor of Missouri...

WALL STREET JOURNAL

ONE-IN-SIX PATIENTS MISDIAGNOSED IN GREAT BRITAIN

If you are a patient in Great Britain's government run health care scheme, you have a one-in-six chance of being misdiagnosed, according to observers...

THE TELEGRAPH

SENATOR BAUCUS DECLARES WAR ON THE MIDDLE CLASS

The health care reform bill authored by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) will require every American to buy a health insurance plan that will be designed in Washington and (through time) be shaped and molded by special interest pressures or pay a hefty tax, says John C. Goodman, President, CEO and the Kellye Wright Fellow with the NCPA...

NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS

APPLYING THE LESSONS OF STATE HEALTH REFORM

One reason health insurance policies are so expensive in New Jersey is that state regulations require insurers to sell policies to all applicants, including people who wait until they become sick to buy coverage (so-called guaranteed issue), says Michael Bond, a senior fellow with the NCPA...

NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS

OBAMACARE IS HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH

The health care reform bill of Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), would start off by imposing annual fees of $6.7 billion on health insurance companies, $4 billion on medical device producers, $2.3 billion on drug manufacturers and $750 million on clinical laboratories, all of which would surely be passed on to consumers in higher prices, says Pete du Pont, Chairman of the National Center for Policy Analysis...

WALL STREET JOURNAL

MEDICAID EXPANSIONS

Expansion of Medicaid eligibility causes people to drop their private coverage (which allows them access to a broad array of providers) in order to join the public plan (where access is much more narrow), says John C. Goodman, President, CEO and the Kellye Wright Fellow of the National Center for Policy Analysis...

NATIONAL JOURNAL

Penalties for employers who don't cover their low-wage workers -- proposed by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) -- would discourage hiring and needlessly prolong the recession, says John Goodman, President, CEO and the Kellye Wright Fellow of the National Center for Policy Analysis...

DALLAS MORNING NEWS

TRANSPARENCY IN THE HEALTH INSURANCE MARKET

We don't need a public option; transparency can keep health care competitive, say Regina Herzlinger, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and Peter Pronovost, a professor of anesthesiology and critical-care medicine and health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University...

NATIONAL REVIEW

STUDY GIVES HIGH MARKS TO RETAILERS' CLINICS

Walk-in clinics in big box stores such as Wal-Mart or Target provide routine care of equal quality to an emergency department at a lower price, according to study...

RAND CORPORATION/ANNALS OF INTERNAL MEDICINE

50 MILLION NEW PATIENTS? MORE PRIMARY DOCS NEEDED

To keep up with the demand for primary care doctors, the country will need to add another 40,000 to the existing 100,000 doctors over the next decade or face a soaring backlog, according to Dr. Ted Epperly, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians...

ASSOCIATED PRESS/THE TIMES-PICAYUNE (NEW ORLEANS)

OBAMA AND THE COST OF INDIVIDUAL INSURANCE

One reason that individual health insurance policies are cheaper than employment-based plans is that they generally require more cost-sharing by consumers, say observers...

WALL STREET JOURNAL

PUBLIC OPTION LITE

The Baucus health care reform plan remains a public option by other means, say observers...

WALL STREET JOURNAL

The higher taxes, debt payments and interest rates needed to pay for health reform mean lower living standards, says Martin Feldstein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ronald Reagan and a professor at Harvard University...

WALL STREET JOURNAL

WHAT OBAMA SHOULD TELL CONGRESS

ObamaCare will increase costs, probably reduce quality, and (after spending more than $1 trillion) may not even increase access to care, says John C. Goodman, President, CEO and the Kellye Wright Fellow of the National Center for Policy Analysis...

NATIONAL JOURNAL

RATIONING OBAMA-STYLE

The Obama Administration has yet to demonstrate how it plans to reduce spending without denying people high quality health care, says John C. Goodman, President CEO and the Kellye Wright Fellow of the NCPA...

NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS

SENTENCED TO DEATH ON THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE

British patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under a National Health Service-scheme to help end their lives, leading doctors have warned...

DAILY TELEGRAPH

CRISIS OF THE UNINSURED: 2009

The increase in the number of uninsured over the past decade is largely due to immigration and population growth -- and to individual choice, says health economist Devon Herrick...

NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS

READ THE UNION HEALTH CARE LABEL

ObamaCare is a Trojan Horse for more forced unionization, Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee...

WALL STREET JOURNAL