Federal budget experts across the political spectrum agree that the Medicare program is having a financial crisis. Without fundamental change, the future looks bleak. Medicare will go bankrupt by 2002. The necessary budget savings can be achieved while providing substantial benefits to the elderly by giving them greater control over Medicare funds, and their own health care.
Employers around the country are now combining Medical Savings Accounts and managed care. Medical Savings Accounts are inconsistent with the traditional philosophy of HMOs. But efforts to make medicine cost-effective are natural allies of Medical Savings Accounts.
Is there a way to simultaneously cut the spending and solve the problems of the Medicare program? Many health policy analysts believe the answer is Medical Savings Accounts.
Congress can't balance the budget unless spiraling Medicaid costs are reined in, and an increasing number of people are convinced that the problems can't be solved in Washington. But can state governments succeed where the federal government has failed? Many are already trying by experimenting in new and innovative ways.
In the U.S., we spend too much on hospital care and too little on drugs. Billions of dollars are wasted every year because patients and their doctors choose expensive, hospital-based therapies instead of more cost-effective drug therapies.
For the last several years, some critics of the American health care system have claimed that life expectancy is a good indicator of the quality of a country's health care system. If they are right, you should be indifferent about having your surgery in Cuba or in the United States because the two countries have the same life expectancy, 75.6 years.
The Veterans Administration runs the largest and least efficient hospital system in the country.
The government of California would pay for most health care through higher taxes, requiring the state's entire health care system to be remade by state government and micromanaged by a new, all-powerful state health commissioner.
Medical Savings Accounts are being attacked on the left, on the right and by special interests. The most vocal criticism comes from large insurance companies who fear a huge loss of premium income if MSA deposits are tax free. Most of the criticisms are bogus.
Medical Savings Accounts are being attacked on the left, on the right and by special interests. The most vocal criticism comes from large insurance companies who fear a huge loss of premium income if MSA deposits are tax free. Most of the criticisms are bogus.
The Michel-Lott plan builds on key reform ideas developed by the National Center for Policy Analysis. However, some benefits of the reforms would be diluted by unnecessary insurance regulations that should be dropped from the proposal.
A group of moderate Republicans and Democrats in the Senate has proposed a so-called mainstream health care plan.
Unlike the Clinton plan and the versions of that plan sponsored by the House Democratic leadership, the House compromise bill promised to solve problems by empowering individuals and leaving markets free to solve problems. Unfortunately, it fails to deliver on that promise.
The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) has endorsed the two latest versions of the Clinton health care plan: bills by Senator George Mitchell (D-ME) and Representative Richard Gephardt (D-MO). In doing so, AARP has betrayed its members.
One reason why there is so much uncertainty about the real cost of health reform proposals before Congress is that in most bills the costs are hidden.
Senator Kennedy and others argue that Hawaii's more centralized control of the health care system has led to a better distribution of physicians and more effective utilization of resources, hospital beds and technology. However, there is evidence to dispute this.
The high taxes the Mitchell bill would impose – both directly and indirectly (through cost shifting) – would lower investment, worker productivity and employee wages.
The Clinton plan and its Gephardt and Mitchell reincarnations attempt to solve a minor problem (eliminating uncompensated care for the uninsured) by making a major problem (uncompensated care under government programs) even worse.
The Dole proposal avoids most of the bad features of the Clinton health care plan and its various derivatives. A true market-based alternative, it includes many of the reform ideas developed by the National Center for Policy Analysis. However, the proposal's unnecessary, counterproductive insurance regulations need to be replaced, and details of its positive reforms can be significantly improved. This backgrounder discusses what is right in the Dole plan, why it is superior to Clinton-style plans and how it can be improved.
It's in our self-interest, says Hillary Rodham Clinton, to force uninsured "freeloaders" and their employers to buy health insurance whether they want to or not. Is that argument correct?
Does it make sense to give the government control over everyone's health insurance in order to increase the insured population by a couple of percentage points?
Both the Congress and the American people seem to have already rejected President Clinton's health reform blueprint. A large bloc of voters, perhaps a majority, is vehemently opposed to the plan. Many others are confused or skeptical. In Congress, staunch supporters of the president's proposal are rare.
President Clinton has offered the nation a dramatic health reform plan that promises universal coverage, benefits as comprehensive as those of Fortune 500 company plans and lower costs. The actual results of the plan, however would be quite different from the promises.
Managed competition would make no sense unless most health care were delivered in health maintenance organizations (HMOs), employing the techniques of managed care. That is why most proponents of managed competition oppose traditional insurance and fee-for-service medicine. They want physicians to become agents of bureaucracies rather than agents of their patients, and they want medical practice to be determined more by computer-generated mandates than by the physician's best judgment.
This study examines the most serious health policy problems facing Texas and analyzes the best and worst proposals for state health care reform.