Cato

By Tad DeHaven of the Cato Institute. 

Another day brings another example of federal health care fraud. Today’s story comes from “the nation’s healthcare fraud capital” of Miami-Dade County. The government’s crack investigators realized it was fishy that a single county was accounting for more than half of Medicare’s total payments for the treatment of homebound patients with diabetes. Miami-Dade doesn’t even have Florida’s highest rate of diabetes.

By David Boaz of the Cato Institute.

In today’s Washington Post, William Kristol exults:

The Gallup poll released Monday shows the public’s conservatism at a high-water mark. Some 40 percent of Americans call themselves conservative, compared with 36 percent who self-describe as moderates and 20 percent as liberals.

Gallup often asks people how they describe themselves. But sometimes they classify people according to the values they express. And when they do that, they find a healthy percentage of libertarians, as well as an unfortunate number of big-government “populists.”

Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and the author of The Cult of the Presidency. This article appeared in the DC Examiner on June 30, 2009.

"I am a firm believer in the power of the free market," President Obama told the Wall Street Journal recently. The "irony" surrounding his public image as a collectivist, the president insisted, was that "I actually would like to see a relatively light touch when it comes to the government."

Either Obama is as confused about the definition of irony as pop singer Alanis "rain on your wedding day" Morrisette, or he was being disingenuous. Given the president's ambitious, state-bloating agenda and longtime disdain for free enterprise, the latter is more likely the case.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Faced with rising opposition to a so-called “public option” in health care reform, some Democrats are floating the idea of establishing health insurance “co-operatives” as an alternative. Opponents of a government takeover of the health care system should not be fooled.

A “co-op” can be defined as a business owned and controlled by its workers and the people who use its services, in this case presumably the people whom it insures. In that sense providing some sort of legal framework or seed money to help establish health insurance co-ops seems relatively harmless but also relatively pointless. The U.S. already has some 1300 insurance companies. Adding a few more would accomplish…what?

Chris Edwards is a top expert on federal and state/local tax and budget issues. Before joining Cato in 2001, Edwards was senior economist on the congressional Joint Economic Committee examining tax, Social Security, and entrepreneurship issues.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Before 1987, Americans only needed to understand the word “billion” to get a handle on federal budget numbers. Today, the word “trillion” is the needed metric in budget discussions.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Sarah Palin may be the first woman to serve as vice president, and she would now have to be considered the most likely candidate to be America’s first woman president. But she won’t be the first woman to receive an electoral vote. That title goes to — anyone, anyone? That’s right — everyone knows that the first woman to receive an electoral vote was Geraldine Ferraro, running mate of Walter Mondale in 1984.

This article appeared on Cato .org on June 13th.

WASHINGTON, D.C -- Like the child who murders his parents and then asks for pity because he's an orphan, the Federal Reserve has a long history of asking for more regulatory powers to clean up messes for which its action or inaction is the primary cause.