Archive | Healthcare
In recent years, Congress has faced mounting public pressure to “do something” about the rapidly rising prices of prescription drugs and to rein in what are believed to be excessive industry profits. Although prescription drug spending comprises just 10 percent of overall health care costs, it has been one of the fastest growing components of overall health care spending during the past two decades—rising by an average of 11 percent annually during the 1990s and by 9 percent in 2006, compared to just 6 percent for spending on physician services, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Over the past century, American consumers have benefited from thousands of new pharmaceuticals and medical devices to help them combat disease, alleviate the symptoms of illness and infirmity, and improve their well-being. However, the public often demands that such treatments meet a near-perfect level of safety at bargain basement prices. In turn, Congress and the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have steadily raised the regulatory hurdles that medical products manufacturers must clear before marketing a new treatment. Read more on health at CEI.org.
The health care “reform” bill drafted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid adds new tax increases, and costs twice as much as its promised $849 billion price tag.
The tax increases (in billions) include:
1. 40% excise tax on health coverage in excess of $8,500 (individuals) / $23,000 (families). . .
2. Additional 0.5% Medicare (Hospital Insurance) tax on wages in excess of $200,000 ($250,000 for joint filers) – begins in 2013 – $54 B tax increase
3. Impose annual fee on manufacturers and importers…
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The Dean of Harvard Medical School just gave the Obama health care plan a “failing grade,” saying it will harm America’s health and finances, and hamper the medical innovation needed to save patients’ lives. Dean Jeffrey S. Flier writes,
In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it. Likewise, nearly all agree that the…
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The healthcare “reform” bill backed by Obama “would reduce senior care,” and “could jeopardize access to care for millions,” report healthcare experts at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The bill also “increases medical costs” through inflation, increasing health-care costs to 21.1 percent of GDP by 2019.
The House of Representatives recently passed the bill by a vote of 220 to 215.
According to the federal experts, the bill would likely either cost much more than projected, or result in some “hospitals and nursing homes” deciding to ”stop taking Medicare…
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With much of the health care reform debate still focused on the wisdom of including a government-run, “public” health insurance “option,” too many opponents are neglecting a far more insidious feature of the Democratic proposals: the mandatory purchase requirement. Under each of the bills moving through Congress, every person living in the United States would be required by law to have health insurance. And, if your employer doesn’t provide you with it, you’ve got to buy it yourself or pay…
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CEI’s champion of letter-writing, Alex Nowrasteh, has a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal today advocating removing the cap on H-1B visas to encourage more doctors to practice in the U.S. As Alex points out:
In 2005, a paltry 7,218 medical and health-care professionals earned H-1B visas, while many were denied. A cap on the number of doctors and medical professionals entering the U.S. discourages health-care access and raises costs. The H-1B visa cap should be removed along with…
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Unemployment is now higher in the U.S. than in Europe, reports the Washington Post. “The official U.S. unemployment rate, reported last Friday, now stands at 10.2 percent,” compared to “9.7 percent” in Europe. This is the highest rate in more than 26 years, and marks a huge change from the recent past, in which unemployment was double the American rate in much of Europe, such as in France.
Unemployment is at 10 percent in France, which refused to adopt a U.S.-style stimulus…
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by Hans Bader
November 08, 2009 @ 7:44 pm
Just before midnight on Saturday, the House of Representatives passed a massive, 2000-page health care “reform” bill by a 220 to 215 vote. The bill, backed by the Obama administration, will raise taxes. It will also explode state and federal budget deficits and cost far more than promised. It contains special-interest pork, such as racial preferences that drew criticism from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
The massive health-care bill passed by the House contains provisions sought by trial lawyers that will increase medical costs.…
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With the House version stacked bigger than Dolly Parton at about 2,000 pages, anybody who says they know for certain is lying. It’s not just the verbiage but how it will be interpreted in the years to come. Still, there’s more than enough to be alarmed enough to want to kill the bills off.
“Rather than overwhelm you with arcane details of each bill,” writes Robert Bidinotti in an engaging and highly annotated essay, “it is more important that you understand in…
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It’s been a year since the president was elected, and he’s already piled up an impressive list of lies and broken promises.
The broken promises include his pledge to enact a “net spending cut,” his promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year, and his promise not to sign bills without first giving the public five days of notice.
The Congressional Budget Office says that Obama’s proposed budgets will explode the national debt through massive spending increases, increasing the already large deficits…
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The Wall Street Journal calls the House version of President Obama’s health care plan “the worst bill ever,” noting that it will lead to “epic new spending and taxes, pricier insurance, rationed care, dishonest accounting,” and other problems.
