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John C. Goodman

Goodman and Herrick: Obamacare Has Made Things Worse

Goodman and Herrick: Obamacare Has Made Things Worse

Ignoring the tax subsidies (both at work and in the individual market), things have gotten worse for people with chronic health conditions – because of Obamacare. Premiums have doubled. Deductibles have tripled. And narrow networks exclude the best doctors and the best hospitals. The reason: Obamacare gives insurers perverse incentives to attract the healthy and avoid the sick. People with health problems are being mistreated because no health plan wants them.
John Goodman and Devon Herrick, study for the Heritage Foundation.

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The Left Doesn’t Understand Health Care Prices

The Left Doesn’t Understand Health Care Prices

What the Left Doesn’t Understand About Health Care Prices
If prices are the problem, why don’t they advocate price controls – requiring all providers to accept Medicare fees. If providers are making too much money, why don’t they advocate taxing provider incomes and giving patients tax rebates based on their medical expenses. These measure would be bad, but easy – much easier than trying to nationalize the entire health care system.

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Are Some Drug Prices Too Low?

Are Some Drug Prices Too Low?

When people think about drug pricing in the United States, they tend to think of the sky-high prices of some newer drugs. High prices do cause real problems. Some people in need may go without. People may also go without needed drugs because prices are too low.

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Tax Law Changes: Good, Bad and Ugly

Tax Law Changes: Good, Bad and Ugly

The good: People can contribute to IRAs regardless of age, 401(k) balances can be converted into annuities and retirees can go another year and a half before there are required withdrawals from tax deferred accounts. The bad: heirs are required to withdraw deferred accounts more quickly (10 years). The ugly: industries that agreed to be taxed in order to fund Obamacare get their taxes rescinded, without any reform of the mess they helped create.

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A Jewish Economist Saves Christmas

A Jewish Economist Saves Christmas

How many of you are dreading the breakout of political warfare over Christmas dinner? I am and I’m not even formally eligible to celebrate the holiday. I’ve seen no reliable count, but I sense that tens to hundreds of thousands of families have already come apart thanks to the Great Divider.

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Tax Law Changes: Good, Bad and Ugly

Goodman: Tax Reform for the Middle Class

We need to remove the most unfair, most anti-work, most anti-saving provisions of the tax code – ones that burden the middle-class. These include a social Security earnings penalty that can push senior workers into a 95% marginal tax rate, a tax on nonsocial security income that even hits tax-exempt bonds, and unfair restrictions on part-time workers and the self-employed.

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Tax Law Changes: Good, Bad and Ugly

Tax Reform For The Middle Class

We need to remove the most unfair, most anti-work, most anti-saving provisions of the tax code – ones that burden the middle-class. These include a social Security earnings penalty that can push senior workers into a 95% marginal tax rate, a tax on nonsocial security income that even hits tax exempt bonds, and unfair restrictions on part-time workers and the self-employed.

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Kotlikoff: Real Federal Debt is $239 trillion

Kotlikoff: Real Federal Debt is $239 trillion

Uncle Sam’s fiscal gap (promises minus expected revenues, looking indefinitely into the future) is now $239 trillion. That’s ten times the size of our Gross Domestic Product. Eliminating our current fiscal gap requires either a 50 percent immediate and permanent hike in all federal taxes or a 33 percent immediate and permanent cut in all federal outlays, apart from debt service. The longer we wait, the more painful the solution gets.

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Wedekind: Opioid addiction can be cured

Wedekind: Opioid addiction can be cured

Larry Wedekind writes: The treatment of choice, almost everywhere, is called Medication Assisted Treatment (M.A.T.) and it involves substitute drugs. It has an 80% failure rate. There is a treatment that involves microcurrent neurofeedback and a recovery support team. It costs one-fifth as much and has a high probability of success. What the Trump administration can do: create CPT (payment) codes for this new method of treatment. What Congress can do: reform the Obamacare exchanges.

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Opioids Are Killing Us: Here’s What We Can Do About It

Opioids Are Killing Us: Here’s What We Can Do About It

Written with Larry Wedekind, Goodman writes: The treatment of choice, almost everywhere, is called Medication Assisted Treatment (M.A.T.) and it involves substitute drugs. It has an 80% failure rate. There is a treatment that involves microcurrent neurofeedback and a recovery support team. It costs one-fifth as much and has a high probability of success. What the Trump administration can do: create CPT (payment) codes for this new method of treatment. What Congress can do: reform the Obamacare exchanges.

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