Protect Workers Against Union-Government Collusion
Illinois law mandates that non-union public-sector workers like Mark Janus pay money for union collective-bargaining activities that they do not support. Collective bargaining in the public-sector often involves advocacy of quintessentially political questions, such as the amount of public worker wages, pensions, and other benefits that will be paid for with the public ’s tax money. Thus, these government-compelled exactions—“agency fees”—give these workers a Hobson’s choice: Either sacrifice your First Amendment rights and fund political advocacy you may not like, or find other employment.The Supreme Court uph...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 10, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Ilya Shapiro, Frank Garrison Source Type: blogs
Democratic Ideas On ACA Improvements; More From CBO On BCRA Medicaid Cuts
On June 28, 2017, the New York Times reported that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, facing difficulty in corralling 50 Republican Senators to unite behind a version of the Better Care Reconciliation Act, has suggested he might turn to the Democrats for help in shoring up the deteriorating situation under the ACA if he cannot get Republicans in line. If he does so, he may find that Democrats have both a proposed diagnosis and cure for the most immediately pressing problems facing the individual insurance market.
On June 28, 2017, the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and of the Senate Com...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - June 29, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Timothy Jost Tags: Costs and Spending Following the ACA Insurance and Coverage Medicaid and CHIP Congressional Budget Office cost-sharing reduction payments reinsurance Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, June 26th 2017
Fight Aging! provides a weekly digest of news and commentary for thousands of subscribers interested in the latest longevity science: progress towards the medical control of aging in order to prevent age-related frailty, suffering, and disease, as well as improvements in the present understanding of what works and what doesn't work when it comes to extending healthy life. Expect to see summaries of recent advances in medical research, news from the scientific community, advocacy and fundraising initiatives to help speed work on the repair and reversal of aging, links to online resources, and much more.
This content is...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 25, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Healthy Life Span Increases, and the Age at which We Reach Old Age is Rising
Today I'll point out an interesting paper on the demographics of aging, one that I hope indicates the spread of more nuanced and useful views into forecasts of the future of aging and longevity. While a good read, and helpful for our cause in that it will further spread the message that increases in healthy life span are both realistic and currently taking place, it is nonetheless still the case that this and all of the other long-term projections arising from the demographic community are essentially fantasies. They are simple extrapolations of trends in adult life expectancy established over the past few decades, and are...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 23, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
At Drug Hearing, Senators Discuss Meanings Of Price And Value — And Debate Health Reform
On Tuesday, June 13, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions (HELP) Committee held the first of three planned hearings on high drug prices. This hearing, titled “How the Drug Delivery System Affects What Patients Pay,” was designed to elicit basic information about how drug prices, overall spending, and patient costs have changed over time, and about the drivers of these metrics. The hearing featured four non-industry witnesses, with the plan that industry representatives will be included in future hearings.
One of the most important points to come out of the hearing was that there is bipartisan concern abo...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - June 20, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Rachel Sachs Tags: Costs and Spending Drugs and Medical Innovation Medicaid and CHIP Payment Policy Medicaid best-price rule outcomes-based contracts prescription drug prices value-based pricing Source Type: blogs
President Trump ’s Budget Proposal: Renegotiation of FDA User Fees?
President Donald Trump’s FY 2018 budget proposal seeks a renegotiation of user fee deals made over the last two years to make up for roughly a 30% decrease in the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) budget.
The budget, which calls for more than $1 billion in new user fees to replace appropriations, comes while both the House and Senate have advanced their individual versions of the user fees reauthorization legislation with the previously negotiated user fee levels agreed to between the FDA and the pharmaceutical, medical device, generic drug, and biosimilar industries.
Current user fees cover an average o...
Source: Policy and Medicine - June 13, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan - Policy & Medicine Writing Staff Source Type: blogs
What Do the Subsidy Recipients Think about Cutting Subsidies?
Ever since President Trump and budget director Mick Mulvaney released a proposed federal budget that includes cuts in some programs, theWashington Post has been full of articles and letters about current and former officials and program beneficiaries who don ’t want their budgets cut. Not exactly breaking news, you’d think. And not exactly a balanced discussion of pros and cons, costs and benefits. Consider just today’s examples:[O]ver 100,000 former Fulbright scholars, among them several members of Congress, are being asked to lobby for not only full funding but also a small increase.As a former Federal Aviation Adm...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 9, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: David Boaz Source Type: blogs
Supreme Court Endorses Broad Government View Of ERISA ‘Church Plan’ Definition
On June 5, 2017, the Supreme Court released Advocate Health Care Network v. Stapleton, unanimously (with Justice Gorsuch not yet participating) accepting the federal government’s interpretation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act’s (ERISA) definition of “church plan.” The Court rejected a challenge brought by employees covered by defined-benefit pension plans offered by entities that qualified as “church plans” under the government’s interpretation.
