Health Legislation

Archive for Health Legislation

Gruber Is OK With “Non-Transparency” Because Americans Are Stupid and He Wanted Bill to Pass

You think I’m paraphrasing unfairly, don’t you? It’s short, watch this. It’s Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economist who was one of the go-to guys modeling and touting the Affordable Care Act.

Harry Reid on ObamaCare Being Just a Step in the Right Direction

I know I linked to news reports at the time this interview occurred in the summer of 2013–in which Harry Reid unambiguously says his goal is a single payer system that gets private health insurers out of the picture–but I don’t remember if I ever posted the video of it (which wasn’t available when the […]

Breakin’ the Law, Breakin’ the Law, Non-Compliant Health Plan Style

I came across this in my research on the ACA, just FYI for those of you who buy your own health insurance: [I]n March 2014, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that, through October 1, 2016, state insurance commissioners could permit health insurers to re-enroll individuals and small businesses in existing plans that […]

Something Is Screwed Up in the Labor Market

As part of my research on the Affordable Care Act (aka “ObamaCare”), I used the standard government statistics to look at Part Time Employment compared to Total Employment. Here’s the graph: Now be careful, there was a change in definitions of “part time” in the mid-1990s, which is responsible for that spike. So arguably you […]

Health Insurance Premium Bask

(Bask = Blog Ask for newcomers, not to be confused with a Bleg.) There is a new wave of projections for increases in health insurance premiums for 2015 (relative to 2014), and they are not heart attack inducing. But I’m concerned that something fishy may be going on with some of these relatively innocuous analyses. […]

Health Insurance Coverage in the U.S., 1999-2012

I had known that coverage fell sharply when the recession struck, but I didn’t realize how much it had been falling the entire decade, even amidst the prime housing bubble years: Depending on one’s worldview, the above chart could be spun either way. If you like ObamaCare, you could say, “See? The U.S. health care […]

Mitt Romney, the Guy Republicans Picked to Run Against ObamaCare

For a book I’m doing, I dug up this 2006 WSJ op ed that Mitt Romney wrote, patting himself on the back for providing RomneyCare (not his term of course) to Massachusetts residents. Here’s a great quote: Some of my libertarian friends balk at what looks like an individual mandate. But remember, someone has to […]

Fun Facts About the “Individual Mandate” of ObamaCare

In my latest Mises CA post I walk through the CBO’s forecast. An excerpt: Isn’t it interesting that the “universal coverage” provided by the “Affordable Care Act” will still yield–according to the government’s own projections–almost 4 million Americans who will prefer to pay an average tax of more than $1,000 to the government for 2016, rather than buying […]