May 15, 2014
Remember Cash for Clunkers? That program gave car buyers rebates of up to $4,500 if they traded in less fuel-efficient vehicles for new vehicles with better gas mileage.
But because a lot of the vehicles eligible for the rebate would have sold anyway, taxpayers ended up paying about $24,000 per additional car sale that these incentives produced.
And it looks like Obamacare is in a fierce race to beat Cash for Clunkers to become the poster child for mismanagement of federal taxpayer resources:
May 13, 2014
In Washington, Amitabh Chandra stood before a roomful of economists, policy makers and health care experts earlier this month. As director of Health Policy Research at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, he closed a presentation about the slowdown in health care spending over the last decade by citing an article in The New York Times.
“Changes in the way doctors and hospitals are paid — how much and by whom — have begun to curb the steady rise of health care costs in the New York region,” the article declared. “Costs are still going up faster than overall inflation, but the annual rate of increase is the lowest in 21 years.”
May 13, 2014
Okay, maybe those doctoral economists will come in handy. Jokes aside, bringing life-saving drugs to market will never be cheap – and it will require government participation.
However, there’s a difference between red tape syphoning better-spent dollars to line the pockets of insurance companies who DON’T actually care for our population, and making sure a drug company developing an Alzheimer’s treatment can recoup their billion dollar investment.
May 9, 2014
The federal government may believe that the future of healthcare is the Affordable Care Act.
However, a New Jersey entrepreneur has a different vision — one where patients pay out of pocket for just about everything. And they pay a group of doctors and medical practices that are so fed up with the insurance-based system that they are opting to go it alone.
May 8, 2014
Spending on health care has consistently grown faster than the rest of the U.S. economy. What’s behind this trend is less certain, though. Economists point to two causes: the prevalence of diseases and conditions afflicting the U.S. population, or the rising costs of treating diseases.
New research from American University Associate Professor Martha Starr and Virginia Tech Research Professor Ana Aizcorbe shows it is the latter, with higher prices for treatment accounting for 70 percent of growth in health care spending.
May 2, 2014
May 1, 2014
Mary Wulfers raised a serious question after reading about ObamaCare Exchange enrollees who can’t find doctors.
She asks, Who wants to see a doctor who is being forced to treat them?
Her husband is a primary care physician and, together, they opened a cash-only practice this year. It took two years of planning, but the couple decided to cut the red tape, and offer affordable, actual care to hundreds of patients.
And, get this, Mary’s husband is 61 years old. He could have easily retired, but the joy and reward of running a cash-only practice has kept him in the practice pool.
April 28, 2014
Oregon went “all in” on health reform, firmly embracing the Affordable Care Act. They launched a very successful Medicaid expansion — a $2 billion federal experiment to prove the state could save money by managing patients’ care better, and, of course, the state’s own online marketplace to sell Obamacare insurance.
But that last point has been a huge problem.
The Cover Oregon board decided on Friday to ditch its troubled website and join up with the federal HealthCare.gov exchange instead.
April 26, 2014
While open enrollment for coverage under the Affordable Care Act is closed, many of the newly insured are finding they can’t find doctors, landing them into a state described as “medical homelessness.”
Rotacare, a free clinic for the uninsured in Mountain View, is dealing with the problem firsthand.
April 23, 2014
About 8 million people have signed up for Year 1 of Obamacare, but millions of others are still falling into the law’s “coverage gap.” They earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but they don’t make enough to get federal subsidies to buy private insurance on an Affordable Care Act exchange.
The human toll of the coverage gap can be found all too easily in Hidalgo County, Texas, where less than half of non-senior adults had health insurance in 2012.
