Federal healthcare spending tops Social Security for the first time

The government spent $936 billion last year on health programs including Medicare, Medicaid and subsidies related to the Affordable Care Act, a jump of 13 percent from 2014, according to the Congressional Budget Office.  Spending on Social Security, in contrast, totaled $882 billion, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported.

Read more at The Hill
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Britain's Health Care: So Bad, Doctors Don't Even Want To Practice There

Angry over pay and working conditions, British doctors are threatening to go on strike next week. This is the sort of disaster that can happen only when physicians are government employees. As many as 37,000 "junior doctors, or doctors in training who represent just over half of all doctors in the National Health Service," Reuters reports, have said "they would stage a 24-hour stoppage next week, followed by two further 48-hour strikes."

Read more at Investor's Business Daily
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California State Senate OKs health coverage for many immigrants here illegally

The state Senate on Tuesday approved a hotly debated measure that would allow many immigrants in the state illegally to sign up for special healthcare programs that would offer the same benefits as Medi-Cal. --The action comes just days after lawmakers significantly scaled back the plan, which originally would have offered state-subsidized Medi-Cal to people in the country without authorization.

Read more at the Los Angeles Times
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In Vermont, single-payer healthcare quietly disappears

If you’re looking for a state with a reliable Leftward tilt, you’d be hard pressed to do better than Vermont. After all, this is the place which has repeatedly elected Bernie Sanders – a man who considers the Democrat Party too conservative for his tastes – to statewide office since 1991. So in terms of socialist experimental laboratories, this is the spot where you’d want to launch progressive initiatives and take them for a test spin. That was the plan for Governor Peter Shumlin, who had promised his constituents that they would soon be enjoying the first in the nation single payer healthcare plan. But faced with the cold, harsh light of reality, that plan is now history.

Read more at Hotair.com
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New Cover Oregon allegations: 'If it's true, someone's going to prison'

You already know the process that led to the failed rollout of the Cover Oregon website was bad. ✧ But was it criminally bad?

Read more at KATU News
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'Socialist' Swedes Take to Private Health Insurance

Sweden, a country famous for a welfare state that has actually been trimmed back substantially in recent years, is experiencing a phenomenon unlikely to bring cheer to those Americans who think the answer to Obamacare's problems is more government involvement in medicine. Tired of long waits and inadequate care, Swedes increasingly purchase private health insurance policies to gain access to the care the state can't provide.

Read more at Reason
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After Repeal of Obamacare: Moving to Patient-Centered, Market-Based Health Care

HERITAGE FOUNDATION RESEARCH
Abstract: Obamacare moves American health care in the wrong direction by eroding the doctor–patient relationship, centralizing control, and increasing health costs. True health care reform would empower individuals, with their doctors, to make their own health care decisions free from government interference. Therefore, Obamacare should be stopped and fully repealed. Then Congress and the states should enact patient-centered, market-based reforms that better serve Americans.

Read more at Heritage.org

Note: Many of the solutions this Heritage paper presents are solutions Republicans have submitted in various bills since the healthcare debate began. Harry Reid and Senate Democrats have refused to consider free-market solutions, while the president deceitfully claims that Republicans have not offered any solutions for greater coverage and health care reform. --bc Read More......

Rep. Richardson: Final Gavel Falls-2012 Legislative Session Adjourned

Rep. Richardson's Newsletter, March 7, 2012

This week the final gavel fell ending Oregon’s five-week, 2012 legislative session. For a complete list of what was accomplished during the 2012 Legislative Session, See 2012 Key Votes PDF. ✧ There were four key goals for this short, even-year session: Rebalance the State Budget, pass transformative legislation for education and health care, and create a clear path for Oregon’s economic recovery and jobs for Oregon workers. ✧ Bipartisan cooperation and compromise enabled legislative success in meeting the first three of Oregon’s key goals. Read Rep. Richardson's full newsletter...

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NRO: Oregon’s Verdict on Medicaid

NATIONAL REVIEW, 7/7/2011 by Michael F. Cannon - Oregon’s Verdict on Medicaid The facts come out.

Americans may be surprised to learn that little solid evidence exists to support the claim that expanding health insurance will improve the health and financial security of the uninsured; that some research calls into question whether broad coverage expansions improve health at all; and that some research even suggests that the overall benefits of such expansions may not be worth the cost. We lack definitive evidence because no developed nation has ever conducted a study that randomly assigns people to receive health insurance in order to control for other factors that might affect these outcomes. Until now. Read more at NRO...

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Health Care: Price Competition Can Lead to Quality Competition

HEARTLAND INSTITUTE by John C. Goodman, President and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis - [Excerpt] "Wherever there is price competition, there also tends to be quality competition. In the market for Lasik surgery, for example, patients can choose traditional Lasik or more advanced custom Wavefront Lasik. Prices range from less than $1,000 to more than $3,000 per eye. In the international medical tourism market, some hospitals in India, Thailand, and Singapore disclose their infection, mortality, and readmission rates and compare them to such U.S. entities as the Cleveland Clinic and the Mayo Clinic." Read full article at Heartland.org... Read More......

Rep. Richardson: Should Oregon Continue Paying 100% of Employee Health Benefits?

