The Heartland Institute

Consumer Power Report: What Does Affordable Health Insurance Mean?

By Benjamin Domenech, The Heartland Institute
Consumer Power Report: What Does Affordable Health Insurance Mean?

The name of President Barack Obama’s health care law is, of course, the Affordable Care Act. But a major clash has broken out in Washington regarding what that word “affordable” really means–and billions of dollars in subsidies hang in the balance. As we’ve noted in the past, Richard Burkhauser of Cornell was the first to spot this problem, an error made during the evaluation process of Obama’s law that artificially diminished the cost of its…

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DeMint: Obamacare Will Raise $4 Trillion in Taxes by 2035

By Benjamin Domenech, The Heartland Institute
DeMint: Obamacare Will Raise $4 Trillion in Taxes by 2035

A new report released by the Joint Economic Committee and authored by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) argues that the tax burden of President Obama’s health care law is far larger than previously acknowledged – and that extending the burden out beyond the current windows of analysis reveals a heavy increased tax burden on America’s middle class. The report can be found here.  In an op-ed DeMint wrote for Investor’s Business Daily, he explains the rationale…

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Consumer Power Report: Medicare Funding Shenanigans

By Benjamin Domenech, The Heartland Institute
Consumer Power Report: Medicare Funding Shenanigans

Today will bring the latest report from the Medicare trustees on the program’s solvency, or lack thereof.  Expect a slight improvement to appear thanks to the 2 percent cut to providers mandated under the sequestration agreement – but that’s fool’s gold, and everyone knows it. An interesting side note to the trustees’ report is this story regarding a GAO report on a specific aspect of Medicare’s funding failures – namely, that the Obama administration is…

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Vermont Embraces Single Payer Despite Obamacare Uncertainty

By Loren Heal, The Heartland Institute
Vermont Embraces Single Payer Despite Obamacare Uncertainty

Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of President Obama’s health care law this summer, Vermont will move forward in creating the first single-payer health insurance system in the United States. Under the system signed into law by Democrat Gov. Peter Shumlin in May 2011, a universal, taxpayer-financed government-managed system, Green Mountain Care, will replace private health insurance. All decisions about health care in the state will be made by a five-member,…

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California Shifts To Managed Care for Medicaid

By Loren Heal, The Heartland Institute
California Shifts To Managed Care for Medicaid

GUEST EDITORIAL By Loren Heal, The Heartland Institute The California version of Medicaid, called Medi-Cal, will mandate the enrollment of about 400,000 of its patients in a state-sponsored managed-care plan over the next year. The plan, designed to help the state cope with rising Medicaid costs, will effect Medi-Cal patients in San Francisco and fifteen other counties. California obtained a waiver from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in November 2010 to make…

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FDA Hit for Attack on Off-Label Device Use

By Thomas Cheplick, The Heartland Institute
FDA Hit for Attack on Off-Label Device Use

GUEST EDITORIAL By Thomas Cheplick, The Heartland Institute The Food and Drug Administration has issued a guidance document detailing a possible new regulation against off-label use of a category of medical devices, a development that stunned the device industry. The new FDA regulation would extend the legal doctrine called “intended use” to cover manufacturers of medical devices and make those manufacturers legally liable for off-label uses of their products. The FDA’s decision could have profound…

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Defund Obamacare’s Insurance Rate Reviews

By Edmund F. Haislmaier, The Heartland Institute
Defund Obamacare’s Insurance Rate Reviews

GUEST EDITORIAL By Edmund F. Haislmaier, The Heartland Institute The recently published U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regulations for implementing Obamacare’s health insurance rate reviews, effective September 1, are another instance of the arbitrary and politically manipulated regulations that inevitably result when Congress enacts vague, subjective, and aspirational legislation rather than clear, objective, and specific statutes. Political Pressure on Premiums These rate-review provisions were an entirely political exercise from the start. They were…

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New Mandate, More Regulation

By Kenneth Artz, The Heartland Institute
New Mandate, More Regulation

GUEST EDITORIAL By Kenneth Artz, The Heartland Institute Relationships between doctors and pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers will soon be under the microscope because of legislation forcing public revelation of such relationships and any ways they may have affected a doctor’s decisions. Under the Physician Payments Sunshine Act (PPSA) included in President Obama’s health care law, manufacturers of drugs, devices, and biological and medical supplies are required to keep a yearly report of all…

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Obamanomics: It’s Worse Than You Think

By Joseph Bast, The Heartland Institute
Obamanomics: It’s Worse Than You Think

GUEST EDITORIAL By Joseph Bast, The Heartland Institute Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act … all 3,256 pages of it … into law on March 23, 2010. Most of the provisions don’t go into effect until 2014, but some of the taxes to fund it started immediately. By counting ten years of revenues and only six years of expenses, the administration was able to claim it will reduce the federal debt over…

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Could organ donation shortages be solved with insurance?

By Consumer Insurance Guide Staff
Could organ donation shortages be solved with insurance?

The debate over selling human organs has come into the news again following the arrest this summer of a New Jersey businessman accused of buying and selling kidneys, and the speedy procurement of a liver transplant for Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

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