Why Hillarycare failed …and what we need to learn from that failure
By MATTHEW HOLT
In July 2005 George W Bush had relatively recently won a Presidential election in which the Republican won the popular vote (something that will likely never happen again) & the Republicans controlled all three branches of Government. Those of us liberals at the bottom of a dark trench were wondering if and how we’d get to health reform. So in another reprint to celebrate THCB’s 15th birthday, here was my then take on what went wrong in 1994 and what would happen next–Matthew Holt
There are lots of versions about what killed the 1993-4 health care reform effort. Hillary C...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 14, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Matthew Holt HillaryCare Source Type: blogs
New Release: Monetary Policy in an Uncertain World
This article originally appears as the Editor ’s Preface inMonetary Policy in an Uncertain World: Ten Years After the Crisis* Reference: Brunner, K. (1980) “The Control of Monetary Aggregates.” InControlling Monetary Aggregates III, 1 –65. Boston: Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.[Cross-posted from Alt-M.org] (Source: Cato-at-liberty)
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 9, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: James A. Dorn Source Type: blogs
A No-News Press Release from the Fed
Today, the Federal Reserve ’s policy setting body decided to hold interest rates steady—a policy move that was predicted with near certainty by financial markets. Because this Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting was not a “live” one, that is Fed Chairman Powell did not follow it with a press conference, the o nly news comes from thepress release. And the news there is basically no news at all —except for calling economic growth “strong” instead of “solid.” But this slightly more bullish tone on economic growth is not license to ignore other potential issues in the economy.One concern isescalatin...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 1, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Tate Lacey Source Type: blogs
Eppur Si Muove, or, How Not to Explain Stagnant Real Wages
Lately the old-timers here at Cato ’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives — which is to say, Jim Dorn and I — have been talking a lot about the Phillips Curve, which seems to be playing a part in monetary policy discussions today almost as big as the one it played in the 1970s. And you can bet that, because both Jim and I actually remember what happened in the 70s, and afterwards, neither of us has a good word to say about the concept, except as a very reduced-form means for describing very transient relationships.Because Jim has a CMFAPolicy Briefing on Phillips Curve reasoning in the works, I won ’t be...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 24, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: George Selgin Source Type: blogs
Is Timing Really Everything?
Conclusion
Perhaps the best defense against the truth are more facts. It’s time to crack the ignorance barrier and to learn more about the maddening sponge inside our heads. Forewarned is forearmed. (Source: World of Psychology)
Source: World of Psychology - July 19, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: John DiPrete Tags: Habits Happiness Psychology Self-Help Source Type: blogs
Fed ’s Powell Is Asked Little, Responds Less
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell was before theSenate Banking Committee today to present the semiannualMonetary Policy Report to Congress. Unfortunately, there was little discussion of monetary policy during the proceedings.The Senators spent nearly all of their time asking the Chairman about the recent stress tests,changes to the tax code, and concerns over additional tariffs. On tariffs, Powell deserves credit for plainly stating that “in general, countries that have remained open to trade and haven’t erected barriers, including tariffs, have grown faster, have had higher incomes, [and] higher productivity, and...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 17, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Tate Lacey Source Type: blogs
The Fed's Recent Defense of Interest on Reserves
As regularAlt-Mreaders know, I ’ve been saying for over a year now that, despite their promise to “normalize” monetary policy, Fed officials have been determined to maintain the Fed’s post-crisis “floor” system of monetary control, in which changes to the Fed’s monetary policy stance are mainly achieved by means of adjustments to the rate of interest the Fed pays on banks’ excess reserve balances, or the IOER rate, for short.Until recently the Fed ’s intentions had to be inferred by reading between the lines of its official press releases, or by referring to personal preferences expressed by leading Fed o...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 13, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: George Selgin Source Type: blogs
Price-Level Movements, Fixed Nominal Contracts, and Debtor-Creditor Equity
RecentlyDavid Beckworth andMartin Sandbu, among others, have drawn attention toan interesting paper by James Bullard and Riccardo DiCecio unveiled in Norway earlier this year. In it, Bullard and DiCecio investigate a model economy possessing both a large private credit market and “Non-state contingent nominal contracting (NSCNC).” They conclude that, in such an economy, NGDP targeting is the “optimal monetary policy for the masses.”Here is David Beckworth ’s intuitive explanation for that finding:The basic idea is that in a world of fixed-price nominal debt contracts (i.e. the real world), a NGDP level target pro...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 10, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: George Selgin Source Type: blogs
The Fed Sticks to Its Plan, the Market Moves
Theminutes of the Federal Reserve ’s June FOMC meeting were released yesterday and there were few, if any, surprises. The minutes show a policy discussion hewing close to the Fed’s normalization plan. Members view the current economic expansion as “progressing roughly as anticipated” and see the risks to the economic outlook “as roughly balanced.” Though the Fed continues to undershoot its preferred measure of inflation, the Committee continues to expect 2% inflation “on a sustained basis over the medium term.” Two rather new developments received attention at the meeting. The first relates to increasing t...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 6, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Tate Lacey Source Type: blogs
Dander Still Up. Drowning in Great Dismal Swamp. Film at Eleven.
