What’s New
Obamacare’s Dirty Little Secret
When Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act of 2010, President Obama and lawmakers made the same claim over and over: The act would make good, affordable health insurance available to people with pre-existing conditions. The actual result has been the opposite. Obamacare makes health insurance as good as possible for the healthy and as bad as possible for the sick.
From John Goodman’s editorial in the Wall Street Journal (Paid gateway)
The Government’s New Tax Break for Retirees is Less Than Meets the Eye
A Republican Alternative to Medicare for All
It’s been 15 years since John McCain ran for president with a plan to completely revamp our healthcare system. In the interim, Republicans have attempted a nip here or a tuck there, but nothing really big. Fortunately, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) and his colleagues have come to the rescue with a reform plan that is a pro-patient, pro-family, pro-free enterprise alternative. It is based on three fundamental values. More
What the Debt Deal Ignored
A month ago, Social Security’s Trustees published their annual report. Table VIF1, buried deep in the Appendix, where no one looks, is the statement that Social Security’s unfunded liability is $66 trillion. This measure of Social Security’s red ink is not just gargantuan on its own. It’s $13 trillion larger than it was just three years ago. More
Against Medicaid Expansion
Expanding Medicaid to the relatively healthy might make sense if it improved general health. But there is little evidence it does. In Oregon, for example, a first-of-its-kind controlled trial tracked individuals who applied for Medicaid through a lottery. After two years, there was no discernible difference in the physical health of the winners and losers. More
Economic Growth Theories Fall into the Dustbin of History (And That’s Okay)
Economists like Samuelson failed to understand economic growth in developing countries. Unbeknownst to them, cost-reducing innovations in transportation and communication led to increased trade and lifted people out of poverty. The Industrial Revolution benefited only a small portion of the world. Trade spurred prosperity and development on its own.
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.