February 12, 2009
Permanently Altering the Path of Spending
I took part in a panel discussion today on the stimulus bill, Obama’s health care plan, and more. The entire conversation was taped by PJTV, and is available as a webcast here.
February 12, 2009
I took part in a panel discussion today on the stimulus bill, Obama’s health care plan, and more. The entire conversation was taped by PJTV, and is available as a webcast here.
February 11, 2009
[Cross-posted at the Corner] Let’s set aside the issue of whether funding for a new “comparative effectiveness research” (CER) program belongs in a “stimulus” bill. Let’s instead ask: Is CER a good idea on the merits? In theory, CER is intended to ensure that medical decisions are grounded,...
February 9, 2009
[Cross-posted at the Corner] The House-passed “stimulus” bill includes a little-noticed provision which would impose substantial new costs on employers—exactly what is not needed right now with so many companies struggling to maintain profitability. Under current law, laid off workers can elect to stay on with...
February 4, 2009
Over at National Review Online, I discuss the opportunity the withdrawal of Tom Daschle’s nomination for HHS secretary presents to President Obama: The president says he wants to build reform of health care on a broad base of bipartisan support and consensus. In fact, Daschle said that was his goal as well, but conservatives never...
February 2, 2009
Last week, the journal Health Affairs published an important article calling for the creation of “Accountable Care Organizations” in the Medicare program. Reform of how health care is actually delivered to patients is the Holy Grail of health policymaking. The delivery system can be broadly understood to be those processes by...
January 29, 2009
On Tuesday, some of Washington’s leading budget experts released a public memo to the President providing advice on what he should do in his upcoming 2010 budget. The list of signatories is a who’s who of seasoned fiscal policy experts. There are three former directors of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a former...
January 27, 2009
The House is racing toward passage of an $815 billion economic “stimulus” bill this week (the full text is available at ReadTheStimulus.org). The Congressional Budget Office issued a cost estimate for the measure yesterday. There are many features of the bill that are troubling. The federal government will need to borrow...
January 13, 2009
President-elect Barack Obama went on ABC News’s This Week on Sunday for an interview with George Stephanopoulos and had some very interesting things to say about health care and fiscal policy (the full transcript is available here). Consider this exchange: STEPHANOPOULOS: But you’re going to face some real hard choices. You...
January 7, 2009
The 111th Congress convened yesterday, and the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives wasted no time before laying down an inauspicious marker on health care. As usual, the first order of business in the House was to update the chamber’s internal rules, covering everything from who has access to the members’...
January 5, 2009
It is becoming increasingly clear that one of the main reasons for the current financial crisis is the collective short-sightedness of our national political leaders. Politicians want to get re-elected, and so they are mainly concerned with how they are perceived by voters in the run-up to the next election, not what their policies will...
