What's at Stake for Patients
Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) give people a new way to pay for health care.
Dying Too Soon: How Cost-Effectiveness Analysis Can Save Lives
For every one of us, death is inevitable. Premature death, however, is not. Through some reasonable mix of public and private strategies, we can substantially reduce the chance that we will die before our time.
Misplaced Criticism of MSAs
Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) have become the most controversial element of the health insurance reform proposal before Congress. They should be the least controversial.
Medical Savings Accounts: The Singapore Experience
The Singapore programs provide incentives to reduce consumption and offer protection against extraordinary events and free-rider abuses. The system is efficient and effective, the health status of the people is improving and the national investment in health care is surprisingly low, while hospitals are profitable and physician incomes are relatively high.
Consensus on Health Reform
A consensus is emerging on the right way to reform our health care system. The consensus stems from the recognition that the tax system has shaped and molded our health care system and is responsible for many of its problems. Health reform, therefore, requires tax reform.
Solving the Problem of Health Insurance Portability
The problem of health insurance portability can be resolved without costing the federal government additional money or distorting the health insurance market for other customers.
Portability: Is Kassebaum/Kennedy the Answer?
While solving the problem of the 1 percent of the population that lacks health insurance because they have been denied coverage due to a preexisting condition, this bill would create even greater problems for the 99 percent. Let's see why.
Making A Bad Program Worse – Clinton's Attempt at Medicaid Reform
Should Medicaid – the federal-state health insurance program for the poor – remain a federal entitlement or should the funds be turned over to state and local governments?
A "Long-Term" Solution to a Medicaid Problem
The spending explosion in long-term care is in large part a direct result of perverse federal income tax incentives that subsidize insurance for current medical expenses but penalize insurance for long-term care expenses. However, both the U.S. House and Senate have passed legislation to correct this tax inequity.
Answers for Seniors About Medicare Reform
This Brief Analysis looks at the problems facing Medicare and answers some of the questions seniors have about the program.
Is Preventive Medical Care Cost-Effective?
Studies show that in many cases preventive medical care not only does not save money, it also may do little to prolong life.
Why the Democrats' Medicare Plan Won't Work
Congressional Democrats have proposed an alternative to the Republican plan to solve the Medicare financing crisis.
Medical Savings Accounts for Medicare: The Adverse Selection Issue
The Republican Medicare reform plan allows the elderly to choose a catastrophic health insurance policy coupled with a Medical Savings Account (MSA) rather than remain in traditional Medicare.
Are Medical Savings Accounts Good for the Sick?
Critics assert that Medical Savings Accounts are good for the healthy and bad for the sick. The facts tell a different story. People with high medical expenses are almost always better off if they can switch to a Medical Savings Account plan.
Answers for Seniors About Medical Savings Accounts
The U.S. Congress is on the verge of enacting the most sweeping reform legislation in the 30-year history of Medicare. Under the legislation, Medicare recipients would have new options, including the choice to remain in the traditional Medicare program, enroll in a health maintenance organization (HMO) or select a high-deductible health insurance plan with a Medical Savings Account (MSA). This Brief Analysis explains how MSAs work.
Censorship by the FDA
In the last few years, the FDA's Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising and Communications has limited the drug companies' freedom to send out reprints.
Better Than Medicare
The Republicans have accomplished what no one in the Washington establishment contemplated when the Republican budget blueprint was adopted by Congress earlier this year. They have proposed a Medicare reform plan that actually offers the elderly a better system than Medicare, while still meeting the budget targets.
Saving the Medicare System With Medical Savings Accounts
Earlier this year, the National Center for Policy Analysis addressed the Medicare financing crisis with a proposal similar to the one now being considered by the Republican leadership in Congress.
Saving the Medicare System With Medical Savings Accounts
This study examines the choices private insurers will be able to offer as alternatives to the government-run program if they are given a voucher for the average estimated per-person Medicare cost of $4,848 in 1996.
Medical Savings Accounts and the States: Growth From the Grassroots
While health care reform apparently has been assigned a low priority on the congressional agenda this year, the states have been aggressively and successfully moving toward free-market reform. Legislation allowing Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) has been introduced or enacted in a majority of the states.
Reforming Medicaid
While growth in private-sector health care spending has declined recently, spending on Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for the nation's poor, has continued to explode – growing at an average annual rate of 19.1 percent between 1990 and 1994.
Solutions to the Problem of Health Insurance Portability
One of the biggest problems facing workers in job transition is that health insurance is not "portable." Although the average person will change jobs eight times during his working life, employees are limited in their ability to keep their health insurance during job changes and periods of unemployment.
House Moves to Adopt the Archer-Jacobs Medical Savings Accounts Bill
The House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer (R-TX) introduced legislation to provide for Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs). The legislation captures the fundamentals of MSAs, which offer Americans an opportunity to control rising health costs, to exercise freedom of choice and to determine how they will spend their health care dollars.
Comparing Opportunities To Reduce Health Risks: Toxin Control, Medicine and Injury Prevention
Billions of dollars are being spent to eliminate trivial risks to health and safety based largely on speculative fears that man-made sources of chemicals and radiation are important causes of human cancer.
Myths About Our Health Care System: Lessons for Policy Makers
Critics of the American health care system have propagated a number of myths to justify greater government control over our health care system. This backgrounder identifies 10 of the most common myths and exposes the fictions that underlie each.