Chart of the Week: Medicare Spending Is the Largest Driver of Future Deficits
Medicare is in dire need of reform. This week’s chart illustrates why the entitlement program is the largest driver of long-term runaway deficits. With the country’s population aging and increasingly...
View ArticleRepublican Presidential Candidates Embrace Medicare Premium Support
Earlier this week in New Hampshire, Republican presidential candidates touted the benefits of a Medicare premium support system — the approach to entitlement reform embraced by House Budget Chairman...
View ArticlePODCAST: How Obamacare Will Change the Face of Medicare
In this week’s Heritage in Focus, expert Bob Moffit discusses how Obamacare ends Medicare as we know it. Click here to listen. How does the health reform law break up traditional Medicare? What’s a...
View ArticleMedicare Needs the Life Support of Premium Support
Medicare reform is coming soon; it has to if the program is going to survive. As budget expert J. D. Foster writes, “Medicare reform is inevitable because its demands on the federal budget are...
View ArticleMedicare Rationing and Obama’s Unelected Board of Bureaucrats
Earlier this week, the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee moved legislation forward that would repeal one of the most intrusive and unpopular parts of Obamacare: the Independent Payment...
View ArticleMedicare Reform: Premium Support Is Bipartisan
The House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health held a hearing last Friday to discuss the bipartisan effort behind competing premium support plans. These plans would restructure traditional Medicare...
View ArticleMorning Bell: Facing the Medicare Debate Head-On
Quick quiz: Who said this about Medicare? “With an aging population and rising health care costs, we are spending too fast to sustain the program. And if we don’t gradually reform the system while...
View ArticleMorning Bell: Bringing Medicaid into the Debate
Medicare is an emotionally charged program because it provides health insurance coverage for the elderly. But Medicaid covers America’s poor and disabled—and no one wants to see them harmed, either....
View ArticleDebunking Medicare Reform Myths
In a recent paper, Heritage expert Bob Moffit responds to the critics of the premium-support model for Medicare. This type of reform would give seniors a defined government contribution toward the cost...
View ArticleChart of the Week: Tax Revenues Devoured by Entitlements
The looming unsustainability of the big three entitlement spending programs—Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—is not inevitable, but in order to avoid the catastrophic effects of consuming every...
View ArticleMorning Bell: How Obamacare Robs Medicare and Hurts Seniors
The rhetorical Medicare wars have heated up this week, after President Obama declared in his Saturday radio address that his proposed reforms “won’t touch your guaranteed Medicare benefits. Not by a...
View ArticleMedicare Reform Debate: What Really Works in Health Care Competition
Recently, economist Paul Krugman derided the premium support plan to reform Medicare: Still, wouldn’t private insurers reduce costs through the magic of the marketplace? No. All, and I mean all, the...
View ArticleMedicare Roundup 9/17: Setting the Record Straight
In recent weeks, liberal politicians, editorialists, and policy analysts have vigorously attacked reforming Medicare based on defined-contribution financing. In fact, this approach to reforming...
View ArticleMedicare Roundup 9/21: Setting the Record Straight
In recent weeks, liberal politicians, editorialists, and policy analysts have vigorously attacked reform of Medicare based on a defined contribution financing. In fact, this approach to reforming...
View ArticleRomney’s “60 Minutes” Fix For Social Security and Medicare
President Obama’s and Governor Romney’s appearances on “60 Minutes” Sunday revealed an interesting contrast. The President punted on a serious question about the nation’s concern over spending—blaming...
View ArticleMorning Bell: Two Liberal Whoppers on Medicare
A debate that has been fought largely over the airwaves is about to go head-to-head. Medicare reform is a huge part of that debate, and the left—bolstered by the media—has been promoting two huge...
View ArticleMorning Bell: Heritage Experts React to First Presidential Debate
During last night’s debate between President Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney, Heritage’s domestic policy experts were live-blogging their analysis of the ideas discussed. Below are some of the...
View ArticleFirst Presidential Debate 2012: Top 10 True/False Quiz
During last night’s presidential debate, claims were flying fast and furious. Some of these claims were true, others false. Here are the top 10—see which ones you can guess as either true or false. 1....
View ArticleMedicare and Seniors: Answering the $6,400 Question
Opponents to Medicare reform have been making plenty of erroneous claims about Medicare premium support lately, one of the worst being that Representative Paul Ryan’s (R–WI) premium-support model,...
View ArticleKaiser Study on Medicare Assumes Seniors Don’t Like Lower Prices
The Kaiser Family Foundation just released a study that grossly misrepresents the premium-support model of Medicare reform and apparently misunderstands normal market dynamics and the differences...
View ArticleSaving Medicare: New Legislation from Retiring Congressman Herger
Congressman Wally Herger (R-CA). (Photo: James Berglie/Zuma Press/Newscom) Retiring House Ways and Mean Health Care Subcommittee chairman Wally Herger (R–CA) has introduced the most complete and...
View ArticleToo Eager for a Fiscal Cliff Deal: Republican Leadership’s $1 Trillion Tax Hike
The latest fiscal cliff proposal by Speaker of the House John Boehner (R–OH) is infuriatingly frustrating to conservatives, again. In exchange for $1 trillion in tax hikes—including the President’s...
View ArticleHow to Fix the Medicare Physician Payment Problem
Photo credit: Newscom The congressional formula that determines the annual Medicare payment update for physicians, the sustainable growth rate (SGR), was supposed to cut Medicare doctors’ pay each year...
View ArticleCloakroom: Battle of the Budgets, Round 1
House Cloakroom: March 11 – March 15 Analysis: This week House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) will release his 2014 budget resolution for markup in committee. The Ryan budget is expected offer a...
View ArticleMorning Bell: First Look at the 2014 Ryan Budget
At first look, the budget unveiled today by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul D. Ryan (R-WI) advances much-needed reforms and importantly accomplishes the crucial goal of balancing the budget within...
View ArticleHouse vs. Senate Budget: What a Balanced Budget Looks Like (CHART)
This week, the budget committees of both chambers of Congress released their budgets ahead of President Obama’s budget—marking the first time in 92 years that Congress kicked off the budget process...
View ArticleThe RSC Budget: A First Look
The Republican Study Committee (RSC) has proposed a budget that balances in just four years while holding tax revenue at near its historical average. It advances more aggressive entitlement reforms...
View Article10 Myths About the Obamacare Medicaid Expansion
As Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion is being debated in the states, many myths are being perpetuated by its advocates. Here, Heritage provides the research to debunk such myths: 1. Myth: Expanding...
View ArticleMedicare Reform that Saves Seniors and Taxpayers Money
Newscom America’s finances are in a mess, and Medicare is one of the main reasons. But the good news—just confirmed by the Congressional Budget Office—is that there’s a way to save money for Medicare...
View ArticleCBO Affirms What We’ve Known All Along: Reducing National Debt Will Grow the...
Newscom House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R–Wis.) steps to reduce the budget would help boost economic growth. Ryan’s 2015 budget proposal contains more than $5 trillion in savings over 10...
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