Making Ideas
Change the World
Creating jobs, liberating taxpayers,
empowering patients, and more…
What We Have Accomplished
Turning Ideas
into Public Policy
Health Savings Accounts
Because of the idea of Health Savings Accounts, more than 30 million people are managing some of their own health care dollars in accounts they own and control.
401(k) Plans
Because of automatic enrollment in diversified portfolios, 16 million employees are enjoying higher and safer returns.
Social Security
Because of another idea, 78 million baby boomers are able to work beyond age 65 without losing Social Security benefits.
Roth IRAs
Because of the idea of Roth IRAs, $265 billion in savings has been taxed once and will never be taxed again.
Recent Commentaries
What’s New
It’s Time to Retire the Labor Law
The emergence of Uber and similar ride services and the pandemic-induced phenomenon of working from home are radically changing the nature of work. The idea of “an hour of work” for a single employer is increasingly a meaningless concept. But without that metric, you can’t make sense of “minimum hourly pay” or “overtime” and other features of 85-year-old labor law. Moreover, millions of people no longer want to be traditional “employees.” To facilitate that desire, we need to let independent contractors have all the tax advantages employees have with respect to health insurance, retirement pensions and other benefits. More.
Medicare’s Future
Social Security Sues invalid for Money He Received 21 Years Ago, At Age 11
Roy Farmer of Grand Rapids Michigan has Cerebral Palsy. He’s 32. In 2019, out of the blue, he received a claw back letter from Social Security demanding he repay $4,902 that his (now deceased) mother received back when he was 11. Roy has spent over three years appealing this judgement. He’s been denied twice. More from Kotlikoff Forbes editorial.
Our Fiscal System Needs Reform
Over half of working-age Americans face lifetime marginal tax rates (including direct taxes and loss of entitlement benefits) above 43 percent. One in ten in the bottom fifth face tax rates above 70 percent, effectively locking them into poverty. For some would-be-workers, the tax rates exceed 100 percent.
Extremely high LMTRs reflect the complete loss of family benefits, in the current and future years, from programs such as Medicaid – which ends benefits abruptly if one’s income or assets exceed specific thresholds by even one dollar. More.
It’s Time to Retire the Labor Law
The emergence of Uber (UBER +1.8%) and similar ride services and the pandemic-induced phenomenon of working from home are changing the way millions of Americans are thinking about work. It’s time for our public policies to change as well....
Medicare’s Future
President Biden and former President Trump have made the same promise to voters: they won’t touch Social Security or Medicare. That’s not merely disappointing. It’s irresponsible. According to the latest Social Security and Medicare...
Social Security Sues invalid for Money He Received 21 Years Ago, At Age 11
This is among the worst Social Security horror stories I’ve encountered in years of writing about Social Security. Everyone thinks Social Security is our country’s finest public policy with superbly dedicated and fully trained staff. That...
Our Fiscal System Needs Reform
This paper is forthcoming in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management The U.S. Fiscal System – Uncomfortable Truths The U.S. fiscal system is unfair, distortionary, complex, and insolvent. It’s undermining our nation’s social...
Public Policy Research
Leveraging People,
Money and Ideas
Our Role in Tax Reform
Goodman Institute scholars Laurence Kotlikoff and Alan Auerbach were the intellectual source of the Ryan/Brady (“Better Way”) tax reform proposal. They are also the leading intellectual defenders of tax reform, drawing on the most sophisticated and accurate economic models that exist.
Our Role in Health Reform
We are witnessing a radical transformation of the U.S. health care system. Although health care is the most regulated market in our economy, we have recently witnessed massive deregulation — partly in response to the coronavirus threat. These changes were only possible because of three years of prior effort by the Trump administration. Many of the core ideas were pioneered by Goodman Institute health economists.
New Partnership: Health Care News
The Goodman Institute for Public Policy has agreed to partner with Heartland to ensure the newspaper’s survival going forward. This new partnership could not have come at a better time. Polls consistently show that healthcare is the number one issue with voters.
The Environmental Blog
This Goodman Institute inspired blog is about appreciating the environment and protecting it using the tools of economics. Your blog manager is Jane Shaw Stroup, a former senior fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center.
The Health Blog
For many years, our health care blog was the only free enterprise health policy blog on the internet. Then, when the NCPA closed its doors, the health blog stopped as well.
During this five-year hiatus no one else has come forward to claim the space. So, my colleagues and I have decided to restart the blog in connection with the Goodman Institute. We invite you and others to use this forum to share your views.
Debater Resources
Health Care Briefing With Newt Gingrich
Former Congresswoman Nan Hayworth, Newt Gingrich and I discuss healthcare in the next election and beyond. Newt and I have a mutual admiration society that goes back many years. Newt has always been an outlier among Republican politicians when it comes to the topic of health care – aggressively searching for solutions instead of avoiding the subject.
Sessions Health Care Bill:
- Creates a new optional federal health insurance tax credit that is generous, universal, portable, and the same amount for everyone regardless of income,
- Allows employers and their employees to maintain their current employer-provided health insurance tax status, if preferred,
- Creates a new “Roth” style Health Savings Account to pay for health care expenses,
- Allows employees to have a 24/7 direct primary care doctor of their choice.
- Permanently expands telehealth availability, and
- Promote price transparency and competition.
Our Scholars
Read the most recent commentaries available in the
nation’s most important news publications.
John Goodman
Larry Kotlikoff
Thomas Saving
Devon Herrick
Linda Gorman
All Experts
Testimonials
What They
Are Saying
Many years ago I read a book called Patient Power. It was… written by Musgrave and Goodman. John Goodman is… known as the Father of Health Savings Accounts.
They’ve developed innovative ideas on how to create a better health system, a less expensive health system, a health system with more access for well over two decades.
John Goodman is the leading expert on free market proposals for probably the most dysfunctional 1/6th of our economy that exists. He does a spectacular job.
Our Priorities
The Goodman Institute is doing work not done by any other organization – especially in the areas of tax, health care and entitlement policy. Without our work the nation might not have obtained tax reform. Now we need to defend it.
We work with the best scholars from around the country on the nation’s most difficult public policy problems. Our mission is to find private alternatives to government programs that aren’t working. Ideas have enormous potential to change the course of human events.
Tax
Reform
Health
Reform
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Our
History