John R. Graham | NCPA Last week’s third estimate of Gross Domestic Product for the second quarter confirms that growth in health spending might be moderating somewhat from its initial Obamacare fueled rush. Unfortunately, it is not a clear break in the trend of health spending consuming an increasing share of our national income. Current GDP grew […]
Category: Health and Education
Bruce Deitrick Price When you place a lot of articles on the Internet, as I do, you can expect to get abuse, sometimes earnest, often uninformed, but now and then tricky to a sinister degree. My favorite in the latter category is a guy’s complaint that I am “just a novelist.” This was posted on […]
This blog has never gotten very excited by Medicare’s Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). ACOs are risk-sharing arrangements between Medicare and providers, which are supposed to save money through efficiency. As a concept, they are fine – certainly an improvement over the incumbent, Soviet-style fee schedule. However, it is unlikely that the government has the incentives […]
The Center for Immigration Studies’ latest report concludes that 42 percent of immigrant households, both legal and illegal, used Medicaid in 2012. Only 23 percent of households headed by a native-born American used Medicaid. The report also discusses other welfare, including housing, food stamps, et cetera. It is a very thorough report with a wealth of […]
Devon Herrick | NCPA Back in the 1950s, department stores were the big box retailers of their day. Rather than go to different specialty stores for shoes, hats, coats and bed linen, one only had to stop by Macy’s. About that same time, discount stores like Walmart began to crop up around the country. As […]
Devon Herrick | NCPA Slang words describing human feces are often used to denote products of poor quality or that have absolutely no value whatsoever. A product that is substandard is sometimes derisively referred to as “crap” — or worse. Now, a company in Massachusetts is collecting fecal material into a “stool bank,” and […]
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Doctors and Guns
By Lawrence N. Pivnick MD JD Something is rotten with the state of medicine today. Well, more than one thing actually, but today’s complaint concerns the fact that your doctor has been conscripted by the federal government to spy on your gun closet. This has occurred despite the fact that as Obamacare moved its way […]
Devon Herrick | NCPA BLOG Recent episodes of mass violence have raised awareness of severe mental illness. The perpetrators of these horrendous crimes were undoubtedly suffering from significant psychiatric problems. Policies that aim to prevent mass violence have found broad bipartisan support in Congress. During the month of August while Congress is in recess, some […]
The Fraser Institute has released a study estimating the costs of Canada’s government monopoly, a.k.a. single-payer health system. A typical Canadian family of four will pay $11,735 for public health care insurance in 2015. The study also tracks the cost of health care insurance over time: Between 2005 and 2015, the cost of health care for […]
Last month, I wrote about Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), medical groups accountable to the federal government for management of healthy populations. Even Zeke Emanuel recognizes that they are failing. Dr. Emanuel advised Medicare should “lump together” all the services associated with a procedure, such as a hip replacement, and pay one fee for the entire […]
John R. Graham | NCPA Judges are chipping away at government censorship of communications about prescription drugs. The Food and Drug Administration exerts great power over a medicine’s label, which describes the medicine’s therapeutic claims. Drug makers and the FDA sometimes spend years negotiating a label. The FDA regulates both safety and “efficacy.” So, a […]
(A version of this Health Alert was published in the San Francisco Chronicle on August 10, 2015.) Polls consistently show that Obamacare is unpopular. Back in April 2010, the month before the law was signed, 46 percent of all adults surveyed had a favorable view of the Affordable Care Act, while just 40 percent had […]