A Bitter Pill
William S. Smith
National Review Online, 07/08/11 If revenge is a dish best served cold, the pharmaceutical industry may soon be experiencing a Siberian winter. Reports on Capitol Hill indicate that during debt-ceiling talks with the White House, some congressional Republicans are offering to institute Medicare Part D rebates as a way to raise revenue. These would hit the pharmaceutical industry hard — and as satisfying as that would be for the GOP, they should be opposed on solidly conservative grounds. Read more...

HSAs Continue Strong Growth, Despite Challenges
Roy Ramthun
CDHC Solutions, 07/02/11 The big news in the world of consumer-driven health was the long-awaited release of the 2011 enrollment figures for health plans that make people eligible to open health savings accounts (HSA) on June 14. A heartfelt thank you to America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) for continuing to conduct this research each year. It is the "gold standard" for HSA enrollment data which those of us who follow the industry eagerly await each year. Read more...

The Myth of Medicare’s “Low Administrative Costs”
Avik Roy
Forbes, 06/30/11 Many people wrongly believe that Medicare is more efficient than private insurance; that view was often stated by champions of Obamacare during the debate preceding the law’s enactment. These advocates argued that Medicare’s administrative costs — the money it spends on expenses other than patient care — are just 3% of total costs, compared to 15% to 20% in the case of private, employer-sponsored insurance. But these figures are highly misleading, for several reasons. Read more...

Administration Halts Survey of Making Doctor Visits
Robert Pear
The New York Times, 06/28/11 The Obama administration said Tuesday that it had shelved plans for a survey in which “mystery shoppers” posing as patients would call doctors’ offices to see how difficult it was to get appointments.“We have determined that now is not the time to move forward with this research project,” the Department of Health and Human Services said late Tuesday. The decision, after criticism from doctors and politicians, represents an abrupt turnabout. On Sunday night, officials at the health department and the White House staunchly defended the survey as a way to measure access to primary care, and insisted that it posed no threat to privacy. Read more...

An ObamaCare Legal Precedent?
David B. Rivikin Jr. and Lee A. Casey
The Wall Street Journal, 06/28/11 The Supreme Court's most important ruling this year may have been its unanimous decision in Bond v. United States, which held that individual citizens can challenge federal statutes when they encroach on authority the Constitution reserves to the states. The decision, authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, has far-reaching implications—especially for the government's efforts to defend ObamaCare. Read more...

Klein’s F on Part D
James C. Capretta
National Review Online, 06/21/11 At the time of its enactment in 2003, the Medicare drug benefit — known as Medicare Part D — had many critics. Some said the program, which is built on consumer choice and vigorous competition among private plans, wouldn’t work, because the private plans would decline to participate without a guaranteed share of the market. Others said the beneficiaries wouldn’t sign up for the voluntary benefit, because the competitive structure would be too complex to navigate. Still others said the program would explode in costs without government-imposed price controls. Read more...

No, You Can't Keep Your Health Insurance
Grace-Marie Turner
The Wall Street Journal, 06/08/11 ObamaCare will lead to a dramatic decline in employer-provided health insurance -- with as many as 78 million Americans forced to find other sources of coverage. This disturbing finding is based on my calculations from a survey by McKinsey & Company. The survey, published this week in the McKinsey Quarterly, found that up to 50% of employers say they will definitely or probably pursue alternatives to their current health-insurance plan in the years after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act takes effect in 2014. An estimated 156 million non-elderly Americans get their coverage at work, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Read more...

Characteristics of the CDHP Population, 2005-2010
Paul Fronstin Employee Benefit Research Institute, 05/11 This article examines the population with a CDHP and how it differs from the population with traditional health coverage. Data from the 2005?2007 EBRI/Commonwealth Fund Consumerism in Health Care Survey and the 2008?2010 EBRI/MGA Consumer Engagement in Health Care Survey are used for the analysis. Differences between the population with traditional coverage and high-deductible health plan (HDHP) enrollees are also examined. Differences discussed in the remainder of this article are statistically significant. Read more...

White House Waivers Make a Splash
Grace-Marie Turner The Washington Times, 05/26/11 In a bizarre near-admission that the so-called "Affordable Care Act" is anything but, the White House issued a blog post defending the waves of waivers it has been issuing that exempt employers "from the annual limit provision of the law if it would disrupt access to existing insurance arrangements or adversely affect premiums, causing people to lose coverage." In other words, Obamacare would cause people to lose their insurance coverage or cause costs to go up if they don't grant these waivers. Wasn't Obamacare supposed to do just the opposite? Read more...

Brain cancer treatment: A life extended, savings depleted
Charlie Fidelman The Gazette, 05/25/11 Alice Thepen was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of brain cancer that surgery could not fix. Her doctors gave Thepen six weeks to live – but there was one hope, a new cancer medication approved by Health Canada in 2005. Unfortunately for Thepen, 53, of Montreal, bevacizumab – better known by its brand name Avastin – is not covered in Quebec. Oncologists say they are reluctant to tell their patients about new treatment options – when a medication is not publicly funded and the patient has no recourse to private insurance – for fear of creating panic. Read more...

