The Heartland Institute

Beyond its impact on states and the nation, President Obama’s health care law has effects on county governments as well, as Minnesota counties are currently discovering. Some county officials anticipate a 25 percent to 30 percent increase in workload as they ramp up to begin enrolling new and existing recipients of Medicaid ...

This Obamacare thing is not going as well as some had hoped. Democratic senators, at a caucus meeting with White House officials, expressed concerns on Thursday about how the Obama administration was carrying out the health care law they adopted three years ago. Democrats in both houses of Congress said some members of ...

Do you own your DNA? Not if you live in Minnesota. The state’s DFL-controlled legislature is planning to eliminate genetic privacy rights and individuals’ ownership and control over their DNA data. Minnesota health care officials recently admitted to building an unauthorized state biobank of DNA and health data on individuals ...

Minnesota legislators are debating whether to allow the board of the state’s newly created health insurance exchange to shut out health insurance plans at its own discretion. Minnesota is one of just eighteen states designing a state-run exchange under President Obama’s law. SF 1, the bill to create the Minnesota Insurance Marketplace ...

Much of the conversation during this election season has revolved around the word “access,” particularly within the health care space. What you ought to understand by now is that when most liberal politicians say “access,” what they mean is “taxpayer subsidies.” This is not exclusively the terminology of the left, but it is ...

Yesterday, at the Republican National Convention, former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice gave a superb speech covering many important issues. One issue she touched on that regrettably hasn’t been talked about enough this campaign season is education reform. For the United States to have sustained economic prosperity ...

In the Wall Street Journal yesterday morning, a report from the other end of the monopolization of health care services – what happens when a hospital buys out your specialist. Here’s an example: After David Hubbard underwent a routine echocardiogram at his cardiologist’s office last year, he was surprised to learn that ...

The policy centerpiece of House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget proposal this year is his Medicare reform. While Ryan’s approach builds on prior efforts, it differs in important ways from his prior legislative solutions, including last year’s Path to Prosperity. Ryan’s modified approach is essentially the same as one ...

Medical insurance premiums in the United States will continue to rise, according the chief architect of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jonathan Gruber, who also devised former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s statewide health care reforms, is backtracking on an analysis ...

Washington, DC witnessed a confrontation last week that encapsulates, for good and for ill, the dire situation facing the United States – and the choice we must make if we are to recover and return our nation to prosperity. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the last standing member of President Barack Obama’s “economic dream ...

Despite criticism from state legislators, Gov. Mark Dayton and the Minnesota Department of Commerce have pushed forward with the establishment of a state-crafted health insurance exchange, opening exchange simulations to the public. According to exchange proponents, these simulations are a way for Minnesota residents to test the ...

Some critics claim these clinics sacrifice quality for expediency, and collectively pose a threat to high standards of care offered in a traditional doctor’s office setting. However, this Research & Commentary package demonstrates: Retail health clinics actually help doctors’ offices by decreasing the burden associated with treatment ...

This Heritage Foundation lecture by Charles Baker looks at various state proposals at health care reform. Many have favored Minnesota Care--which was a tightly controlled program and similaer to one the Clinton Administration proposed. This lecture explains the program and why it came to pass. The author asserts deregulation ...

Affordable, convenient health care has become more available to average Americans as a result of the proliferation of so-called "retail clinics." A resurgence of the failed effort to establish "store-front clinics" in the 1980s, retail clinics are growing in number across the nation. These clinics, which offer basic acute care ...