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A new paper published by the Galen Institute warns that states which fall into lockstep with ObamaCare’s health insurance exchanges will end up in a bureaucratic morass with exchanges that won’t work, won’t increase access to affordable health care, and won’t improve health outcomes or increase value. Rita E. Numerof, Ph.D., writes in “What’s Wrong with Health Insurance Exchanges...” that the … [Read more...] about Why ObamaCare health insurance exchanges won’t work

The 2010 health care law has several new taxes designed to offset its costs. Many of the taxes seem to be narrowly targeted at sick people and the people who help them. There are taxes on prescription drugs, taxes on health insurance, extra taxes on high-benefit health insurance, and reduced tax deductions for people with high medical costs. In the news recently is the excise tax on medical … [Read more...] about Robert Book: The Medical Device Tax: Killing Jobs and Raising Premiums

When President Obama pushed through his health care bill, he cut more than $500 billion (over 10 years) in future Medicare spending in order to claim the bill was “paid for.” A better option would have been to aggressively target Medicare and Medicaid fraud, which could have provided the same amount of savings, and possibly more. Barely a day goes by without a major news story highlighting some … [Read more...] about Merrill Matthews: Medicare And Medicaid Fraud Is Costing Taxpayers Billions

An annual census by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) of U.S. health insurance carriers shows that the number of people covered by health savings account/high-deductible health plans (HSA/HDHPs) totaled 13.5 million in January 2012. This census does not include coverage associated with health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs), which are most commonly offered in the large-group … [Read more...] about AHIP: January 2012 Census Shows 13.5 Million People Covered by HSAs/HDHPs

The Supreme Court hasn’t yet rendered its verdict on Obamacare, but the nation’s doctors have. And they think it will wreck America’s health care system. The latest evidence comes from a new survey of young doctors by the Physicians Foundation. Nearly 60 percent of doctors aged 40 and under are pessimistic about the future of American health care. Just 22 percent are optimistic. The number-one … [Read more...] about Sally Pipes: Obamacare diagnosed as quackery

Imagine that all the pharmaceutical companies united to create an institute for quality research, and gave it $1 billion to study “comparative effectiveness” — whether drugs still under patent worked better for people than cheaper generics. Imagine that the pharma companies dug farther into their pockets and came up with another $11 million to train physicians, pharmacists and nurses to be … [Read more...] about The Daily: Agency sets an unhealthy precedent for ‘effectiveness’ research

HHS recently announced hospitals and physicians have to adopt a new generation of diagnosis codes by October 1, 2014. Providers have to adopt what is effectively the tenth generation of the codes of International Classification of Diseases, known as “ICD-10.” The main difference between the current ICD-9 codes and the new set, is there are many more codes, and they are filled with redundancies and … [Read more...] about Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. and Jason Fodeman, M.D.: ICD-10 Implementation Date: Better Never Than Later?

ObamaCare’s threat to religious liberty is reaching a crescendo, with 43 Catholic organizations filing suit in federal court to challenge the HHS mandate of sterilization, contraception, and abortion-inducing drugs as a violation of the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Ad Hoc … [Read more...] about Let Freedom Ring