National Center for Policy Analysis: History
Establishment of the Center for Health Policy Studies
Among all public policy institutes, the NCPA has uniquely focused on private alternatives to government regulation and control of healthcare throughout its history. Economist Milton Friedman, The Wall Street Journal and many other authorities credit NCPA research as the reason Congress repealed the Catastrophic Care Act of 1989 – the first repeal of a federal welfare program in 100 years. Sen. Phil Gramm and other congressional leaders acknowledge the NCPA's educational role in the defeat of the Clinton administration's first-term plan for a national healthcare system.
In 1983, the NCPA developed the concept of Medical Savings Accounts, or HSAs, and later helped launch the idea in South Africa, now capturing two-thirds of the market for private health insurance in that country. Our greatest public policy accomplishment is a provision in the new Medicare bill that makes HSAs available to 250 million Americans.
In addition, the NCPA was the first institute to:
- Propose privatizing Medicare with medical IRAs.
- Document the extent to which state mandated health insurance benefits are causing people to be priced out of the market for health insurance, a finding that has been confirmed by subsequent research of other scholars.
- Document the failings of national health insurance systems around the world.
- Propose a way of making health insurance personal and portable.