Any journalist should be wary of partisan committee chairs wielding statistics. As the great American humorist and novelist Mark Twain observed, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

Open-ended benefits do not conform to the realities of actuarial science. As I wrote last week, a single patient with a chronic disease could cost a plan millions of dollars over his or her lifetime. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act mandates benefits without providing a way to pay for them. Health insurance providers will have no choice but to raise premiums dramatically, and that still might not be enough. Benefit caps were not devised because health insurance executives are hard-hearted or greedy. They were established because, without them, the private health insurance model will not work. The harsh truth is that unlimited benefits are not sustainable without unlimited premiums to balance them out.

Eliminating caps on lifetime health care insurance benefits truly is a blessing to Burke and many other people in his position. I feel for them, and I am happy for them. Unfortunately, the elimination of lifetime caps cannot be sustained, and that will affect everyone.

It has been my experience consulting with families seeking health insurance that many middle-to-high income families are not aware that they might be eligible. Even when they learn they are eligible, many prefer to buy private insurance to avoid the stigma of receiving government assistance.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), a group comprising health insurance regulators from the various states, agreed Tuesday on definitions of the kinds of health insurance expenditures that constitute patient care and quality improvements. These definitions are crucial, because the new health care insurance reform legislation signed into law by President Obama in March [...]

Saving money starts by making the healthcare provider aware that you—not your health care insurance company—will be paying for the care. Many doctors are practicing defensive medicine, erring on the side of caution, under the assumption that the insurer is picking up the bill. When you make it known that you are paying out of pocket, many doctors will reconsider those borderline tests and treatments.

California’s goal for implementing the PCIP is to begin accepting applications in August 2010 with the first effective date of coverage beginning in September 2010.

In March 2010, President Obama signed into law the national health care insurance reform bill known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The new law contains a provision that requires the states to establish high-risk health insurance pools no later than 90 days after the bill became law. The purpose of these pools [...]

The so-called savings are a bit of a shell game. Two-thirds of the Medicare doc fix is paid for with $4.2 billion trimmed from Medicare payments to hospitals—in other words, taking from one pocket and putting it into another. Are the hospitals going to play along? Or are they going to demand a “hospital fix?”

With the $245 billion “doc fix” added in, the deficit for federal healthcare spending over the next ten years will run to $472 billion.