Galen Institute

U.S. small-business owners who aren't hiring -- 85% of those surveyed -- are most likely to say the reasons they are not doing so include not needing additional employees; worries about weak business conditions, including revenues; cash flow; and the overall U.S. economy. Additionally, nearly half of small-business owners point to potential healthcare costs (48%) and government regulations (46%) … [Read more...] about Gallup: Health Costs, Gov’t Regulations Curb Small Business Hiring

In an effort to rally its base in the upcoming November election, the Obama administration seems more interested in punishing religiously based opposition to contraception and abortion than in marginally increasing access to contraception services. It is the combination of the political motive, together with the exclusion of so many employers from the mandate, that has profound constitutional … [Read more...] about David Rivkin, Jr. and Edward Whelan in The Wall Street Journal: Birth-Control Mandate: Unconstitutional and Illegal

The nation’s two largest private health insurers, UnitedHealth Group and Wellpoint, have recently decided to change the way they pay physicians and in some cases the way their network hospitals are paid. It is about time. America’s traditional medical payment system, fee-for-service, based on a labyrinth of codes and procedures and slowly adjusting arcane price schedules, has been broken for … [Read more...] about William Winkenwerder in Forbes: Reform Of the Health Care System That Is Overdue

The Obama administration’s decision to require all employers—excluding houses of worship but including religiously affiliated organizations such as hospitals and universities—to provide contraceptive coverage created a national outcry that the president realized he was losing.  So he tweaked his coverage commandment in an effort to stem the public relations nightmare without really changing … [Read more...] about Merrill Matthews in Forbes: Contraceptive Coverage — One More Unconstitutional Mandate

The president took an extra week to develop his budget, but the extra time was apparently not enough to yield Medicare policies that could produce real savings. The 2013 budget released today relies on the same tired proposals that we have seen previously. Provider payment cuts, delicately referred to as “modifications,” account for $267 billion in savings over the next decade. For a program that … [Read more...] about Joe Antos on The Hill: President Obama’s Medicare cuts don’t cut it

Instead of setting a single uniform standard for national health benefits, the Obama Administration has proposed using a state-based benchmark plan approach, which eventually could affect nearly 70 million Americans. The following primer explains how the proposed benchmark approach is supposed to work and the red flags that have been raised since the bulletin’s release. Continue reading at the … [Read more...] about Michael Ramlet and Nicole Fisher: Primer — Essential Health Benefits (EHB)

As people across the country are waking up to the fact that the Obama administration's latest "accommodation" accommodates only the contraceptive lobby, one continues to hear from the usual liberal voices variations on the same theme: "What's all the fuss about?  Catholics (and others) aren't being required to use contraceptives." Continue reading on the American Thinker... … [Read more...] about Randall Smith in the American Thinker: Health Care Overreach: Federalism and Federal Mandates

Even though the contraceptives mandate exempts parish priests and the Church hierarchy, it still violates Catholics' religious liberty in at least four ways. First, the mandate fines Catholic institutions like Notre Dame and the Eternal World Television Network that adhere to the Church's teaching that contraception "is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in … [Read more...] about Michael Cannon in Huff Post Politics: The Illiberality of ObamaCare