June 14, 2013
This week, the U.S. News “Debate Club” blog posed the question of whether the federal government’s short term deficit has been reduced enough, following the less dismal than usual projections in last month’s Congressional Budget Office report. I weighed in on the debate, arguing that the United States still...
June 6, 2013
The prospects for a “grand bargain” on the budget finally seem dead, and as I explain at National Review Online, the fault lies with tactical blunders made by President Obama. There was a period when the prospects for a “grand bargain” were on the rise — right after President Obama’s reelection in...
June 4, 2013
Last Friday, the Medicare trustees released their annual report on the state of Medicare’s finances. And, yesterday, the American Enterprise Institute held its annual event on the report, moderated by AEI’s Joe Antos. The session always features a presentation on the report’s main findings by a...
June 3, 2013
The Medicare Trustees released their annual report on the state of the Medicare trust fund last Friday, and, not surprisingly, Obamacare supporters are already pointing to the report’s findings as evidence that the law is working. Such claims are nonsense, as I argue in a short post on National Review Online. For starters,...
May 21, 2013
Securing universal health insurance enrollment has been a major goal of American liberals for decades, and Obamacare aims to use the individual mandate to ensure that all Americans obtain health insurance. But as I explain in a column at National Review Online, even with the individual mandate Obamacare will fail to provide...
May 3, 2013
In a column published today at National Review Online I point out some steps that Congressional Republicans can take to not only push back against the worst aspects of Obamacare, but also to win the public argument over the future of American health care. For the moment, the future of Obamacare isn’t a question of legislative...
April 23, 2013
Yesterday, I was pleased to participate in a panel discussion sponsored by the Brookings Institution, entitled “Reforming Medicare: Fiscal Challenges and Policy Solutions.” The event was moderated by Bill Galston of Brookings and included — in addition to my remarks — presentations from Bob Reischauer of the Urban...
April 19, 2013
This week, the American Action Forum (AAF) released a white paper I co-authored with AAF’s President Doug Holtz-Eakin. The paper provides new insurance coverage and cost estimates for the Obamacare replacement plan I developed in collaboration with many other health policy analysts over the past two years. (The replacement plan was...
April 17, 2013
Yesterday, I was pleased to participate in a public event at the American Enterprise Institute, focusing on the content of three papers released by AEI this week (generously sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation). The first paper, which I wrote, is entitled “The Role of Medicare Fee-for-Service in Inefficient Health Care...
April 15, 2013
Over at Roll Call I have a column about what Congressional Republicans rightly seeking Medicaid reform can do to deal with the challenge of managing the long-term care component of the program. Today, states try to manage long-term-care costs and quality through regulations and supply controls, but these efforts are never a match for the...