At the Atlantic, Megan McArdle, who voted for Obama, explains how ObamaCare will cost much more than promised — at least $150 billion more. That’s true even if promised cuts to Medicare included in ObamaCare actually take place — but as McArdle notes, even…
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Everything you need to know, right here. And the best part is, it’s only 1,990 pages long! Print it out and read it during a coffee break.
Seriously, with a document this long do you think anyone really knows what’s in it? Doesn’t that thought spook you?
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In the Washington Post, Robert J. Samuelson explains in the “Public Plan Mirage” how the so-called “public option” contained in congressional health-care reform bills is just a gimmick: “It pretends to control costs and improve access to quality care when it doesn’t.” Steve Chapman wrote earlier about the “‘Public Option’ Health Care Scam.”
In other news, a study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers found that the provisions in the Senate health care “reform” bill sponsored by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) would add $1,700 a year…
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With Democratic support coalescing around Sen. Max Baucus’s (D-Mt.) health care reform proposal, passage of a comprehensive overhaul now appears more likely than ever. Opponents had their summer of protests. But, Democrats have shown a renewed sense of energy since discrediting Sarah Palin’s “death panels” and Sen. Charles Grassley’s claim that ObamaCare would “pull the plug on grandma.” Still, while those charges may have been a little overwrought, there is plenty to be concerned about with the Democratic health reform…
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Michael Masnick at Techdirt offers up another incidence of government inconsistency in light of the FTC’s blog-watching rules, reminding us that “clinical research on drugs isn’t even remotely trustworthy, as it all-too-often seems to involve doctors who have serious conflicts.”
Doctors with conflicts-of-interest, who push and promote certain drugs while receiving all kinds of goodies from pharmaceutical companies, seems, at the very least, like a more justifiable place for regulators to stick their noses (although there’s definitely an argument to be made…
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Rep. Diana DeGette is, without any apparent cognitive dissonance or trace of irony, proposing:
1) Require, by law, that people buy health insurance.
2) Remove health insurers’ antitrust exemption. But only after legally requiring everyone to buy their product.
You figure it out. Insurers are set to receive one of the largest coroporate welfare grants in history. No wonder so many firms are salivating over this year’s health care legislation. But they may pay an antitrust price for their legally mandated windfall.
Perhaps this…
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Last week, after the industry association America’s Health Insurance Plans released a study showing that premiums would rise 18 percent under the Senate Finance Committee’s reform proposal, top Democrats took to the airwaves to condemn the industry for standing in the way of health care reform. President Obama used his Saturday radio address to accuse the industry of using “deceptive and dishonest” attacks to derail reform legislation. And Obama and congressional Democrats threatened to repeal the McCarran-Ferguson Act, which exempts insurers from most…
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Some of the consequences of increasing government’s role in health care are easy to predict. One is that cutting costs requires cutting the amount of care. That means rationing. People judged not deserving of care would be denied it.
Another is that if government uses its increased bargaining power to lower drug prices, there will be less money for R&D. That means less innovation. That could well mean the end of increasing life expectancies.
Some people see these consequences and oppose more…
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Health-care “reform” always costs more than predicted, as ObamaCare provisions have at the state level. So the claim that the new, cheaper version of President Obama’s health care plan will cost only $829 billion, while not increasing the deficit, should be taken with a grain of salt.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid admitted that the actual cost will be more like $2 trillion, and health-care experts have given it a similar price tag of more than $2 trillion.
The reason for the…
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Here is the letter I wrote that appeared in the Los Angeles Times in response to Erwin Chemerinsky’s article on the constitutionality of health care reform. Chemerinsky teaches at UC Irvine’s law school.
Chemerinsky argues that according to Supreme Court precedent, the proposed health care reform bills will be considered constitutional.
Unfortunately, he is probably right.
The author of our Constitution, however, would disagree. In Federalist 45, Madison writes, “the powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined.” …
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A Scottish colleague brought this article by Richard Dawkins in the UK’s Guardian to my attention, and the title says it all: “Libel laws silence scientists.” I’m embarrassed to say that I hadn’t heard of this before now, but the physicist turned science journalist Simon Singh (author of such books as Fermat’s Last Theorem and The Code Book) has been sued in a UK court and, this past summer, found liable for libel for an April 2008 commentary piece in the Guardian…
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