Health Care

How Health Care Spending Soared by $1 Trillion in 10 Years

By Yuval Rosenberg

Health care spending per person for Americans with employer-provided health insurance rose by 44 percent, or 4.1 percent a year, from 2007 through 2016, according to a new study in Health Affairs ...
Who Will Protect Medicare? GOP, Dems Duke It Out

By Yuval Rosenberg

The 2018 election may be a referendum on President Donald Trump, but it’s also turning into a battle over Medicare, at least in some key races. The Washington Post’s David Weigel reports that...
Kudlow: ‘I Don’t Buy’ That Tax Cuts Boosted Deficit

By Yuval Rosenberg

Larry Kudlow is at it again. Speaking at the Economic Club of New York, the top economic adviser to President Trump said that, while the administration is looking to cut federal spending — including...
House to Considers Billions in Cuts to Obamacare Taxes

By Michael Rainey

In addition to a package of bills that would make the individual tax cuts permanent , the House is expected to consider legislation this week that would delay or roll back multiple tax provisions in...
Arkansas Drops Thousands from Medicaid

By Michael Rainey

More than 4,000 people will lose their Medicaid coverage in Arkansas for failing to meet the state’s new work requirements. Earlier this year, the Trump administration approved the new work rules,...

‘Things Are So Much Worse’ – but Does Anyone Care About the Deficit?

By Yuval Rosenberg

As we told you yesterday , the Congressional Budget Office estimated this week that the deficit for the first 11 months of fiscal 2018 totaled $895 billion, or $222 billion more than it was over the...
Pharma CEO: It's a 'Moral Requirement' to Raise Prices

By Michael Rainey

Nostrum Laboratories, a small pharmaceutical firm based in Missouri, raised the price of the antibiotic nitrofurantoin from $474.75 to $2,392 a bottle last month. Here is how the CEO, Nirmal Mulye,...
Charging Almost $200 for a Bottle of Pills Worth $6

By Yuval Rosenberg

Bloomberg’s Robert Langreth, David Ingold and Jackie Gu take a fascinatingly detailed look at the “secret drug pricing system” that generates millions of dollars for pharmacy benefit managers,...
The Remedy For Surprise Medical Bills May Lie In Stitching Up Federal Law

By Michelle Andrews and Julie Appleby, Kaiser Health News

When Drew Calver had a heart attack last year, his health plan paid nearly $56,000 for the 44-year-old’s four-day emergency hospital stay at St. David’s Medical Center in Austin, Texas, a hospital...
Trump Says He Made Social Security, Medicare Stronger. Fact-Checker Says False.

By The Fiscal Times Staff

President Trump said this week that "Democrats want to destroy Medicare. If you look at what they’re doing, they’re going to destroy Medicare. And we will save it. We will keep it going. We’re making...

The Amazing Growth of High-Deductible Health-Care Plans

By Yuval Rosenberg

According to CDC data released Wednesday, the percentage of Americans under age 65 with a high-deductible health plan grew from 43.7 percent in 2017 to 47 percent in the first three months of 2018. “...
Uninsured Rate Holds at Record Low

By Yuval Rosenberg

Despite efforts by the Trump administration to undermine the Affordable Care Act, the uninsured rate over the first three months of 2018 among Americans of all ages was 8.8 percent, down slightly...
Is the Trump Economy Helping Ordinary Americans?

By Yuval Rosenberg

President Trump has touted the strength of the economy this summer, claiming that he “unleashed an economic miracle” by signing tax cuts into law and boasting that this "may be the best economy in...
GOP Pushes New Bill to Preserve Protections for Pre-Existing Conditions

By The Fiscal Times Staff

Ten Republican senators last week introduced legislation to guarantee insurance protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions — an element of Obamacare that is threatened by an ongoing...
Senate Spending Bill Would Provide $425 Million Boost for Alzheimer's Research

By Yuval Rosenberg

The spending bill passed by the Senate on Thursday would increase funding for Alzheimer’s research by $425 million, to $2.3 billion total — “essentially quadrupling spending levels from four years...