The Inflation Reduction Act’s drug price-setting provisions have drawn significant rebuke from experts who argue that many clinical programs will ultimately be killed or never get started as a result of the act’s deleterious effects on innovation. What isn’t getting attention is how the law is reshaping Medicare in big ways.
Yes, Democrats have finally achieved their holy grail of being able to have the government set drug prices, and President Biden will certainly campaign ...
healthcare
The House just passed a long-needed health care price transparency measure
When I was pregnant with my second child, in the years following the passage of the Affordable Care Act, I went to the doctor for routine prenatal testing. Despite promises to the contrary, I had lost several health insurance plans during those years, and at least one while pregnant. At the doctor that day, my new deductible was so high that I paid full freight up-front for all my care.
The practice offered me two tests — one a new-fangled version of the old test. Wh...
Fix needed now: America’s long-term care financing system is broken
Nonprofit providers of aging services have been warning for decades that America’s system for financing long-term care is dangerously broken. The dedicated professionals serving older adults in nursing homes, home health agencies, hospice programs, and senior living communities have toiled side-by-side with families across the country to cobble together care and services for parents, friends, and neighbors—connecting the tattered pieces of our patchwork long-term care system in an effor...
Matthews: Trump’s right, ObamaCare sucks: Here’s why
Donald Trump recently asserted on Truth Social “Obamacare sucks!!!” He’s right. The Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) has failed to achieve any of President Barack Obama’s vaunted promises. Democrats know it, and yet they complain about the U.S. health care system’s problems and costs without ever acknowledging that’s ObamaCare. As we approach the law’s 10-year anniversary — it passed in 2010, but most insurance reforms started in 2014 — let’s revisit some of its failed promises...
Medicare Advantage is giving away billions to corporate insurers. It’s time we put a stop to it.
Physicians and policymakers are, in different ways, both responsible for the health and well-being of patients. While physicians care for patients to the best of their ability, policymakers ensure that the structures that make up the health care system are effective and equitable. Whenever and wherever there is a threat to these goals, both groups have a role to play in recognizing and combating it. That is why we are speaking out on the need to make fundamental changes to the Medicare ...
Biden turns ‘Godfather’ on prescription drugs
They say that wherever government gets involved, there are unintended consequences — results that most people who had initially cheered on government action hadn’t considered. But the cynic in me believes there are few truly unintended consequences — that most proposals are not goals, but only a stop along the way toward a larger objective.
As a former health policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, and as someone whose mother’s life was extended and improved by prescriptio...
Another health care enrollment period, still no dental care
On Nov. 1, people across the country began navigating the health care open enrollment process, a complex ritual that happens every year to secure health insurance. As a part of that process, individuals will inevitably encounter gaps and inconsistencies in coverage for services most of us understand to be essential. Among the services that aren’t covered for most adults — oral health care.
Over 20 years ago, former Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Donna Shalala, s...
The new House Speaker’s views on health topics
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We need a public option for pharmaceuticals
America is currently facing dual public health crises of record drug shortages and skyrocketing prices. Several critical medicines are in short supply, including at least 14 essential generic cancer drugs, ADHD treatments, antibiotics, and even children’s acetaminophen. Americans also spend more on prescription drugs per capita than people in any other country. A quarter of adults surveyed in 2022 said that they or a member of their household have not filled a prescription, cut pills in...
Government the single greatest obstacle to health care quality
Once again, it’s Health Care Quality Week, when researchers and activists turn to government to fix the many serious quality problems in the U.S. health sector. Yet whenever government inserts itself into health care, low quality is the inevitable result.
Government routinely mandates and subsidizes low-quality health care while blocking high-quality care. Whether it’s terrible health insurance, poor-quality care, or lack of quality innovations, government is not the solution ...