Separately, on the same day, the Department of Justice filed a brief in Texas v. United States in support of the federal government’s motion for summ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - June 6, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Timothy Jost Tags: Following the ACA ERISA Source Type: blogs
Senate HELP Committee Advances FDARA
Conclusion
Many Democrats used the hearing to protest the Senate process for developing a counterpart to the House-passed ACA repeal bill, calling on committee Republicans to hold hearings.
Related StoriesSenate HELP Hearing on FDA User FeeGOP Senators Send Letter to CMS, Requesting MA ChangesFighting Back – Pharma Objects to FDA’s Last Minute Obama-Era Guidances (Source: Policy and Medicine)
Source: Policy and Medicine - June 6, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan - Policy & Medicine Writing Staff Source Type: blogs
ERISA: A Bipartisan Problem For The ACA And The AHCA
The Supreme Court has once again been called on to mediate the boundaries of a far-reaching, infamously complex, federal employee benefits law. And once again this law may have an important and unanticipated effect on health care.
The main goal of this law, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), was to provide uniform, federal regulation of pensions and employee benefit plans (including health care). But the law has had a far more dramatic impact on health policy beyond what Congress ever contemplated. Because ERISA pushes aside state regulation of these plans, it has impeded the states’ ability to ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - June 2, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Abbe R. Gluck, Allison K. Hoffman and Peter D. Jacobson Tags: Following the ACA Insurance and Coverage Advocate Health Care Network v. Stapleton AHCA All-Payer Claims Database church plans ERISA Essential Health Benefits Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. SCOTUS States Zubik v. Burwell Source Type: blogs
10 Reasons to Stop Subsidizing Urban Transit
As the Trump administration debates whether to help fund a$1.75 billion transit project in California that will do almost nothing to increase transit ridership, it is time to reconsider whether transit should be subsidized at all. Here are ten reasons to end those subsidies.1. It ’s the most costly transportation we haveIn 2015, the transit industry spent $1.15 to move one person one mile, of which $0.87 was subsidized. No other major form of transportation is so expensive or so heavily subsidized. Auto driving cost about 26 cents per passenger mile of which subsidies were 2 cents. Flying was about 16 cents a passenger m...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 23, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Randal O ' Toole Source Type: blogs
Spending Cuts in President Trump ’s 2018 Budget
The Trump administration has released its2018 budget plan, which includes spending and revenue projections for the 2018 to 2027 period. The plan would increase spending on defense, infrastructure, paid leave, and a few other items, but would reduce overall spending substantially compared to the baseline. The plan would cut numerous programs, and it would eliminate the budget deficit within a decade.The spending cuts in the Trump plan would be beneficial for numerous reasons:Cuts would reduce federal deficits, which have plagued the government since the turn of the century. The budget ’s spending cuts are being called cru...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 23, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Chris Edwards Source Type: blogs
Trump Budget to Cut Federal Pensions
The Trump administration ’s 2018 budget to be released tomorrow will include a range of proposed spending cuts. The budget will call for cuts to food stamps, Medicaid, and other entitlement programs. These reforms come on top ofproposed cuts to discretionary programs released in March.There is more good news. The budget will propose cuts to the fat benefit packages received by federal workers. AnApril CBO report found that benefits for the government ’s civilian workers were 47 percent higher, on average, than for comparable private-sector workers. One cause of the excess is that federal workersreceive both a defined...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 22, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Chris Edwards Source Type: blogs
FDA User Fee Reauthorization Clears Hurdle In Senate With Bipartisan Support
On Thursday, May 11, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions marked up the proposed Food and Drug Administration (FDA) user fee reauthorization bill and voted 21-2 to advance it to the full Senate. The bill would reauthorize the fee system for the FDA’s approval of drugs, medical devices, generic drugs, and biosimilars. Recognizing both the must-pass nature of the bill and the partisan climate in Congress right now, the committee and its staff smartly managed to keep the bill fairly clean, adding few non-funding related provisions relative to some past user fee agreements (UFAs). Still, the full tex...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - May 15, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Rachel Sachs Tags: Drugs and Medical Innovation biosimilars clinical trials generic drugs right to try user fees Source Type: blogs
Why Is Insider Trading Illegal?
Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the legendary baseball commissioner, once said that every boy builds a shrine to some baseball hero, and before that shrine a candle always burns. Growing up a Baltimore Orioles fan during the franchise ’s glory days, my shrine had many heroes, including central figures Cal Ripken (HOF 2007), Eddie Murray (HOF 2003), andJohn Lowenstein. Not central but still part of the shrine wasDoug DeCinces, a good glove/solid bat third baseman who manned the O ’s hot corner for nine of his 15 major league seasons.And so I was saddened to read that last Friday DeCinces wasconvicted of 14 charges of insider t...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 15, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas A. Firey Source Type: blogs
