The reason the United States spends so much more on health care than the rest of the world is not because Americans tend to consume significantly more health care services. The problem is almost entire that we pay dramatically more for the exact same service. The data is overwhelmingly clear but the point is rarely [...]

While in Israel Mitt Romney praised that country’s high quality, low cost health care system. This resulted in a predictable round of mockery from people pointing out that Israel’s heavily government controlled system is exactly the type of “socialism” Romney claims would destroy freedom and economic success if implemented in America. From Ezra Klein: “Our [...]

The day has finally arrived. After years of debate, the long wait will soon be over. At around 10 am Eastern time when the Supreme Court speaks we should finally know the fate of the Affordable Care Act. Today is the last day of the Supreme Court’s session which means they should be releasing their [...]

To bring New York into compliance with the Affordable Care Act, Governor Andrew Cuomo had to create the new exchange in his state through executive order. From the New York Times: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, stepping into the national debate over President Obama’s health care law, used his executive power on Thursday to carry out one of [...]

Nine medical specialty boards are recommending that doctors perform fewer of the 45 most common tests and procedures as part of the Choosing Wisely campaign created by the ABIM Foundation. Procedures that should be cut back include CT scans for people who have only fainted, stress test imaging for people with no history of cardiac [...]

It is basically the position of the Obama administration that the group health insurance market currently “works.” Administration officials have repeatedly stated things to that effect, and this is why the Affordable Care Act doesn’t change much about the group market. This creates a logical problem for the administration when it tries to argue that [...]

I think nothing better illustrates how poorly the oral arguments went for the Obama administration today than this exchange where Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. tried to claim the individual mandate to buy insurance is not actually a government “purchase mandate.” From the transcripts: JUSTICE SCALIA: General Verrilli, you -you could say that about buying [...]

In addition to the individual mandate being extremely unpopular, opinions about the entire Affordable Care Act have remained negative and been trending downward. The Kaiser Family Foundation poll found 44 percent view the law unfavorably while just 37 percent now view it favorably. From Kaiser: While the trend is very slight and not perfect, looking [...]

If you actually wanted to reduce health care spending you need to reduce how much we are actually paying for health care products and services. Not only do we spend way more than the rest of the industrialized world on administrative costs, we also pay way more for the exact same drugs and treatments. Forcing [...]

Robert J. Samuelson writes an extremely disappointing  and misleading article about health care policy in today’s Washington Post. The column starts out fine with Samuelson looking at the basic OECD data that shows America spends dramatically more on health care than any other industrialized country on earth but doesn’t get better health outcomes as a [...]