Obama skirts rule of law to reward pals, punish foes
Michael Barone The Examiner, 05/24/11 Question: What do the following have in common? Eckert Cold Storage Co., Kerly Homes of Yuma, Classic Party Rentals, West Coast Turf Inc., Ellenbecker Investment Group Inc., Only in San Francisco, Hotel Nikko, International Pacific Halibut Commission, City of Puyallup, Local 485 Health and Welfare Fund, Chicago Plastering Institute Health & Welfare Fund, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, Teamsters Local 522 Fund Welfare Fund Roofers Division, StayWell Saipan Basic Plan, CIGNA, Caribbean Workers' Voluntary Employees' Beneficiary Health and Welfare Plan. Answer: They are all among the 1,372 businesses, state and local governments, labor unions and insurers, covering 3,095,593 individuals or families, that have been granted a waiver from Obamacare by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. Read more...

Obamacare Tax Subsidies: Bigger Deficit, Fewer Taxpayers, Damaged Economy
Paul Winfree The Heritage Foundation, 05/24/11 The number of Americans who pay federal income taxes has been shrinking every year, with a recent report suggesting that less than half of American households owed federal income taxes in 2009. One of the key components of Obamacare, tax subsidies to purchase federally approved health insurance, will substantially increase the number of people who are not paying for government services and thus have a lower incentive to be concerned about record-breaking government spending. These tax subsidies, which take effect in 2014, will also harm the economy by increasing the national deficit and by creating huge marginal tax rates that will discourage productivity for many households. Obamacare’s tax subsidies are one of the primary reasons to repeal Obamacare. This Heritage Foundation analysis lays out the facts. Read more...

States Need Tools to Stem Medicaid's Red Ink
Grace-Marie Turner The Daily Caller, 05/24/11 This week, Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC), Tom Coburn (R-OK), and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) introduced legislation to reform Medicaid by giving states more flexibility and control and creating new incentives to improve the quality of care in the program. They start by giving governors their first request -- repealing the maintenance of effort requirement that forces them to keep Medicaid enrollment high even as health spending is squeezing other state services. Their "Medicaid Improvement and State Empowerment Act" would give "health grants" to states to provide coverage for low-income Americans and give states more flexibility to provide care that suits the needs and resources of their states and not the dictates of Washington bureaucrats. Read more...

Republicans and Mediscare
The Wall Street Journal, 05/23/11 Underneath Newt Gingrich's rhetoric last week about Paul Ryan's "right-wing social engineering" was a common anxiety about the politics of Medicare: Is this the right moment for entitlement reform? Did the GOP endanger its House majority by giving Democrats a campaign strategy for 2012, and is Mr. Ryan's proposal really too "radical" after all? Read more...

ObamaCare Repeal Means Waivers for Everybody
Grace-Marie Turner The Washington Examiner, 05/22/11 There are now 1,372 companies, labor unions and states that have applied for and been granted waivers from an early provision of the health overhaul law that says health policies must provide at least $750,000 a year in insurance protection. And one-fourth of the latest batch of waivers went to restaurants, spas, and other businesses in Rep. Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district. Clearly, if you have friends at the White House and pay your dues, you, too, can be exempt from Obamacare's rules. Obamacare is barely in place, and we see administration officials using it to pick winners and losers based upon political favorites. The waivers are just one more reminder of why Obamacare will not stand. Read more...

Next Steps on Medicare Reform Now
Mark B. McClellan The Hill, 05/20/11 While there is broad agreement that we can no longer afford a delay in addressing the quality and cost challenges facing Medicare and our health system, differences on views about the solution run deep. Supporters of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) emphasize further steps in reforming traditional Medicare payments and in how healthcare is regulated, while critics of the legislation emphasize more choice, flexibility and responsibility for patients. My own belief is that major steps in both provider and consumer reforms are needed to work together to support better care at a lower cost — real healthcare reform. Read more...

Rep. Erik Paulsen vows to revamp FDA and cut medical device tax
Brad Allen MinnPost, 05/20/11 Minnesota’s 3rd District congressman, Erik Paulsen, who co-chairs the congressional Med Tech caucus, has an ambitious legislative agenda that would have a big impact on the industry. He said he is pushing for legislation to: 1) “Modernize” the Food and Drug Administration; 2) Block implementation of a $20 billion tax on medical devices; 3) And make the corporate research and development tax credit permanent. Read more...

How We Would Cut America's Debt
The Washington Post, 05/20/11 With U.S. debt projected to grow more than 275 percent by 2035, the nonpartisan Peter G. Peterson Foundation asked six think tanks to find ways to address the nation’s long-term budget challenges. Below are details from plans that will be unveiled at a fiscal summit the foundation is hosting Wednesday in Washington. Read more...