Cato Policy Forum: Whatever Happened to Medicare Reform?

This year?s presidential campaign has focused on covering the uninsured, to the exclusion of a much bigger problem: Medicare?s effects on the cost and quality of health care, and the enormous bite that program will take out of workers? earnings. An unreformed Medicare program alone would require tax rates to rise by 25 percent within a generation, and to double within 75 years.

On Thursday, May 15 Cato Institute will host a policy forum designed to help the candidates focus on the crucial issue of Medicare reform. Titled, ?Whatever Happened to Medicare Reform??, the forum will feature presentations by former Medicare trustee Tom Saving, Stuart Guterman of the Commonwealth Fund, and Cato Institute director of health policy studies Michael F. Cannon. It will take place at the Cato Institute at 12:00pm and will be followed by a luncheon reception in Cato?s winter garden.

To register for the event, please click here, email events@cato.org, fax (202) 371-0841, call (202) 789-5229, or register online by noon on Wednesday, May 14, 2008. The Cato Institute is located at 1000 Massachusetts Ave, N.W., Washington, DC, 20001.

Cannon to Be Keynote Panelist at World Congress Leadership Summit

Cannon will also participate in the opening keynote panel at the 4th Annual World Congress Leadership Summit on Medicare on Thursday, May 15, 2008 at the Westin Alexandria in Alexandria, VA, from 8:15 to 9:30am. He will also be available to sign copies of Healthy Competition: What?s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It (2nd Edition), from 10:45 to 11:15am.

Tanner on McCain Health Plan: It?s Radical and It?s Good

There is a radical health reform proposal in this presidential campaign. And it?s good, says Cato Institute senior fellow Michael D. Tanner in the Orange County Register. ?John McCain is proposing the most radical overhaul of American health-care policy in a decade and a half,? says Tanner, who sees positive things in the McCain plan. ?McCain's proposal would give people back the choices they need to get better care?without having the government take over the health system. That's a radical change, and the right idea.?

Michigan Law Review on Medicare Meets Mephistopheles

Nearly two years after its release, David Hyman?s satire Medicare Meets Mephistopheles is still generating reviews ? and controversy. In the April 2008 issue of the Michigan Law Review, Michigan law professor Jill Horwitz takes issue with many of Hyman?s conclusions, but nonetheless raves: ?Hyman is extraordinarily knowledgeable about health care regulation and his exposition is succinct. The book is filled with informative and accurate summaries of Medicare?s complicated program design and related laws. The summaries of fraud and abuse law, for example, make my heart sing. I?ve seldom seen such an accessible and accurate primer.?

Click here to read the full review, and here to purchase Medicare Meets Mephistopheles.