According to a Sept. 3 report by Anna Wilde Mathews of the Wall Street Journal, Pittsburgh-based Highmark Health announced it will cut back its range of plans offered through the ObamaCare marketplaces. The nonprofit company currently covers around 380,000 marketplace enrollees in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and West Virginia. During the first six months of 2015,...
Health Insurance
Sorry Mr. Trump, Canadian Health Care is Not Working
As is often the case in U.S. politics—though normally on the Democratic side of the aisle—Canada’s health care system was raised as a functioning alternative to the American model. Specifically, GOP front-runner Donald Trump described Canada’s health care system as working just fine. The facts are markedly different from Mr. Trump’s description. Canada suffers...
Small Businesses Threatened With $36,500 IRS Fines For Helping Employees With Health Costs
Small businesses that reimburse employees for the cost of premiums for individual health insurance policies or pay their health costs directly will be fined up to $36,500 a year per employee under a new Internal Revenue Service regulation that takes effect July 1, 2015. According to the notice, an employer arrangement that reimburses or...
Conservative Think Tank: 10 Countries With Universal Health Care Have Freer Economies Than The U.S.
(Originally published January 27, 2015) Many American conservatives oppose universal health insurance because they see it as fundamentally antithetical to a free society. “If we persevere in our quixotic quest for a fetishized medical equality we will sacrifice personal freedom as its price,” wrote a guest editorialist in the ]Wall Street Journal in 2009. But...
Interview – U.S. Domestic Medical Travel: SPOTLIGHT
U.S. Domestic Medical Travel, May 20, 2015 U.S. Domestic Medical Travel (USDMT): What are your thoughts on patients traveling for care to Centers of Excellence (COEs) – domestic or international? Grace-Marie Turner (GM): Today, health plans, employers and individuals are looking for ways to maximize the value of their spending on healthcare and coverage....
More than 52,000 Canadians left the country for medical care in 2014
(Originally published March 17, 2015) VANCOUVER—Large numbers of Canadians continue to venture abroad to seek medical care, according to a new study released today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank. The study, Leaving Canada for Medical Care, 2015, estimates 52,513 Canadians left the country to receive non-emergency medical treatment...