I have written two posts analyzing Hillary Clinton’s healthcare plan. You will find them on www.tpmcafe.com (where I am a contributor). You can comment there.
Category Archives: Mandates
If We Mandate Insurance, Should 20-Somethings Pay Less?
Should insurers be able to offer less expensive policies to the young and healthy? Or should they be required to offer the same benefits to everyone at the same price?
In states where insurance is mandated, should twenty-somethings get a break? In a post on Health Care Policy and Marketplace Blog Robert Laszewski addresses these questions. He begins by focusing on a report just released by the health insurance trade association (AHIP). The study looks at state health insurance reforms of the 1990s that tried to eliminate discrimination by insisting that insurers must sell “individual” policies to people who are not covered by an employer or another group without discriminating on the basis of health, age or gender. According to the AHIP, these reforms have had some “unintended consequences.”
Drug-Maker’s Direct-to-Consumer Advertising—“Half-True”?
Earlier this month the FDA announced that the direct-to-consumer ads Merck has been using peddle its new cervical cancer vaccine, Gardasil, are “half-true . . . information currently being advertised could mislead the public.”
But “don’t get too excited that the U.S. Food & Drug Administration has regained its sanity,” says blogger Bill Sardi.
“This is the FDA in Thailand,” he explained. (Sardi picked up the news in the Bangkok Post)
Before taking a closer look at precisely why Thailand’s health officials are concerned about Merck’s ads—and why our own FDA isn’t raising a red flag– let’s step back and review our own government’s policy on drug ads that are beamed directly to you and me.