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Going to the supermarket with my mother was always a test of patience. She would carefully examine the produce, looking for defects that only she could see to make sure that she found the best head of lettuce or bunch of carrots. If they were too expensive, she put them back. She was a careful shopper when it came to items that cost a few dollars. It is not very likely that she would be less … [Read more...] about The problem with Kaiser’s premium support study? Seniors are smarter than that—and so are health plans

Medicaid, America’s safety-net program for more than 62 million low-income uninsured Americans, is broken. It’s broken at the state level, where program costs are swamping state budgets. It’s broken for federal taxpayers, as Medicaid waste, fraud and abuse drain tens of billions of dollars from federal coffers every year. And, most important, it’s broken for the millions of families who can’t find … [Read more...] about Paul Howard and Russell Sykes: Medicaid Is Broken—Let the States Fix It

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops directly challenged a statement that Vice President Joe Biden made during the debate on Thursday night, insisting “it is not a fact,” as Biden claimed, that they are exempt from the anti-conscience HHS mandate. The HHS mandate will force Catholic institutions and other employers to provide free sterilization and contraception, including drugs that may cause … [Read more...] about Biden against the Bishops

The first presidential debate between Mitt Romney and President Obama was easily the wonkiest such debate I can recall in my lifetime. That’s great for the country. But even better was the fact that Mitt Romney was able to correct a number of the misleading statements that President Obama has been making about Romney’s plans for health care and entitlement reform. Let’s review the … [Read more...] about Avik Roy: In the First Presidential Debate, Mitt Romney Told the Truth on Health Care and Obama Tried Not To

Guest Post by Rita E. Numerof, Ph.D. By a narrow 5-4 margin, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), using the argument that the individual mandate penalty is a tax.  The intent behind the individual mandate was to ensure that all Americans would secure healthcare insurance coverage.  For those without the financial means to do so, … [Read more...] about Healthcare Reform… the Job's Not Done

Health policy will claim several minutes of its own during Wednesday night’s first presidential debate. The debate between President Obama and Governor Romney is primarily about the economy. Both topics tend to be detached from sound “economics” per se at the campaign level, but the handling of health care during the next presidential term (and beyond) could either strengthen or sink prospects for … [Read more...] about Tom Miller: How Romney can make health care an asset in Wednesday’s debate

J. D. Kleinke, my neighbor at the American Enterprise Institute, has written a New York Times op-ed that recycles a fact-challenged rewriting of health-policy history and combines flawed analysis with wishful thinking. Kleinke argues that the individual mandate and health exchanges of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) were, and should remain, sound conservative ideas meriting Republican support. He … [Read more...] about Tom Miller: A Conservative Case for Obamacare?