113,000 Californians to Lose Medicare Advantage Benefits

A recent article discussing Obamacare's elimination of Medicare Advantage for entire communities in California quotes yours truly extensively.  Read the entire article here.

Over Regulation Reduces Choice in Health Insurance: An Update

Earlier this year, the Pacific Research Institute published a study demonstrating one way that Obamacare will dramatically reduce Americans’ choice of health insurance. By encouraging states to pass laws giving politicians control of health plans’ premiums, Obamacare creates incentives for politicians to impose populist limits that threaten health plans’ solvency.

Furthermore, common measurements and tools used to determine whether health insurance is “competitive” are deeply flawed, leading even well-intentioned regulators astray as they seek to control the cost of health insurance. This month's Health Policy Prescription incorporates new data to test whether the conclusions of the earlier study persist. It finds that they do.

Read the updated article here.

Lights Out Until December 28

I am taking pre-Christmas vacation.  Benjamin Rush Society national office, blogging, research, and general online presence is off until December 28.

Merry Christmas; and I look forward to picking up where I left off on December 28.

The CLASS Act: Time to Repeal It.

I was recently interviewed for an article asking why won't Congress repeal the CLASS program, a part of Obamacare that the U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services has dictated cannot proceed.  The CLASS program was an unsound long-term care benefit that independent analysts had recognized as impossible since the beginning.

The CLASS program has only been killed because Congress, in an extremely rare example of probity, required the Secretary of HHS to determine that CLASS would be actuarially sound for 75 years. If Congress had required this of the rest of Obamacare, the whole thing would have been administratively rescinded at the same time

Read the entire article here.

Obamacare Will Drive Health Insurers Out of Business: Good or Bad Outcome?

Over at Forbes.com, a liberal blogger has finally confessed the truth - Obamacare will lead to a government-monopoly, so-called "single-payer" system.  It's led to a spirited response amongst my Forbes.com colleagues.

Read my contribution here.

Health Care Mingle Jingle in San Francisco, December 8

I've been spending a lot of my time lately on a new project focusing on innovation in HIT (health information technology).  My office is in San Francisco, so I'm in the right place.

I belong to the Health Technology Meet-Up Group, which is having a very interesting event in San Francisco on Thursday, December 8 - the "HealthCare Mingle Jingle".

Part conference, part holiday social, the Mingle Jingle is an all-day event with presentations by innovative, new, health IT firms, followed by a reception.  If you can only make it to the reception, the organizer tells me that you are welcome.

The event is in the San Francisco Financial District.   More information and details are at this link.