Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior…
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More Legal Shenanigans from the Biden Administration’s Department of Education

Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior of federal administrative agencies, whose vast armies of overpaid bureaucrats remain unaccountable for their excesses.

Among the most familiar examples of that bureaucratic abuse is the Department of Education (DOE).  Recall, for instance, the United States Supreme Court’s humiliating rebuke last year of the Biden DOE’s effort to shift hundreds of billions of dollars of student debt from the people who actually owed them onto the backs of American taxpayers.

Even now, despite that rebuke, the Biden DOE launched an alternative scheme last month in an end-around effort to achieve that same result.

Well, the Biden DOE is now attempting to shift tens of millions of dollars of…[more]

March 18, 2024 • 03:11 PM

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Home Press Room Coalition Urges Congress to Oppose Rate-Setting in Coronavirus Package
Coalition Urges Congress to Oppose Rate-Setting in Coronavirus Package Print
Thursday, March 19 2020

The Center for Individual Freedom (“CFIF”) today joined a coalition of 24 organizations, led by the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, on a letter urging Congress "to reject any attempt to include any language that would seek to address surprise medical billing by creating a government-mandated benchmark (i.e. rate-setting) to determine out-of-network rates for physicians."

Read the letter below or by clicking here.


March 18, 2020

Dear Senate Majority Leader McConnell, Minority Leader Schumer, House Speaker Pelosi, and Minority Leader McCarthy:

As you debate and consider a legislative response for those affected by COVID-19, the undersigned groups representing millions of taxpayers and consumers urge you to reject any attempt to include any language that would seek to address surprise medical billing by creating a government-mandated benchmark (i.e. rate-setting) to determine out-of-network rates for physicians. Government price controls for medical bills would be particularly devastating at a time of great stress for our nation’s patients and healthcare providers.

Doctors and hospitals are on the front line of treating and fighting this disease. Mandating in-network rates would result in direct government price controls that would artificially suppress rates for providers offering out-of-network care, resulting in enormous financial losses that would be shifted to local hospitals and emergency rooms.

Many of these facilities — particularly the ones serving rural, hard-to-reach communities across the nation — are already operating under razor-thin profit margins, if they are even profitable at all. Further compounding their financial woes could exacerbate a growing doctor shortage and lead to an increase in rural provider consolidation or even closure. The net result of any of these outcomes would be fewer options and higher costs for already at-risk patients.

Lawmakers in California enacted a flawed approach called “benchmarking” in 2017 and patients across the state are suffering from the consequences. Benchmarking at the federal level would give the government authority to set arbitrarily low rates for physicians providing out-of-network care by tying payments to insurers’ deeply discounted in-network averages. This harmful rate-setting approach is included in legislation advanced by the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, the House Energy & Commerce Committee, and the House Education & Labor Committee.

It is critical that at a time of a national emergency you focus on the needs of the country and not use the pandemic as an opportunity to enact government rate-setting that would harm our patients and our healthcare system.

Sincerely,

David Williams
President
Taxpayers Protection Alliance

David McIntosh
President
Club for Growth

Grover Norquist
President
Americans for Tax Reform

Brent Wm. Gardner
Chief Government Affairs Officer
Americans for Prosperity

Jessica Anderson
Vice President
Heritage Action

Jason Pye
Vice President of Legislative Affairs
FreedomWorks

Thomas Schatz
President
Council for Citizens Against Government Waste

Brandon Arnold
Executive Vice President
National Taxpayers Union

Christopher Sheeron
President
Action for Health

Mario H. Lopez
President
Hispanic Leadership Fund

Rick Manning
President
Americans for Limited Government

Jeff Mazzella
President
Center for Individual Freedom

Norm Singleton
President
Campaign 4 Liberty

Wayne Hoffman
President
Idaho Freedom Foundation

Ryan Ellis
President
Center for a Free Economy

Andrew Langer
President
Institute For Liberty

Brian Garst
Vice President
Center for Freedom and Prosperity

Josh Crawford
Interim Executive Director
Pegasus Institute

Charles Sauer
President
Market Institute

Mike Stenhouse
CEO
Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity

Jon Pritchett
President
Mississippi Center for Public Policy

Paul Gessing
President 
Rio Grande Foundation

Seton Motley
President
Less Government

James L. Martin, Founder (Chairman)
Saulius “Saul” Anuzis (President)
60 Plus Association

 

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