Archive for the ‘Policy - National’ Category

EMTALA’s perverse incentives

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

"911Doc" at DocsOntheWeb describes the harms of EMTALA: If you are unfamiliar with EMTALA or our take on it you can read about it here, but to be brief, EMTALA is an unfunded federal mandate passed in 1986, which, de facto, has made it a crime to tell anyone 'no' ...

Advice to Ken Buck & other candidates: aim to repeal ObamaCare, not just revise

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Ken Buck has said that ObamaCare (HR 3590) is wrong.  In Human Events, Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute makes the case that "lawmakers need to scrap the measure in its entirety" and that "incremental revisions just won’t do." Some excerpts: Incremental revisions just ...

Prepare for countless government health care bureaucracies

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said "we have to pass the bill [HR 3590] so you can find out what is in it." Apparently passing the bill is not enough. We still don't know what's in it. As Politico reports: Don’t bother trying to count up the number of agencies, boards and ...

What abortion costs can tell us about medical care costs

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

Note: This post is not about the proper legal status of abortion or whether it is moral. It's about medical care costs and how patients pay for it. Readers can appreciate the content of this post regardless of their position on legal abortion. Politicians like to talk about how to keep ...

ObamaCare’s broken promises

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Michael Tanner reviews a few of Barack Obama's promises about the health control legislation (HR 3590) in a New York Post article: "The bill doesn't come close to giving "everybody" access to coverage." "Even further from reality is the president's continued insistence that the new law is 'reducing costs.'" "Anyone who thinks that ...

It’s Not Health Care ‘Reform’; It’s Exploitation

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

Pajamas Media has published my article on health care exploitation. It begins: Scratch a health care “reformer” and you’re likely to find a health care exploiter. As ObamaCare’s provisions and taxes begin and resistance builds through lawsuits and state-level measures, it’s important to see the exploitative motives driving increased political control of your medical care. ...

Medicare head Donald Berwick: rationing for thee, not for me

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

David Catron points out more ruling class elitism from Medicare & Medicaid head Donald Berwick: Berwick praised the heavy-handed rationing methods of Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and said, “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care; the decision is whether ...

FDA on your DNA: “You can’t handle the truth!”

Monday, July 19th, 2010

From Paul Hsieh: Recent advances in biotechnology have allowed private companies to offer affordable genetic testing directly to consumers, to help them determine their risks of developing problems such as diabetes, heart disease, and various forms of cancer. In response, the U.S. government has told these companies ...

Ten Small-Scale Reforms For Pre-existing (Chronic) Conditions

Monday, July 12th, 2010

Instead of more political meddling in insurance markets like guaranteed issue and community rating, the following free-market-oriented reforms would help alleviate the problems with pre-existing conditions.  From John Goodman at the Health Affairs Blog: Encourage Portable Insurance. Allow Special Health Savings Accounts for the Chronically Ill.  Allow Special Needs Health Insurance. Allow Health ...

The AMA & biased legislation vs. health care mutual aid societies

Monday, June 28th, 2010

Mary Ruwart nicely summarizes how the American Medical Association and legislation biased toward insurance companies crowded out health care mutual aid societies. Today their equivalents are health care cooperatives.  The following is from The Liberator Online, June 24, 2010: QUESTION: I think part of the problem with today's health care ...