Republicans, beware the trap of ‘limited’ health reform

Friday, February 26th, 2010

Writes Paul Hsieh, M.D. in Pajamas Media: Controls breed more controls. The seemingly innocuous “reform” of requiring insurers to cover all pre-existing conditions would merely set the stage for ever-tightening controls until liberal Democrats achieved their long-held dream of a complete government takeover of health care — ...

One more victim of Medicaid and employer-based insurance

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

John R. Graham of the Pacific Research Institute offers a great critique of Nicholas D. Kristof's recent New York Times column.  Kristof relates a distressing story about a John Brodniak, who lost his job due to illness, exhausted his COBRA benefits, and ended up on Medicaid.   Yet, Kristof reaches an ...

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 ...

Free-market insurance and pre-existing conditions

Sunday, September 20th, 2009

Paul Hsieh, MD has written a review of how a free market in medical insurance would address customer concerns about how changes in health status can effect premiums and insurability.   He of course mentions health status insurance as an example. My favorite part of the article concerns how rights connect ...

Insurance industry volunteers to become government contractor

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

From the Associated Press: The health insurance industry offered Tuesday for the first time to curb its controversial practice of charging higher premiums to people with a history of medical problems. The offer from America's Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association is a potentially significant shift ...

Health-status insurance and becoming uninsurable - a review

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

As I noted recently, health-status insurance could be a free-market solution to making sure you'll have medical insurance when you need it, even if you get sick.  Ronald Bailey provides a good review of John Cochrane's policy analysis here at Reason.com.

How health-status insurance addresses pre-existing conditions problem

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

I cannot remember wanting to cheer and applaud after reading a policy analysis.  But this is how pleased I was with a new Cato Institute Policy Analysis by University of Chicago finance professor John H. Cochrane: Health-Status Insurance: How Markets Can Provide Health Security. In short, health-status insurance addresses what worries people ...

Guaranteed renewable insurance

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

A common and legitimate concern about health insurance is not being able to buy insurance because of a preexisting condition.   In this post I make the case that if government stopped subsidizing employer-sponsored insurance, more people would buy individual insurance policies when they are young and healthy.  Such policies are ...

For affordable health insurance, lift government controls

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

Linda Gorman has an excellent article on how state-level insurance controls make insurance prohibitively expensive: Providing health insurance for everyone who wants it doesn’t have to come with a high price tag. It doesn’t have to come with increased government control of your medical decisions, or less personal choice when it ...