If you are new to health policy, here’s a warning. You won’t spend very much time in the field before you hear the claim that Stanford University economist Kenneth Arrow has shown that free markets can’t work in health care. Here is Paul Krugman making the claim and here is Arnold Klingtaking me to ...

Read more: The Uneasy Case against Free Market Health Care

James Buchanandied the other day and in the eyes of many he was the father of Public Choice economics. Comments on a number of blogs reveal two things about bloggers on the left: (1) they don’t understand what contribution Buchanan made and (2) they don’t understand why Public Choice is important. ...

Read more: Public Choice

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) just released its latest batch of Head Start data, revealing, once again, that its students are receiving far less than a “head start.” 

The study, which was finally released the weekend before Christmas after more than a year’s delay, examines ...

Read more: Another Study Confirms: Head Start Doesn’t Work

Uwe Reinhardt had a post the other day at The New York Times economics blog comparing Medicare with Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. He basically sifts through the evidence on which is less costly: Medicare (a public plan) or the private MA plans. But while his column is definitely ...

Read more: Is Private Health Insurance More Costly Than Public Health Insurance? Five Principles

This country, for the last 80 years, has been living through what future historians might call the Great American Reading Swindle. The experts claimed to believe in a method that didn’t work. In order to protect it, and to shield themselves from charges of educational malpractice, they generated ...

Read more: Reading is Easy (Illiteracy is hard)

Bruce Bartlett once worked for Jack Kemp and for Ron Paul. He served in the Reagan and Bush (41) administrations. He even burnishes these credentials over a column at The New York Times economics blog. Yet his columns these days are invariably anti-Republican and increasingly leftwing.

In his ...

Read more: Bruce Bartlett’s Worst Column

Though the government’s entitlement spending is still spiraling out of control, taxpayers have finally caught a break: The recently passed “fiscal cliff” deal included the repeal of one of Obamacare’s worst provisions, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act. 

The ...

Read more: Fiscal Cliff Deal Undoes Part of Obamacare

Here is the bill. Here is the CBO score. Here is the House Republican summary of the bill.

Republicans seem to have great difficulty reminding people that the George W. Bush tax cuts are the reason why middle income families have not been paying about $2,000 more in taxes every year. The agreement ...

Read more: Fiscal Cliff: Who Won? Who Lost?