Veterans Health Administration (VHA) medical facilities in North Carolina and Virginia fail to provide veterans with health care within 30 days of patient requests in more than one-third of all cases, according to an audit conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Office of Inspector General (OIG). Staff members create false records to hide the delays, the study reported. VA Secretary David Shulkin disputed the conclusions of the report. Approximately 36 percent of veterans…
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Are Unlawful ACA Payments a Costly Catch-22?
Violating the U.S. Constitution could save federal taxpayers more money than stopping illegal Obamacare payments to health insurers, according to a new report illustrating the cronyism of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). A new Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) report reveals a lose-lose Obamacare proposition for Americans: Continue to make unconstitutional payments to insurers, or halt the unlawful payments and make up for them by paying higher premium subsidies. Here is how this shell game works…
Read MoreShould Dentists Support the Right of Dentists to Make Hiring Decisions?
Lawmakers in several states have considered proposals in 2017 to let dentists custom-build their ideal dental teams. Unfortunately, it is increasingly likely that most state legislatures will leave dentists’ hands tied when they adjourn, against the wisdom of dentists, dental hygienists, and free-market policy experts. One kind of dental teammate inaccessible to dentists in most states is the dental therapist. Obstruction of dentists’ freedom to hire dental therapists ensues not from political bias but from special interests. Opponents include dentists who…
Read MoreThe Tangled Webs Behind PPO Insurance Networks
Nothing could be more confusing than fees charged by hospitals and doctors. There are many reasons why hospitals would like to keep it that way. I remember sitting in a hospital staff meeting and hearing about negotiations to merge two hospitals that were about a mile apart. The argument was that bigger is better, and a merger would put the hospitals in a greater “bargaining position” to get higher fees. I remember thinking that monopolies…
Read MoreNational Health Service in U.K. Continues to Deteriorate
By Linda Gorman, reprinted from Health Care News, Heartland Institute The United Kingdom’s single-payer health care system provides an important model, and cautionary tale, for those who advocate such a system in the United States. Over the Christmas holidays, the waits for emergency care in the British National Health Service (NHS) reached what the nation’s press called “crisis” levels. Compared to 2013, twice as many ambulances had more than 30 minute waits outside of overcrowded…
Read MoreObama administration hides Medicare Advantage cuts in demonstration project
GUEST EDITORIAL By Kenneth Artz, The Heartland Institute President Obama has big changes planned for Medicare Advantage, which relies on private insurers’ plans that contract with Medicare to provide coverage. It is highly popular among rural seniors who have trouble finding doctors who accept Medicare payments. A significant portion of the Medicare cuts in Obama’s health care law come from Medicare Advantage, taking $150 billion from the program over the next decade. As with other…
Read MoreCatholics and evangelicals fight against contraception mandate in court
GUEST EDITORIAL By Kendall Antekeier, The Heartland Institute Wheaton College, an evangelical college in Illinois, has appealed a federal judge’s decision to dismiss its lawsuit against the Obama administration over the mandate that all employers and institutions provide free access to contraceptives regardless of their religious views. Wheaton had joined the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the Catholic University of America in their lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS),…
Read MoreMedicare trustees see rapidly approaching insolvency
GUEST EDITORIAL By Kenneth Artz, The Heartland Institute The annual report from Medicare’s trustees highlights concerns that bankruptcy could arrive for the program much earlier than previously anticipated. Medicare, the government’s medical insurance program for the elderly, covers 48.3 million people. With baby boomers now reaching the eligible age of 65 at the rate of 10,000 a day, the future of the program is in serious doubt. Just two years after the passage of President…
Read MoreMassachusetts sets global cap on health care costs
GUEST EDITORIAL By Loren Heal, The Heartland Institute In an attempt to impose top-down containment on Massachusetts’s soaring health care costs, Democratic Governor Deval Patrick signed a law which creates a statewide global cap on public and private health care costs. The law expands the state’s bureaucracy and specifies a target growth rate for overall medical spending based on the growth rate of the state’s economy. Joshua Archambault, director of health care policy at the…
Read MoreMajority of physicians say they don’t recommend a career in medicine
GUEST EDITORIAL By Benjamin Domenech, The Heartland Institute We’ve documented in the past the concerns among America’s physicians about how they will adapt to a new reality under President Barack Obama’s health care law, particularly considering the need for more than 30,000 primary care physicians by 2015 even under the most optimistic assumptions of the law’s effects. Now comes a new survey from the Physicians’ Foundation that finds six in 10 doctors are considering quitting…
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