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Where DOGE and the Tax Bill Intersect

Where DOGE and the Tax Bill Intersect

On the one hand, Elon Musk has been given a goal of reducing government waste by the Trump administration. On the other hand, congressional Republicans are desperate to find ways to cut spending in order to pay for a high-priority tax bill. The intersection of these two goals creates a rare opportunity to institute reforms that would be very hard to accomplish under ordinary circumstances. More.

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Free Market Solutions to Health Policy Challenges: A New Era Under Trump

Free Market Solutions to Health Policy Challenges: A New Era Under Trump

In this episode of Health Care News, host AnneMarie Schieber and health economist Devon Herrick tackle the latest health policy shifts under the Trump administration’s second term. They discuss the implications of executive orders impacting health care, including the shift away from gender identity mandates, the withdrawal from the World Health Organization, and the evolving role of artificial intelligence in medicine. Tune in to hear their insights on free-market approaches to health care reform, the challenges of bureaucracy, and the potential for innovation in drug development and patient care. Don’t miss this thoughtful analysis from a free-market perspective!

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Cutting Government Waste

Cutting Government Waste

There is a great deal of waste in our entitlement programs. And by cutting out waste, we can make these programs work better for the people who depend on them.
Take Social Security. Last year the agency said it has identified 2 million beneficiaries who have been overpaid. It has sent them “clawback” letters, demanding Uncle Sam’s money back. In some cases, the claims go back several decades, and the amounts can be more than $300,000. More

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Assessing the Biden Presidency

Assessing the Biden Presidency

If public opinion polls are the guide, Joe Biden has been the worst president since Richard Nixon. Here’s why that may be true. Most of the time, presidents have only a marginal impact on the economy. Consequently, they should be judged not on what happened on their watch, but what they did or didn’t do relative to what happened. The economy did well during the Biden years. But not because of Biden’s policies toward business enterprise. It was in spite of them. More.

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Cutting out Government Health Care Waste

Cutting out Government Health Care Waste

The trick is not to cut spending. The trick is to cut spending in a way that leaves people at the bottom of the income ladder at least as well off – if not better off – than they are today. Writing at Forbes, John Goodman asks: why not let Medicaid enrollees buy health care the way they buy food with Food Stamps? That would give beneficiaries the opportunity to access walk-in clinics and urgent care centers rather than going to the emergency room.

He also asks, why not let enrollees have an HSA from which they pay a modest month fees to direct primary care doctors, who provide 24/7 access to all primary care? Currently, when people enroll in Medicaid, their visits to the ER increase by 40%. All told, Goodman says we can reduce health care spending by $7 trillion over 10 years – with most of the gain going to taxpayers.

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Why We Need Health Insurance Companies

Why We Need Health Insurance Companies

Our health care system is replete with perverse incentives. If they are not checked, our premiums and taxes will consume ever more of our national income. Canada checks them by limiting resources.  Doctors must send their patients to the hospital for simple x-rays. And the country ranks 25th out of 29 developed countries on the number of MRI scanners per person. In the US, private health insurers perform the task – by requiring preauthorization for certain services and denying claims for medically unnecessary procedures. Despite some problems, our system works much better. More.

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Why Are So many People Angry at Health Insurers?

Why Are So many People Angry at Health Insurers?

Because of government regulation, no insurer in our health care system wants a sick person. No employer. No commercial insurer in the (Obamacare) marketplace. No Medicaid managed care plan. And no safety net institution. The exception is the Medicare Advantage program, where risk adjustment makes the healthy and the sick equally attractive from a financial point of view. Unique in our health care system, MA plans specialize in such chronic conditions as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc. These MA plans actually seek to enroll patients that conventional health insurance would like to avoid. More.

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What the FDA Gets Wrong About Drug Ads

What the FDA Gets Wrong About Drug Ads

The FDA wants ads to have more warnings about risks and side effects. RFK, Jr. wants to abolish the ads altogether. Yet, our most important health care problem is not that people are taking too many prescription drugs. They are taking too few. We get our highest return on money we spend on drugs (versus doctors, hospitals, etc.). We do not have too many ads. We have too few. More.

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How Medicare Causes Seniors to Overpay for Drugs

How Medicare Causes Seniors to Overpay for Drugs

This occurs for three reasons: traditional Medicare requires three separate insurance plans for comprehensive coverage; traditional Medicare drug plans are required to community rate, without adequate risk adjustment; and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) are able to calculate patients’ coinsurance based on list prices, rather than on the actual discounted prices the PBM pays the manufacturers. In addition, beneficiaries in all Medicare plans will pay more for drugs and drug insurance because the IRA removes more than $300 billion of government funding from Medicare Part D over 10 years—leaving the market with no alternative but to shift costs to beneficiaries. More.

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Who Should Pay for Really Expensive Drugs?

Who Should Pay for Really Expensive Drugs?

Although Big Pharma and big business agree on the end result (people get the lifesaving drugs they need), they don’t always agree on who should bear the bulk of the cost. Enter the politicians to tilt the scale. A bipartisan push would allow drug companies to sell brand-name drugs at monopoly prices for virtually all patients with employer-provided health insurance. The result would be higher drug company profits and lower employee wages. More.

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