While the politicians in Washington are poised to undermine the healthcare system with additional layers of taxes, spending, and regulation, Steven Chapman proposes to use markets to improve a part of the system that is suffering from a punitive form of price controls. Orgain donors are allowed zero compensation for their sacrifice. This policy – […]

I don’t think the number of doctors leaving the profession will come anywhere close to this level, but polling data reported by the New England Journal of Medicine is another indication of the dangers of letting politicians get even more power over the health care system. The politicians will still get quality care, but average […]

My Cato colleague Jose Pinera makes a powerful argument for “privatizing” Social Security, which is something that has happened in about 30 nations. My Ph.D. dissertation was on Australia’s private system, so I’ve always had a soft spot for this issue. Sadly, Washington is busy creating new entitlements instead of fixing the ones we already […]

We’ve already addressed this issue, but this story is even more amusng. I’ll resist the need for any (additional) awful puns, and I’ll even admit I don’t know for sure that these…um…services are financed by taxpayers (but that must be true since we’re talking about the Netherlands, right?). But is this really such a big […]

I had to laugh when I saw this article linked on the Drudge Report. Does Obama really think that Democratics in the House will be intimidated by a threat not to campaign for them? Look what wonders Obama did campaigning for Corzine in New Jersey and Coakley in Massachusetts. If he can’t boost Democrats in […]

The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the so-called stimulus generated jobs and growth. I addressed some of the profound shortcomings in CBO’s Keynesian model in a previous post, pointing out that the model is structured to produce certain results regardless of what happens in the real world. Interestingly, the Director of the CBO, Doug Elmendorf, basically […]

Dan Mitchell doesn’t get to talk until after the 3-minute mark, but he then explains why Obamacare will undermine the healthcare system. His basic point is that government intervention is the reason why the current system has problems, and that those problems will get worse by adding even more government.

When Dorothy and her friends finally reach Oz, they present themselves to the almighty Wizard, only to eventually discover that he is just an illusion maintained by a charlatan hiding behind a curtain. This seems eerily akin to the state of Keynesian economics. It does not matter that Keynesianism isn’t working for Obama. It does not matter […]

This column by Tim Carney in the Washington Examiner should make every honest person nauseous. It explains how the big pharmaceutical companies are Obama’s biggest allies. This is well know inside the beltway, but average Americans don’t understand that Obamacare is largely a giveaway to powerful interest groups. Two observations are worth making. First, the […]

I know I promised extra political humor this week, but here’s some extra policy pain. Not only does government-run healthcare mean more spending, more regulation,and more taxes, but it also means more power for the internal revenue service. A new report reveals that the legislation makes the IRS the chief enforcer of the new scheme: […]