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 ...
Sheldon Richman makes the case in The Freeman:
Opponents of (more) government control of health care and health insurance are breathing a sigh of relief after Tuesday’s upset senatorial election in Massachusetts. But now that the celebrations are subsiding, I feel compelled to warn that the most perilous days may lie ...
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 ...
The CBO predicts higher insurance premiums, but what do supporters say? From the Wall Street Journal:
"No Big Cost Rise in U.S. Premiums Is Seen in Study," said the New York Times, while the Washington Post declared, "Senate Health Bill Gets a Boost." The White House crowed that the CBO report ...
Writes Cato's Michael Cannon:
Amid double-digit unemployment, a record $1.6 trillion federal deficit and a national debt projected to double in 10 years, U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., voted to bring to the floor of the Senate a health care overhaul with so many job-killing tax increases that it’s hard to ...
A new Cato briefing paper by economist Aaron Yelowitz. Here's the summary:
One of the most interesting questions about the health care overhaul now moving through Congress is how it would affect young adults. That legislation would force most or all Americans to purchase health insurance (an "individual mandate") and would impose ...
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 ...
John Goodman makes an excellent point about what happens when government forced insurers to charge the same price to everyone, regardless of their risk: they seek to avoid the sick and attract the healthy:
...think about everything you would like to get from an insurance company. Here are a few items ...
James C. Capretta has a fine description of what economists call the "death spiral" that results from requiring insurers to issue policies to everyone (guaranteed issue) at prices that do not reflect their health risks (community rating). It's happened in states, and it can happen nation-wide:
Insurance death spirals occur when ...
Typically profit-seeking companies try to sell products that their customers want. Not so with insurance companies when they must charge the same premium to high-risk patients as low-risk patients. Such a political control is known as "community rating." Michael Cannon explains an unintended consequence of community rating in Massachusetts:
Massachusetts long ...
