Recent Articles

As centrist Republicans contemplated an Obamacare repeal-and-replace plan, the CBO warned that doing so would boost the number of uninsured by 22 million. That scared enough Republicans away to kill the bill. The intrepid Philip Klein at the Washington Examiner noticed that, buried in a footnote, was a stunning rebuke of those CBO forecasts. Turns out, the…

Policymakers are debating whether Congress should enact a single-payer health care system or create a system based on personal choice and market competition. The fundamental question is whether government officials or individuals and families will make the key health care decisions. The adoption of a single-payer system requires major trade-offs: a loss of personal and economic freedom, the loss of existing health coverage,…

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar sounded the alarm about Medicare-for-all during the Conservative Political Action conference on Thursday. “The threat is an immediate and complete takeover of healthcare,” Azar said. Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta and Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon joined Azar on the panel led by Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute. Azar said…

Price controls in health care could be one of the major policy issues of the 2020 Democratic primary and a key way of differentiating the most progressive candidates on the Left from others seeking the nomination, but Republicans are posing the question as well. It should come as no surprise to find the outspoken champion…

Democrats defeated Republicans in the Obamacare repeal fight by warning that 22 million Americans would be thrown off their health insurance. They pointed to data leaked from the Congressional Budget Office. Well, it turns out that data was completely wrong. According to a report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released Wednesday, the…

This is a special time of year in health policy nerd world — the arrival of another year of data on National Health Expenditures (NHE) from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The journal Health Affairs published a preview on Wednesday, which the authors summarized thusly: “National health expenditures are projected to grow at an average annual rate…

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) is introducing the most ambitious Medicare-for-all plan yet — one that envisions a quick transition to a public health plan with a robust set of benefits. The co-chair of the Progressive Caucus is releasing a proposal Wednesday to transition the United States to a single-payer health care system, one in which…

Critics cried sabotage when political leaders took action to repair some of the damage done by the ACA. But a new study by the president’s Council of Economic Advisers finds that eliminating federal tax penalties on the uninsured and giving consumers more coverage options will provide economic benefits totaling $450 billion over the next decade.

The Trump administration wants to know what challenges employer and group health plans face in maintaining grandfathered status for Affordable Care Act plans. The Treasury and Labor departments and HHS issued the request for informationlate Thursday. The request comes as the number of grandfathered plans fall. The agencies want to understand “whether there are opportunities for…

Today, Type 1 diabetes patients pay twice as much for insulin as they did in 2012. This is outrageous — but drug companies aren’t to blame. The problem is a dysfunctional supply chain that benefits everyone except patients. In today’s system, insurers hire third-party firms, known as pharmacy benefit managers, to manage drug plans. These PBMs negotiate…