The Heartland Institute

America s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a trade group representing more than 1,000 insurance providers, has come out in favor of a law requiring everyone to buy what they sell. A friend points out this is like the Big Three automakers supporting a law requiring everyone to buy a new, American-branded car. This may be the ...

Consumer-driven health care has reached the tipping point of 20 percent of the under-65 population. Virtually the entire individual market is in high-deductible plans these days. Some critics call an employer-sponsored HDHP cost-shifting, saying mean and nasty employers are making employees pay for services that used to be covered ...

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) has been moving to put together a comprehensive health care reform package as his final legacy. At a bare minimum it will involve several radical steps toward a single national health care plan: * a mandate on all Americans to buy health insurance; * a mandate on nearly all businesses to help ...

Proponents of consumer-directed health care lost a giant when J. Patrick Rooney, former chairman of Golden Rule Insurance Co., passed away on September 15 in Indianapolis, Indiana. He was 80 years old. More than anyone else, Rooney was responsible for moving the national political agenda in favor of consumer-driven health care ...

Will 2009 see a surge in health savings account enrollment among federal employees? Premium increases in federal employee health plans, combined with the current economic downturn, seem to point to the answer being yes. The most popular offering of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Standard ...

On May 12, 1992, The New York Times breathlessly reported Vermont's governor, Howard Dean (D), had "signed a law here today that sets in motion a plan to give Vermont universal health care by 1995." It was part of a whole movement, the article said: "Oregon, Minnesota and Florida have also passed comprehensive health insurance ...

The recent decision of a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned a federal judge's ruling on San Francisco's "play or pay" employer health insurance mandate, highlights one important fact: The 1974 federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act, known as ERISA, is a mess. It was bad ...

The market for health insurance for small employers is dysfunctional, offering very few choices, very high prices, little innovation, and poor service. It is the result of two decades of deliberate policy by state regulators to stabilize this market down to three or four vendors. We need more competition and more innovation ...

Massachusetts' new "Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority"--the agency charged with enforcing the new law mandating every state resident get health insurance--held its first meeting June 7 and is already talking about how to restrict access to care. According to a June 8 Boston Globe article, the state's assistant ...

Deloitte Consulting has released its latest annual survey of large employers and has found a high degree of support for consumer-driven health plans (CDHP). Perhaps the most revealing question in "Reducing Corporate Health Care Costs: 2006 Survey" was, "Which health plan type offers the most effective approach for managing ...

Writing in the Washington Post on January 18, business columnist Steven Pearlstein argued, "the president must acknowledge that there can be no credible reform without extending health insurance for every American--every employer should be required to pay half the cost of basic health insurance for every employee." The same week ...

David Kendall of the Progressive Policy Institute has issued a new study, "Fixing America's Health Care System: A Progressive Plan to Cover Everyone and Restrain Costs." It's an interesting mix of policy prescriptions, some of which are very useful while others are pie-in-the- sky. But the whole paper is tainted by a core ...

In a January 31 Los Angeles Times article, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar wrote the Bush administration wants to "move the nation away from the system of employer-provided health insurance ... [and toward] a system in which workers ... would take personal responsibility for protecting themselves and their families." The article quotes ...

On August 2, the Kaiser Family Foundation held a briefing with eHealthInsurance on the individual market. An important new report, Update on Individual Health Insurance , was issued in conjunction with the briefing. The report provides some baseline information on the individual market so policymakers can have a point of reference ...

The Joint Economic Committee of Congress held a hearing in April on "Consumer-Directed Doctoring: The Doctor Is In, Even if Insurance Is Out." Among the witnesses were Robert S. Berry, MD of the PATMOS EmergiClinic in Greeneville, Tennessee; Alieta Eck, MD of the Zarephath Health Center in Zarephath, New Jersey; Bernard Kaminetsky ...

The reported findings of the latest Commonwealth Fund study, "Job-Based Health Insurance in the Balance: Employer Views of Coverage in the Workplace," shouldn't be taken at face value. Commonwealth Fund suggests the big news is that employers themselves support an employer mandate. The press release's first paragraph says, "Employers ...

Health insurance products designed to give consumers a bigger say in their coverage--and consequently become more discriminating consumers of health care services--are multiplying at a dizzying pace. HRAs and High Deductibles “Small business owners aren’t quite nervy enough to impose a high-deductible insurance plan on their ...

The first annual Consumer Directed Health Care Conference (CDHCC) was held in Las Vegas April 7-9 and was a huge success, with some 700 attendees and 45 exhibitors. Little doubt remains that “consumerism” is the next wave in health care financing and delivery. The CDHCC delved deeply into case studies to show how consumer ...

Two recent reports associate lack of health insurance coverage with less access to health care services and worse health outcomes. One study is written by Jack Hadley of the Urban Institute and published by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, the other by an Institute of Medicine (IOM)committee, with support ...

During the last decade the health care industry, out of concern for growing health care costs, moved decisively away from traditional fee-for-service insurance to managed care. The rush was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the causes of health care inflation. The argument went that doctors were encouraged to perform ...