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Why Only Business Can Save America from the Health Care Industry

"It is easy to understand how the health care industry manipulated the rules of publicly financed programs like Medicare and Medicaid. A larger mystery is business' passive acquiescence to explosive health plan premiums, which have become its largest and most unpredictable cost burden. Why haven't America's business leaders united to be a counterweight to the health care industry's massive influence?"

The Only Way Out of the Health Care Wilderness

"The claim that we have the best healthcare in the world is correct only if you have an acute condition.... But acute conditions generate enormous costs only because we have not addressed the chronic condition earlier, interrupting the disease progression that produces the acute events. Since most healthcare cost growth over the past 2 decades has been related to patients with 4 or more chronic conditions, this should be recognized as the foremost issue in healthcare reform."

Bending the Health Care Cost Curve by Using Reference Pricing

"[H]ealth insurers are increasingly turning to the ideas that drove [premium support] -- choice, competition, and the power of a (carefully regulated) market -- to address high costs on the procedural level. Call it the micro-voucherization of health insurance. This is known by wonks as reference pricing, and its recent results in California are promising: the costs of hip and knee replacements fell by 19%, with no attendant decrease in quality."

Administration Announces One-Stop-Shop on the Health Care Law for Businesses Big and Small

"Business.USA.gov/healthcare [is] a one-stop-shop where employers of all sizes can go for information on the [ACA]. The new site includes a web-based tool that allows employers to get tailored information on how the health law may affect them based on their business' size, location, and plans for offering health benefits to their workers next year. From tax credits for small businesses to help make coverage affordable, to measures to help slow the growth of health care costs, there are a variety of ways that the Affordable Care Act can help businesses expand health care coverage and compete."

The Gold Plated Health Care System: What the New Numbers Tell Us about the State of the Economy

"This non-economist ... believes the pause could be more durable, even after 2014. Something deeper and more troublesome than the recession is at work here. As observed last year, the health spending curve actually bent downward a decade ago, four years before the economic crisis. Health cost growth has now spent three years at a pre-Medicare (indeed, a pre-Kennedy Administration) low."

The Republican Case for Waste in Health Care

"Though we spend more per person on health care than any other people on earth, and with results that are no better and often worse than all other advanced nations, we have allowed conservatives and corporate interests to bind us with laws that explicitly forbid the use of formal cost-benefit analysis to determine how health care dollars are spent. Until we get our heads around this contradiction, we are in big trouble."

Middle Class Americans Saving Billions under the Health Care Law's Medical Loss Ratio Refunds

"[I]n 2012 8.5 million consumers received half a billion dollars in refunds -- with the average consumer receiving a refund of around $100 per family. Moreover, in 2012, 77.8 million consumers saved $3.4 billion up front on their premiums as insurance companies operated more efficiently as compared to 2011.... For those Americans who already have health insurance -- the vast majority -- the only changes you will see under the law are new benefits, better protections from insurance company abuses, and more value for every dollar you spend on health care. If you like your plan you can keep it and you don't have to change a thing due to the health care law."

Wal-Mart Could Transform Health Care -- But Does It Want To?

"Back in 2007, Princeton University's Uwe Reinhardt suggested to NPR that Wal-Mart could be 'taking aim at the entire health care system' by expanding its new discount drug program.... And in subsequent years, Wal-Mart did grow its health care footprint, from launching retail clinics based within its stores to advocating for national health reform. Considering its history -- as recently as 2005, Wal-Mart had little involvement in the health care market and was being pilloried for skimping on its own employees' benefits -- it's been a significant turnaround for the firm, and has positioned Wal-Mart as one of the leading disruptive innovators in health care."

Health Insurance Exchanges May Transform Health Care and Lower Costs -- But Only If We Get It Right

"Comparisons between health care and retail abound, and while we say it is ideal for the consumer experience to be the same in both industries, in fact they are much different.... [W]hat if the customer expected the same 'no questions asked' return policy ...? Or a money back guarantee? In health care, only recently has the federal government taken steps to impose financial penalties in instances of poor care (which is the health care system's equivalent of a 'return policy' from providers)."

The President's Health Care Law Is Hurting Our Economy, and Must Be Fully Repealed

"It's no secret that our nation's economy is struggling, and the president's health care law, enacted in 2010, is making things worse -- raising health costs and making it harder for small businesses to hire workers. The only way to change this is by repealing ObamaCare in its entirety."