Latest Hub Issues & Best Blogs

Listing all issues/blogs by date.

Health Reform's 1099 Headache
Joseph McCafferty

CFO.com, 8/19/10

A little-noticed provision in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is suddenly generating a lot of attention. The new rule requires all businesses to file 1099 forms if they purchase $600 or more in goods or services from another business during a year. While the rule was largely overlooked in the early analysis of the health-care law, a recent uproar has put it in the spotlight, and efforts are now under way in Congress to repeal the measure. Read more...

ObamaCare = Buyer’s Remorse
U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe

TulsaToday.com, 8/19/10

Even though many Oklahomans did not buy into the idea of socialized medicine through ObamaCare, most are now stuck with buyer’s remorse anyway.  Why?  Because for the first time in our history, we now have on the books a law that forces Americans to purchase a product or face IRS sanction.  Contributing to the buyer’s remorse suffered by opponents and supporters alike are increased health care costs, new taxes, the constitutionality of the mandate itself, and over-regulation. Read more...

And So the Death Panels Begin
Benjamin Zycher

The Daily Caller, 8/19/10

In a moment of honesty, professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, arguing in favor of a single-payer (government) system of health insurance coverage, noted that “… the public sector… sooner or later [would] have to make key decisions about medical treatment.”  And: “… health care—including the decision about what treatment is provided—[would become] a public responsibility.” And so the death panels begin. An FDA advisory panel last month recommended to withdraw approval for Avastin, a drug for the treatment of advanced breast cancer.  Originally approved under the FDA accelerated review program, subsequent statistical studies of the benefits of the drug found them somewhat smaller than indicated by the data during the earlier review process. Read more...

Public Confidence in Health Care Dips
Duff Wilson

The New York Times: Prescriptions Blog, 8/19/10

The American public’s confidence in the health care system rose markedly after passage of the sprawling legislative package this year, according to a survey released on Wednesday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. But the measurement of confidence quickly settled back to historical levels, according to the monthly survey, as families turned from rhetoric to reality. Changes in the new law are being put in place over 10 years, and the news has turned from political promises of insurance reform to the reality of rising premiums. Read more...

Big Employers Estimate Health-Care Costs Will Rise 8.9% in 2011
Katherine Hobson

Wall Street Journal, 8/19/10

A survey of big employers finds they expect their health-care costs to rise nearly 9% next year and plan to share some of that burden with employees via higher premiums and higher out-of-pocket limits. The survey included responses from 72 members of the nonprofit National Business Group on Health, which represents large companies such as General Electric, Microsoft and General Motors. It parallels pretty closely another survey on employer health-care costs, by PricewaterhouseCoopers, that we reported on a few months back. Read more...

Consumer Power: 5 Lessons from Utah’s Heath Care Reform
Gregg Girvan

The Heritage Foundation, 8/19/10

Obamacare is on the march, and state policymakers must decide by 2014 how they will respond to this encroachment on states’ rights to control their own health insurance markets. The state of Utah has been on the reform path since 2005. With its system of defined contributions (as opposed to the standard defined benefits), a functioning health insurance exchange, and appropriate risk-adjustment mechanisms, Utah has given its workers the freedom to choose among many health plans with different levels of benefits, instead of remaining tied to the one-size-fits-all approach dictated by Washington. The Heritage Foundation has discerned five distinct lessons that the other 49 states can learn from Utah’s experience. The time for learning—and for action—is now. Read more...

Large Companies Faced With Uncertainty Over Effects of New Health Care Law
Jim Angle

Fox News, 8/18/10

Large American companies, already facing rising health care costs along with their employees, also are struggling to figure out how the new federal health care law will affect them. Helen Darling of the National Business Group on Health cited a survey of 72 large companies, which acknowledged "we are in middle of transformation, a transformation of how health care is financed and delivered in this country," she said. The large companies said they expect their health care costs to rise next year by about 9 percent, two percent more than they rose this year. They attribute one percent of the two percent increase to the early provisions of the new health care law. The companies have several strategies for dealing with increased costs and many say they'll do what they have been doing -- ask workers to pick up a larger share ... Read more...

Giant Obamacare Loophole
Clarice Feldman

American Thinker, 8/18/10

NRO's Stephen Spruiell  notes a large Obamacare loophole which could undo the entire scheme of  forcing young healthy citizens to subsidize the health care of everyone else: One challenge in implementing healthcare reform is that there's a lot of fine print in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). And some of that fine print could subvert the goals of the overall legislation. Read more...

The Selling of Obamacare: The Role of Healthcare Trade Associations
Elias Crim

The Washington Examiner, 8/18/10

Two leading healthcare organizations, the Catholic Health Association and the American Medical Association, made a unique contribution to the healthcare debate. They didn’t have the labor unions’ money or manpower. But, as moral and medical advocates with strong reputations, the CHA and AMA could advise uneasy voters and politicians to support Obamacare in good conscience. Read more...

Faced With Rising Health Costs, Large Employers Plan to Shift Burden to Workers
Mike Lillis

The Hill’s Healthwatch, 8/18/10

Faced with skyrocketing healthcare costs and new insurance rules under healthcare reform, more of the nation's biggest businesses are planning to hike premiums and cost-sharing measures on their employees next year, according to a survey of those companies released Wednesday. Seventy percent of large employers said they will eliminate lifetime dollar caps on overall benefits, according to the latest annual survey conducted by the National Business Group on Health (NBGH), while 63 percent plan to increase premium rates in 2011, up from 57 percent this year. Forty-six percent intend to hike maximum out-of-pocket costs for workers next year, up from 36 percent in 2010. Forty-four percent intend to increase in-network deductibles. Read more...

<<  < 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 >  >>