States have often been an incubator for innovative ideas in health technology pricing and reimbursement. In another example of necessity being the mother of invention, Medicaid expansion coupled with rising drug costs have forced state Medicaid authorities to seek new payment mechanisms that would contain drug costs. In June of this year, the Centers for…

Details

Californians have always had the freedom to purchase “short-term” health insurance. Short-term plans have traditionally filled gaps in coverage, such as when consumers are between jobs or nearing Medicare eligibility. They often cost 70 percent less and offer greater choice of doctors than ACA plans.

Money once reserved for wage increases is now diverted to pay for employer-provided health insurance. A new study provides stunning estimates: For the bottom 60% of U.S. workers, wage gains have been completely wiped out by contributions for employer-provided health insurance.

Details

“Medicare for All” is an enormously popular slogan, as evidenced by a slew of recent surveys. Its widespread appeal has emboldened the growing ranks of America’s democratic socialists, the more ambitious of whom see it as the entering wedge of a larger transformation of the country’s economic life. It’s also an indulgent fantasy, based on the…

Details

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) on Wednesday introduced a measure to overturn a Trump administration rule expanding access to non-ObamaCare insurance plans. The move is a step in Senate Democrats’ plan to force a vote on the measure as they seek to argue Republicans are attacking protections for people with pre-existing conditions, a key argument Democrats want to…

Details

Part of the fun of running for office appears to be taking creative liberties with your opponent’s record, so get ready for a fiction-filled autumn. An early ObamaCare misdirection out of Wisconsin is one that Republicans nationwide will have to anticipate.

Details

Senate Republicans say they would like Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) to appoint a successor to the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) who, unlike McCain, would support GOP legislation to repeal ObamaCare.

Our health care system must improve quality while reducing the cost of care. There is near-universal agreement that, to do so, we must move from fee-for-service reimbursement to paying for the value of care received. Yet, despite the fact that the idea of “volume to value” has been around for a decade or more, it is not…

Details

Ten GOP senators this week introduced legislation that they say would protect ObamaCare provisions for people with pre-existing conditions.

The bill, introduced on Thursday, comes as congressional Democrats try to tie Republicans to the Trump administration’s decision not to defend some ObamaCare provisions in a federal lawsuit filed by red states.

HHS wants to encourage providers to enter value-based care agreements with each other, and it’s researching whether it can offer new legal protections for those arrangements.

Details