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Democratic lawmakers in Connecticut introduced legislation Thursday that would create a public option for health-care coverage, allowing individuals and small businesses to buy insurance through the state. Under the proposal, Connecticut would create multiple plans that small businesses and their employees could buy starting in July, leveraging the state’s existing purchasing power to lower costs.…

Put simply, there is nothing like Medicare for All anywhere in the industrialized world. Socialized medicine proposals, like the House version introduced last month by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, (D-WA), would offer everyone living in the United States comprehensive coverage with no deductibles and no copayments. Jayapal claims, “This is not a particularly ambitious plan, in…

The CMS is asking the public for ideas and advice on how to make it easier for health insurers to sell policies across state lines. The agency issued a request for information on Wednesday for recommendations on eliminating barriers and enhancing insurers’ ability to sell individual insurance coverage from state-to-state. The request, which the CMS…

The Trump administration is sounding out an idea to require that hospitals, doctors and other medical providers publicly disclose the “secretly-negotiated” prices they charge insurance companies for services, a move that proponents say would expose for the first time the actual cost of care. [Some are skeptical that anyone in the health sector knows the…

In response to a request from Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, health policy experts at the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution worked together to compile a list of policy options to slow the rate of increase of health care costs and attract bipartisan support.

Access to quality, affordable medical care should be something all elected officials can agree to work on because it’s something we all believe in, Rep. Westerman (R-AR) writes. The Fair Care Act has two primary goals: to increase the number of people with health insurance coverage and to decrease per person health spending. It’s a fair…

The American people don’t want such a major upheaval. The right solution is to give people more choices of more affordable health coverage and have states, rather than the federal government, target resources to those who need help.

Direct primary care (DPC) is fast becoming an accepted alternative to fee-for-service payment in the private market, but it has yet to find its way into Medicare. Over two-thirds of Medicare beneficiaries have two or more chronic conditions. This is a population that would benefit greatly from high quality primary care, but the program is still built on the…

Medicare funds health-care services for 60 million elderly and disabled Americans. Of these, 39 million receive coverage through a plan known as “Traditional Medicare” or “Medicare Fee-for-Service” (MFFS) that the federal government administers directly. Increasing numbers of seniors—21 million in 2019—enroll in Medicare Advantage (MA), choosing from competing plans managed by private insurers. MA provides an incentive…

Two Republican congressmen introduced proposals Tuesday designed to fix America’s health care system through a variety of market-oriented reforms. Reps. Bruce Westerman (R-AK) and Jim Banks (R-IN) say their Fair Care Act of 2019 “addresses major drivers of health care costs as well as obstacles hindering individuals from obtaining health insurance coverage.” It proposes a bevy of changes to the health care market. Many of the bill’s provisions target availability…