Last week, the Senate Committee on Finance held a hearing to mark the first anniversary of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, featuring Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. There was quite a lot about the hearing that was completely predictable. Committee Democrats spent their time encouraging Secretary Sebelius to elaborate on the [...]

It is to be hoped that eventually more policy makers recognize how silly it is to be debating how best to pay insurance companies when we really need to figure out how best to pay doctors.

In the meantime, I shall bask in the knowledge that Congressman Gohmert and I agree on something.

Which only goes to show that, in the realm of public policy, truly anything is possible.

I know I’ve said this before — although not since the word has become the political slogan of the White House — but the more things change the more they stay the same. Last week, the House Small Business Committee held a hearing to examine the perpetual problems small business owners have with the thorny [...]

Among the many crises awaiting Barack Obama after January 20, 2009 is the issue of health care. In an effort to be helpful (or pushy, depending on your perspective), Senator Max Baucus has released a 98-page white paper outlining a comprehensive and ambitious plan to cover everybody, reduce costs, increase efficiency, reward good health care [...]

A House Small Business Committee hearing last week demonstrated that the nation’s governors can often be more practical and less preachy than federal lawmakers when it comes to health care reform. Minnesota’s Governor Tim Pawlenty (R) and Pennsylvania’s Governor Ed Rendell (D) described their very different approaches to health care marketplace reform in their respective [...]