All Posts Tagged With: "Obamacare"
Obama’s “Accommodation” on Contraception
President Obama tells us that through his “accommodation” on the contraception controversy he’s avoided “choos[ing] between individual liberty and basic fairness for all Americans.” How so? By ordering insurance companies to give away birth control pills.
11Feb2012 | Sheldon Richman | 6 comments | ContinuedHonesty Is Not the Best Political Policy
An honest statist would just say: “Let’s have the government levy a tax on men to pay for women’s birth control.” The transfer program wouldn’t be buried in the employer-based insurance system. It would be open for all to see — which is why it’s not done that way.
10Feb2012 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedPondering the Imponderable about Contraception
If Woman A pays for Woman B’s birth control and Woman B pays for Woman A’s birth control, does each get free birth control?
10Feb2012 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedContraception: Insuring the Uninsurable
It makes no sense to talk about insuring against the eventuality that a particular person will reach child-bearing age and use contraception.
10Feb2012 | Sheldon Richman | 11 comments | ContinuedMedical Consumers or Wards of the State?
Paul Krugman wants to know: “How did it become normal, or for that matter even acceptable, to refer to medical patients as ‘consumers’?” Let’s concede for argument’s sake there is something unattractive about viewing patients as consumers. Krugman writes, “Medical care, after all, is an area in which crucial decisions—life and death decisions—must be made. [...]
22Jun2011 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedCongress Can’t Repeal Economics
It’s raining! I don’t like it! Why hasn’t Congress passed the Good Weather Act and the Everybody Happy Act? Sound dumb? Why is it any dumber than a law called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which promises to cover more for less money? When Obamacare was debated, we free-market advocates insisted that no [...]
22Dec2010 | John Stossel | 13 comments | ContinuedAppropriating Hayek
J. Mick Tilford, a professor of health policy and management at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, attempted to enlist F. A. Hayek in his defense of the Obamacare health insurance mandate. In an op-ed published Sunday in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Tilford wrote (subscription site): Even the fervent libertarian Freidrich [sic] Hayek wrote that [...]
15Nov2010 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedObamacare Fosters Oligopoly
Well, now. It seems Obamacare is increasing concentration in the medical industry. From yesterday’s Wall Street Journal: The turn toward consolidation among insurance companies is not new, and neither is it among doctors, hospitals and other providers. Yet the health bill has accelerated these trends, as all sides race to anticipate and manage political risk [...]
27Oct2010 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedObamacare Reality Bites
One might think that letting government officials exercise discretion in the enforcement of bad regulations would be a good thing. I’m not so sure.
22Oct2010 | Sheldon Richman | 14 comments | ContinuedObamacare: Rule by Decree
Is there a way to make Obamacare worse? Yes, by giving the authorities loads of discretionary power so they can selectively exempt favored companies from the onerous rules. And that’s what’s happening right now. Bloomberg reports, Nearly a million workers won’t get a consumer protection in the U.S. health reform law meant to cap insurance [...]
21Oct2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedFree Stuff!
The Obama administration will forbid health insurance companies from charging policy holders to cover screenings and other preventive services. They must be free of all charges. “The rules will eliminate co-payments, deductibles and other charges for blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol tests; many cancer screenings; routine vaccinations; prenatal care; and regular wellness visits for infants [...]
15Jul2010 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedAlarmism or Realism?
A standard charge against opponents of the medical insurance overhaul is that the dire predictions are nothing but alarmism. The argument is something like this: “You said the same thing when Medicare passed in 1965.” This is actually a very funny contention. One of the arguments against Medicare was that it would pave the way [...]
26Mar2010 | Sheldon Richman | 10 comments | ContinuedWishful Thinking on Health Care
For a century the foundation of medicine in the United States has steadily shifted from cooperation and competition to compulsion and management through government power.
26Mar2010 | Sheldon Richman | 19 comments | ContinuedObamaCare and Unions
Last November 7, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3962, crafted by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and whimsically titled the Affordable Health Care for America Act (AHCAA). It was the House’s version of ObamaCare. American labor unions, whether representing government- or private-sector workers, enthusiastically endorsed the measure. Yet most unions have been effective at securing good [...]
24Mar2010 | Charles W. Baird | 1 comment | ContinuedWill Medical “Reform” Cut Real Costs?
There is no possibility that the President’s plan will even remotely cut real costs. The true legacy of this bill will be to add costs in ways we hardly can imagine.
17Mar2010 | William L. Anderson | 7 comments | ContinuedHow Can that Be?
The White House website’s summary of Barack Obama’s health insurance plan says these two things: New plans will have to offer preventive care and immunizations at no cost; and Nothing in the proposal forces anyone to change the insurance they have. Period. Can both be true? What if you have a plan that doesn’t include [...]
22Feb2010 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedTGIF: Obama and the Public
Broken or not, government at the moment is not inspiring confidence in the majority of people. That’s good news for those who look to government for neither inspiration nor solutions (to problems it itself has created). There’s no more urgent task that to fan the flames of political cynicism, emphasizing that what’s wrong with health [...]
5Feb2010 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | Continued-
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