What comes next for private health insurance? Beginning later this year, ObamaCare will create extraordinary new pressures on the insurance industry.

The federal government has taken over large swaths of consumer lending, most notably the $10 trillion home mortgage and $1 trillion student lending markets. The government's share of new loans for each now approaches 100%.Government monopolies in financial services pose risks to taxpayers as well as borrowers

Tom Miller's speech at the Pioneer Institute's health care policy luncheon and The Great Experiment book launch on March 13, 2012.

There is a way to fix the Medicare program without raising taxes: use market-like arrangements to set prices for both the traditional fee-for-service (FFS) program and for private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. A fully implemented competitive pricing system for Medicare would save $550 billion over 10 years.

By next year, about two-thirds of American physicians will be working as salaried employees of large groups and hospitals. This movement has been underway for years. Over the last decade, the number of independent physicians was falling by about 2% a year. But these trends are now accelerating. 

Panelists discuss competitive pricing in Medicare.

Online registration for this event is closed. Walk-in registrations will be accepted.

Economic events in recent months have underscored the large role that the federal government plays as both an explicit and implicit insurer of a wide range of economic activities. For everything from terrorism, crops, floods, and natural catastrophes, to...

Our research shows that competitive bidding—a key feature of the Wyden-Ryan plan—could save Medicare $339 billion over ten years while maintaining basic benefits and without raising taxes. Crucially, the elderly would not be exposed to the risk of higher health care costs, as in approaches that would set fixed voucher payments toward the purchase of medical insurance.