In late 2020 an unemployed North Carolina bartender and his wife were visiting relatives in Wyoming when the man fell seriously ill. He was quickly airlifted to the University of Colorado Hospital outside Denver, where he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a form of blood cancer. His insurance paid that air ambulance bill, from Wyoming to Colorado, deeming it medically necessary.
Read the article in Kaiser Health News
Two years ago, 81 think tanks and grass roots organizations signed onto Health Care Choices, a comprehensive reform of the health care system. This was a huge accomplishment – since the conservative think tanks had been at odds over health policy for almost three decades. At 45 pages and 139 footnotes, however, it was very wonkish and not a useful campaign document. No one campaigned on it in 2020.
To be useful in an election, a plan needs to be marketed – and that’s why Marie Fishpaw (Heritage Foundation) and I pulled out 10 key benefits that candidates could promise voters. We got input from Newt Gingrich, key people on Capitol Hill and others. They are briefly explained at this Goodman Institute Brief Analysis and discussed in the April issue of Health Care News.
The most important innovation in our approach is this: We should begin by saying Obamacare has made health insurance unaffordable and the best doctors and hospitals inaccessible. In other words, we should go right to the heart of what the other side promised and didn’t deliver; and then pledge to do what they didn’t do by empowering individuals and letting markets work.
A bill recently passed the Senate that would make Daylight Savings Time (DST) permanent, observed year around. It would do away with Standard Time. This is not the first time Congress has flirted with making DST year around. On December 14, 1973 Congress voted to make DST year around for two years. President Nixon signed the bill on December 15. The United States also tried year around DST during World War II. Supposedly people hated it.
Dominique Vervoort and Ge Bai analyzed the percentage change in average charges and compared them to average Medicare Part B (fee-for-service) payments for 51 specialties. Data was drawn from the years 2010 to 2019, with the figures adjusted for inflation. The authors found a positive association between the change in charges and change in Medicare payments (see the figure). This was not unexpected. Charges are often pegged to Medicare in some way. There were two outliers. (This too should come as no surprise). Emergency care and anesthesia charges grew faster and were above the trend line.