US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has claimed that cuts in Medicare spending help Medicare’s Trust Fund, making it easier to pay benefits in future years.[1] Yet CBO Director Douglas W. Elmendorf rejected such claims, saying that they amount to impermissible double counting.[2] The money that is saved by cuts...
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If you are on Medicare, you and others like you are probably going to be more affected by the new health reform law than any other population group. Benefits of Reform There are a number of new benefits, including the following: Medicare will pay for an annual checkup. Deductibles and co-payments for many preventive...
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New Book Examines the ‘Risky Business’ of Insurance Regulation “Insurance is too important to society and to commerce to be left as a political pawn,” writes Lawrence S. Powell, the editor of the newest Independent Institute book, Risky Business: Insurance Markets and Regulation. Powell’s words are timely because, as with so many natural disasters,...
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Unless you qualify for an exception, beginning in 2014, the new law will require you to obtain a health insurance plan. For the first two years, state governments will have the power to dictate most of the benefits the plans must include. Beyond that point, the benefits will probably be mandated under federal law....
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Probably not. No promise was repeated more often by Barack Obama than the pledge that, “If you like the plan you are in, you can keep it.” For the vast majority of people, however, this promise almost certainly will not be kept. Here’s why. Your Employer May Be Forced to Switch to Another Plan...
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Even if you are not enrolled in a traditional Health Maintenance Organization or an Accountable Care Organization (ACO), you can expect a return to some of the heavy-handed health insurance industry practices that were so unpopular in the 1990s and gave rise to the “patient bill of rights” proposals. The reason? The new healthcare...
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My past several posts have been devoted to improving patient safety by reforming the malpractice system. I have explained the enormity of the problem of adverse medical events, offered principles to guide malpractice reform, and outlined the benefits that a system of liability-by-contract would bring to doctors, the courts, and other stakeholder groups. Here...
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A liability-by-contract system along the lines I have discussed in recent blog posts and in my book, Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis, would have a number of compelling advantages. Here are three: Insurers rather than patients would become the primary monitors of healthcare quality Under this proposal, a great deal of quality information—currently unavailable—would...
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In earlier installments of this series I discussed some of the problems with the current malpractice system, proposed a contractual, no-fault alternative, presented ten principles to guide tort reform, and explained how my proposal would free the patient and the doctor. In this post I explain how it would free expert witnesses and the...
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A system of liability by contract will not work in all cases. Many patients have a high probability of death or disability at the time they enter a hospital. Doctors are unlikely to want to pay the cost of those outcomes, should they be ruled “adverse,” and it would be unreasonable to expect them...
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