Commentary
Commentary
To Save Medicaid, Hold States Accountable
Taxpayers spent a record $554 billion for Medicaid last year — a 12% rise from 2014 and much higher than forecast. President Obama deserves the credit — and blame — for that rapid increase. And the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services predicts that the program will cost $890 billion ...
Commentary
Aetna’s Obamacare Pullout Means the ‘Insurance Death Spiral’ Has Arrived
Aetna the nation’s fourth-largest health insurer, just decided to stop offering plans on Obamacare’s exchanges in all but four states in 2017. The firm says that it was losing roughly $300 million per year on these policies. And it projected that its losses would only increase, since the share of ...
Blackouts
Stop squandering California’s energy resources
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. just announced plans to prematurely shutter California’s sole nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon. The news came hours after energy officials issued the year’s first “flex alert” — a warning that certain areas should conserve energy to avoid a blackout. That’s right — at a time ...
Commentary
The Friedrichs Case: Why the Supreme Court pick means so much
In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump emphasized once again that the issue of replacing late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia with someone of similar conservative judicial philosophy “will be one of the most important decided by this election.” There is no better example of ...
Commentary
Aetna and The Great Obamacare Unraveling: Insurers Are Sick of Trying to Survive in a Health-Care Economy Permanently Altered By This Bad Law
Health insurance giant Aetna just announced that it will sell health plans in only four of Obamacare’s state exchanges next year, down from the 15 it currently operates in. The law’s partisans claim that the move is payback for the Obama administration’s recent decision to block Aetna’s merger with rival ...
California
Where’s the Passion for CEQA Reform?
The roots of California’s environmental regulations can be traced back to 1884. That’s the year a federal judge ordered miners to stop using water cannons to batter the Sierra hillsides to separate gold from the soil and rock, but also left behind a broken and ugly landscape. The process, called ...
Commentary
Hillary Won the Nomination, But Bernie Won On Healthcare
Many pundits speculated that Hillary Clinton would devote a significant portion of her Democratic Convention speech to health care. But she dedicated just one sentence to the topic. The reason? Earlier in the week, Bernie Sanders had already laid out her campaign’s position. In exchange for her formal rival’s endorsement, ...
Commentary
Dear America: Don’t Buy the Single-Payer Snake Oil
Americans have grown infatuated with single-payer health care. Gallup recently found that six in 10 people support replacing Obamacare with a “federally funded health care program providing insurance for all Americans.” This support is troubling. Single-payer systems are little more than snake oil. Both in the United States and abroad, ...
Commentary
Trump’s right — the system is rigged. Look at Common Core
Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump has argued that our political, policy and economic systems are rigged against ordinary Americans. The process that gave us Common Core is a perfect example of a rigged system in action. Back in June 2009, two big Washington, D.C.-based organizations — the National Governors Association ...
Commentary
Why Is The FDA Leaving Doctors In The Dark?
FDA officials apparently think that doctors aren’t smart enough to understand the labels on the medications they prescribe. The agency recently released draft guidance for how the pharmaceutical industry should label “biosimilars,” a new class of medicines. These guidelines state that biosimilars’ labels should leave out critical information in order ...
To Save Medicaid, Hold States Accountable
Taxpayers spent a record $554 billion for Medicaid last year — a 12% rise from 2014 and much higher than forecast. President Obama deserves the credit — and blame — for that rapid increase. And the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services predicts that the program will cost $890 billion ...
Aetna’s Obamacare Pullout Means the ‘Insurance Death Spiral’ Has Arrived
Aetna the nation’s fourth-largest health insurer, just decided to stop offering plans on Obamacare’s exchanges in all but four states in 2017. The firm says that it was losing roughly $300 million per year on these policies. And it projected that its losses would only increase, since the share of ...
Stop squandering California’s energy resources
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. just announced plans to prematurely shutter California’s sole nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon. The news came hours after energy officials issued the year’s first “flex alert” — a warning that certain areas should conserve energy to avoid a blackout. That’s right — at a time ...
The Friedrichs Case: Why the Supreme Court pick means so much
In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump emphasized once again that the issue of replacing late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia with someone of similar conservative judicial philosophy “will be one of the most important decided by this election.” There is no better example of ...
Aetna and The Great Obamacare Unraveling: Insurers Are Sick of Trying to Survive in a Health-Care Economy Permanently Altered By This Bad Law
Health insurance giant Aetna just announced that it will sell health plans in only four of Obamacare’s state exchanges next year, down from the 15 it currently operates in. The law’s partisans claim that the move is payback for the Obama administration’s recent decision to block Aetna’s merger with rival ...
Where’s the Passion for CEQA Reform?
The roots of California’s environmental regulations can be traced back to 1884. That’s the year a federal judge ordered miners to stop using water cannons to batter the Sierra hillsides to separate gold from the soil and rock, but also left behind a broken and ugly landscape. The process, called ...
Hillary Won the Nomination, But Bernie Won On Healthcare
Many pundits speculated that Hillary Clinton would devote a significant portion of her Democratic Convention speech to health care. But she dedicated just one sentence to the topic. The reason? Earlier in the week, Bernie Sanders had already laid out her campaign’s position. In exchange for her formal rival’s endorsement, ...
Dear America: Don’t Buy the Single-Payer Snake Oil
Americans have grown infatuated with single-payer health care. Gallup recently found that six in 10 people support replacing Obamacare with a “federally funded health care program providing insurance for all Americans.” This support is troubling. Single-payer systems are little more than snake oil. Both in the United States and abroad, ...
Trump’s right — the system is rigged. Look at Common Core
Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump has argued that our political, policy and economic systems are rigged against ordinary Americans. The process that gave us Common Core is a perfect example of a rigged system in action. Back in June 2009, two big Washington, D.C.-based organizations — the National Governors Association ...
Why Is The FDA Leaving Doctors In The Dark?
FDA officials apparently think that doctors aren’t smart enough to understand the labels on the medications they prescribe. The agency recently released draft guidance for how the pharmaceutical industry should label “biosimilars,” a new class of medicines. These guidelines state that biosimilars’ labels should leave out critical information in order ...
