Publications -- Health

Jun 15, 2006

BA #559 – Consumer-Driven Health Care Spurs Innovation in Physician Services

Consumer-driven health care (CDHC) is leading to new models for the delivery of medical services. Consumer-driven health plans generally include personal accounts — such as Health Reimbursement Arrangements or Health Savings Accounts — that allow patients to directly control some of their health care dollars. Because they have a financial stake in their own spending, patients have incentives to shop for the best price and to make tradeoffs between convenience and cost.

Jun 15, 2006

BA #558 – How to Create a Competitive Insurance Market

Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) has introduced the Health Care Choice Act (H.R. 2355), which would increase access to individual health coverage by allowing insurers licensed to sell policies in one state to offer them to residents of any other state. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) has introduced a companion bill in the Senate (S. 1015). If enacted, the law would create a more competitive, nationwide health insurance market.

Mar 29, 2006

BA #548 – Transparency in Health Care

Consumers may soon be able to shop for health care the way they shop for groceries. But in order for patients to become savvy shoppers in the medical marketplace, they must be able to discover what things cost and to compare prices as well as value. Today, that's not easy.

Mar 21, 2006

BA #546 – Health Savings Accounts: Answering the Critics, Part III

Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) allow patients to manage some of the dollars spent on their health care. Critics say that giving health care consumers the ability to control their own spending will have dire consequences. The evidence shows otherwise.

Mar 21, 2006

BA #545 – Health Savings Accounts: Answering the Critics, Part II

Consumer-driven health care (CDHC) allows patients to manage some of the dollars they spend on health care. Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are a mechanism for them to do so.

Mar 21, 2006

BA #544 – Health Savings Accounts: Answering the Critics, Part I

Critics of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) have a litany of complaints. They are essentially the same complaints critics made a decade ago, at the dawn of the consumer-driven health care revolution. We now have evidence that consumer-driven health care works.

Mar 20, 2006

ST #284 – Medicaid Empire: Why New York Spends so much on Health Care for the Poor and Near Poor and How the System Can Be Reformed

Medicaid, the joint federal-state health care program for the poor and near poor, is the largest single expenditure by state governments today. At the rate the program is growing, it is on a course to consume the entire budgets of state governments in just a few decades.

Mar 14, 2006

BA #543 – Personal and Portable Health Insurance

One of the peculiarities of the U.S. health care system is that the health plan most of us have is not a plan that we chose; rather, it was selected by our employer. Even if we like our health plan, we could easily lose coverage because of the loss of a job, a change in employment or a decision by our employer. These problems affect all Americans, but have the greatest impact on older workers, who are more likely to have health problems.

Mar 14, 2006

BA #542 – Bush's Answer to Hillarycare

In his State of the Union address, President Bush devoted only a few sentences to health policy. But as the president was speaking, the administration released a five-page document describing health policy proposals so sweeping and bold, they are comparable in scope to Hillary Clinton's proposals of a decade ago. If the White House devotes the energy and political capital necessary to see them through, these reforms will leave a lasting mark on social policy in this country.

Jan 30, 2006

Making Health Insurance Portable

One of the strange features of the U.S. health care system is that the health plan most of us have is not a plan that we chose; rather, it was selected by our employer.