October 30, 2008
A new website — Retirement Debate®, sponsored by The Wall Street Journal Online and Allstate Insurance — invites authors to post short essays on Social Security and Medicare issues. I recently posted a piece on what’s needed to restore financial balance to Medicare, available here.
October 23, 2008
On September 24th, I was at the Heritage Foundation with state Medicaid officials and others discussing what states could do to improve how long-term care services are provided and financed. The session was organized by Dennis Smith of Heritage. Dennis was, until earlier this year, the head of the Medicaid program at the Centers for...
October 16, 2008
Last night, Senator Barack Obama looked straight into the camera and told the audience that, if they wanted to keep their employer-sponsored health plans, they could. A nice selling point for his proposal, that. But it’s not true. The Lewin Group, an independent health policy consulting firm, estimates that 22 million workers and...
October 8, 2008
In Tuesday’s Washington Post, Ruth Marcus joined a chorus of columnists offering their views in recent days on the health-care plans of the two presidential candidates. It may surprise some supporters of John McCain to find out her piece was not entirely one-sided. She offered some faint praise for the potential of Senator...
October 8, 2008
Of late, Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden have been throwing rocks at Senator John McCain’s health-care plan. They have called it “risky,” claiming it would destabilize insurance for those workers who have coverage through their jobs. They have also suggested workers would end up paying more under McCain’s...
October 3, 2008
Joe Biden: Distorting the facts. During the vice presidential debate yesterday between Senator Joe Biden and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the Democratic candidate repeated several misleading and outright deceptive arguments about the McCain health care plan that the McCain campaign needs to take on, and soon. At a minimum, Senator McCain...
September 26, 2008
Last week, the White House Writers Group, among others, sponsored a health care “summit” in Orlando, Florida. Among the presenters at the meeting was Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, who spoke in his capacity as the Business Roundtable’s lead executive on consumer health and retirement issues (Verizon’s General...
September 12, 2008
Robert Samuelson’s September 10th column in the Washington Postshould be read by every health care analyst in Washington. He makes several important points that run counter to conventional wisdom. For starters, he argues that the urgent problem today is cost escalation, not coverage. Samuelson points to new data showing health care...
September 11, 2008
The Heritage Foundation sponsored an event yesterday called “The Future of Medicare Advantage,” at which I was invited to make some remarks (video and slides below). Medicare Advantage allows beneficiaries to get their health coverage through private insurance options, such as HMOs orPPOs, rather than through the...
September 5, 2008
The Obama health care plan would not work as advertised, as I’ve noted before on this blog. The Democratic presidential campaign likes to say the Obama plan would build on the employer-based health insurance system. But, in reality, key provisions would swell the ranks of public insurance enrollees and undermine the viability of...