Author: David Hogberg

Skeleton of VA Nursing Home Patient Found After Missing 15 Years

ConservativeBlog.org /
Carl McKenzie, a psychiatric patient, had been missing for four months from the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem, Virginia.  In late March, his body was finally found in some underbrush near the hospital.  That same day, a groundskeeper found ...
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Intellectuals and the VA: How A Bad Idea and Bad Reporting Contributed to a Health Care Catastrophe

Intellectuals and the VA: How A Bad Idea and Bad Reporting Contributed to a Health Care Catastrophe

National Policy Analysis #660 /
In all the finger-pointing over the Department of Veterans Affairs scandal, one group has thus far largely escaped accountability: intellectuals. The people whose work begins and ends with ideas — academics, policy wonks and, to some extent, journalists — helped ...
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Commonwealth Fund Study: Cost Versus Access

ConservativeBlog.org /
I recently appeared on the Andrew Wilkow show to discuss the new Commonwealth Fund study that purports to show that the U.S. health care system is dead last among 11 industrialized nations. Greg Scandlen adds some more points about the ...
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New HHS Report Also Shows ObamaCare Raising Premiums, Reducing Choice

ConservativeBlog.org /
As noted below, the new report from the Dept. of Health and Human Services shows ObamaCare is likely headed for a death spiral.  The study also reveals that ObamaCare has increased insurance premiums. The report states that the “national average for ...
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New HHS Study Provides More Evidence ObamaCare Headed For A Death Spiral

ConservativeBlog.org /
A new report from the Dept. of Health and Human Services purportedly showing that the ObamaCare exchanges are improving cost and choice inadvertently provides more data that the exchanges are heading toward an insurance death spiral.  (If you need an explanation of ...
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Cohn’s Excuse For VA Failure

ConservativeBlog.org /
Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic has an interesting analysis of the Veterans Administration scandal that runs 12 paragraphs. He should have stopped at 11. His final paragraph links VA failure to larger problems in the U.S. health care system: ...
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Health Care Odds & Ends: Exchange Edition (aka Bad News Edition)

ConservativeBlog.org /
Although little of the news about the ObamaCare exchanges is good, let’s see if we still can’t find some humor in it. 1. Two Million Discrepancies.  Of the 5.4 million people who signed up on the federal exchanges, about 2.1 ...
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If ObamaCare Saves Lives, It Does So Very Inefficiently

ConservativeBlog.org /
Referring to a recent study about RomneyCare in Massachusetts that finds a link between insurance status and mortality, The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn says “it makes Obamacare look good.”  In fact, it shows that ObamaCare is a grossly inefficient way ...
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Policies On Vermont Exchange Could Have Substantial Rate Hikes

ConservativeBlog.org /
Yesterday came news that policies on the Vermont ObamaCare exchange would likely rise, although it wasn’t reported by how much. Today the Vermont Digger finds that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont is asking to raise its premiums by an ...
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Health Care Odds & Ends: Good News Edition

ConservativeBlog.org /
Let’s start this Monday with good news on the health care front.  (Back to your regularly scheduled commentary on ObamaCare exchanges and Veterans Affairs tomorrow.) 1. Reference Pricing.  A few years ago the health care plan that services CalPERS workers ...
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