PUBLICATIONS BY Edmund F. Haislmaier
Research
Commentary
Media Appearances
2008 Research
April 23, 2008
Health Care Reform: Design Principles for a Patient-Centered, Consumer-Based Market
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
(Backgrounder #2128)
The foundational insight behind consumer-centered health care reform is that the only way to achieve better value is to make the consumer (and patient) the key decision maker in the system. Only a consumer-centered health care system offers the incentives needed to maximize value and produce more for less both systematically and consistently over the long term.
April 23, 2008
Executive Summary: Health Care Reform: Design Principles for a Patient-Centered, Consumer-Based Market
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
(Executive Summary #2128)
The foundational insight behind consumer-centered health care reform is that the only way to achieve better value is to make the consumer (and patient) the key decision maker in the system. Only a consumer-centered health care system offers the incentives needed to maximize value and produce more for less both systematically and consistently over the long term.
2007 Research
December 06, 2007
Expanding SCHIP: Not the Best Option for States
By Edmund F. Haislmaier and Greg D’Angelo
(WebMemo #1725)
The congressional proposal to expand eligibility for SCHIP would aggravate budget challenges that state governments will face in the coming years.
September 21, 2007
The Massachusetts Health Reform: Assessing Its Significance and Progress
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
(Heritage Lecture #1044)
Massachusetts has committed to restructuring its health system around the principle that individual consumers, not employers or government, should be the key decision-makers and owners of insurance in the health care system. That is a very significant shift in the health policy debate, and it is worth replicating elsewhere the core design elements that effect such a profound change.
July 30, 2007
State Health Reform: How to Fund a Statewide Health Insurance Exchange
By Greg D'Angelo and Edmund F. Haislmaier
(WebMemo #1573)
The five core financial components of a state health insurance exchange.
July 26, 2007
State Health Care Reform: The Benefits and Limits of "Reinsurance"
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
(WebMemo #1568)
When most people refer to “reinsurance” in health care, what they really mean is the related concept of risk transfer or risk-pooling arrangements. Although such mechanisms do not lower overall health care costs, they can help people in poor health obtain coverage and, in conjunction with other reforms, can create a smoother-functioning health insurance market.
July 23, 2007
State Health Reform: How Pooling Arrangements Can Increase Small-Business Coverage
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
(WebMemo #1563)
By combining sound program design with other market-based reforms, state policymakers can create pooling arrangements that increase the number of insured workers and improve the overall health care system.
March 20, 2007
Health Care Reform in Maryland: Doing It Right
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
(Heritage Lecture #1002)
A health insurance exchange facilitates personal, portable insurance independent of the place of work; makes efforts to insure the uninsured more targeted and effective, breaking the cycle of rotation in and out of coverage and reducing the number of uninsured; and provides the administrative framework needed to reach the hardest to insure and cover them efficiently and effectively.
January 11, 2007
Hearing on Prescription Drug Pricing and Negotiation for the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
(Testimony #9999)
Hearing on Prescription Drug Pricing and Negotiation for the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit
2006 Research
June 16, 2006
Health Care Information Technology: Getting the Policy Right
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
(WebMemo #1131)
While health care transactions generate an enormous volume of data, too much of it is disjointed and inefficiently used. Recent studies indicate that better management and use of this information could generate tens of billions of dollars in savings, reducing administrative costs while improving medical care. Many legislative proposals are based on the premise that benefits and savings will flow automatically from government-mandated 'standardization' and 'interoperability.' However, these technical concerns are secondary to creating a market framework for medical information. With that in mind, Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) recently introduced the "Independent Health Records Bank Act" (S.3454 and H.R.5559). This legislation would establish health care information record banks designed to protect patient privacy and respect the information ownership rights of patients and providers alike.
May 15, 2006
Doing It Right: The District of Columbia Health Insurance Market Reform
By Lawrence H. Mirel and Edmund F. Haislmaier
(Heritage Lecture #936)
Under the proposed D.C. Equal Access to Health Insurance Act, all of the incentives in the system would be aligned to put the needs of the patient first, health insurers would compete for customers by offering the best value for money, and providers would compete for patients by offering the best quality of care at the best price.
