Originally published in the Aurora Daily Sentinel, January 29th, 2010. This version has links to references.
Why we're "crazy" about health care choice
By Brian T. Schwartz and Linda Gorman
Sentinel Editor Dave Perry dismisses the Colorado Right to Health Care Choice Initiative as "crazy" and says its supporters "clearly have lost" their ...
Says John Graham at the Pacific Research Institute in a new study:
Medicare Advantage ... allows consumers to get their benefits through private insurance plans. Under the Senate Health Care bill, the Medicare Advantage program, would be cut by about $118 billion.
“In a very narrow sense, Medicare Advantage plans cost more ...
A Wall Street Journal editorial summarizes:
[Harry Reid] is claiming that a Medicare "buy-in" for people from ages 55 to 64 has overcome the liberal-moderate impasse over the "public option." But if anything, this gambit is an even faster road to government-run health care. ...
Mr. Reid's buy-in simply cuts out the ...
From the Northern Colorado Business Journal:
Bill Ritter today announced a plan that would trim about $320 million and reduce state jobs by about 267 positions in an effort to balance Colorado's budget.
Among the cuts are $18.5 million in savings to the state's Medicaid program, in part through a 1.5 percent ...
From 9 News:
[Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colorado)] says people can't handle the double-digit health care cost increases they are seeing each year and that the people who have insurance can't keep covering the costs of those who don't and who are then treated in the emergency room which he called "the ...
"Doctors in Colorado began to see reductions in their reimbursements from the Medicaid program on Wednesday as an effort to fill financial gaps in the state’s budget," reports a recent Denver Business Journal article. This could mean higher premiums for those who with a non-government health plan. Last year Bloomberg ...
The Daily Camera published my thoughts on Colorado HB 1293:
Prepare For More Expensive Medical Insurance: the Senate Finance Committee has approved Colorado House Bill 1293. The Denver Post claims that this bill would reduce your insurance premiums. Not so. They will increase.
The Post claims HB 1293 would "increase the number ...
This sounds like a way to get you to pay for other people's health care, and not address the real problems of high medical and insurance costs.
From the Denver Daily News:
The Colorado Healthcare Affordability Act (CHAA), introduced last week as House Bill 1293 seeks to provide health coverage for up ...
From the Colorado Health Institute's Pueblo Insurance Study:
Where there are lower income households and more people over age 65, there will be a higher percentage of the population on Medicare, Medicaid and CHP+, resulting in providers needing to shift more costs to commercial payers. In 2005, Pueblo had 41.7% of ...
A common, and flawed, justification for mandatory medical insurance is that the uninsured drive up the costs of insurance premiums. You know, by using the emergency room for their medical care. Yet, as I've noted before, Medicaid patients burden ERs more than the uninsured. Worse yet, Medicaid and Medicare increase ...
