Daily Policy Digest
Health Issues
| Shifts in Coverage Status Tied to Emergency Room Use Adults who recently gained or lost health insurance were more likely to visit the emergency room than those continuously insured or uninsured... |
| Importance of the Individual Mandate to the Health Reform Law The disparity between the fines under the health reform law and insurance premiums will encourage people to wait until they're sick to buy insurance and cancel it when they're well, causing costs to skyrocket, says John C. Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis... |
| How to Replace the Health Reform Law To be credible, the replacement for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act must address in a plausible way the genuine problems with our system of financing health care... |
| The Road to IPAB The Independent Payment Advisory Board's attempt to lower rates to providers will drive more health care professionals out of the Medicare sphere and leave enrollees in a lurch to find care, says Devon Herrick, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis... |
| Drug Resales Get Scrutiny Federal lawmakers have discovered drug distributors set up additional and unnecessary middlemen in the supply chain between wholesalers and health care providers to inflate prices... |
| Medicaid Patients Go to Emergency Room More Often Nearly 40 percent of Medicaid patients visited a hospital emergency department during the previous year -- more than twice the portion of private insurance patients... |
| Who Will Be Able to Afford Health Insurance in the Future? Given recent trends, the employee contribution to a family health insurance premium plus out-of-pocket costs will comprise one half the household income by 2031 and total income by 2042... |
| Could Employer Dumping of Health Coverage Reduce the Deficit? In a new report, the Congressional Budget Office argues that dramatic increases in employers dumping employees into subsidized health insurance exchanges would reduce, not expand, the deficit... |
| Why America's Doctors Are Struggling to Make Ends Meet By 2013, only around a third of doctors in all specialties will own their own practices, down from about 43 percent in 2009 and nearly half in 2005... |
| Health Reform Cost Balloons The 10-year cost of the Affordable Care Act's core provisions to expand health insurance coverage has ballooned to $1.76 trillion from a projected $940 billion... |
