All Posts Tagged With: "health care"
Howard Dean: “Kill the Bill”
“This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. And, honestly, the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill and go back to the House and start the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill.” (Vermont Public [...]
16Dec2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 0 comments | ContinuedSenate Push on Health Care Falling Short
“Senate Democratic leaders appeared poised Monday night to abandon efforts to create a government-run insurance safety net in their push for health-care reform, as they attempted to close ranks around a bill they hoped would win the backing of all 60 members of their caucus … Democratic negotiators had already disappointed liberal lawmakers by jettisoning [...]
15Dec2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 0 comments | ContinuedSenate Compromise Scares Medical Professionals
“Industry groups representing doctors and hospitals attacked one of the alternatives in the deal, designed to take the place of a proposed government-run insurance program, in the hours after Senate leaders announced it Tuesday night. They argued that a plan by liberal Democrats to allow uninsured individuals as young as 55 to buy into Medicare [...]
10Dec2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 0 comments | ContinuedSenate Reaches Deal on Public Option
“After days of secret talks, Senate Democrats tentatively agreed Tuesday night to drop a full-blown government-run insurance option from sweeping health care legislation, several officials said, a concession to party moderates whose votes are critical to passage of President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.” (AP, Wednesday) It’s not over til the Senate votes. FEE Timely [...]
9Dec2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 0 comments | ContinuedObama Visits Congress, Pushes Health Care
“After working through the weekend, the Senate will reconvene Monday for an eighth day of debate and potentially the first controversial amendment, addressing the issue of abortion coverage. After the abortion vote, expected Monday or Tuesday, the Senate could tackle another high-profile amendment: a bipartisan bid to allow the importation of prescription drugs from Canada [...]
7Dec2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 0 comments | ContinuedProfit is Bad for Your Health?
Many self-styled healthcare “reformers” favor a “public” (read: government) insurance option. The advantage of the government plan, President Obama said, is that “there wouldn’t be a profit motive involved.” Some supporters hoped the public option would be a step toward a single-payer government-run system in which the profit motive would disappear entirely from healthcare decisions. [...]
18Nov2009 | Art Carden | 8 comments | ContinuedMonsieur Bastiat, Call Your Office
In September I lectured at the Liberty Weekend Dedicated to the Life and Legacy of Frédéric Bastiat, sponsored by the Polish-American Foundation for Economic Research and Education (PAFERE) in Warsaw. Preparing for my visit, I reread Bastiat’s great book The Law. Oh do we need Bastiat today! The Law is the kind of book you [...]
18Nov2009 | Sheldon Richman | 5 comments | ContinuedBig Business Goes Big for Health Care Reform
“What disturbs Americans of all ideological persuasions is the fear that almost everything, not just government, is fixed or manipulated by some powerful hidden hand,” Frank Rich wrote in the New York Times a few months ago. That manipulation should disturb us. But contrary to Rich, it is not the work of “corporatists” who have [...]
18Nov2009 | John Stossel | 5 comments | ContinuedHealth Industry to Gain from Health Care Reform
“‘All industries stand to gain from this legislation,’ Steven D. Findlay, senior health policy analyst with Consumers Union in Washington, said in an interview. ‘They’re going to continue to fight their narrow issues and get the best that they can get. But all of them are aware they stand to gain significant new business and new revenue [...]
9Nov2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 0 comments | ContinuedHealth Care and Medical Care
In the current Atlantic Megan McArdle discusses the flaws in using gross domestic product as a measurement of a country’s well-being and notes that a search is underway for alternative measures. (Actually Mark Skousen proposed one in The Freeman some years ago.) Her column contains this interesting paragraph: One possible approach is to focus on [...]
5Nov2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedNot with a Bang But a Whimper
Social change can be revolutionary, sudden, and swift. More commonly it moves at a glacier pace. Yet glaciers work great change, and great damage, given enough time.
3Nov2009 | Ross Levatter | 2 comments | Continued“Rube” Baucus and Healthcare Reform
John Goodman of NCPA, one of the best healthcare economists I know, explains the Baucus bill in the Senate. That is no easy thing considering that it is “such a Rube Goldberg approach to health insurance.”The details of the monstrosity are here.
28Oct2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedIf You Can’t Kill Employer-Based Health Care, Feed it
That seems to be what democrats think. Getting rid of the employer-based health-care system is the one shred of good in the entire debacle. But since they clearly can’t go straight from an employer-system to a government system, it looks like they will bolster the failed employer-based health care system even further. From the Wall [...]
26Oct2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 0 comments | ContinuedHealth Care’s Muddled Incentives
On the topic of health care, what empirical observations are reliable? Unfortunately, many “facts” come freighted with a great deal of ideological baggage. Those skeptical of markets, who favor a large role for government in health care, tend to emphasize statistics that disparage the American healthcare system. For supporters of markets, it is tempting to try to [...]
23Oct2009 | Arnold Kling | 16 comments | ContinuedHealth Care: A Future Free-Market Alternative
I visit a new doctor because of complaints I’ve been having. The primary-care doctor begins his first visit with me by explaining his payment system. I need to put down a retainer based on his assessment of the time it will take him to deal with my problem, which he’ll inform me of at the [...]
23Sep2009 | Ross Levatter | 8 comments | ContinuedArrogance
It’s crazy for a group of mere mortals to try to design 15 percent of the U.S. economy. It’s even crazier to do it in a few months. Yet that is what some members of Congress presumed to do. They intended, as the New York Times put it, “to reinvent the nation’s health care system.” [...]
23Sep2009 | John Stossel | 17 comments | ContinuedReason.tv: No American Should Have to Choose Between Health Insurance and Getting Drunk
A good one from the folks at reason.tv:
15Sep2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 2 comments | Continued-
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