Last week the Office of the Actuary of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a couple of reports, one on national health spending in 2008 and the other, which was covered by the Wall Street Journal, on the impact of pending federal health reform legislation on health care costs. Both are interesting in […]

An article in the Boston Globe on Thursday reported on last week’s Massachusetts Division of Insurance (DOI) public hearing at which health plans were asked to justify their business operations. The purpose of the DOI hearings is to try to determine why the cost of health insurance is so high for small businesses. At the […]

The furor of the debate over whether or not to include a public plan or to enforce an individual mandate has obscured another important element of federal health reform: the role and design of the health insurance exchanges. A recent posting on The Health Care Blog entitled “Last Chance to Fix the Exchanges” makes this point […]