Hospitals account for a significant amount of health care’s enormous 550 million metric ton greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint. That is largely because hospitals are remarkably energy inefficient.
In 2023, just 37 — substantially less than 1 percent — were Energy Star certified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for Scope 1 and 2 energy efficiency. The innumerable and unrelenting health harms associated with GHG emissions disproportionately harm Medicare and Medicaid b...
healthcare
There are better ways to address drug costs than importing socialized medicine
Today, Johnson & Johnson, Merk and Bristol Myers Squibb are testifying in front of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. Listening to what the drugmaker executives have to say about medicine prices would ordinarily be a valuable exercise. But under the proverbial interrogation lamp of HELP Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the proceedings will be more akin to the Salem witch trials.
The committee hearing is set to focus on price disc...
US hospitals receive billions in funding — but where does it actually go?
Most American hospitals were established as either municipal or charitable organizations, with a commitment to providing free and discounted medical care to the poor. This responsibility is now recognized in federal law, aided by substantial public subsidies.
However, the magnitude of state and federal subsidies to support hospitals now substantially exceeds the value of “uncompensated care” that facilities provide to the uninsured.
As a new Manhat...
10 years in, the Medicaid expansion is failing the neediest Americans
As we mark the 10th anniversary of the first expansions of states’ Medicaid programs under the Affordable Care Act, which began in January 2014, it’s time to think again about the effects on the most vulnerable in our society.
Consider, for example, what is unfolding in North Carolina.
Last month, it became the 40th state to expand Medicaid under the ACA, opening the program to an estimated 600,000 adults who, while relatively low-income earners,...
In 2023, progress against physician-assisted suicide
As we glance back at 2023, opponents of physician assisted suicide can reflect on a year marked by unwavering opposition and quiet victories in our fight. While the legislative landscape was busy with bills introduced in more than a dozen states, it has been more than two years since any new assisted suicide laws were enacted in the U.S.
These victories are not a sign of surrender by suicide proponents, but rather a sign of the persuasiveness of the arguments against it and th...
Fee-for-service healthcare is making us sick
More than 1.3 billion adults globally will have diabetes by 2050, according to a study released this year. In the U.S., our current health system — which is structured around treatment, not prevention — is woefully unprepared to deal with this reality.
For over 150 years, the U.S. healthcare infrastructure has centered on symptoms, doctors and treatments — not on patients. From our data collection to our systems design and payment models, it’s more profitable to treat sick pat...
The Inflation Reduction Act’s harms go beyond drug pricing — they’re threatening your Medicare
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 ...
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...