Great Britain has provided yet another glimpse of the horrors to which patients are subjected under socialized medicine. The latest victims of the NHS are the hearing impaired: Patients across the country are waiting more than two years for a hearing aid, and up to five years to have old-fashioned equipment replaced by modern technology. And, for anyone out there [...]
This isn’t about health care, but I couldn’t resist a brief post about the consternation with which the “progressive” blogosphere has responded to Bill Kristol’s addition to the NYT stable of columnists.  Here’s a typical example: One of the world’s most prestigious news outlets has apparently given this thug space on the most valuable media real estate in existence. This is what [...]
The annual rise in group health plan costs, a major component of health care inflation, has stabilized according to Financial Week. The 6.1% rate is still way too high, but it is coming down: It is a big improvement from just a few years ago, when annual health plan increases were rising by double digits and employers despaired [...]
Japan has a “universal” health care system not unlike that which many faux-progressives advocate for the U.S. Like all government-controlled systems, it boasts a strict price control mechanism that produces provider shortages. As AP reports, such shortages can have tragic results for patients is dire need of care: An 89-year-old woman died after an ambulance crew spent two hours [...]
Today, I’m going to diverge from health care to address the tsunami of BS emanating from the media concerning the economy. The major “news” organizations are subjecting the public to a fictional narrative that portrays the economy as bad and getting worse. In reality, the economy is in far better shape than anyone could have [...]
That the latest version of Arnoldcare has been lambasted by both free-market and single-payer advocates suggests that the plan has serious problems. And it does indeed offer the worst of both worlds: heavy-handed government interference in the health care market and preservation of private insurance monopolies. But, being a hospital finance type, I was really taken aback by the proposed 4% tax [...]
I have said before that Ron Paul will never voluntarily give up his newfound notoriety, even after he is resoundingly rejected by Republican primary voters. He again made that clear last Sunday on Meet the Press.  Republican presidential hopeful Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) refused to rule out the possibility he may run as a third-party candidate during an appearance Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.� Like most [...]
At the Health Affairs blog, Sarah Dine affects mystification at the failure of this year’s SCHIP expansion effort: The failure to reauthorize a SCHIP program that allows states to continue the flexibility represented by the Republican frontrunners’ home states and indeed many of the fifty states remains one of the great political mysteries of the year. [...]
When dealing with the problem of medical overtreatment, ”progressive” policy wonks always manage to tiptoe around the elephant in the room: malpactice abuse. A typical example of this phenomenon can be found at Economist’s View. In a post about Shannon Brownlee’s book, Overtreated, Mark Thoma insinuates that the overtreatment problem is caused by greed: Essentially, the argument is that [...]
Harvard economist Greg Mankiw offers some useful observations on the zealotry with which ”progressive”  health care wonks push insurance mandates: Some analysts, when discussing health reform plans, make a big deal over the issue of insurance mandates. They suggest that it is crucial to have mandates to solve the adverse selection problem and that plans without mandates will not work. [...]