Maybe this is the last in my series of dander-raising essays, as recent national and world events have most definitely left so many of us with a raging case of TDS. (Trump Derangement Syndrome, look it up it ' s a thing).So many damned browser tabs open. So little time.Or maybe not. Who knows. Where are all these suicides coming from?My editor keeps telling me, " don ' t let it make you paralytic. " Hey, I ' m trying.Just sensing a kind of coalescence in all the corruption our bloggers keep writing about. How do we even differentiate these activities across so many sectors of society. We were going to see our swamp drained...
Source: Health Care Renewal - June 12, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: blogs
Show Me the (Education) Money, Finale!
ConclusionIf someone tells you that public school spending has been “gutted” or “cut to the bone,” or any other body-destroying description, the first thing to note is that for many decades prior to the Great Recession we shoved so much food into the public schooling system that it would more accurately have been seen as threatened with obesity than “gutti ng.” Even since the recession, we haven’t typically gutted anything—significant funding has still flowed—and that includes in most embattled states. That said, at least based on salaries, teachers have seen their compensation stagnate. However, a lack o...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 23, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Neal McCluskey Source Type: blogs
Show Me the (Education) Money, Part IV!
We ’ve looked at the K-12 spending trends bothnationally and in restive states, broken down per-pupil expenditures intosmallerbits, and addedNorth Carolina. I had planned to finish this spending series with this post, but there are a lot of data to examine so I ’m going to put off conclusions to the next—and final—post. We now look at total enrollment and inflation-adjusted expenditures, and then at how staffing and inflation-adjusted teacher salaries have moved, both nationally and for our “hot” states. (On all charts, pay close attention to the horizontal axis. Many start with wider increments of time than th...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 18, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Neal McCluskey Source Type: blogs
The Macro View – Health, Financial And Political News Relevant To E-Health And The Health Sector In General.
May 17, 2018 Edition.Well the Budget has happened this week and we are all now fully in the picture.The easy summary is that combined with all the by-elections caused by the Citizenship Saga Part X is that the high and low tax parties will get to conduct a 500,000 people opinion poll quite soon. Late June is the guess. We also have to wait for the clever people to work through the really fine print and see what nasties we all missed!In summary my view is that this budget is bloody risky. One economic hiccup and we will be in a recession I reckon.Internationally things are not good with war brewing between Israel and Iran w...
Source: Australian Health Information Technology - May 17, 2018 Category: Information Technology Authors: Dr David G More MB PhD Source Type: blogs
Show Me the (Education) Money, Tar Heel Edition!
North Carolina is becoming the latest hot spot in the education funding wildfire —thousands of protesting teachers areexpected in Raleigh on Wednesday—so before I deliver the promised wrap up on mystatespendingseries, I thought I ’d add NC to the mix.As you can see on the following chart, North Carolina ’s total spending per-pupil, which includes both operational and capital costs, fell appreciably between the 1999-00 school year, the earliest withreadily available federal data, and 14-15. It dropped from inflation-adjusted $10,397 to $8,986, a roughly 14 percent decline. Like other states already profiled, spendin...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 14, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Neal McCluskey Source Type: blogs
Show Me the (Education) Money, Part III!
With“Red for Ed” walkouts continuing in Arizona, and ongoing discussion about how well public K-12 schooling has been funded nationwide, here ’s part three of our impromptu series on spending. As promised last week, this post presents the total spending charts for the five states that have been most in the news over funding: Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. Please see thepreviousposts for discussions of national spending levels and data sources. The data here are total, inflation-adjusted, per-pupil expenditures on public elementary and secondary schools.ArizonaThings are looking down in AZ, ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 1, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Neal McCluskey Source Type: blogs
