Some consumers and businesses might see a little extra cash this summer as a result of the 2010 health care law. The Kaiser Family Foundation recently reported an estimated $1.3 billion in rebates will be delivered from health insurers who spent more than the law allotted on administrative expenses and profits.

President Obama promised that the brunt of any financial reckoning will fall mostly only on those making more than $250,000 annually. Under his healthcare plan, the economic agony starts at income levels that fall much lower than that.

Regardless of whether proposed health insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act are ever implemented successfully, consumers and employers need better tools to compare the relative cost and quality of the health care they are likely to receive under different plan options.

For the second year in a row, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has advanced a comprehensive budget plan that would restructure Medicare and Medicaid, repeal the big-spending portions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and ultimately resolve the fiscal crisis facing this country. 

In the latest Health Policy Outlook AEI health expert Scott Gottlieb, MD explains how a previously obscure government advisory panel now wields tremendous powers to decide which preventive health care services public and private insurance will cover.

Sound retirement security policy for future retirees requires planning. Workers need to be engaged; employers need to be responsible; and policymakers must ensure that pension law, tax law, and the Social Security system operate in a manner that promotes opportunities for private saving, appropriate retirement asset management, and sustainability and predictability.

Which politicians do you trust more to micromanage your health care: federal or state? That’s the false choice presented by two versions of “federalism” intended to divide responsibility for health policy between the national government and the states.