For the first time, President Obama has backed moving the new health care law’s waiver for state innovation from 2017 to 2014, when most parts of the affordable care act go into effect. From the New York Times: Senior administration officials said Mr. Obama would reveal to the National Governors Association in a speech on [...]

It is not surprising given Jonathan Gruber’s strong support for an individual mandate and his prominent role in both “Romneycare” and “Obamacare” that he is working hard to defend the idea with a new paper for the Center for American Progress attacking “alternatives” to his preferred policy. Overall, I find his case weak and extremely [...]

Even though it has been almost a year since health care reform was passed, the concerned industry groups are still donating millions to members of Congress. From the Washington Post: While it is well-known that health-care and health-insurance providers and companies donated heavily while the bill was being drafted, a new study of campaign spending [...]

The size of the individual mandate in the health care bill is very modest, especially compared to the cost of health insurance in America. The penalty is whatever is higher $695 a year or 2.5 percent of income and the law also lacks any enforcement mechanism. Given how modest the actual cost of the individual [...]

Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Scott Brown (R-MA) have introduced a two-page bill to reform the new health care law that would given states more flexibility in trying alternatives health care systems by moving up the start date from 2017 to 2014. While their legislation would basically change only one word in the Patient Protection [...]

One of my strongest hopes is that everyone in the media, especially on the left, can simply stop pretending the new health reform law is some great progressive victory. It is not. It is a conservative, pro-corporate piece of legislation. From the CBS News: Obama: Well, partly because I couldn’t get the kind of cooperation [...]

In the last few days, several bloggers – among them Jon Cohn and Ezra Klein — have written faulty defenses of the health care bill. They used theoretical, counterfactual alternatives in defense of the health care legislation they’ve supported, calling to mind Voltaire’s classic, Candide. In it, Voltaire heavily mocks the extreme optimism of Pangloss, [...]

During the 2009 push for health care reform, in scenes that conspiracy theorists usually have to imagine, the hospital industry sat down with White House officials and agreed to support the administration’s effort in exchange for Obama promising to protect their profits, which included a commitment to kill the public option. Yet, like any good [...]

During the health care fight, the Obama administration would probably have benefited from having a military historian as an adviser. Even a cursory study of military history will show you the important role played for centuries by mercenaries—and it will show you their limitations. There are two critical things to keep in mind when thinking [...]

Democrats were extra proud when they put a requirement that insurance companies cover children with pre-existing conditions in their new health care law. Now, I bet the CEOs at the country’s largest for-profit insurance companies are even more proud of themselves for easily finding a way around this regulation: simply stop offering child-only policies. From [...]