The Heartland Institute

In a controversial decision that could change how low-income women receive health services, the state of Texas has pushed forward in its anti-abortion battle, igniting a public relations skirmish with the federal government. The state director of Health and Human Services , Commissioner Tom Suehs, signed a new rule that will ...

Commentators have portrayed Texas’s uninsured rate as evidence of Texans’ lack of access to health care. However, the reality is that Texas’s problem is not care but cost . How does an uninsured individual receive care? In Texas and across the country, the answer is all too often through an emergency room. The costs of emergency ...

Last week I told you about the Obama administration’s denial of the Medicaid waiver extension request for Mitch Daniels’ Healthy Indiana Plan. Today, let’s take a moment to admire what Daniels has achieved in empowering consumers within one area where he exercises more control, absent federal policies: the use of consumer-driven ...

I’m sure you all recall the story that grabbed headlines from 2009 when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) came under fire for suggesting women in their 40s and 50s not get mammograms. Last week, the USPSTF announced a similar recommendation change for early detection of prostate cancer. The group changed its ...

The skyrocketing costs caused by Medicaid’s fee-for-service approach have states struggling to meet their government budgets, and access to quality health care is becoming scarcer. In hopes of improving access and reducing costs, many states are considering turning to managed care. Under a managed care system, health care providers ...

There’s a great story embedded in the recent attention paid to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s back surgery. Initially, the story was highlighted by critics seeking to force a wedge between Perry and social conservatives – the liberal Texas Tribune refers to the procedure as “controversial” – because Perry utilized stem cells (insert ...