It only takes about 31 seconds of this week's health care coverage to show why people hate what passes for mainstream media reporting. After Democrats sang "goodbye" to 217 Republicans who voted to take health insurance away from 24 million Americans and strip essential protections from millions more, conventional wisdom regurgitators like Katie Couric and […]

Economics, the textbooks say, is the study of the allocation of scarce resources. The economics of health care is certainly no exception. Given the competing and often contradictory demands across its ecosystem of patients, employers, physicians, drug stores, pharmaceutical firms, device manufacturers, clinics, hospitals, insurers, and government, the economics of health care might more accurately […]

With the Republican drive to repeal and replace Obamacare halted (at least, for now), President Trump and GOP leaders are moving on to their next quest: tax reform. On this issue, press secretary Sean Spicer declared, Trump will be "driving the train" because "this is a huge priority for him, something that he feels very […]

ive days after the presidential election, I wrote a concession message to Trump voters congratulating them for what they had won. To those Trump promised would get "sick of winning," I predicted, "You've won his 'big and beautiful' Obamacare replacement plan that will take away health insurance from 22 million Americans." If the president-elect and […]

There is total chaos in the House of Representatives today as Speaker Paul Ryan rushes to jam through a version--any version--of his so-called American Health Care Act. The timing and the ever-changing content of the bill have little to do with health care for the American people and everything to do with political spite. Ryan […]

House Speaker Paul Ryan has just experienced two weeks from hell. On Monday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) led by his hand-picked director mauled Ryan's so-called "replacement" for the Affordable Care Act. CBO forecast that over the next decade the "American Health Care Act" will cost 24 million Americans their insurance. The bill, which […]

"Reality," Stephen Colbert famously told President Bush in 2006, "has a well-known liberal bias." And right now, President Trump and his GOP allies in Congress are learning that when it comes to their Obamacare "replacement" plan, reality bites. Which is why Republicans have launched an all-out assault on the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Because […]

After almost seven years, House Republicans have unveiled their Obamacare "replacement" plan, such as it. But because the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has not yet scored the so-called "American Health Care Act," we don't yet know how many people it will cover and how much it will cost. Already, analysts from S&P and Brookings […]

When it comes to defending their party against scandals, no one gets in line like Republicans. That's why it's no surprise that GOP leaders in Congress are doing their best to head off any independent probe into President Trump's rapidly propagating Putin problems. Last week, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus called allegation of Team Trump […]

The truth, it is said, will set you free. Unless, that is, you are a Republican and the issue is the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Republicans are foaming at the mouth at the nonpartisan agency's conclusion that the repeal of Obamacare will no replacement in place for the Affordable Care Act will lead to 32 […]