REP. DENNIS RICHARDSON, NEWSLETTER, 6/17/2011

[Excerpt] HB 2011 would require State of Oregon workers to begin paying something toward their group medical, dental and vision benefits. This is something many school districts already ask of their employees, including teachers. ∴ I believe it is time for state workers to begin paying at least $50 per month toward the $1200 monthly bill for state worker group health benefits. If this $50 minimum payment were required, more than $69 million would be generated in 2011-13—that is $69 million that could be used for high priority programs. Read more at Rep. Richardson's Newsletter...

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Oregon's Obamacare -- hearing Friday

VICTORIA TAFT, 3/8/2011 - "OregonObamaCare Coming. Unless YOU Stop It! Hearing Friday. After rearranging the construct of DHS and health care delivery in the last legislature (elections have consequences) here, Democrats have set the table for ObamaCare to come to Oregon. This is an unaffordable blank check to establish OregonObamaCare (This isn't what they're calling it. I just thought it looked snappy all mashed up). This bill establish a health care welfare plan, begin the process of taking control of HMO's, rationing care (of course) and, among other things, set up a huge bureaucracy without increasing the number of doctors. ∴ This, of course, will bankrupt the state..." Read more at Victoria Taft... Read More......

Bachmann: Obama's H'care Waivers Are Admission Of Failure

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Noonan: He Was Supposed to Be Competent

WALL STREET JOURNAL/OPINION, 5/29/2010 by Peggy Noonan - The spill is a disaster for the president and his political philosophy. ∴ Excerpt:

The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. This is a terrible thing to see in a political figure, and a startling thing in one who won so handily and shrewdly in 2008. But he has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They're in one reality, he's in another. Read more at WSJ...

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Pelosi to Aspiring Musicians: Quit Your Job, Taxpayers Will Cover Your Health Care

“We see it as a entrepreneurial bill - a bill that says to someone, if you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations because you will have health care.”
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CAPMAG: What the health care bill actually says...

CAPITALISM MAGAZINE, 12/5/2009 by John David Lewis - Excerpt from What The "Affordable Health Care For America Act," HR3962, Actually Says:

In many ways the bill is a convoluted, uncoordinated list of compromises between thousand of legislators, legislative aides, and lobbyists. Yet the bill has two main thrusts, with one central meaning. The first thrust is a massive increase in government power. The second is the total rejection of the free market. The central meaning of both is the repudiation of individual rights. No longer will Americans have the liberty to preserve their own lives in the way they judge best from now on, they will have to conform to government controls on the most intimate details of their lives.

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Health Care: Is the 'Public Option' Inevitable or Imperiled?

REASON ONLINE, 6/29/2009 by Peter Suderman - Just a few weeks ago, progressive health-care reform looked like a done deal. And the so-called "public plan"—a government-run insurance option beloved by the Democratic Party's most liberal faction—was to be the legislation's centerpiece. ∴ But thanks to some inconvenient analysis from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and increased public worries about government spending in general, reform efforts are now in disarray... Continued at Reason Online... Read More......

Cato scholars on Obama's health care 'infomercial'

President Obama on Wednesday [6/24] answered questions on rising costs, taxing benefits, and many other issues during an ABC News special on health care reform, "Questions for the President: Prescription for America." Cato Institute scholars Michael D. Tanner and Michael F. Cannon respond to Obama's claims. Learn more about health care reform at http://healthcare.cato.org.


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WSJ: Democrats Present Hurdles for Obama

WALL STREET JOURNAL, 6/29/2009 by Naftali Bendavid and Greg Hitt - WASHINGTON: As Congress tackles President Barack Obama's top two domestic priorities -- climate change and health care -- he faces some of his most serious challenges from fellow Democrats. ∴ The narrow passage Friday of an environment bill came with nearly one in five Democrats defecting, and only after supporters from coal-producing and agriculture districts won concessions that eased the impact on business and aggravated some environmentalists. Prospects for the measure remain uncertain in the Senate, even though Democrats hold a 59-40 voting majority. Read more at WSJ... Read More......

Mandates costly? Who knew?

Want To Reduce Health Insurance Costs? Eliminate Mandates
Say Anything (Blog), May 20, 2008, posted by Rob

Or, in other words, make the health insurance market truly free. Or freer, at least.

A 2005 study by the Commonwealth Fund illustrates how insurance rates for young people are far higher in states with guaranteed issue and community rating than in states that do not have them. For instance:

• A healthy 25-year-old male could purchase a policy for $960 a year in Kentucky but would pay about $5,880 in New Jersey.
• A similar policy, available for about $1,548 in Kansas, costs $5,172 in New York.
• A policy priced at $1,692 in Iowa costs $2,664 in Washington and $4,032 in Massachusetts. . . .

Forcing insurers to cover benefits that many consumers may not want (or need) also drives up premiums. For instance, New Jersey is one of only four states to mandate coverage for chiropody. And it is one of only 13 states that mandate coverage for in vitro fertilization — adding 3 percent to 5 percent to the cost of premiums. Proponents often argue that their particular mandate costs little; but when all 42 of New Jersey’s mandated benefits are added together the costs are significant. Nationwide, as many as one-quarter of the uninsured may have been priced out of the market by costly mandates.

What’s troubling is how many politicians want to solve this problem which was created by too much government interference with more government interference in the form of expanded government-provided health care.

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