News & Blogs

CBO Wins Our Maxwell Smart “Missed it By That Much” Award

Speaking of frauds and cheats, we now dial back to the Biden years when the White House rammed through a Democratic Congress the ironically titled Inflation Reduction Act. HOTLINE readers know we at UP were among the first  policy groups to expose the phony budget “savings” in the IRA from drug price controls and the Medicare Part D redesign. Now it’s official. We were right, as this half-trillion-dollar mea culpa from CBO shows: In its…

Jon Decker Talks AARP-UHC Partnership with Andrew Langer on Kim Klacik LIVE

Transparency Should Apply To All Forms Of Medicare Insurance

In various committee hearings and markups, Congress continues exploring actions to expand transparency for health care consumers. Such measures hold the potential to give patients the information they need to select their health care options wisely, generating competition that can bring down costs. However, the success of transparency efforts depends upon those measures getting applied evenly and broadly. When it comes to Medicare, that means Congress should ensure seniors have information on all types of…

Germany figured out how to cut healthcare costs: Make Americans pay the bill

Germany has found a convenient way to cut healthcare costs: send the bill for medical innovation to the United States. Under a new policy, Germany will tighten its already aggressive controls on what drugmakers can charge for innovative medicines. The result is predictable: Germany will contribute even less toward the cost of developing new treatments while American patients shoulder more of the burden.

Congress is finally taking on the middlemen driving up your drug costs

Every day, people walk into their local pharmacy and face a price they can’t afford for a drug they can’t live without. Families are being forced to choose between paying for lifesaving prescriptions and covering basic necessities. At the same time, the community pharmacists who provide these critical medications are struggling to keep their doors open. You deserve to know why this is happening and who is benefiting from it. The answer: We are paying the price for PBM greed.

Opinion: This Is Not the Answer to Soaring Health Care Costs

With health insurance premiums surging again, a growing chorus of economists and policymakers has settled on a cure for American health care: Cap what hospitals, drug makers and insurers can charge. The idea shows up in many forms, including Medicare drug price negotiation, proposals to limit private hospital prices to multiples of Medicare rates, and calls for public plans that pay providers at government-set rates. Their diagnosis is half right. Prices are high, opaque and frequently baffling, and they often do not…

America must win the biotech competition with China

The United States and China are engaged in a competition that will shape far more than the future of medicine. The country that wins the biotechnology race will wield enormous economic influence. Even more than that, this competition poses a national security threat to our very existence. For decades, the United States held an overwhelming advantage, but that lead is now narrowing faster than most policymakers realize.

AARP doesn’t represent seniors. It overcharges them

With families still struggling after years of high inflation, “affordability” remains top of mind for policymakers in Washington. But one organization has little credibility on this front: AARP. Formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, a more accurate moniker might be Against Affordability for Retired Persons because AARP makes most of its money by overcharging its members. As I outline in a new report for American Commitment, its most recently available financial statement shows…