Health Care

TGIF: Dump the Contraception Mandate and All the Rest

by Sheldon Richman January 3, 2014

“Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.” —Oscar Wilde In the wacky world of American politics, if you as an employer have a religious objection to paying for your employees’ contraceptives, you are the one contemptuous of religious freedom. As the New York Times editorial board lectured a judge who thinks otherwise, “the threat to religious liberty comes ...

TGIF: The Affordable Care Act Doesn’t Go That Way

by Sheldon Richman November 1, 2013

Web problems can be fixed. The problems inherent in the so-called Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) are another story. Let’s stipulate that most people who favor the ACA have honorable intentions: they want everyone, including people in ill health, to have access to good and affordable medical care. All decent people should want that. (How many favor ...

The Real Problem with the Obamacare Mandates

by Laurence M. Vance October 22, 2013

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as the PPACA or Obamacare, became law on March 23, 2010. Passed along strict party lines, it has proven to be one of the most polarizing pieces of legislation ever passed. Some of those who initially supported the president’s health-care law are now some of its most vocal critics. Yet ...

Ending Medicare

by Laurence M. Vance July 12, 2013

Medicare is government-funded health care for Americans aged 65 and over and/or those who are permanently disabled. Like Social Security, it is funded by payroll tax deductions from both employers and employees, but only partially. Unlike Social Security, which has its roots in Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, Medicare began in 1966 as part of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Initial enrollment ...

“Hurry Up and Die”: The Inescapable Outcome of Socialized Medicine

by Michael Tennant February 4, 2013

Japan’s “universal” health-care system, like all such systems the world over, is in trouble, with costs rising and the population aging. Nearly 25 percent of Japanese are over the age of 60, a proportion expected to increase to 40 percent over the next 50 years. Since the old generally require more — and more expensive — medical treatment than ...

Death and the National Health Service

by Scott McPherson January 7, 2013

“I’ve seen the future, baby: it is murder.” — Leonard Cohen, “The Future” The British are so proud of their National Health Service. Hospitals are falling apart and have become a breeding ground for staph infections; waiting lists and the rationing of care are the norm, and “new medical technologies” has become an oxymoron. But to hear them ...

Obamacare’s Other Achilles Heel

by Wendy McElroy January 4, 2013

With the media obsessing about the fiscal cliff, many people may not have noticed that net American taxes for the next decade just rose by around $1 trillion. That’s the cost of the first phase of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare. Much of the increase will be borne by the average working person. The watchdog ...

Medicare Is Doomed

by Sheldon Richman November 1, 2012

When Democrats accuse Republicans of wanting to “end Medicare as we know it,” they are right. Of course ending Medicare as we know it is not the same as ending Medicare. What Democrats fail to point out is that “Medicare as we know it” is no longer an option for anyone. They too will end “Medicare as we know ...

Medicare Is Doomed

by Sheldon Richman September 3, 2012

When Democrats accuse Republicans of wanting to “end Medicare as we know it,” they are right. But Democrats do too. “Medicare as we know it” is no longer an option. Leaving aside Medicare’s fatal moral defect — that it’s coercively funded — the program is doomed. It has tens of trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities. It threatens working generations ...

The Supreme Court’s Word Game Saves Obamacare

by Sheldon Richman September 1, 2012

The Supreme Court decision upholding the health-insurance mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) had a distinct Alice-in-Wonderland feel to it. As Lewis Carroll wrote in Through the Looking-Glass, “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” Chief Justice ...

Sick Economics

by Laurence M. Vance August 14, 2012

Second only to their salary, all employees love and depend on their fringe benefits. Fringe benefits can take the form of paid time-off for breaks, vacations, jury duty, personal reasons, maternity leave, or illness. They can be in the form of discounted or fully paid insurance for health, life, or disability. Participation in a pension or retirement program is a ...

Big Pharma and Crony Capitalism

by Wendy McElroy July 9, 2012

A friend just experienced a terrible drug problem. Not with illegal drugs, but with a prescription from her doctor. Her eighty-year-old memory sometimes stumbles, and so, without diagnostic tests, the doctor prescribed a potent Alzheimer medication. Within a week, I received phone calls from her about two men and a woman who were breaking into her house repeatedly despite carefully ...