The United States spends more on healthcare than any other country, but it spends it on the wrong people. There are 15.8 million healthcare professionals nationwide, and 95 percent of them are non-doctors. Why? The healthcare system is built for middlemen, not patients and providers. Healthcare middlemen include insurance companies, government administrators, actuaries, billers,...
A conservative think tank with ties to the Trump administration is lobbying the White House to go big when it reconsiders the Obama administration’s signature climate change rule. U.S. EPA is expected to soon announce its plans to repeal the Obama-era Clean Power Plan rule to limit power plants’ greenhouse gas emissions. And the...
There is nothing quite like the power of American ingenuity and innovation. And nowhere in the country is there a better example of economic growth and empowerment on display than right here in Texas. A primary reason for that? Freedom. Specifically, there is simply less government intrusion into the daily lives of families and...
A few years back, children’s book author Kari Anne Roy was visited by both the Austin police and Child Protective Services for allowing her son Isaac, then 6, to do the unthinkable: play outside, up her street, unsupervised. Though eventually the charges were dropped, it wasn’t before Child Protective Services interviewed all three of...
When Colin Kaepernick took a knee last fall during the singing of the National Anthem, it sparked an intense debate over race-based police brutality. Since then, some have defended Kaepernick by arguing that, in addition to the police brutality issue, the National Anthem is racist. This defense then escalated into a larger conflict over the status of ...
Is Washington’s plan to gut the Affordable Care Act’s navigator program a proper cost-cutting measure, or a politically motivated attack on ObamaCare? Probably both. ObamaCare is monumentally, incomprehensibly complex. The ACA organizational chart makes the Los Angeles freeway system look simple. With more than 10 million words in the first round of regulations, and thousands of changes since then, understanding...
Remember when President Barack Obama said that passage of the Affordable Care Act would save middle class families $2,500 a year on their health insurance premiums? Obama claimed much of that savings would come from taxing so-called “Cadillac plans” that gave the rich “overly generous” benefits, and using that windfall to help fund Obamacare....
Deane Waldman, M.D., M.B.A., is director of the Center for Health Care Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. As Republican senators look to scrape together the votes for a deal on health care, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is pushing his own proposal. He calls it “Medicare for All,” and it has already...
Once again, California has the highest poverty rate in the nation, according to a new U.S. Census Bureau report. A little more than 1 in 5 Californians—20.4 percent—live in poverty. The national average is 14.7 percent according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure which accounts for regional cost-of-living differences, out-of-pocket medical expenses and other items, unlike...
Owners and guests of short-term and vacation rentals in Texas recently racked up another win at the 3rd Texas Court of Appeals. On August 22, the Austin court joined a growing list of state appellate courts to hold that renting your home out for short periods of time does not magically transform it into a commercial enterprise...
Though not perfect, NAFTA has increased prosperity and improved the lives of millions of Americans through greater competition, affordable products, and wealth and job creation. Potential renegotiations of NAFTA could deter these gains if the deal doesn’t include reducing both trade barriers and government favoritism for certain industries. Consider that Mexico has long maintained...
Liberal California and conservative Texas are different in many ways – including their poverty rates. California’s poverty rate is 20.4 percent and the Texas rate is only 14.7 percent, based on the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which accounts for the regional cost of living, out-of-pocket medical expenses and other items. Why the dramatic difference in poverty...