Back in 2010, I guest-hosted Larry Kudlow’s CNBC program for a couple of days. During one of the segments on my last show, I crossed swords with the other host, Simon Hobbs, as we argued whether patients needlessly died because of the government-run healthcare system in the United Kingdom. Since neither one of us had […]
read more...One of the challenges of good entitlement reform (or even bad entitlement reform) is that recipients think they’ve “earned” benefits. If you tell them that programs such as Medicare are unsustainable and need to be changed, some of them suspect you’re trying to somehow cheat them. After all, they were forced to cough up payroll […]
read more...I’ve shared several videos that make the case against Obamacare. Here’s one narrated by a Dutch woman warning that America shouldn’t repeat the mistakes of European government-run healthcare. Here’s one from Reason TV about how free markets produce lower healthcare costs. Here’s one explaining the need to deal with the government-caused third-party-payer crisis. And I […]
read more...I’ve certainly offered more than my fair share of Obamacare criticism. Since I’m a public finance economist, I’m mostly concerned that the law increases the fiscal burden of government. But I’m also irked that Obamacare will worsen the third-party payer crisis, which it the main problem with our health care system in America. And it […]
read more...I’ve written about how Obamacare is a costly boondoggle. I’ve written how it victimizes children, low-income workers, and retirees. And I’ve explained how it exacerbates the real problem in our healthcare system. I’ve even pointed out that there’s something good in the law. But I’ve never bothered to discuss how bad laws usually aren’t as […]
read more...During the big-spending Bush years, economic and fiscal people inside the Administration often would sympathize with my complaints about bad policy, but say that there was nothing they could do since all the big decisions were being made by the political types in the White House. In other words, Karl Rove and his crew were […]
read more...Want to know why – as shown by this map – most of America’s richest counties are part of the metropolitan DC region? Part of the answer is that federal bureaucrats are overpaid. Another part of the answer is that the Washington area is filled with consultants and contractors, and this shadow government workforce also […]
read more...There’s an old joke that the definition of quandary is when your mother-in-law drives off a cliff in your new car. But since I’m not married, I can’t use that joke. Besides, I’m a policy wonk, so the type of quandary that catches my attention is when the Obama Administration delays big parts of Obamacare […]
read more...There are lots of despicable people in Washington engaged in a lot of unsavory behavior, so it would be very difficult to get agreement if you asked regular people to select the most odious feature of the political class. Many people would probably choose corruption as the defining characteristic of Washington, and it would be […]
read more... Is Obamacare such a cluster-you-know-what that the law will self-destruct? Well, I’ve already explained why I’m optimistic about the possibility of turning Obamacare lemons into free-market lemonade. Simply stated, the law took a healthcare system that already was a mess because of government intervention and subsidies and it doubled down on that misguided approach! […]
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