January 1, 2009
As Secretary Mike Leavitt prepares to leave office after four years at the helm of the Department of Health and Human Services, it is worth noting what he is worried about given his experience and perspective. In his column in today’s Washington Post, George Will gives us the answer: surging costs for Medicare and Medicaid. Leavitt...
December 23, 2008
Last week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued two highly anticipated reports. The first, Key Issues in Analyzing Major Health Insurance Proposals, provides something of a roadmap for how CBO thinks about far-reaching health reform proposals (available in PDF format here). The second report, Budget Options Volume I: Health...
December 17, 2008
Earlier this month, the president-elect’s selection for Secretary of Health and Human Services, former Senator Tom Daschle, announced that the transition team was planning a series of “health care reform parties” during which the general public would have the opportunity to offer input on the shape and content of the...
December 16, 2008
[Cross-posted from The Corner.] Car company executives and UAW leaders are fond of blaming the U.S. health–care system for their financial woes. If only the federal government would adopt Japanese- or German-style socialized medicine, they contend, all would be well. But this is just one more myth sidetracking Detroit from...
December 12, 2008
It’s official: former Democratic Senator Tom Daschle is President-elect Barack Obama’s pick to be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services. In an unusual step, Obama also said Sen. Daschle would head a new White House Office of Health Reform, with Jeanne Lambrew, the co-author of his recent book on health care, serving...
December 11, 2008
The idea of letting early retirees buy into Medicare has been around for a long time. The last time it was seriously considered was in the late 1990s when it was proposed by President Bill Clinton. It didn’t pass then, in part, because it was impossible to structure such a program in a way that wasn’t prohibitively expensive...
December 10, 2008
Where should conservatives turn for new leadership on health care issues during the Obama years? Certainly one place should be the executive mansions in the states. Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and other like-minded reformers in the states are working to implement practical reform programs based on markets and consumer choice....
November 26, 2008
President-elect Barack Obama announced yesterday that Peter Orszag, currently the director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), will be nominated to become the next director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). CBO and OMB obviously have much in common, and budget professionals have often worked for the two agencies at...
November 20, 2008
Officials from the Obama transition team have let it be known that former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle is the pick to be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services. This does not come as a great surprise; Senator Daschle has been signaling for months now that he wanted HHS, as I pointed out back in August. Why did Daschle...
November 6, 2008
With the election of Senator Barack Obama as the next president, a renewed and serious debate about covering the uninsured in the coming years seems certain. There will be much to discuss, course: The merits of “pay or play.” Enforcement of individual mandates. Insurance market reforms. And much, much more. But perhaps no...