Under the ACA,  some 62 preventive services and products will be free (in the past much of the preventative medicine was charged to patient on a non-negotiated rate. Today, they are financed through regulations applied to the insurance industry): no copays and the deductible will not apply. The list includes vision checks for children, birth […]

Economic Populism Is a Dead-End for Democrats recently appeared in The Wall Street Journal, appropriately enough, and comes from Third Way.  A commenter asked why it was important to list who was on the trustee list, which included some Dems and others.  I won’t go through the laundry list on taxes, social safety net, and other […]

Sadly, not in the real world. But in the econoblogosphere. Much of that is arguably thanks to the newly launched Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Traveling and family time, so I can’t do a big writeup, so just a few somewhat randomly chosen links: Brad Plumer: Is inequality bad for economic growth? Jared Bernstein: The Impact of Inequality […]

Hilary W. Hoynes, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, Douglas Almond made a genuinely important contribution to the debate on the effects of social welfare programs in this NBER working paper/revised manuscript “Long Run Impacts of Childhood Access to the Safety Net” They took advantage of a natural experiment to estimate the long run effects of access to […]

It’s critical to understand that Third Way presents itself as “centrist” and a think tank: Third Way Via Huffington Post Bill Black summarizes the profiles of the trustees: Twenty of the twenty-nine trustees come from finance (counting the lawyer whose specialty is representing private equity firms). Their most common background is Mitt Romney’s — private […]

(Reuters) – Employers tried the carrot, then a small stick. Now they are turning to bigger cudgels. For years they encouraged workers to improve their health and productivity with free screenings, discounted gym memberships and gift cards to lose weight. More recently, a small number charged smokers slightly higher premiums to get them to quit. […]

In his speech on inequality Barack Obama said it’s also true that some programs in the past, like welfare before it was reformed, were sometimes poorly designed, created disincentives to work, but we’ve also seen how government action time and again can make an enormous difference in increasing opportunity and bolstering ladders into the middle […]

This quote is right up there with the great Will Rogers line: “I don’t belong to an organized political party. I’m a Democrat.” Matthew Yglesias opens his recent post with it. I don’t know if he coined it, but if so, A Huge Kudos. It’s utterly and painfully true. A deservedly iconic statement. Here’s what […]

A federal judge in the District of Columbia will hear oral arguments on Tuesday in one of several cases brought by states including Indiana and Oklahoma, along with business owners and individual consumers, who say that the law does not grant the Internal Revenue Service authority to provide tax credits or subsidies to people who […]

Somewhere in the future months, one of us is going to have to eat crow here on the success of the PPACA. The Republicans, Teabaggers, Healthcare Insurance Companies, Gerrymandered Republican Districts, ALEC, Koch Bros, etc. are working their hardest to make this much needed change in how people gain coverage fail. Meanwhile healthcare insurance companies […]