
Linda Gorman’s Commentaries

The $3.5T Spending Mistake
Congressional Democrats are proposing to spend an enormous amount of taxpayer dollars on what the New York Times calls a “cradle to the grave” addition to U.S. social welfare. When budgeting shenanigans are ignored, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the full cost is not the $3.5 trillion that has been widely advertised, but at least $5.0 trillion and possibly as much as $5.5 trillion.

Gorman: US Hospitals are Safer
A frequent criticism of US hospitals is the charge of excessive adverse medical events, sometimes leading to avoidable deaths. How do our hospitals compare to hospitals in national health care systems? Quite well. The percent of patients who experience an adverse event is twice as high in Canada, three times as high in Britain and four times as high in New Zealand.

If The Court Strikes Down Obamacare, How Bad Would That Be?
This article was coauthored by Linda Gorman, director of health care at the Independence Institute in Denver, Colorado.

Gorman in The Hill: Trump’s Drug Plan Wrong Rx
The Trump administration wants to use an average of the drug prices paid by other countries to limit what Medicare Part B pays for some drugs. This is a bad idea.

Linda Gorman Study: Obamacare Dollars Wasted
The percent of the population with private health insurance actually declined during the eight years of the Obama presidency, according to a study by health economist Linda Gorman.

Gorman: Obamacare has been extremely wasteful
The federal government spent $341 billion from 2014 through 2016 on subsidizing individual coverage so that people would buy it (Not counting the money spent on state and federal exchanges).

Gorman in The Hill: Doctor Incentives Rx is Failing
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has voted to recommend scrapping the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System because it “cannot succeed.”

Gorman in Forbes: Will Tax Reform Kill People?
You know you are in the silly season when the charges against sensible tax reform become more and more outrageous. The silliest and most outrageous is based on this causal reasoning: The Republican tax measure repeals the Obamacare mandate, requiring people to purchase health insurance; without the mandate, fewer people will insure; and without insurance, more people will die.

Gorman in The Hill: States are bilking Uncle Sam with Medicaid scams
Congress has decided to stop forcing federal taxpayers to subsidize people who live under state governments intent on levying excessive income taxes. Now, how about ending federal subsidies rewarding states that tax the heck out of health care?

Congress Could Improve Health Care by Reforming the False Claims Act
In a new Independence Institute working paper on the use and misuse of the False Claims Act (FCA), attorneys Mark W. Pearlstein and Laura McLane explain how an 1863 statute written to expose and punish Civil War contractors who billed for gunpowder and supplied kegs full of sawdust raises costs and threatens access to medical care.