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! […]
read more...As I explained back in April, I’m cautiously optimistic that Obamacare will fall apart for the simple reason that it’s impossible to have a workable government-run healthcare system without the type of brutal rationing and sub-standard care found in places like the United Kingdom. So part of me is happy that the White House has […]
read more...I had some fun back in April when I noted that politicians and staff on Capitol Hill were getting very agitated about having to be part of Obamacare. Well, it seems that the way the law applies to them is so costly that many of them are thinking about calling it quits. Here are some […]
read more...I’ve complained ad nauseam about how government has screwed up the health sector, both because of spending programs such as Medicare and Medicaid and because of tax and regulatory distortions that have mutated the supposedly private insurance market into some bizarre form of pre-paid, all-you-can-eat healthcare. These policies have created a third-party payer crisis. There […]
read more...I’ve frequently argued that “third-party payer” is the main problem with the healthcare system. In simpler terms, this is the notion that a market won’t function very well if consumers think they’re spending someone else’s money. Why be a careful consumer, after all, if someone else is picking up the tab? This is a pervasive […]
read more...I’m going to make an assertion that seems utterly absurd. The enactment of Obamacare may have been good news. Before sending a team of medical attendants to cart me off to a sanitarium, allow me to elaborate. I’m not saying Obamacare is good policy. After all, I’ve written over and over again that it is […]
read more...When I travel, particularly overseas, I run into a lot of people who are totally confused about the American healthcare system. For all intents and purposes, they think the United States relies on the free market and that government (at least in the pre-Obamacare era) was largely absent. So they are baffled when I tell […]
read more...I’ve certainly complained about Obamacare from a fiscal perspective, warning that it means higher taxes and more spending. And I’ve also warned that it will make our health care system less efficient and could lead to some of the horrifying examples of rationing and poor care that you find in the United Kingdom (scroll to […]
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