Fix Health Care Policy

States are far better equipped than the federal government to address increasingly complex and serious health care workforce issues. But Obamacare swells the costs and role of the federal government, ignoring the critical role that states should play as a consequence of their existing oversight of key workforce areas. Click here to read about how Congress is, once again, committing the states to unfunded and underfunded federal mandates.

Tags: ObamaCare, physicians, PPACA, state health reform

States should not remain silent or complacent about the new Medicaid provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Instead, as Heritage expert Nina Owcharenko writes, states should push back and forge ahead with transformative reforms that would fix the broken Medicaid program, starting with a comprehensive assessment of each state’s specific needs and followed by actions to maximize existing authority to pursue market-based reforms and demand new flexiblity from federal officials.  To learn more about how states can chart the path forward in Medicaid reform, click here.

Tags: Medicaid reform, ObamaCare, PPACA, state health reform

Implementation of the Massachusetts health care reform has largely failed to address the needs of small businesses and their employees. As other states take up health care reform under the implementation deadlines of Presi­dent Barack Obama’s health care law, they would be wise to implement health reforms that best address the needs of their states, including their small business communities. States should eliminate counterproductive health care mandates and promote market choice and competition, which will help to control the cost of pro­viding coverage for the employer and help to provide affordable, quality coverage for employees.  To read more, click here.

Tags: employer mandates, Massachusetts, small business, state health reform

Obamacare is on the march, and state policymakers must decide by 2014 how they will respond to this encroachment on states’ rights to control health insurance markets. Utah has been on the reform path since 2005, creating a system which gives its workers the freedom to choose among many health plans instead of remaining tied to the one-size-fits-all approach dictated by Washington.  Click here for five lessons learned from Utah’s experience.

Tags: defined contribution, ObamaCare, state health reform, utah health exchange

Enormous expansion of federal power will result from passage of “Obamacare”, with far-reaching effects on the traditional roles and authority of states—and on the freedoms of American citizens. Former Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Dennis Smith explains what states should do to protect their historic authority—and their citizens—from this power grab of one-sixth of the American economy.

Tags: federalism, health care reform, ObamaCare, state health reform

In  sharp contrast to the recent federal health care overhaul, Utah is enacting its own version of health care reform which promises to increase the number of employers offering insurance, reduce the number of uninsured, provide true coverage portability, increase competition among insurers and health care providers, and provide better value to patients and consumers.  Utah’s approach serves as an example for other states to enact patient-centered health care reform.  To learn more, click here.

Tags: health care reform, insurance market reform, patient centered health care, state health reform, uninsured, utah health exchange

With Democrats’ eyes focused on increasing the federal government’s power in the health sector, the possibility of state-level health reform is getting overlooked. However, as Dr. Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution and Dr. Stuart Butler of The Heritage Foundation have written, “…measures to energize state experimentation within a federal-state framework based on clear national goals will achieve two objectives: it will extend coverage in the near term, and it will advance the date at which coordinated national action is possible.” The authors explain the benefits of federal encouragement of state initiatives:

“-Breaks political deadlocks. [T]here are deep disagreements among reasonable and committed people—including between us—about what the best practical approach is. That makes it very difficult to get political support for coherent, workable action even among those who broadly agree on goals. Our strategy is designed as a political device to break that deadlock by making it possible to launch a variety of bold approaches quickly, with the more successful initiatives helping to build consensus for more sweeping action.

-Allows for glitches in a limited arena. [G]iven the complexity of current U.S. health care financing, it is likely that well-intentioned reformers will make mistakes. Eventual national action will emerge with fewer glitches if those mistakes are made on the limited stage of individual states than if a full-blown national plan must be designed in advance.

-Can accommodate states’ variations. [W]e believe that any national system would have to accommodate considerable state-to-state variation, at least for many years. If that is so, then why not begin with a system that incorporates state variation as an instrument to spur continuous improvement amid uncertainty and disagreement about the ideal solution?”

The federal government could take steps to facilitate state innovation:

“If the federal government were to encourage states in tangible ways—in particular, by a process that would allow states to apply for major alterations in existing federal law and programs within their borders and perhaps that offered modest financial assistance—we believe that there would be many more creative state proposals. We think that this approach would improve understanding of what works and what does not and would accelerate the search for the best way forward.”

Tags: federalism, state health reform