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Health Care and Personal Responsibility
35 posts, newest first (page 1 of 2).
Death Panels, the Coverage, and the Board Congress Quietly RepealedThe press mocked "death panels" in 2009 while a real ACA board with power over Medicare spending never seated a member and was repealed in 2018. High-Risk Pools Covered the Sick Before 2014, and They Could Do It AgainFunded high-risk pools protect people with costly conditions without raising premiums for everyone else, and the states have tested the model for decades. Six Things People Believe About Health Insurance That Are Simply Not SoSix common beliefs about health insurance, from who pays the premium to preexisting conditions and price shopping, tested one at a time with a verdict on each. Read the Medicare for All Bill and You Will Find Your Insurance AbolishedThe slogan promises to extend a popular program, but the Medicare for All Act of 2019 bars private coverage that duplicates the government plan. Veterans Should Carry Their Health Care Dollars the Way They Carry the GI BillThe GI Bill trusted veterans to pick their own college; the same trust argues for letting them take their care elsewhere when the VA cannot serve them. Phoenix 2014 and the Secret Wait Lists That Changed Veterans' Health CarePhoenix VA staff kept unofficial wait lists to hit their numbers, and the scandal produced three laws that gave veterans a way out of the line. New York's Big Soda Ban and the Nanny State That Lost in CourtNew York City's 16-ounce soda cap fell because an appointed board wrote a law that belonged to elected legislators, a separation-of-powers lesson. Healthy Habits Are a Matter of Character, Not a Government ProgramA free people builds good habits in families and churches and clubs, not in federal agencies, and the oldest moral tradition in the West says why. When a Health Agency Decided It Could Freeze Every Eviction in AmericaThe CDC stretched a 1944 quarantine statute to freeze evictions nationwide, and the Supreme Court rulings that followed show where agency power stops. What Jacobson v. Massachusetts Actually Held About State Health PowersJacobson v. Massachusetts is cited as a blank check for health orders, but a close reading shows it limits state power and never mentions federal agencies. The Church Amendments of 1973 and a Doctor's Right to Say NoConscience protection for doctors and nurses began in Congress in 1973 as a bipartisan settlement, and the history shows it was never a new demand. A Certificate of Need for Pizza Shops, a Thought Experiment in PlanningA labelled satire that applies hospital-style certificate-of-need rules to pizza, to show what the real laws do to clinics, scanners and surgery centers. Certificate-of-Need Laws Make a New Clinic Ask Its Rivals for PermissionCertificate-of-need laws make anyone who wants to build a hospital wing or buy a scanner prove "need" to a board that rivals can lobby; repeal them. How Direct Primary Care Works and How to Find a Practice That Offers ItDirect primary care swaps the insurer for a flat monthly fee, and this step-by-step guide shows how to test whether it fits your family in a single afternoon. What California's 1975 Malpractice Law and Texas's 2003 Reform Taught UsCalifornia capped pain-and-suffering damages in 1975 and Texas followed in 2003, and the record shows what caps can and cannot do. Frances Kelsey, Thalidomide and the 1962 Law That Slowed Every New DrugFrances Kelsey was right to hold the line on thalidomide, but the 1962 law passed in her wake went far beyond safety, and its cost deserves an honest count. The Right to Try Law of 2018 and the Families Who Pushed It ThroughA dying patient should not need Washington's permission to try an unapproved drug, and families made that case state by state until Congress listened. How a New Drug Gets Through the FDA and Why the Trip Takes So LongThe FDA's approval path is a chain of safety rules that also carries a cost few count: patients who wait while a useful drug sits in review. Pharmacy Benefit Managers, the Middlemen You Never Hired, ExplainedHow rebates, formularies and spread pricing work, why a list price can rise while someone else pockets the gap, and why transparency beats a price board. Should America Stop Paying for the World's Medicines? Conservatives SplitTwo conservative answers to foreign drug price controls, importing their prices or pressing them through trade, and why the second is the better one. Price Controls on Medicines Today Mean Fewer New Medicines TomorrowGovernment price setting for drugs buys a visible saving now and costs cures that are never invented, and the patent bargain explains why. Asking Able-Bodied Adults to Work for Medicaid Is Not Cruelty, It Is DignityThe cruelty charge against Medicaid work requirements fails against the 1996 welfare law and the court record, though the paperwork critique is real. The Medicaid Match That Pays States More for Adults Than for Disabled KidsThe Affordable Care Act paid states a richer Medicaid match for able-bodied adults than for the disabled, and the arithmetic shows how that bends priorities. What the Medicare Debate of 1965 Promised and What the Program BecameConservatives offered a targeted alternative to Medicare in the 1960s and warned of open-ended costs, and the program's later history shows why.
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