June 4, 2010
In another Web Memo for the Heritage Foundation this week, I wrote a bit more about the debt commission and the budgetary and political problems that Obamacare creates for the nation’s finances. Here’s an excerpt from the beginning: Unfortunately, the timeline for the United States to take corrective...
June 1, 2010
I have a column up at Heritage.org today on the health care reform law’s supposed budget pressure reduction: The President and congressional leaders have argued that a primary benefit from the health law will be reduced long-term budget pressure and thus a brighter future for coming generations of taxpayers. But when the cost...
May 24, 2010
The Obama administration continues to insist (see this post from White House Budget Director Peter Orszag) that the recently enacted health care law will reduce the federal budget deficit by $100 billion over ten years and by ten times that amount in the second decade of implementation. They cite the Congressional Budget Office’s...
May 10, 2010
In the very short term, Europe may be able to weather the Greek debt crisis and cobble together a program that buys time, stems contagion, and avoids a precipitous downward spiral. That is not at all assured, of course. Indeed, it may in fact be unlikely, given the size of the hole that Greece now needs to fill under the IMF-EU bailout...
May 6, 2010
I have a column up today at Kaiser Health Newson the new Independent Payment Advisory Board created in the recently passed health legislation. Here’s an excerpt: ….the [Independent Payment Advisory Board] — a 15 member independent panel, to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate — is now charged...
April 29, 2010
The president’s debt commission had its first meeting this week, and all of the talk was of getting serious about putting our fiscal house in order, with everything “on the table” for consideration. There’s no arguing with the need to get serious. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), if the Obama...
April 23, 2010
Yesterday, the chief actuary for Medicare released a memorandum providing cost estimates for the final health legislation passed by Congress and signed by the president. Amazingly, the HHS Secretary tried to suggest that the memo confirms that the legislation will produce the favorable results that the legislation’s backers have...
April 16, 2010
Suddenly, the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders seem to want health care news stories to fall off of the front page. This week, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman abruptly cancelled a high-profile hearing he had called just days earlier to berate corporate CEOs who dared to tell their investors that...
April 9, 2010
In a new column for Kaiser Health News, I ask what the Massachusetts health reforms of 2007 might warn us about what to expect from the new national reform: The president himself has said that the national plan contains many of the features of the Massachusetts program, now operating in its third year. He is right. There are striking...
March 31, 2010
Now that the health-care bill has been signed into law, President Obama wants to “pivot” to other pressing issues. But, truth be told, the biggest issue the country now faces is still, in large part, about health care. The federal government is running massive budget deficits and is expected to continue to do so indefinitely....