The Heartland Institute

I just sent the guy who delivers my newspaper a $20 tip for Christmas. He does a good job getting me the Washington Post every morning and I want him to keep on doing it so I can continue my morning ritual of reading the paper over a cup of coffee with the local news on the TV. If you like what we are doing here ...

It is time to get serious. I don't think freedom in health care has ever faced such enormous challenges--which is ironic because at this point in history the evidence could not be clearer that consumer empowerment works while centralized planning fails--every single time. If we followed the evidence, all of the momentum would ...

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 ...

With the stock market crashing, home values falling, unemployment rising, and the prospect of massive federal intrusion in the health care you get, it may be hard to find things to be grateful for this Thanksgiving. Call me Pollyanna, but I m not worried. Yes, we will dither. The country will experiment with centralized planning ...

Our events last week were terrific. We hope to have videos posted on the Web site shortly, but a few highlights: We had an excellent roundtable meeting of CHCC members. It was held at the offices of Dezenhall Resources, a health care consulting firm in downtown DC (the infamous K Street Corridor). It was good to see so ...

We had a terrific time at our third annual Awards Banquet. I will report more on it next week. Stay tuned. On Saturday, November 8, I went to Orlando to receive the Ed Annis Award from Doctors for Patient Freedom. The group is made up largely of physicians who have been in leadership positions with organized medicine. There ...

Hoisted on His Own Petard Now, there's an expression I don't get to use very often, but it could not be more fitting than to describe the doomed candidacy of Senator John McCain. Mr. McCain's own campaign finance " reforms" came back to destroy him. Like most politicians he thoroughly misunderstood the issue he was addressing ...

I am very pleased that former House Majority Leader Dick Armey has agreed to keynote our Awards Banquet on November 12. Mr. Armey was a very rare politician in Washington, because he was able to admit when he made a mistake and learn from the experience. He told me once that supporting HIPAA was one of the biggest mistakes ...

United Benefit Advisors has published the results of an employer survey, Consumer-Driven Health Plans Continue to Grow. This is a massive national survey, conducted annually, of nearly 13,000 employers sponsoring 18,000 benefit plans. According to the survey, the number of Consumer Driven Health Plans, or CDHPs, increased by 43 ...

We are providing a special discounted rate for CHCC members to attend the Third Annual Awards Banquet. Originally we were going to charge $180, but with all the turmoil out there we decided to cut the price in half to $90. We would really like you to be there to congratulate our honorees, Roy Ramthun, Linda Gorman, and ...

This endless campaign is finally coming to a close. I've never been good at predicting elections, so I won't embarrass myself here. I'll just be glad to see the end of all the mindless political operatives saying, " My guy can do no wrong. The other guy can do no right." I am, however, pretty good at predicting the consequences ...

Wow! Between the elections and the market turmoil this is a golden age for news junkies. Remember back in the old days when the biggest " crisis" on people's minds was the price of gasoline? When was that, a month ago? Seems like ancient history. It feels like a cosmic game of 52-Card Pick-Up. Everything has been tossed ...

We lost a giant this week. J. Patrick Rooney passed away on September 15 in Indianapolis. More than anyone else, Mr. Rooney was responsible for moving the political agenda in favor of consumer-driven health care, first by working with Andy Jacobs (D-IN), chairman of the Health Subcommittee on Ways and Means, and then with ...

Our latest Consumer Education workshop was held on Wednesday, October 1, in Chicago. The presentations by Doug Andrews of Argus Financial, Glenn Stokes of HSA Bank, Bob Hamilton, MD, and Doug O'Brien of the state Chamber of Commerce were just terrific. Next, it is on to Austin on October 17. There our presenters will be Sharon ...

I spoke last Friday in Madison, Wisconsin at an event organized by Jeff Mayers, founder of www.WisPolitics.com. The topic was " Diagnosing a Policy Fix to U.S. Health Care," and I was a keynote speaker along with Ken Thorpe of Emory University and Antonia Maioni of Canada's McGill Institute. It turns out the event was televised ...

We lost a giant last week. J. Patrick Rooney passed away on September 15 in Indianapolis. More than anyone else, Pat was responsible for moving the political agenda in favor of consumer-driven health care, first by working with Andy Jacobs (D-IN), chairman of the Health Subcommittee of Ways and Means, and then with Bill Archer ...

Our consumer education workshop in Harrisburg was pretty successful. There wasn t as big an audience as we were hoping for, but we got 29 people including one legislator, one reporter, and the five speakers. The speakers were: Ross Schriftman, RHU, LUTCF, CNC, of Kistler, Tiffany Benefits, who spoke about how to buy ...

By overriding President George W. Bush's veto of the Medicare "sustainable growth rate" (SGR) fix, the U.S. House and Senate delayed for 18 months a planned 10.6 percent cut in physician reimbursements for Medicare cases. But Congress also killed a new approach to the way Medicare pays for medical equipment that would have ...

Our Consumer Education Workshop on September 3 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is shaping up to be a great event. To get the detailed information, go to http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=23638 Similar events are being planned for Chicago on October 1 at Lloyd's Restaurant, and Austin, Texas on October 17 at the Doubletree. Please ...