Are you ashamed to be seen with your health care bill? Do you fear facing your own constituents? Are you plagued by feelings of dread and mild nausea at the thought of disappointing your seething supporters, angry activists and demanding donors? If you answered "yes" to all these questions, you might be a Republican member […]

This past two weeks have been big ones for some very big promises from Republicans in Washington. It didn't go well for them. Three weeks after House Republicans voted to pass a new version of their "American Health Care Act," the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) weighed in on high-profile pledges from President Donald Trump […]

When the Supreme Court struck down the Affordable Care Act's mandatory expansion of Medicaid by the states back in 2012, observers quickly began focusing on who would "opt in" or "opt out." But from a purely budgetary standpoint, there was never any question that accepting federal dollars to fund 100 percent of that expansion and […]

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 […]

Long before it mastered the mass production of "fake news," the Republican Party propagated its Ur-lie that "tax cuts pay for themselves." Almost from the moment that Arthur Laffer first sketched his now-famous curve on a napkin in 1974, right-wing pundits, politicians, and propagandists have declared as an article of faith the belief that tax […]

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 […]