February 3, 2011
[NOTE: Last week, on January 26, 2011, I testified before the U.S. House Committee on the Budget in a hearing on the new health care law. Anyone interested in watching the hearing can find video here courtesy of C-SPAN; my testimony starts around 56 minutes in. The complete text of my testimony as prepared appears below.] Mr. Chairman,...
February 3, 2011
In the last several days, every single Republican member of Congress, in both the House and Senate, voted to repeal Obamacare. And a federal judge has ruled that the law is unconstitutional. I have a short piece up on NRO today looking at the new political and legal realities that the legislation’s supporters now...
January 26, 2011
Obamacare didn’t get mentioned until near the end of the president’s State of the Union address, but when the president did get around to talking about it, the content of what he said was predictable. He attempted once again to justify a full government takeover of American health care on the grounds that the new law is...
January 19, 2011
Simply repealing Obamacare won’t solve all the nation’s health care woes, which is of course why the rallying cry has been “repeal and replace.” One of the most difficult problems facing policymakers is how to fix Medicare, which has become a crushingly expensive entitlement. Fortunately, there are some good ideas...
January 19, 2011
Over at Kaiser Health News, AEI’s Tom Miller and I have an article describing how Congress enact a health-reform program that deals with the central issue of cost control while also achieving universal coverage without the need for a mandate: Pro-competition, pro-consumer-choice advocates should press for reforms that would begin...
January 18, 2011
I will have several posts here today and tomorrow to catch up on a raft of things I’ve recently written in print and online. For starters, in the latest issue of National Affairs, I offer advice to the new Congress on a broad range of questions. A couple of brief examples: Republicans will have to show voters that it is the need to...
January 18, 2011
I have a new article up at the Wall Street Journal today with Doug Holtz-Eakin and Joseph Antos. It refutes the idea that repealing Obamacare will increase the deficit: The Congressional Budget Office says repealing the Affordable Care Act would increase the deficit by $230 billion over the coming decade and by a modest amount in the...
January 18, 2011
During the yearlong debate over Obamacare, the law’s apologists returned over and over again to the supposed fiscal benefits flowing from its provisions as a top selling point. Pass Obamacare, they said, and we’ll have health insurance for everyone, painless cost-cutting to slow rising premiums, and deficit reduction to boot....
January 4, 2011
With the 112th Congress convening for the first time tomorrow, I’ve offered some advice in the New York Times Room for Debate series to the leadership of the House of Representatives on what they should focus on in the months ahead: The lengthy lame duck session of the 111th Congress so dominated the news last month that it is...
December 20, 2010
The November election has certainly shaken things up in Washington, even before most of the newly elected members to the House and Senate arrive in town and take their seats in Congress. That’s because all parties havebegun recalibrating their positions in anticipation of the shifting balance of power that is coming in January....