Colorado short on primary care docs, “reform” will make ER over-crowding worse
Colorado’s overcrowded ERs to get worse with Obamacare because of lack of primary care doctors. In the Wall Street Journal, John Goodman explains how Medicare’s price controls contribute to this problem, and what to do about it.
Health Insurance Exchanges: A Race To the Bottom
The problem is that the actual insurance that health plans offer may be fairly lousy — perhaps just a little better than the typical managed care plan offered under Medicaid. That’s because of the way these insurance products are going to be regulated, and the way they will be priced under the federal scheme.
U.S. Credit Rating: Don’t Shoot the Downgrade Messenger
Attacking S&P for the U.S. credit downgrade is like criticizing your doctor for diagnosing your cancer.
Obamacare threatens solvency of Colorado health plans
The notion that politicians can control health costs is a conceit of the ruling class. Health costs will only decline when patients, not politicians, directly control more of our health spending. This cannot happen until President Obama’s health law is repealed. In the meantime, CO should reject politicized control of insurance premiums.
Debt ceiling: Budget Deal Doesn’t Cut Spending
“Rs & Ds have come together on a ‘historic’ budget deal that … [the] Washington Post’s lead story calls the cuts ‘sharp’ and ‘severe.’ However, the budget deal doesn’t cut federal spending at all. The ‘cuts’ in the deal are only cuts from the CBO ‘baseline,’ which is a Washington construct of ever-rising spending.” – Chris Edwards, Cato
Politically-controlled health benefits exchanges crowd out private exchanges
Government has no business running health benefits exchanges. They compete with private ventures. Politico reports: “To some observers, the growing interest in private health exchanges indicates that employers would be less likely to send their employees to the public exchanges to take advantage of public subsidies.”
Will ObamaCare produce cascade of insolvent Colorado insurers?
ObamaCare threatens the solvency of private health plans, which will significantly reduce consumer choice and increase costs. …[In] Colorado, where one large health plan has already announced plans to leave the state, Graham’s analysis demonstrates a “cascade” of insolvency, whereby only five of the ten largest plans in 2009 will be operating in 2017.
“Accountable Care Organizations”: The Coming Collectivization of American Health Care
In the 1930s, the USSR forced independent farmers into large state-run collective farms. … these collective farms could not feed the country. … Unfortunately, the United States is about to make the same mistake in health care by collectivizing doctors and hospitals into government-supervised accountable care organizations (ACOs).
Is the Colorado Health Benefits exchange built to fail?
Last week Governor Hickenlooper’s office announced the members of the Colorado Health Benefits Exchange Board. Paul Howard and Stephen T. Parente write why such exchanges are built to fail. Because of a “litany of new minimum-insurance requirements and regulations … health insurance purchased through an exchange will likely end up more expensive than it is now.”
Hickenlooper’s veto of SB 11-213 insults low-income parents
Published in the Boulder Daily Camera: Maintaining current Child Health Plan fees would not only be an injustice to taxpayers, but also an insult to eligible parents. The fees imply that parents value enjoying life’s amenities more than their own children’s health.
The FDA, Avastin, and death panels
“The FDA, stuck in its 1960s Thalidomide glory days mindset, denies Americans access to life-saving drugs. …[D]espite its intentions, [the FDA] drives up the costs of medicines & often dries up the supply chain altogether. America is currently facing a shortage of about 246 drugs – a record high.” – Milton Wolf, MD
Accountable Care Organizations: Soviet-style command & control medicine that strangles innovation & quality
Accountable Care Organizations “will become the medical equivalent of the state-run giant collective farms that failed to feed the USSR. Central planning will strangle innovation in American medicine just as it strangled the Eastern Bloc economies during the Cold War.”
