Health Policy Matters Post

Duplicity and Deceit

The 2,074-page health reform bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid unveiled Wednesday is a maze of complexity and duplicity. It would spend $848 billion over 10 years to provide new subsidies for health coverage, increase taxes by $486 billion, and allegedly cut spending by $491 billion. All the while, it pretends to use this massive government expansion to cut the deficit.

Galen Institute Event

Save the Date: Politicians, Public Options, and Patients: What the Canadian Experience Teaches Us About Political Control of Health Care

What's New

A Health Freedom Contract With America
Grace-Marie Turner
The Orange County Register, Nov. 18, 2009

The Democratic leadership shoved its health reform bill through the House with a two-vote margin. The $1.3 trillion measure will impose crushing new regulations on the health marketplace and dramatically expand the size and the scope of the government. It's time for lawmakers to stop insisting on a major overhaul of the system and reset the debate. They can begin with ideas that will empower individuals and families to take control of their health care decisions and leverage the power of market competition to lower health costs.

Learning the Wrong Lessons from the Failure of ClintonCare
Grace-Marie Turner
Sphere.com, 11/13/09

Pushing a big government health reform plan the public doesn't want can be hazardous to a political party's health. That's the lesson Democrats should have learned from the 1993-94 health reform debate and the 1994 elections. Instead, Democrats mistakenly believe they were tossed out of power in the 1994 elections because they failed to pass sweeping reform legislation. Former President Clinton told Senate Democrats just that on Tuesday, warning that failure to pass a health reform bill this year would be the worst political outcome for them.

What's Next After PelosiCare?

Speaker Pelosi and President Obama are declaring political victory for getting their health reform bill through Congress just before the stroke of midnight on Saturday, but they’ve gone against the will of the American people who believe overwhelmingly, and correctly, that it would increase their health costs, threaten the quality of care they receive, and lead to a flood of unfunded entitlement spending.

AARP’s Tacit Endorsement of Medicare Cuts Line Its Pockets, But Shortchanges Seniors
Grace-Marie Turner
Chicago Tribune, Nov. 5. 2009

Clearly something must be up with AARP. Why else would the nation's largest lobbying organization, sworn to protect the interests of senior citizens, watch silently as Congress plans to cut Medicare spending by $400 billion to pay for its health reform legislation? Could it be that the interests of seniors and AARP are not exactly aligned?

Here’s An Idea: Why Not Reform Medicaid First?
Grace-Marie Turner
The Washington Examiner, Nov. 5, 2009

In its efforts to expand access to health insurance, Congress is planning to add millions more people to Medicaid -- already the largest health plan in the country. The government has controlled Medicaid for nearly 45 years, and the program has enormous problems with cost, quality, and access. Rather than expanding Medicaid, Congress should start by reforming it -- now.