Featured Article
Having health insurance is not the same as receiving health care
By Kenneth Lin, MD That is not original. I borrowed it from Los Angeles County Department of Health Services Director Mitchell Katz’s JAMA Internal Medicine editorial about problems with ensuring access to health care for Medicaid recipients whose cheap public insurance usually doesn’t even pay doctors enough to recoup costs of care, let alone earn a living.
Hamilton’s Curse
Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Arch Enemy Betrayed the American Revolution-and What It Means for Americans Today by Thomas J. Dilorenzo (Author) Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton–two of the most influential Founding Fathers–were also fierce rivals with two opposing political philosophies and two radically different visions for America. While Jefferson is better remembered today, it is […]
The HealthCare Debate is Misdirected
For Healthcare to be truly patient oriented and directed it has to be entrepreneurial Government directed Healthcare can never be truly patient friendly How Did We Get Here? The US Healthcare debate has been “what should or can the government do to solve the healthcare crises since the New Deal in the 1933 and following. […]
The Medicare Monster Concluded
A cautionary tale-Part IV Hospitals have adapted to the system by qualifying patients for more tests and procedures, by shifting patients to different DRG designations that carry a higher reimbursement rate, and especially by shifting patients from hospital to outpatient settings, which shifts the cost to the supplemental-insurance program. An HCFA official told us: “There […]
The Medicare Monster, A cautionary tale-Part III
A cautionary tale-Part III The deliberations about the cost of the hospital-insurance program make for a fascinating and almost comical story. Because it is hard to predict changes in medical technology and hospital costs, it was decided that the program could only be projected out 25 years, instead of the 75-year horizon that is used […]
The Medicare Monster Continued
A cautionary tale-Part II The deliberations about the cost of the hospital-insurance program make for a fascinating and almost comical story. Because it is hard to predict changes in medical technology and hospital costs, it was decided that the program could only be projected out 25 years, instead of the 75-year horizon that is used […]
The Medicare Monster
A cautionary tale-Part I Steven Hayward & Erik Peterson from the January 1993 issue – WSJ The scene is Capitol Hill. It’s the year 2035. Thousands of elderly protesters assemble outside the Capitol building. Inside, the House Ways and Means Committee meets to enact huge cuts in both Medicare and the national health-insurance program. Members are reluctant to take this […]
Single-Payer National Health Insurance around the World Part VIII
Lives at Risk by John C. Goodman, Gerald L. Musgrave, and Devon M. Herrick (Continued from the July 2015 HPUSA Newsletter) Reforming the U.S. Health Care System: Designing an Ideal Health Care System CHARACTERISTICS OF AN IDEAL HEALTH CARE SYSTEM Chapter Twenty-three Among people who believe the American health care system needs serious reform, attention […]
Single-Payer National Health Insurance around the World Part VII
In 2002 and 2003, we reviewed The Twenty Myths of health care reform. Now a decade later the authors have updated the book, renamed it, and added important 21st century data. Lives at Risk by John C. Goodman, Gerald L. Musgrave, and Devon M. Herrick (Continued from the April 2015 HPUSA Newsletter) Chapter 22: Is […]
Single-Payer National Health Insurance around the World Part VI
Lives at Risk by John C. Goodman, Gerald L. Musgrave, and Devon M. Herrick (Continued from the January 2015 HPUSA Newsletter) The Politics of Medicine Part 2 / Chapter 21 / P 187 “Public choice” is the discipline that attempts to integrate economics and political science.1 Its chief goal is to explain political phenomena, just […]