May 05, 2006
Competition and Federalism: The Right Remedy for Excessive Health Insurance Regulation
By Nina Owcharenko, Edmund Haislmaier and Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D.
(WebMemo #1060)
Open competition in health care markets would benefit consumers.
April 11, 2006
The Significance of Massachusetts Health Reform
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
(WebMemo #1035)
Last week the Massachusetts legislature passed comprehensive health care reform legislation almost a year after Governor Romney first proposed the key elements of a reform strategy. News reports and most commentary have focused on two small but controversial provisions in the final bill: requirements that Massachusetts residents purchase health insurance and that businesses with more than 10 workers who don't offer their employees health insurance pay a per-worker contribution to the state's uncompensated care pool. But in focusing on those items, most reporters and commentators have missed the truly significant and transformative health system changes that the legislation would set in motion.
2005 Research
December 02, 2005
After Katrina: How Congress Should Ensure Health Insurance Continuity
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
(Backgrounder #1900)
A temporary, refundable, and advanceable health insurance tax credit would help to ensure that the vast majority of those who had private health insurance coverage before a disaster struck could keep it following the disaster rather than adding to the burden of uncompensated care on medical providers, becoming dependent on public assistance, or joining the ranks of the uninsured.
July 22, 2005
A Good Start: The House Health Care Reform Bills
By Edmund F. Haislmaier, Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D., and Nina Owcharenko
(WebMemo #803)
Three positive steps and one puzzling omission.
March 03, 2005
Weird Science: Projecting the Effects of Medicare's Odd Drug Benefit Design
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
(WebMemo #674)
Millions of seniors are in for a surprise. And so are their representatives on Congress.
2004 Research
October 12, 2004
Details Matter: A Closer Look at Senator Kerry's Health Care Plan
By Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D, Nina Owcharenko, and Edmund F. Haislmaier
(Backgrounder #1805)
Senator John Kerry's health care plan would expand coverage but would fall short in transforming health insurance markets and making patients the key decision makers in the system. In effect, it would reinforce the status quo, with (according to one estimate) nine of every 10 dollars spent going to employers, insurance companies, and state governments, not to individuals.
October 12, 2004
Executive Summary: Details Matter: A Closer Look at Senator Kerry's Health Care Plan
By Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D, Nina Owcharenko, and Edmund F. Haislmaier
(Executive Summary #1805)
Senator John Kerry's health care plan would expand coverage but would fall short in transforming health insurance markets and making patients the key decision makers in the system. In effect, it would reinforce the status quo, with (according to one estimate) nine of every 10 dollars spent going to employers, insurance companies, and state governments, not to individuals.
May 25, 2004
Compromising Quality: The High Cost of Government Drug Purchasing
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
(Backgrounder #1764)
Some in Congress would make an already deeply flawed Medicare drug benefit worse by expanding the bureaucracy's power to manage and price prescription drug coverage, making seniors' coverage clearly inferior to existing coverage through private-sector pharmacy benefit managers. The government should avoid imposing drug substitution, restricting market access, limiting intellectual property rights or pricing freedom, or extracting price concessions by non-market means.
May 25, 2004
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
(Executive Summary #1764)
2003 Research
July 17, 2003
How Congress's Medicare Drug Provisions Would Reduce Seniors' Existing Private Coverage
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
(Backgrounder #1668)
The House-Senate conferees now attempting to reconcile two profoundly flawed Medicare bills should go back to the drawing board and use as a blueprint the 1999 majority recommendations of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, which proposed that Medicare beneficiaries be given a choice between traditional Medicare as it exists today and new, private plans offering comprehensive, integrated benefits including full outpatient prescription drug coverage.
July 17, 2003
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
(Executive Summary #1668)
June 26, 2003
An Analysis of the White House Position on Medicare Legislation
By Edmund F. Haislmaier, Robert E. Moffit, and Nina Owcharenko, Center for Health Policy Studies
(WebMemo #305)
The White House Office of Communications recently issued a series of "questions and answers" on the Medicare legislation before the House and the Senate. The point of the issuance was to answer the critics of the Medicare legislation by responding to the main criticisms in a question-and-answer format.
