Last week, the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship held yet another hearing on the subject of small businesses and health care reform. This latest in the multi-year series is perhaps most readily distinguished by the determination of both Congressional Democrats and the Obama Administration to get this done, as close to right now [...]

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 [...]

I suspect we’d find, if we looked at it carefully, that most routine medical care does not need to be financed. By pretending that it does, we simply add to the cost and make medical care less affordable that it really is.

The only reason nobody seems to have figured that out yet is that nobody seems to have considered the notion that the way things are is not necessarily the way they have to be.

In spite of all the talk we’ve been hearing about “change” during this campaign, neither presidential candidate offers much that is strikingly new in the way of health insurance proposals. Basically, Republican candidate John McCain wants to bring down health insurance costs by using the free market to increase competition. Democratic candidate Barack Obama wants [...]

The sign says “Beware of CHICKEN” and, yes, that really is a chicken. Welcome to upstate New York, home of nonemployer microbusiness Silver Top Graphics and its owners Dan Flanagan and Lisa Tait.

In 2005, almost half of employees at small firms who were married to an employee of a large firm are estimated to have been covered as dependents by their spouse’s health insurance benefits plan. This rather intuitive and commonsensical notion is one of the principal findings in a new research report released last week by [...]

Small Business Health Plans (SBHPs), the most recent incarnation of the association health plans that were supposed to allow small businesses to join pooling arrangements and purchase health insurance across state lines through trade and industry membership organizations, are back. Last week, Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY) introduced his SBHP bill in the Senate, with co-sponsors [...]