News
Daily Caller | Obama praises Romney for Mass. Health care overhaul
"I agree with Mitt Romney, who recently said he's proud of what he accomplished on health care in Massachusetts and said he supports giving states the power to determine their own health care."
Daily Caller | Obama Administration announces support for acceleration of health care waivers for states
In other words, states will have the leeway to pursue health care policies, irrespective of the new Affordable Care Act.
Baltimore Sun | Medical device approval plagued by unhealthy delays
Europe does better job than United States at bringing needed medical devices to market.
CSM | Health care reform: How big is Obama's concession?
On Monday, President Obama offered to let states design their own health systems, as long as they meet the overall goals of the national health care reform plan.
CNN Money | Medicaid funding busts state budgets
Several dozen governors are pleading with the president to let them drop enrollees in their costly Medicaid programs. They say this flexibility is critical in closing an estimated $125 billion budget gap for fiscal 2012, which starts July 1 in most states.
NationalJournal | Health Care Law to cost states $118 Billion, Republican Report Says
According to the report, adding new Medicaid enrollees under the law will cost California $19.4 billion from 2018 to 2023 and will cost Florida $12.94 billion from 2013 to 2023. It uses a variety of sources including state estimates.
Econ Comments
USA Today | Pa.'s Corbett: Let states guide Medicaid reform
Governors from around the country will detail their experiences and challenges in trying to operate efficient, fiscally viable Medicaid programs under the burden of federal requirements that often hinder state objectives.
Washington Times | EDITORIAL: Medicare case could nix Obamacare
Federal compulsion is un-American.
CNN | Obama embraces earlier state flexibility on health care reform
The senior administration officials, speaking on background, explained that for any state alternatives to be eligible for a waiver, they must meet four criteria:
WSJ | The Massachusetts Health-Reform Mess
The Bay State has shown the risks of ObamaCare.
POLITICO | Experts: Individual mandate might fail
Forget all the shouting you’ve heard about the new mandate to buy health coverage. Forget the lawsuits, the cries of “Big Government” from Republicans and the Democrats’ claims that the new health care law would fall apart without it.
Blogs
Heritage Foundation | White House Still Failing to Fix Medicaid Crisis
Members on both sides of the aisle admit that states’ health care reform needs are vastly different and cannot be addressed by a one-size-fits-all approach like Obamacare, which imposes a pre-ordained federal version of reform on the states.
Cato Institute | Obama Offers States ‘Flexibility’ to Adopt Single-Payer instead of ObamaCare
A closer look shows that the president is not lifting the burdensome requirements ObamaCare imposes on states. All he's doing is proposing to move up, from 2017 to 2014, the date on which states can apply for federal permission to impose a different but equivalently or more coercive plan to expand health insurance coverage.
Heritage Foundation | The Case for Entitlement Reform: Taxpayer Contributions Fall Dangerously Short of Received Benefits
Medicare and Social Security are important retirement security programs for millions of Americans. But they are ticking time bombs with trillions in future unfunded obligations that will bankrupt America if they are not changed.
Washington Post | Health care doesn't keep people healthy -- even in Canada
File this one under "health care doesn't work nearly as well as we'd like to believe." A group of researchers followed almost 15,000 initially healthy Canadians for more than 10 years to see whether universal access to health care meant that the rich and the poor were equally likely to stay healthy. The answer? Not even close.
Reports
Heritage Foundation | How States Can Survive the Medicaid Crisis
Along with the exploding costs of public-sector benefit packages, managing Medicaid is the greatest challenge confronting the nation’s governors and state legislative bodies. About 16 percent of the nation’s population is currently enrolled in Medicaid, the joint federal–state program for certain categories of mostly poor individuals.