June 25, 2003
An Analysis of House Medicare Legislation
By Lanhee J. Chen, Edmund F. Haislmaier, Robert E. Moffit, and Nina Owcharenko, Center for Health Policy Studies
(WebMemo #302)
This analysis examines the House Medicare Modernization and Prescription Drug Act of 2003 (H.R. 2473). The bill establishes a universal, but voluntary, drug benefit as an entitlement in the Medicare program. The bill also makes changes in traditional Medicare and creates a new competitive system for Medicare that will take effect in 2010.
June 17, 2003
Analysis of the Evolving Senate Medicare Bill
By Edmund F. Haislmaier and Robert E. Moffit
(WebMemo #296)
A preliminary analysis of the Prescription Drug and Medicare Improvement Act of 2003 based on a descriptive outline of the Senate bill's provisions; it is not based on formal legislative language, which has been unavailable to the public.
June 02, 2003
Representative Gephardt's Costly Health Plan
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
(Backgrounder #1657)
Representative Richard Gephardt's proposal to expand health insurance coverage through a combination of new corporate and individual tax credits and expansions of Medicare, Medicaid, and the State Children's Health Insurance Program, instead of focusing on individuals, targets corporations. It would compound the flaws of the current tax treatment of health insurance and lead both to expanded federal control and to a continued loss of personal choice and control by individuals and families over their health care decisions.
February 25, 2003
State Opportunities to Provide Affordable Health
By Nina Owcharenko and Edmund Haislmaier
(Backgrounder #1626)
The federal health care tax credit will be equal to 65 percent of the health insurance premiums of these individuals and can be applied only to specific types of coverage that states can play a key role in offering.
1993 Research
March 08, 1993
Why Global Budgets and Price Controls Will Not Curb Health Costs
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
(Backgrounder #929)
It is our pleasure, therefore, that those prices, which the concise items in the following list indicate, be held in attention throughout our whole domain, in such a way that all men understand that freedom to exceed them is removed.
2006 Commentary
November 30, 2006
The Massachusetts Approach: A New Way To Restructure State Health Insurance Markets And Public Programs
By Ed Haislmaier and Nina Owcharenko
In April 2006, Massachusetts enacted legislation to reorganize both its health insurance markets and a large portion of its health care subsidy system. In this paper we consider how the Massachusetts approach differs from most previous state health reform efforts, while also noting its antecedents. We examine the policy implications of the legislation’s key elements and discuss how other states might consider altering the scope and specifics of those components. We conclude that both parts of the Massachusetts reform strategy merit consideration by other states and together hold promise for expanding coverage, particularly by addressing the problem of coverage discontinuity.
May 06, 2006
Massachusetts Health Reform: What the doctor ordered
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
Call it a "rush to comment." Pundits wasted no time weighing in when Massachusetts' comprehensive health reform was introduced. Most focused on two small but controversial provisions: a requirement that all residents carry health insurance, and a requirement that some non-insuring employers kick in an annual fee to the state's fund for uncompensated medical care.
February 03, 2006
A "Futile and Stupid" Health Care Gesture
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney's reaction to the plight of those without health insurance reminds one of a line from "Animal House": "I think this situation absolutely requires that a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part."
January 28, 2006
Mitt's Fit
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
In "Unhealthy in Massachusetts" (NRO, 1/26) Sally Pipes roundly trashes Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's health plan. However, her "just say no" critique reveals a near complete misunderstanding of the governor's innovative approach.
2004 Commentary
November 08, 2004
Health Plans: An Ethical Prescription
By Edmund F. Haislmaier
Lost amid the din of election coverage were reports on two events with long-term implications for American health care.
October 22, 2004
The Flu-Vaccine Shortage: A Second Opinion
By Andrew Grossman and Edmund F. Haislmaier
Sen. Kerry should himself "play straight with the American people" and admit that his plan for buying drugs in Medicare relies on the same factor that caused the vaccine shortage.
