For all of the quality care it delivers, the U.S. health care system is one of the most dysfunctional sectors of the U.S. economy. The government spends nearly 50 cents of every dollar spent on health care, most consumers are almost entirely insulated from the cost of their decisions, and employers decide what kind of health insurance their employees get.
But while the U.S. health care system begs for reform, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act only exacerbates all of the current problems, promising to devolve into a price-controlled system rationed and micromanaged by bureaucrats.
IPI believes there are much better options: reform the tax treatment of health insurance; remove the state and federal mandates and regulations that make coverage more expensive; pass medical liability reform; and promote policies that create value-conscious shoppers in the health care marketplace.
Should the Supreme Court Limit Obamacare Subsidies Only to State-Created Health Exchanges?
That language is important because only 13 states set up their own exchanges. The other 37 either didn’t try or failed and so relied on the federal government to do it.
Calling Sen. Coburn: Wish He Could Still Expose Obama's Latest NIH Funding Ploy
President Obama wants to throw more money at the National Institutes of Health, as part of the liberal vision that government is better and cheaper at research. But taxpayers shouldn't give more money to an agency that wastes billions of dollars on questionable, and even ludicrous, research.
The Most Wanted List You Never Heard Of: Millions of Tax Dollars Vaporized
The Office of Inspector General at the US Dept. of Health and Human Services has a Most Wanted list. IPI's Merrill Matthews wrote about a 2010 GAO report identifying "$48 billion in what it termed as ‘improper payments.’”
Markets Don't Fail, Government Policies Do
Lot's of liberals, the media and even some economists like to talk about "market failure" as a justification for their expansive government policies. But markets don't fail. What does fail are government policies that try to "fix" markets.
Obamacare Will Cost $50,000 for Each Newly Insured American
"Patient access to doctors is approaching a perfect storm of decreased physician supply, more demand for medical care, and doctors increasingly refusing to see low-paying Medicare or Medicaid patients,” explains Merrill Mathews, PhD, a healthcare policy expert at the Institute for Policy Innovation. “If the ‘promise’ of Obamacare’s access to health-care is to be kept, government will eventually have to force doctors to accept Obamacare-covered patients.”
The Most Ridiculous Obamacare Claim Yet: It Spurs Innovation
Economist Laura Tyson says the real legacy of Obamacare will be innovation. And it's true that the health care industry has had to be very innovative under Obamacare, trying to survive the legislation's punitive restrictions and limitations.
Obama Reneges on Yet Another Obamacare Promise
President Obama’s threatened veto of legislation defining full-time work as 40 hours a week instead of 30 hours reneges on another of his many Obamacare promises.
Doctors Face A Huge Medicare And Medicaid Pay Cut In 2015
If you thought it was getting increasingly difficult for Medicare and Medicaid patients to see a doctor, you’re right—and that problem may get even worse in 2015.
Another Single-Payer Health Care Dream Bites the Dust - In Vermont
Chalk up one more failure for a single-payer health care system that actually works. The latest casualty: Vermont.
Will Any Medicaid Patient Be Able to See a Doctor in January?
Democrats and the poor are quickly learning that access to health insurance (Medicaid) isn't the same as access to health care.


