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Obamacare will Increase Health Spending by $7,450 for a Typical Family of Four
It was one of candidate Obama’s most vivid and concrete campaign promises. Forget about high minded (some might say high sounding) but gauzy promises of hope and change. This candidate solemnly pledged...
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Putting Obamacare's Launch in Perspective
The common view of Obamacare among conservatives goes something like this. Prior to 2010, America’s free-market health-care system was the envy of the world. Obamacare changed all that; it is a...
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Beware the Pivot to a 'Grand Bargain'
It would appear that one of Washington’s tried-and-true political maneuvers — the “pivot” — is now actively underway in the unfolding budget drama. For those who may not be familiar with the pivot,...
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Increased SNAP Benefits: The New Normal?
There are 48 million participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The program pays out $75 billion a year in benefits.Adjusting for inflation, SNAP benefit expenses have...
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We Need To Talk About Entitlements
If the United States cut all domestic discretionary spending ($611 billion) and a third of its defense spending ($218 billion out of $652 billion), the federal government would still have a budget...
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Why We Have Federal Deficits
The federal deficit is a huge public policy problem that must be understood, confronted, and solved. Federal deficits run in these last five years dwarf any precedent in U.S. post-world-war history....
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No Grounds for Claim that Obamacare Lowers Healthcare Costs
Public support for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has plummeted now that the oft-repeated claim that “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it” is widely understood to be untrue. Despite...
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Is Obamacare Responsible for Healthcare Savings?
Many are claiming the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is responsible for lowering healthcare spending’s projected growth. David Cutler, a White House advisor, wrote an article for the Washington Post on...
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Obamacare Is Driving Costs Up, Not Down
The past two months have laid bare the emptiness of the president’s most prominent Obamacare promises. Millions are losing the plans they have and like against their wishes, contrary to the...
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Obamacare’s Troubles Are Far From Over
The Obama White House has spent the past week trumpeting the supposedly fixed healthcare.gov website, with the hope that the strong negative perceptions now held of Obamacare can be partially reversed...
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The End of Obamacare: Just the Beginning of Better Health Care
The Obama administration detected faint signs of a pulse last week in its dysfunctional health benefits exchange web site. But the parade of dismal failures, broken promises, and unsuspecting victims...
View ArticleA Decade of Success: How Competition Drives Savings in Medicare Part D
On December 8, 2003, then-president George W. Bush signed into law the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA). As part of the MMA, a new, voluntary prescription drug program called “Medicare Part D” was...
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Part D's Lessons for Entitlement Reform
While battles rage over Obamacare, Washington barely noticed the anniversary for another government health care program. December 8 marked ten years since passage of the Medicare Part D drug program...
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Don’t Worsen Social Security’s Soaring Cost Problem
Followers of politics may have noticed a recent push from the left to expand Social Security benefits above and beyond the current-law growth schedule (which itself remains unfinanced). Such an...
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Millennials Hurt Most by Growth of Social Security
Increasing Social Security benefits, as proposed by moveon.org, Paul Krugman, and U.S. Senators, may offer political benefits to legislators, but it will be expensive—especially for young people.Unless...
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Better Health Insurance doesn’t Equal Better Healthcare
New data from the Oregon Medicaid expansion study—examining a 2008 lottery where 30,000 random winners, all low-income uninsured people, got the opportunity to apply for Medicaid—gives fodder for...
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Why Slower Healthcare Cost Inflation Isn’t Fixing Medicare Finances
Followers of the national healthcare policy debate may have noticed an interesting recent turn. After the Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s troubled rollout, the law’s supporters shifted to a new line to...
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New Rules to Deprive Seniors of Drugs, Doctors
Two provisions in lengthy proposed regulations published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the Federal Register on January 10 would deprive seniors of vital drugs and make it more...
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Actually, We Won the War on Poverty
This week, Republicans opened their annual winter meeting in Washington—a strategy confab sandwiched between the much-talked-about 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty and President Obama’s State of...
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Republican Alternatives to Obamacare the President Forgot
As can be expected in a mid-term election year, last night’s State of the Union speech was a doozy. This time around, the President promised Americans everything from retirement security and tax...
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