Archive for the ‘regulation’ Category

Obama Care will emulate Massachusetts’ health “reform” failure

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

he Wall Street Journal reminds us: Natural experiments are rare in politics, but few are as instructive as the prototype for ObamaCare that Massachusetts set in motion in 2006. The bills for "universal coverage" are now coming due, and it appears the state political class is prepared to ...

Obama’s health care proposal: Putting politicians in control of your health care

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Some reactions to president Obama's health care reform proposal released February 22, 2010: Keith Hennessey has a summary and analysis of possible political strategies behind it: Somebody in the Administration put a lot of work into this proposal.  It is extremely detailed, and it reads like a best effort to find ...

The conceit of Obama’s insurance price controls

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

President Obama has wants empower the federal government to forbid insurers from increasing their premiums more than the authorities allow.  Two reactions to this part of the president's health care proposal: Don Boudreaux, Cafe Hayek on price controls: What cool adventures await us if Mr. Obama succeeds in giving Uncle ...

Insurance price controls hurt the sick

Friday, January 15th, 2010

A Cato podcast on the insurance company price controls in the House and Senate health care bills: As I summarized in a previous article, when government forces insurers to issue policies to high-risk customers (guaranteed issue), but to also charge the same premiums as they to lower-risk customers, bad things happen: Insurers ...

Health insurers’ ’sins’ don’t justify phony reform

Friday, January 8th, 2010

Pajamas Media published my article today: Health Insurers’ ‘Sins’ Don’t Justify Reform Are health insurance companies evil? A web search for the phrase turns up almost a million hits. The common reasons for this passionate indictment are insurance company profits, denial of claims, and rescission of policies. But these do not justify ...

Health “reform” vs. medical technology & innovation

Friday, November 27th, 2009

From a new Cato Institute policy analysis, Bending the Productivity Curve: Why America Leads the World in Medical Innovation: The health care issues commonly considered most important today — controlling costs and covering the uninsured — arguably should be regarded as secondary to innovation, inasmuch as a medical treatment must first ...

Health care bill HR 3962: Politicians shall control your medical care

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

David Harsanyi summarizes it nicely: You will, of course, need to be plastered to buy Pelosi's fantastical proposition that 450,000 words of new regulations, rules, mandates, penalties, price controls, taxes and bureaucracy will have the transformative power to "provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in ...

Health reform bill and preexisting conditions

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

Section 211-213 of HR 3962 basically says that insurance companies must offer coverage (guaranteed issue) and charge the same premium (community rating) to everyone regardless of their medical history.  The November 8  Daily Camera (Boulder, CO) printed my brief opposition to such political controls: Should government force you to pay more ...

Bizarro Health Care ‘Reform’: Expect Less, Pay More

Friday, November 6th, 2009

Pajamas Media was kind enough to publish my article about the Democrats' "Bizarro" health care reform. Here's the first few paragraphs: Expect less, pay more. It’s not the slogan for some “Bizarro World” Target store in a comic book; it’s an accurate slogan for congressional Democrats’ health care “reform” proposals. They ...

Democrats vs. small business

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

From Grace-Marie Turner: For example, the bill requires employers to pay at least 72.5 percent of insurance premiums for an individual and 65 percent for families. Data from a 2009 Kaiser Family Foundation survey suggest that at least 30 percent of firms with fewer than 200 employees that now offer insurance ...