News
The Health Care Cost Curve Is Bending up Again
2+ hour, 22+ min ago (220+ words) Medicaid spending, accounting for 18 percent of NHE, increased by 6.6 percent.Enrollment declined by 8.6 percent to 84.3 million as states resumed eligibility redeterminations, and per enrollee spending surged by 16.6 percent, partly owing to rising provider payment rates and payments to managed care…...
Improving Medicare Program Integrity - American Enterprise Institute - AEI
2+ week, 18+ min ago (324+ words) GAO's widely cited estimate of Medicare's "improper payments" " $54 billion per year, at last count " is susceptible to being misinterpreted because of what it includes and excludes. On the one hand, it overstates the problem because, according to the Department of…...
New Evidence on the Growing Generosity (and Instability) of Medicare Drug Coverage
2+ week, 3+ day ago (309+ words) Recent changes to Medicare's prescription drug benefit were designed to make coverage more generous for beneficiaries while shifting more financial risk onto insurers. New evidence suggests those changes may have gone further than intended and are likely contributing to omorngoing…...
Policy Reasons to Not Extend Covid-Era Enhanced ACA Subsidies
1+ mon, 3+ day ago (542+ words) In this blog post, I briefly discuss its direct costs, its fairness, the fraud it engenders, and its adverse consequences for work incentives and for the cost and functioning of the health care system. The post Policy Reasons to Not…...
Congress Should Look to Employer Health Coverage to Help Low-Wage Workers
2+ mon, 1+ week ago (240+ words) By James C. Capretta The GOP is already signaling directionally where it would like to go, which is toward "individualization" of ACA subsidies. Instead of sending premium credits to health insurance companies, Republicans want to give them directly to eligible households....
New Research on Long-Term Care Insurance Partnerships
2+ mon, 3+ week ago (851+ words) Public policymakers should be encouraged by these new research results, which show that the seemingly inevitable drift towards public coverage of long-term care and the accompanying massive increases in state and federal government spending as the baby boom generation reaches…...
Disability Debates | American Enterprise Institute - AEI
3+ mon, 1+ day ago (921+ words) Recently,mediaandthink tank interesthas increased about possible reforms to the disability programs administered by the Social Security Administration (SSA). As I led the effort on such a regulation in the first Trump Administration, reporters have contacted me, and others are…...
Congress Should Have Eliminated, Not Expanded, the QSBS Exclusion
3+ mon, 1+ week ago (92+ words) In this article, Mitchell and Pomerleau explain why the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's expansion of the qualified small business stock exclusion was a poor tax policy choice, and they propose ways Congress could rectify it. Tax Notes subscribers may…...
How Hospitals Should Merit Their Tax-Exempt Status
3+ mon, 4+ week ago (651+ words) On September 16, 2025, the Subcommittee on Oversight of the House Ways and Means Committee'held a hearing'on the purpose and use of the tax-exempt status widespread in the hospital sector. In this blog post, I offer some suggestions to policymakers, focusing on…...
The 340B Debate | American Enterprise Institute - AEI
4+ mon, 2+ hour ago (216+ words) By James C. Capretta | Jack Rowing Soon after the law was approved, the Veterans Affairs Department said its purchasing leverage with drug companies was at risk because any price concessions it secured would automatically get passed through to Medicaid, too. Federally…...