For 25 years I’ve been saying that I wished a little state like Vermont would implement a single-payer Canadian-style health insurance system––"Medicare For All." My argument has always been that such a small and limited experiment would give us the opportunity to see the ideological arguments for such a system play out in the face of fiscal reality and the stakeholders fighting it out in the
Category: HEALTHCARE/MEDICAL
The Letter You Never Want to Get on Christmas Eve
I was reading the December 18th issue of Inside Health Insurance Exchanges and came across an article entitled, "New Kids on the Block Come Out Swinging; Co-Ops Lower Rates for Many Health Plans." The gist of the article had to do with the success a number of Obamacare insurance co-ops have had in charging lower rates and getting lots of market share by "[underpricing] more established players
Statement on the National Children’s Study
Dr. Collins statement on the National Children’s Study.
Dr. Collins interview with Science2034
Dr. Collins talks about how well-funded scientific research might change our lives and our world.
Dr. Collins is the guest lecturer at the MIT Compton Lecture
At the MIT Compton Lecture, Dr. Collins talks about supporting and translating basic science into better treatments, and gives a tribute to researchers in Africa dedicated to studying Ebola.
How Many People Have Enrolled So Far in Obamacare’s Second Open Enrollment?
Undoubtedly I will hear that question many times in the coming weeks. The answer is that this enrollment process is so screwed up we will have no earthly idea how many new people have enrolled and how many 2014 enrollees remained on the program until at least April 2015. Let me try to illustrate. Let’s say George is now enrolled in Obamacare. He is happy to have subsidized and guaranteed
Is the Administration Low-Balling Their 2015 Obamacare Enrollment Estimate?
Well, with an estimate of only 9 million to 9.9 million, apparently they are. But I will suggest the focus should not be on anybody’s estimate for 2015 but rather on how many people need to enroll in Obamacare to make it sustainable. A few points: The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that when Obamacare launched in 2014, 17.2 million people were eligible for subsidies. The only place you can
Supreme Court Takes the Obamacare Subsidy Case–Justices Will Rule Before July 1
In a Wow moment, the Supreme Court announced Friday that they will take one of the four pending "Halbig" cases––specifically King v. Burwell. The issue is over whether the new health law actually authorizes the payment of premium subsidies in the 37 states that will rely upon the federal government to run their exchange in 2015. This effort is being made on a number of fronts but has been
NIH Director’s Statement on Dr. Lindberg’s retirement
Don Lindberg, M.D., who has been the director of the National Library of Medicine for more than 30 years, plans to retire at the end of March 2015.
Proposed Principles and Guidelines for Reporting Preclinical Research
The signatories represent journals that publish preclinical biological research — an area of research that encompasses both exploratory and hypothesis-testing studies, with many different designs.
Obamacare: Death By a Thousand Votes?
We didn’t see a Republican tide on election night. We saw a Republican tsunami. A year after Obamacare went into effect and Democrats said people would come to support it voters gave one Republican candidate after another, who made Obamacare a big part of each of their campaigns, one victory after another. So, how will the Republicans use their convincing result on Obamacare? Republicans will