Healthcare
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has announced a universal health coverage plan that he intends to introduce in Congress next year. Here’s how the Los Angeles Times describes it…Wyden’s plan would require employers to continue contributing toward the cost of health coverage, but it would get them out the business of directly providing insurance and…
I remember during the recent RI Senate race that Senator-elect Whitehouse made much of Healthcare, and, in particular, the “broken” Medicare Part “D” program (prescription drugs). In fact, it was number one on his Health Care reform To-Do list. While he was holding “the hands of seniors who are desperately afraid that they’ll wake up…
Commenter “Andy” (no relation, as far as I know) tries to provide a signature example of how emergency room overuse contributes to rising healthcare costs…If an uninsured person has no primary care provider, they are less likely to seek help if they have (to take a silly example) a chronic stomach ache. Let’s say, for…
Megan McArdle of Asymmetrical Information challenges emerging conventional wisdom that using emergency rooms for routine medical care is a significant contributor to rising healthcare costs (h/t Instapundit)…It doesn’t seem to me that emergency room care for routine ailments is actually more expensive to provide than clinical care; it’s just that hospitals price it to cover…
There’s a good debate about healthcare going on in the comments section on last night’s gubernatorial debate that’s worth promoting into its own post…
To understand why universal coverage won’t work for a certain segment of healthcare delivery, consider a fictional extension to your auto insurance policy. You are given the option of buying “gasoline insurance”. Instead of paying for what you buy when you go to a gas station, you will pay a premium at the beginning of…
On Monday, I attended a candidate’s forum sponsored by the Rhode Island Health Center Association. Federal candidates Lincoln Chafee, Jon Scott, Rod Driver, Sheldon Whitehouse, Patrick Kennedy and James Langevin; and state candidates Don Carcieri, Reginald Centracchio, Charles Fogarty and Elizabeth Roberts all gave answers to questions about health care asked by moderator Bill “Rap…
For the last several weeks (at least), the Providence Journal editorial board has been strongly advocating for implementation of a “universal health care” system. Here is an example from the October 3 Projo…Until the United States puts everyone in the same risk pool (say, by extending Medicare to all), the situation will only worsen as…
At the Northeast Conservative Conference of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies held this past weekend at the Crowne Plaza in Warwick, I asked Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma what the Federal government’s first step towards reforming health insurance in America should be� Senator Tom Coburn: You can’t tinker around the edges anymore. We have…
At the start of this legislative session, Representatives Amy Rice (D-Portsmouth/Middletown/Newport), Arthur Handy (D-Cranston), Raymond Sullivan (D-Coventry/West Greenwich), Joseph Faria (D-Central Falls), and Joseph Almeida (D-Providence) introduced a bill that would have required corporations with 1,000 or more people to either pay a fixed percentage of payroll for their employees health care, or pay into…