Is the individual mandate at the heart of “ObamaCare” a conservative idea? Is it constitutional? And was it invented at The Heritage Foundation? In a word, no. The U.S. Supreme Court will put the middle issue to rest. The answers to the first and last can come from me. After all, I headed Heritage’s health work for 30 years. And make no mistake: Heritage and I actively oppose the individual mandate, including in an amicus brief filed in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, the …
On Monday Politico ran a column by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) taking issue with my critique of his proposal to accelerate the granting of waivers under Obamacare. Unfortunately, he missed a central point I was making about limitations on the waivers that could be granted. Apparently the senator was offended by this paragraph, from my New England Journal of Medicine piece on his bill: Even more problematic to proponents of state flexibility on both the left and the right is that states would not be able to fold other health …
?? Last week, Henry Aaron argued in this space that raising the retirement age to help Social Security’s solvency amounted to a cloaked benefit cut. He said it’s also unlikely to be much help in reducing the deficit. The way he frames the challenges facing the budget pretty much assure that conclusion. But there are other ways of looking at the impact of raising the retirement age, and more structural – dare I say “progressive” – ways of reforming Social Security in the context of alleviating the long-term deficit problem. …
The Senate this week is considering amendments to Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) legislation to raise the debt limit. Reid’s bill is a substitute to the version that passed the House, which would add $925 billion to the federal debt ceiling, but his would hike the limit by $1.9 trillion so that the Senate does not have to take another troublesome vote on the debt limit before the 2010 election. Raising the debt ceiling to some degree is, unfortunately, necessary to avoid a default with perhaps catastrophic financial consequences for …
After much congressional handwringing over what budget process reform to attach to a must-pass increase in the debt ceiling, support for the legislative proposal crafted by Senate Budget Committee leaders Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Judd Gregg (R-NH) has crumbled. It fell apart as many members recognized two political facts of life. One is that it would inevitably lead to tax increases. The other, reinforced by the Massachusetts election, is that Americans are in no mood for a back-room, members-only commission that rushes its plan through Congress just after the November …
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) has been engaged in a good-faith effort to build potentially broad bipartisan support for health care reform. If carried out on a far wider scale with members of both parties, in both houses, and with the good-faith involvement of the President, such a process could lead to the kind of bipartisan health reforms Americans would believe in. To do that, the President needs to hit the “reset” button and bring together a wide set of members with a fresh roadmap – and the …
According to a New York Times story on Sunday, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) plans to propose a new “fee” on insurance companies to help pay for a costly liberal health reform package. This “fee” would allow Congress to penalize their straw man du jour, insurance companies, while attempting to pay for part of one of the trillion dollar proposals being debated in Congress this week. However, these “fees” are nothing more than taxes hidden behind a thin veil of “fairness” rhetoric. They would actually fall on ordinary …
For most of 2009, President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid have been obsessed with a “public option” for health care, which would create a government-run health care system that would eventually monopolize the industry and create the single-payer system liberals have long desired. Even when town hall protesters by the thousands jeered the concept; they stood by it. Even when poll numbers reflected a small minority of support; they stood by it. Even when study after study showed that millions of Americans would be forced out of their …
Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s Washington Post op-ed shows that she’s studied the focus groups and tracking polls on health care: Just beat up on health insurance companies enough, and you can get Americans to accept a thousand plus pages of legislation that would do just about anything. And then, make sure to tell Americans not to focus on what the legislation actually says. She flat-out writes: “we can’t let the details distract us…” Just trust us. We are from Washington. We are going to rearrange the entire health system. If it …
