FixHealthCarePolicy

Check Out New Obamacare Watchdog Site

www.obamacarewatch.org is a project of e21, a new think tank devoted to promoting sound, market-based economic policy.  The site pulls together evidence and analysis about the legislation, as well as relevant news items and commentary.  To learn more about Obamacare and its impact on America, be sure to check out this site!

Tags: health care reform, ObamaCare

Paul Krugman’s Health Care Fantasies

Paul Krugman just can’t stop spreading misinformation about Medicare and health insurance. Today he writes:

“In the individual insurance market, where people buy insurance directly rather than getting it through their employers, so much money goes into underwriting and other expenses that only around 70 cents of each premium dollar actually goes to care.”

This is just plain deceptive. The latest government figures available, from 2007 (see Table 12), show that 87.8 cents of every private health insurance premium dollar went to personal health care bills. And that remaining 12.2 cents? In addition to underwriting, administration, advertising, and (gasp!) profit, that 12.2 figure also includes some patient care that insurance companies provided themselves, like disease management and on-call toll-free nurse consultations. Krugman continues: (more…)

Tags: Medicare, Paul Krugman

Obamacare Does Cut Your Medicare Benefits

Yesterday at his AARP townhall, President Barack Obama claimed: “Nobody is talking about cutting Medicare benefits.” The July 28th Barack Obama needs to talk to the January 11th Barack Obama, who told ABC News:

We’ve got to eliminate programs that don’t work, and I’ll give you an example in the health care area. We are spending a lot of money subsidizing the insurance companies around something called Medicare Advantage, a program that gives them subsidies to accept Medicare recipients but doesn’t necessarily make people on Medicare healthier. And if we eliminate that and other programs, we can potentially save $200 billion out of the health care system.

Over one in five Medicare patients are enrolled in the Medicare Advantage plans that President Obama wants to completely cut. The benefits that over 10.5 million seniors would lose as a result of President Obama’s $200 billion in Medicare Advantage cuts include: (more…)

Tags: Medicare Advantage, Obama Health

In the Green Room: Rep. Camp

Rep. Dave Camp came to Heritage’s weekly bloggers briefing today. He made specific recommendations for health care reform that leaves the individual in charge and actually reduces costs without raising taxes. “80% of Americans have health care, and they don’t want to see it change in a fundamental way,” he said, adding that reform should include 3 things “that get the cost out of health care.” 1. Common-sense liability reform that reduces doctors’ need to practice defensive medicine. 2. Regulatory reform, so small businesses can group together in insurance pools. 3. Strong anti-fraud provisions.

Tags: Dave Camp, health insurance, heritage, regulation, small business, The Bloggers Briefing, tort lawyers