Health Policy Program: Latest Articles

Faith in medicine runs deep in America. We spend more per person on health care than any other nation. Most of us are confident that we will live longer, more active lives than our parents. Whether we eat too much or exercise too little, whether we're turning gray or feeling blue, we increasingly look to some pill or procedure to make us better. No one likes to hear official projections such as those that came out last week about Medicare,… more

Health-care spending is currently rising at a rate of around eight percent a year, and a large proportion of the health care that is delivered in this country simply drives up costs without improving health or increasing longevity.

Previous efforts to address these problems have neglected an element so basic that its wisdom has largely been ignored -- namely, reliable information, the lack of which hampers the efficiency of the health-care market and prevents doctors and hospitals from learning… more

Believe it or not, there is a politically appealing way to achieve universal health-care coverage: simply require all U.S. residents to buy insurance, with government help if necessary.

To understand why and how this might work, consider that the majority of those who lack health insurance are not unemployed. Nearly 60 percent of uninsured Americans work full time; another 16 percent work part time. These tend to be workers whose employers don't offer them health insurance (because they are low-wage… more

If media reports are to be believed, "means-testing" Medicare is the newest Capitol Hill answer to the embattled program's troubles. According to the Washington Post and New York Times, Congress is considering tripling Medicare Part B premiums for the very wealthiest of beneficiaries, from about $700 a year to more than $2,100.

But even though raising Medicare premiums for the wealthiest beneficiaries might sound like an easy way to improve the program's finances -- and make it more egalitarian, to boot… more

Last week Sen. John Edwards became the first presidential candidate in U.S. history to propose solving the problem of the uninsured by making health insurance mandatory. Although his proposed health care mandate is limited to children and young people -- all those under the age of 21 -- it offers the most promising way forward for eventually covering all 41 million uninsured Americans, and it marks a major turning point in our nation's health care debate.

The United States spends… more