In The News

Not all fossil fuels are created equal — at least with respect to their carbon footprint.

Wisconsin, a state that had a successful HRP (not all state HRPs worked) until Obamacare essentially shut it down, required insurers to chip in as well, according to Mark E. Litow, a retired health actuary who served on the board of the Wisconsin HRP, and Merrill Matthews, IPI resident scholar, writing for RealClearHealth.com on February 16.

Only 200,000 people enrolled in the pools in part “because many HRPs did not offer financial assistance to lower-income participants, a few charged much higher premiums than Wisconsin, and because of some state-imposed limitations,” say Mark Litow, who was involved in Wisconsin’s risk pool, and Merrill Matthews, with IPI. “All of those problems are easily fixed,” they write in a RealClearHealth op-ed.

The president of a Texas-based conservative think tank is speaking out against the high rate of incarceration in the United States, arguing that the annual cost to house inmates is not fiscally responsible and that the intended outcome is not the same as the actual result.

One reason health insurance premiums exploded under the Affordable Care Act is the law’s requirement that health insurers accept anyone who applied for individual coverage, known as guaranteed issue. 

“But the reason Obama was hit with so many more unanimous decisions was because he went rogue early on, asking his staff to look for novel theories that would allow him to move forward with implementing his agenda,” writes Merrill Matthews for Rare. “And if that meant twisting the Constitution—and basic logic—to get it, so what?”

The H-1B visa "impasse" should be the "easiest" of all the "controversial elements" of proposed immigration reform for Congress to fix, said Tom Giovanetti in a Thursday blog post.

Merrill Matthews recently called the CFPB the "most unaccountable organization in Washington ... an agency that neither the people’s elected representatives nor the president can control."

IPI president Tom Giovanetti in a statement called it a "slam dunk" for President Donald Trump and Congress. "This legislation has nothing to do with preventing or prosecuting terrorism, but rather simply corrects lack of foresight in legislation passed 30 years ago, long before digital data became such a pervasive part of normal life," he said.

As President Donald Trump rolls back financial regulations and looks to make personnel changes at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Congress should begin work immediately to abolish the regulatory agency.