The Senate Finance Committee got to the heart of the issue during a hearing yesterday on "Health Benefits in the Tax Code: The Right Incentives." Three prominent economists were in solidarity in targeting the tax treatment of health insurance as key to health reform. The value of the subsidy for job-based health insurance was a whopping $245 billion in 2007, according to Eward Kleinbard, … [Read more...] about Slowly, Slowly
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A Crystal Ball?
House action on changes to government health programs this year foretell more sweeping changes that are likely to come next year if Democrats make expected gains in the November elections. First example: Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, plans to introduce a bill soon that will extend price controls in the Medicaid program to some private Medicare … [Read more...] about A Crystal Ball?
High Stakes
Sen. Barack Obama this week announced a plan designed to help businesses afford health insurance, but the ideas would perpetuate today's problems and add new bureaucracy in the process. Small businesses would get refundable tax credits to offset 50% of the amount they pay for health insurance for their workers and have the government take over a portion of the catastrophic costs of high-cost … [Read more...] about High Stakes
Outside the Box
There really wasn't a controversy about whether to delay Medicare's scheduled cuts in physician fees, but you'd never know it from reading about this issue in the mainstream media over the last month. Both sides wanted to undo the cuts, but the real debate was over how to pay for the "fix" since the cuts were built into the federal budget. The leadership's solution was to … [Read more...] about Outside the Box
Single-Payer Redux
Highlights Problems in Canada and the UK Physician payments The uninsured HSA update Problems in Canada and the UK: There is mounting evidence that centrally-controlled, government-dominated, taxpayer-financed, rule-driven health care systems are failing. We found a surprising number of articles this week about problems in paradise -- aka, British and Canadian single-payer health care … [Read more...] about Single-Payer Redux
Wake-Up Calls
Highlights Federal Health Board Single-Payer Health Care Market Innovations Medical Tourism A Federal Health Board? Key members of Congress got another wake-up call this week about the serious threat that rising government health spending poses to the future of our health sector — and our economy. During a summit sponsored on Monday at the Library of Congress by the Senate … [Read more...] about Wake-Up Calls
Drumbeats
The Commonwealth Fund continues its advocacy for universal coverage and a larger role for government in our health sector with a new paper in Health Affairs: It cites the rising number of people with health coverage that does not adequately protect them from high medical expenses — the under-insured. News coverage has headlined the study's finding of a 60% increase in the number of … [Read more...] about Drumbeats
Problems Are Brewing
Interest in the Massachusetts health reform plan remains high, as evidenced by the sell-out crowd at a forum on Capitol Hill this Monday sponsored by the Alliance for Health Reform and the Kaiser Family Foundation (and which was televised live on C-SPAN). I was the lone voice on the panel suggesting caution about the plan while "three amigos from Massachusetts," as the other speakers … [Read more...] about Problems Are Brewing