The Heartland Institute

WASHINGTON (May 11, 2009) -- Representatives of five major health care trade associations Monday presented the White House with a proposal to reduce the growth of health care costs by up to $2.2 trillion over the next ten years. However, an assessment by several skeptics of the trade associations proposal shows the proposal ...

As part of the federal government s economic stimulus package, Congress has authorized spending about $20 billion on health information technology (health IT) and another $1 billion on comparative effectiveness research. These provisions achieved wide bipartisan support in Congress and in the health care industry, based on the hope ...

My dad would look into the rearview mirror to back the family car out of the driveway. We would then go to the neighborhood bakery to purchase doughnut holes. They were sweet and tasted great! Mention doughnut holes today to my dad s generation and the response is apt to be a very bitter one! Medicare Part D began in ...

1. States Already Received a Medicaid Bailout. In June 2008, the wartime supplemental blocked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) from issuing six regulations cracking down on state transactions designed solely to increase the percentage of Medicaid spending paid for by the federal government. Some may view ...

Why not just abolish the U.S. Food and Drug Administration? By Maureen Martin That may sound radical, but the Wyeth v. Levine case, due to be heard in the U.S. Supreme Court next Monday, could destroy the agency s purpose. The issue in the case is whether the federal law establishing the FDA preempts state laws and shields ...

The Impact of Mandates. While mandates make health insurance more comprehensive, they also make it more expensive because mandates require insurers to pay for care consumers previously funded out of their own pockets. We estimate that mandated benefits currently increase the cost of basic health coverage from a little less than ...

Mandated benefits provide two types of protection: 1) protections for the health of the general public, such as the mandated Pap smear benefit; or 2) protections for the health of a vulnerable sub-group, such as the benefit that mandates coverage of supplies for people with diabetes. However, mandating health benefits may impact ...

One of the major causes of high-priced health insurance in the U.S. is the high number of mandatory minimum coverages required by some state governments. A new law in Florida will allow insurers in that state to offer minimum-coverage health policies that are exempt from most of the state's mandatory coverages. Florida is ...

On April 27, 2004, President Bush issued Executive Order (EO) 13335 "to provide leadership for the development and nationwide implementation of an interperable health information technology infrastructure to improve the quality and efficiency of health care." EO 13335 established the position of a National Coordinator for Health ...

The increasingly important role of prescription medicines as both complements to and substitutes for other medical procedures, as well as rising costs for newer and more effective medicines, has precipitated an array of proposals for reducing private and public spending on drugs. Some prominent observers have questioned whether ...

Health Savings Accounts are a way to provide affordable, flexible, consumer-directed health insurance for a population that has a growing need for quality coverage. HSAs allow employers and employees to deposit money, tax-free, into an account that is used for short-term, low-cost expenses such as doctor visits. Account owners ...

May 2008 will be a period of intense, uncomfortable scrutiny for those who market prescription drugs direct-to-consumers (DTC). Among other things, a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee examines the loaded question, “Direct-to-Consumer Advertising: Marketing, Education, or Deception?” Amid ...

Prescription drug advertising directed at consumers has grown slowly but steadily in this country over the past 25 years. That growth has accompanied the introduction of new drugs that provide significant health benefits to the American consumer; there is little doubt that advertising has played a major role in increasing public ...

Gov. John Baldacci's Dirigo Health plan, a state-funded program that was supposed to provide subsidized health coverage to some 128,000 Maine people without insurance, is a costly failure. After four years and nearly $164 million committed to this program, less than 4 percent of Maine's previously uninsured people have Dirigo ...

Most Americans want health care reform, but mandating health insurance or legislating a government-run single-payer system will not solve anything. Health care needs less government intervention, not more. Policymakers should instead embrace free-market ideas, allowing the industry to drive innovation and competition, thus alleviating ...

Something may finally be done to address the 1.7 million medically uninsured Georgians during this year's General Assembly. In the fall of 2007, the Georgia Uninsured Work Group (WG), an unprecedented collaboration of associations representing hospitals, doctors, insurers and sales agents, convened with facilitation by the Center ...

The Health Care Rub BY DIANA FURCHTGOTT-ROTH January 16, 2008 URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/69636 As Senator Clinton and Mitt Romney debate the pros and cons of mandatory health insurance, one vital ingredient has been forgotten: the physicians who provide our medical care. With demand for medical services growing ...

The lengthy waits endured by Canadian patients for health care services take an obvious emotional, physical and financial toll on patients and their families. But excessive waits also impose costs on Canada’s overall economy. For the first time ever, this new research puts a dollar figure on the cost of excess waits for ...

Arnold Schwarzenegger said in an address this week that California must end its "binge and purge" budget process -- his way of kicking off a binge worthy of Imperial Rome in its decadent late period. Yep: As his state reels from one of its recurrent fiscal crises, the Governor is making some headway on his "universal" health ...

The Truth About Health Costs By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, January 10, 2008 Health Care Reform: Democrats claim high medical costs are a "failure of the free market," and they demand a government takeover. But a new study says government's to blame. Public health programs account for almost half of ...