Healthcare

When the Last Bastion Falls

By Justin Katz | July 14, 2009 |

On healthcare, as on several other issues, it’s long been my contention that the touted (but debatable) successes of other nations are heavily dependent about the United States of America being its different self. That’s one of the points worth taking from Peter Morici’s op-ed on healthcare reform: Americans subsidize health care globally by paying…

An Image and a Corrective on Healthcare and the Economy

By Justin Katz | July 14, 2009 |

Ben Stein presents an excellent image: True, by many metrics, the economy has stopped falling drastically, but we are still in a painful recession, large by postwar standards. The bank crises seem to have abated for now and Wall Street is paying itself fantastically well again, thank heavens, after being rescued with taxpayer money. But…

Who Isn’t Covered?

By Justin Katz | July 13, 2009 |

Here’s an interesting paragraph from a Mark Steyn piece in the current print edition of National Review: There have been two trends in U.S. health care over the last decade. On one hand, a lot of Americans have become, by any rational standard, overinsured: They get tested for things they’ll never get. On the other,…

A Cost to Racial Denial

By Justin Katz | July 8, 2009 |

Race is not purely a matter of hue. Evidence from sports aptitude to facial bone structure proves it to be so, and denying that fact in the name of racial harmony makes it more difficult to solidify the cultural holding that the differences don’t matter in a philosophical or legal context. It may also make…

Preparing to Stick It to Doctors

By Justin Katz | July 1, 2009 |

Listening to the federal conversation about healthcare “reform” as it takes shape, one notices that some of the problem, specifically with the shortage of primary care doctors, appears to have been the government’s handling of its own piece of the industry: The disparity results from Medicare-driven compensation that pays more to doctors who do procedures…

Something Not to Forget on Rising Healthcare Costs

By Justin Katz | June 30, 2009 |

There are more problems with our healthcare system than this allows, but Thomas Sowell’s point is well worth remembering: Just as medical care, houses, and cars were all cheaper when they lacked things that they have today, so medical care in other countries is cheaper when it lacks many things that are more readily available…

Taxing Health Care

By Marc Comtois | June 28, 2009 |

One idea that has been floated as part of comprehensive health care reform is to tax health care benefits as income. I recall Senator McCain’s plan contained such a provision for example. Well, it looks like the Senate is considering going with it, too. Except for union workers. The exception, which could make the proposal…

When the Government Faces Healthcare Reality

By Justin Katz | June 27, 2009 |

Put aside aspersions against health insurers, whether for-profit or (ahem) non-profit, because it simply isn’t credible to assume that government bureaucrats won’t be corrupt and selfish. What, then, will the government response be when it faces these forces as a (or the) national healthcare financier: “We understand that many of our members are suffering in…

Who’s the Boss of Primary-Care Doctors?

By Justin Katz | June 17, 2009 |

I’ve read the editorial several times, and it still isn’t clear to me how or why the Projo writers avoided mentioning the problem of liability insurance for primary-care doctors. Shortly after I moved to Tiverton and found a nice local doctor to visit, he packed up and left the state for sunnier climes. My understanding…

“The Federal Government … Is the Health Care Equivalent of Bigfoot”

By Monique Chartier | June 16, 2009 |

Fred Thompson pointed out this afternoon that even the Chicago Tribune has doubts about President Obama’s proposed expansion of the federal government as a health care insurer. But we do know a few things about government-run health plans. We draw upon decades of experience with Medicare, the government’s plan for the elderly, and Medicaid, which…