We need to be smart about how we use public resources to respond to the coronavirus outbreak. Two major crises are facing the country right now: 1) the negative health impact and associated deaths from the virus, and 2) the enormous economic impact of large numbers of businesses and schools shutting down. Congress needs to…
DetailsState and federal laws and regulations are hindering the private sector’s efforts to help fight the outbreak. Effectively responding to the coronavirus epidemic requires innovation from private companies, medical professionals, and entrepreneurs. These folks are ready to perform heroic acts, but government rules and red tape are getting in their way. To take one tragic…
DetailsIf Medicare for All should ever become reality, America would face a far greater cost than the multi-trillion dollar price tag. This government controlled, single-payer health care system would come at the expense of Constitutional rights that are supposed to be preserved, protected, and defended. This should come as no surprise where health care is…
DetailsA New Paper By Doug Badger & Brian Blase | Surprise medical bills are a source of frustration for many Americans, and legislation to address the problem appeared to be on a fast track early in the year. But action has since slowed, primarily due to a stand-off between the two powerful interest groups that…
DetailsNew York state is grappling with a Medicaid shortfall in the billions of dollars. And one of the main reasons is improper enrollment. Using annual information from the Census Bureau to assess the demographic make-up of Medicaid enrollees over time, researcher Aaron Yelowitz and I estimated that 2.3 million to 3.3 million Medicaid enrollees nationally…
DetailsAs if voters didn’t have enough reasons to question government-run health care, the Wall Street Journal provided yet another last week. The paper ran a lengthy expose highlighting numerous cases of doctors previously accused of negligence receiving “second chances” in the government-run Indian Health Service (IHS), resulting in incidents wherein at least 66 patients died…
DetailsThe share of recipients who aren’t eligible has grown sharply since the expansion began in 2014. Medicaid expansion was a key component of ObamaCare. In 2014 when the expansion started, the feds stopped doing audits of states’ Medicaid eligibility determinations. The Obama administration’s goal was to build public support for the new law by signing…
DetailsHospitals and insurers will howl, but the Trump administration today took a big step toward consumer empowerment with administrative actions designed to increase price transparency for hospital and other medical charges. Galen Senior Fellow Brian Blase, who was instrumental in developing the executive order on price transparency issued in June, congratulated the administration for its proposed and…
DetailsOn November 1, 2019, presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) published a lengthy monograph describing how she would pay for her plan to replace the U.S. health care system with a single, federally-run insurance agency: what she describes as “Medicare for All.” In this paper, we analyze each of Warren’s proposals in detail. While…
DetailsMost Democratic presidential candidates are supporting some version of Medicare for All, a radical proposal to put Washington in complete control of the health-care system. Joe Biden, however, promises to “protect and build on the Affordable Care Act,” the last Washington health-care experiment, which is better known as ObamaCare. Yet ObamaCare largely failed in its…
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