This health care reform bill passed late last night and soon to be signed into law is a seriously flawed piece of legislation, for it fails to achieve the goals of real health care reform. Now that it is essentially the law of the land, the country needs to work diligently at the federal and [...]

The greatest problem with the Senate health care bill is not that it does “too little” to help people. The problem is that the bill does too many terrible things to help all the bad actors. The Senate bill further entrenches the private health insurance system. It continues the terrible pattern of privatizing our social [...]

It seems that President Obama’s former senior health-care adviser, David Cutler, is following in the proud tradition of Jonathan Gruber by conveniently ignoring potentially huge cost-saving ideas to make Obama’s health care proposal sound better than it really is. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, David Cutler claims there have been 10 broad ideas offered [...]

The current Senate health care bill has a provision (Section 1332. Waiver for State Innovation (PDF)) that will allow states to opt out of the current reform structure if they can provide the same level of care for the same amount or cheaper with a different plan. Given how poorly designed the Senate bill is, [...]

The Obama administration, in its push to get the House to vote for the Senate’s health care reform bill unchanged, is pointing to the serious issue of lack of competition in the health insurance market as a powerful reason for reform. Obama’s health care proposal, however, no longer does much to actually solve the problem. [...]

Today, HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius met with the heads of the different private health insurance companies. The bigwigs had a message for the Obama Administration: Stop blaming the insurance companies for the high cost of health care. Ironically, in making their case, they delivered a powerful argument that a private health insurance system like ours [...]

One of the many big problems with the current crop of health care reform proposals is that they do not do enough to address cost control. If we are serious about addressing cost, one of the important tools available is a centralized provider reimbursement negotiator. It is an agency which negotiates or sets provider reimbursement [...]