July 29, 2010
Recently, I co-authored a paper for the Heritage Foundation with Brian Riedl on the Community Living Assistance Service and Supports Act, or CLASS Act. The CLASS Act is a voluntary long-term care insurance program that hitched a ride on Obamacare. Here’s an excerpt from our Heritage paper: …The Obama Administration and...
July 29, 2010
Over at Kaiser Health News, I have a new article looking more broadly at the fiscal sleight of hand that has gone into making the health care law seem far less expensive than it is: In total, federal spending on the nation’s main retirement and health programs will jump by 5.6 percent of GDP over the next quarter century, and that...
July 28, 2010
On July 15, the Galen Institute held an event on Capitol Hill at which I had the privilege to discuss a paper I have written on why the Obama health plan is not entitlement reform. The event was moderated by Grace-Marie Turner, the president of the Galen Institute, and opening remarks were graciously provided by House Budget...
July 26, 2010
Peter Orszag, the president’s outgoing Director of the Office of Management and Budget, released the annual mid-year update to the administration’s budget projections at 3 p.m. last Friday afternoon in a conference call with reporters. That was a dead giveaway that the administration was hoping not to make much news with its...
July 8, 2010
The reason the health-care debate has been so polarizing is that there is a deep and fundamental divide over what should be done to fix the problems in American health care, especially with regard to rapidly rising costs. On one side of the debate are those who advocate a decentralized, market-based reform program. Congressman Paul Ryan...
July 2, 2010
(with Tom Miller) This week, the Obama administration finally launches a poorly designed, hastily constructed, and severely underfunded high-risk pool program across the 50 states. It’s a shallow attempt to appear to be doing “something” soon to help Americans without health insurance due to pre-existing health...
June 24, 2010
The new issue of National Affairs, the excellent journal edited by my EPPC colleague Yuval Levin, includes a piece that I wrote with Tom Miller of the American Enterprise Institute. The focus of the piece is the problem of pre-existing conditions: The health-care legislation enacted this spring followed more than a year of heated,...
June 24, 2010
From my latest column today in Kaiser Health News: Over the past three years, President Barack Obama made many promises to the American people about his health care plan. Among other things, he said it would reduce the federal budget deficit in coming years, promote better quality care and improve access to physicians. But two promises...
June 15, 2010
The New York Times has a symposium on wellness incentive programs in insurance and health care. I argue that they’re worth a try: In health care, as in so much else in modern life, money matters immensely. It matters for those who provide services to patients, as well as for those who consume them. We would have a better...
June 9, 2010
I am pleased to announce the launch this week of what I hope will be an important new resource in the debate over the future of American health care: ObamaCareWatch.org. Yesterday, the Obama administration embarked on an ambitious effort to again “sell” the new health law to a skeptical public by highlighting the supposed...