November 12, 2013
Though the administration has secured a month’s reprieve from the woes of implementing the Affordable Care Act by promising that the dysfunctional online enrollment system will be up and running by the end of November, as I argue in a column at e21, the delayed launch of the program has already caused serious problems that will not...
November 6, 2013
On Sunday I was invited to appear on Chris Wallace’s program to discuss the Obamacare rollout and its impact on the insurance market with one of the law’s architects, Ezekiel Emanuel. You can watch a video of the debate, or read a transcript at FoxNews.com.
October 29, 2013
In the midst of the troubled launch of Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges, it is looking less and less likely that the law will lead to the net increase of insured Americans that the administration has promised, as I explain in a column at National Review Online. At the time of enactment, CBO estimated that the net...
October 25, 2013
With the serious setbacks facing the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, it is starting to look like it would be best for opponents of the law to wait for the disaster to unfold to reap the political benefits of its collapse in 2014. But, as I argue in a column at The Weekly Standard, pushing for delaying the individual mandate...
October 15, 2013
If the White House and Congress want to make a serious effort at entitlement reform, they should begin by bringing more consumer choice to Medicare, which could be done by replacing Obamacare’s Medicare accountable care organizations (ACOs) with a model that provides more consumer choice, as I explain in a new column at e21. There...
October 9, 2013
In the ongoing debate over the government shutdown and the upcoming negotiations over the debt ceiling, Republicans should continue to focus on extracting concessions on Obamacare, rather than “pivoting” to a more general debate over the budget. As I argue in a column at National Review Online, the implementation of Obamacare...
October 3, 2013
Last month, the Congressional Budget Office released its annual update to its long-term budget projections, and as I explain in a post on the Health Affairs blog, the unsustainable debt and deficits forecasted by the CBO are due to the familiar causes of growing entitlement spending, especially in health care. The cause of the soaring...
October 2, 2013
In a column at The Weekly Standard, I argue that Republicans should use the budget debates over the government shutdown as a chance to argue for a delay of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. The political and substantive case for a delay in the individual mandate is compelling. On a political level, what...
September 20, 2013
Medicare premium support, the entitlement reform plan that has been part of budgets passed by the House Republicans in 2011, 2012, and 2013, was harshly criticized during the last election, with the president repeatedly, and falsely, claiming that the plan would “end Medicare as we know it.” But, as I explain in a column at...
September 19, 2013
Yesterday, Health Affairs released the annual projections of national health expenditures (NHE) from the Office of the Actuary at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). In conjunction with the release of the new projections, Health Affairs asked the lead CMS author, Gigi Cuckler, to provide an...