Is healthcare reform fiscal reform?
Greg Mankiw mocks the muddled thinking of health-reform advocates. I have a plan to reduce the budget deficit. The essence of the plan is the federal government writing me a check for $1 billion. The...
View ArticleMove to the centre, or move the centre?
Greg Sargent and EJ Dionne separately hope that Obama’s State of the Union address will be less about moving his presidency to the centre than about moving the centre to where he is already standing....
View ArticleHealth insurance and the Constitution
Judge Roger Vinson’s ruling that the individual health insurance mandate is unconstitutional seems to have surprised a lot of commentators. I’m surprised they’re surprised. The ruling may be wrong–ie,...
View ArticlePPACA one year on
A year ago this week Congress passed and President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute organized a conference on Monday to take stock. As a...
View ArticleRyan’s budget plan
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has done a quick analysis of Paul Ryan’s budget, and says the main things that need to be said about it. This article by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles...
View ArticleReforming entitlements needs consensus
Ron Brownstein at National Journal reviews the recent history of efforts to restructure entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security. With bipartisan consensus, he argues, it can be done; without,...
View ArticleMitt Romney’s speech on health care
It was a close-to-impossible assignment: explain why the Massachusetts health care reform was good policy and President Obama’s health care reform, so strikingly similar, wasn’t. In his speech at Ann...
View ArticleGingrich’s campaign looks over before it begins
Newt Gingrich got his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination off to a bold, if perplexing, start by attacking Paul Ryan’s budget plan as “right-wing social engineering” and affirming his...
View ArticleThe meaning of NY-26
Democrats are reading a lot into their unexpected win in the New York special election. The election was about Medicare reform, they say: voters roundly rejected the House Republican plan. Republicans...
View ArticleAlain Enthoven on Ryan’s Medicare plan
Alain Enthoven, pioneer of “managed competition” and esteemed authority on health-care economics, has an excellent column on Ryan’s premium support plan (What Paul Ryan’s critics don’t know about...
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