The Heartland Institute

I was in Chicago for three days this week for Heartland's President's Council Retreat. This was an appreciation of Heartland's major supporters and it was a fabulous event. It didn't go off without a hitch, but it certainly was memorable. I missed the Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Field that was ended early due to near-tornado ...

Although presidential candidates Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and John McCain (R-AZ) have wide differences in their positions on health care, it may not matter much what they or other politicians have to say on the matter. It is a mistake to think of health care reform as primarily a political issue. Health care is an enormous ...

The chickens are coming home to roost. I won't spend a lot of time on Ted Stevens. He will be tried and found guilty -- or not. But it is interesting how often the biggest pork producers get caught with their own hands in the cookie jar (or pork barrel, to keep my metaphors straight). While I'm no great fan of John ...

The next in our series of Consumer Education Workshops will be held in Austin, Texas on October 17. We haven't pinned down the location yet, but the agenda will go like this: 12:00 noon Welcome and Introductions Greg Scandlen, The Heartland Institute Hagerstown, MD 12:10 p.m. How to Buy Health Insurance Sharon Alt Alt Benefit ...

The Heartland Institute is doing a much better job than I was ever able to do in putting these publications online. If you need to go back to an earlier edition, at least as of June, they will be available at http://www.heartland.org/Publications.cfm?pblId=29 . There has been a ton of good stuff published recently on Health ...

Driving into DC the other day, I was struck by how many tiny little cars there are on the road these days. The big SUVs are gone. There seems to be a new status symbol -- the cutest, tiniest little care wins the lottery. And I thought, Man, that didn t take long. And there once again is the wonder of the market. It ...

I m keeping this issue fairly short this week since I know you are eager to get out of the office and start enjoying the Fourth of July Weekend. I actually prefer to call it Independence Day. Too many people forget why we are celebrating the date in all of the excitement over beer and hot dogs and fireworks and sunscreen ...

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 ...

Consumers for Health Care Choices and The Heartland Institute are developing a number of events that you will love. First, we are doing a series of Consumer Education Workshops around the country this fall. These are intended to reassure nervous business owners and employee representatives about the merits of Consumer-Driven Health ...

This issue is devoted to physicians, especially the bungling of the AMA as it flushes its principles down the toilet to get a seat at the table. A physician in a leadership position from Massachusetts explained to me that they sacrificed the idea of balance billing in private contracts as well as in Medicare in order to ...

I m keeping the Intro short this week, because it is a pretty long edition and I haven t yet made sense of all the puzzling things going on out there. We are definitely going through a strange patch of political posturing and musical chairs. The song that keeps going through my head is Steven Stills, Time to Change Partners ...

Brian McManus of the Health Care Freedom Coalition and Dan Perrin of the HSA Coalition, both member organizations of Consumers for Health Care Choices, are mobilizing a defense of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) against a new threat in Congress. The threat is a proposed requirement, passed by the House of Representatives on ...

At this point it is all about money. One of the articles below mentions that the liberal group Health Care for America Now has $40 million to spend on inflicting government health care on us. This is just one of many similar efforts on the Left. Compare that to Rick Scott's valiant investment of $5 million in Conservatives ...

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 ...

Businesses and employees in San Francisco are facing higher health costs and likely job losses after a three-judge panel from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overruled a federal district court judge's finding that San Francisco's new health care ordinance violated the 1974 federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act ...

Consumer Power Report, written by Greg Scandlen, director of Consumers for Health Care Choices at The Heartland Institute, is a weekly report summarizing recent developments on consumer-directed health care in the media, legislative, and regulatory arenas. It addresses topics of interest to physicians and other medical personnel ...

Consumer Power Report, written by Greg Scandlen, director of Consumers for Health Care Choices at The Heartland Institute, is a weekly report summarizing recent developments on consumer-directed health care in the media, legislative, and regulatory arenas. It addresses topics of interest to physicians and other medical personnel ...

Consumer Power Report, written by Greg Scandlen, director of Consumers for Health Care Choices at The Heartland Institute, is a weekly report summarizing recent developments on consumer-directed health care in the media, legislative, and regulatory arenas. It addresses topics of interest to physicians and other medical personnel ...

Proponents of government-provided health care continue to tout Massachusetts as a model for the nation. The state has enrolled some 300,000 people in free MassHealth, the heavily subsidized Commonwealth Care, and the unsubsidized Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority. All but 63,000 are in the first two programs, and ...

California continues to stumble along down the road in dealing with health care. The state is facing a $14 billion budget deficit in the coming year, and this estimate does not include the impact of reduced revenues from falling real estate values and sales. So what does the governor decide to do? He joined the speaker ...