central health insurance state

The Heartland Institute: Health Care News
The Heartland Institute offers extensive resources on budget and tax policy issues. Those resources include Budget & Tax News, a monthly print and email publication; and PolicyBot, with thousands of policy documents, available in PDF and HTML free of charge, on such topics as economic development, privatization, and regulation.

• August 2008 Health Care News (PDF)
  The August 2008 issue of <I>Health Care News</I> highlights innovation in the health care industry.
• Consumer-Oriented Government Policy Can Avert Dire Health Care Mega-Trends
  One of the most innovative ideas that appeared in <I>Patient Power: The Free-Enterprise Alternative to Clinton's Health Plan</I>, a book I wrote in 1993 with Gerry Musgrave, and again in my 2007 study on "Applying the 'Do No Harm' Principle to Health Policy," was a way to slice through a Gordian knot created by five health care mega-trends.
• Allowing Interstate Purchase Could Reduce the Number of Uninsured, Analysts Say
  Analysts investigating why so many people are uninsured are increasingly concluding state regulations on the insurance market are one of the biggest causes of the problem, by making insurance unaffordable for many people.
• Massachusetts Businesses and Insurers Form Coalition to Fight Rising Health Care Costs
  Massachusetts businesses have joined several of the state's health insurers to form a new consumer advocacy group, the Coalition for Affordable Health Coverage, seeking to slow health insurance premium increases and prevent the financial burden on employers from being further increased through continued attempts by the Massachusetts government to "universalize" health insurance in the Bay State.
• Four Steps to Reforming Long-Term Care
  Although it is optional, every state provides a long-term care benefit through its Medicaid program--and not just to the poor. Medicaid is paying for the long-term care of a growing number of middle-income seniors, and this is one of the fastest-growing areas of state spending.
• Obesity Has Many Causes ... and Wide-Ranging Market Solutions
  Americans are bigger today than ever before. Some scientific research, many news stories, and the occasional movie claim our growing girth imposes strains on the health care system, raises costs throughout the economy, and shortens lives.
• Consumers Union Will Rate 'Aggressiveness' of Treatment
  Consumers Union, publisher of <I>Consumer Reports</I>, has joined a growing list of organizations offering consumers information on hospitals and health care efficiency.
• A Health Care Revolution Is Underway ... No Thanks to Government 'Help'
  Although presidential candidates Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and John McCain (R-AZ) have wide differences in their positions on health care, it may not matter much what they or other politicians have to say on the matter.
• Kansas Legislature Rejects Big-Government Health Care
  Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) has signed into law a bill implementing several new health care initiatives, but most of the big-government provisions were rejected by the legislature before the measure reached the governor's desk.
• Britain's NHS Denies Care for Patients Paying Privately for Drugs
  British taxpayers suffering from life-threatening diseases are being denied many of the latest and most effective drugs because of a government policy disallowing co-funding with private companies.
• Arkansas Aims to Increase SCHIP Participation
  An Arkansas-based advocacy group has kicked off a new initiative intended to increase enrollment of the state's children in ARKids First, the state's federally funded Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
• AHIP Cedes Initiative to Government in Health Care Overhaul Proposal
  America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a trade association representing more than 1,300 health insurance providers, has offered a proposal it says could help the United States reduce total spending on health care by more than $145 billion in the next decade while improving quality.
• Texas Governor Announces Trauma Research Grant
  Initiating an intensive taxpayer-supported effort to support injury trauma research and awareness, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has awarded the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHSC-H) Center for Transitional Injury Research a $5 million grant, effective this summer, to recruit leading scientists and surgeons in trauma care to the state and to establish a trauma research center utilizing modern medical technologies.
• Congressional Task Force Seeks to Regulate Health Care
  U.S. Sens. Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Judd Gregg (R-NH) are creating a bipartisan task force of White House and Congressional officials that will meet through the end of the year to consider legislative ways to lower health care costs; address the long-term funding issues affecting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; and study the comparative regional and demographic effectiveness of national health policies.
• Wisconsin Insurance Providers Increase Cost Transparency
  Insurance-providing members of the Wisconsin Association of Health Plans have pledged to make health care costs more transparent to enrollees.
• HHS Devises Another Strategy for Health Information Technology
  The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has released a plan to "coordinate the federal government's health IT efforts, which seek to achieve nationwide implementation of an interoperable health IT infrastructure throughout both the public and private sector.
• Rhode Island Legislators Get Health Insurance Stipend
  A new Rhode Island law may give the state's legislators a real advantage over their constituents when it comes to health insurance.
• Rhode Island Governor Offers Proposal for Consumer-Driven Medicaid Overhaul
  Rhode Island Gov. Don Carcieri (R) has offered a proposal to save taxpayers $67 million by overhauling Rite Care, the state's Medicaid program.
• Medical Innovation Abounds--Except Under Single-Payer Systems
  In late June, key members of Congress got another wake-up call about the serious threat rising government health spending poses to the future of our health care sector and the overall economy.
• Kids' Obesity Rates Leveling Off
  Childhood obesity rates in the United States have leveled off after decades of increases, according to a study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
• SCHIP Rules Get Mixed Reviews in States
  A reform implemented by President George W. Bush and the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) will tighten eligibility for the federally funded State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), limiting the program to children whose family income is no more than 2.5 times the federal poverty level.
• Oregon Voters May Take Up Student Policies
  Voters in Portland, Oregon may be asked to decide whether they and their fellow taxpayers will begin shouldering the financial burden for providing health insurance to the city's elementary and high school students.
• Florida Passes Model Legislation Allowing More Health Insurance Choice
  Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) has signed a bill allowing uninsured Floridians to purchase health insurance plans largely free of expensive, superfluous mandated coverages.
• The ONC - Coordinated Federal Health IT Strategic Plan: 2008 - 2012
  On April 27, 2004, President Bush issued Executive Order (EO) 13335 "to provide leadership for the development and nationwide implementation of an interperable health information technology infrastructure to improve the quality and efficiency of health care." EO 13335 established the posit