A new book calls for universal health insurance coverage, but with no increase in government spending. It’s getting a lot of attention in progressive circles. Yet a bill that would go a long way toward implementing Finkelstein’s proposal has been introduced in Congress by a conservative Republican. More
Can history help us understand today’s panic over global warming? While the Earth is warming and human activity is probably contributing to it, the overheated efforts to make people fear the long-term future suggest that this is more of a crusade than a rationally considered enterprise. Extreme fear of global warming is negatively affecting politics, the economy, the media, international relations, and education.
It’s been 15 years since John McCain ran for president with a plan to completely revamp our healthcare system. In the interim, Republicans have attempted a nip here or a tuck there, but nothing really big. Fortunately, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) and his colleagues have come to the rescue with a reform plan that is a pro-patient, pro-family, pro-free enterprise alternative. It is based on three fundamental values. More
A month ago, Social Security’s Trustees published their annual report. Table VIF1, buried deep in the Appendix, where no one looks, is the statement that Social Security’s unfunded liability is $66 trillion. This measure of Social Security’s red ink is not just gargantuan on its own. It’s $13 trillion larger than it was just three years ago. More
Expanding Medicaid to the relatively healthy might make sense if it improved general health. But there is little evidence it does. In Oregon, for example, a first-of-its-kind controlled trial tracked individuals who applied for Medicaid through a lottery. After two years, there was no discernible difference in the physical health of the winners and losers. More
For the past half century, virtually every major attempt to reform the health care system has involved people who don’t practice medicine telling the doctors who do practice medicine how to manage their affairs. Yet none of these solutions appears to work. Costs keep rising. Quality of care is not measurably improving. And, access to care (as measured, say, by per-capita doctor visits or the length of time needed to see a doctor) seems to be getting worse. So why not try something different? Why not allow the folks who practice medicine and who are in the best position to eliminate waste, improve quality and expand access to care to solve the very problems no one else seems able to solve? More
Economists like Samuelson failed to understand economic growth in developing countries. Unbeknownst to them, cost-reducing innovations in transportation and communication led to increased trade and lifted people out of poverty. The Industrial Revolution benefited only a small portion of the world. Trade spurred prosperity and development on its own.
The emergence of Uber and similar ride services and the pandemic-induced phenomenon of working from home are radically changing the nature of work. The idea of “an hour of work” for a single employer is increasingly a meaningless concept. But without that metric, you can’t make sense of “minimum hourly pay” or “overtime” and other features of 85-year-old labor law. Moreover, millions of people no longer want to be traditional “employees.” To facilitate that desire, we need to let independent contractors have all the tax advantages employees have with respect to health insurance, retirement pensions and other benefits. More.