The Heartland Institute

Across the country today, Medicaid requires states to provide dental coverage for children. Yet Medicaid’s reimbursement rates have been, and continue to be, too low to adequately compensate traditional dental practices. This leads to significant health problems, where simple cavities become severe infections which can even prove ...

President Obama a few months ago blamed the nation’s economic weakness on spending cuts by state and local officials “who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government and who don't have the same kind of flexibility of the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming ...

Sixty-four percent of South Carolina fourth graders were not proficient in math and 72 percent were not proficient in reading in 2011, according to the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, the most respected nationwide test. For minorities, the stats are abysmal: only 13 percent of African-American fourth graders ...

States don’t have $390 billion they’ve promised teachers in future pensions, according to a new report by the National Council on Teacher Quality. This means taxpayers will have to backfill the difference while receiving no new services in return. For the report, No One Benefits , NCTQ researchers analyzed teacher pension systems ...

In this "Best of" Heartland podcast, Townhall.com columnist Marita Noon explains why alternative energy is hamstringing the U.S. economy. ...

One of Utah’s most ambitious municipal broadband programs is facing serious subscribership and funding problems. The Utah Telecommunications Open Infrastructure Agency (UTOPIA), a municipal broadband program organized in 2002 by a group of communities in the Wasatch Front area of the state, is facing massive debt, low enrollment ...

The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has told the states there will be no flexibility in implementing Medicaid expansion: either expand fully or don’t expand at all. The announcement came as states were hoping to receive extra federal assistance by expanding their programs only partially: for example ...

Two years ago, the town of Harvey Cedars in New Jersey had a two-story sand dune constructed in front of 190 ocean-front homes to protect them from storms. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did the construction. In the case of Hurricane Sandy, the project worked, and none of the homes was damaged. But the 22-feet-high dunes ...

In this "Best of" Heartland podcast, Momentum appears to be building in Congress for the Marketplace Fairness Act, which would allow states to collect sales tax from online sales even when a retailer has no physical presence in the state. Heartland Institute Government Relations Director John Nothdurft tells us what's happening ...

Central banks—the US Federal Reserve is one—come with the mystique of Oz. While the Fed fiercely denies that it is powerful enough to cure recessions with a click of the heels, there are those who believe it's true. If, however, you look behind the velvet curtains and columned lobbies, you will find good men but bad wizards ...

As states decide whether to implement a health insurance exchange under President Obama’s health care law, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has encouraged states to do so by touting the flexibility of implementation. One area where exchanges will likely provide little or no flexibility, however, is in the distribution ...

Gary D. Alexander, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Public Welfare writes to The Honorable Joseph R. Pitts, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Health and The Honorable Frank Pallone, Jr, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Health with recommendations to improve the Affordable Care Act. ...

There was a time when the Harrisburg, Pa., incinerator was a successful waste-to-energy plant. Then, with the stock market rising and every American looking like a sharp investor, politicians hooked up with Wall Street in a series of exotic financial deals designed to finance plant upgrades. After a decade, they’ve incinerated ...

In this "Best of" Heartland podcast, Energy economist Donn Dears discusses the economic benefits of natural gas fracking and its outstanding environmental record. ...

A surgery center in Oklahoma has returned to a direct fee-for-service business model in an attempt to resist tight government controls and avoid heavy reliance on health insurance and the third-party payer system. The Surgery Center of Oklahoma, founded by Dr. Keith Smith and Dr. Steven Lantier, has cut out the insurance middleman ...

( Originally published in The Washington Examiner ) In 2007, a divided Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency must treat carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as "pollutants," and must therefore analyze whether the increasing concentrations in atmospheric carbon might reasonably be anticipated to endanger ...

Nevada restaurant owners—increasingly anxious about the future of their businesses under the Affordable Care Act—are echoing statements by national restaurant chains about the excessive costs President Obama’s health care law will impose on them. "I don't know what secret [the politicians] know, where they just assume we can write ...

It’s the real-world equivalent of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, the fictional lawsuit Charles Dickens wrote about in Bleak House . The Jarndyce case in the chancery courts in Britain dragged on for so many generations the legal fees devoured the probate estate over which the parties were haggling. Evidently there’s no risk of that ...

In this "Best of" Heartland podcast, Investments expert Bill Gunderson says, in many markets, a real recovery in housing looks to be underway. It's the result of good old supply and demand coming into alignment after several years of a depressed housing industry ...

In this "Best of" Heartland podcast, Steven Titch, policy analyst for the Reason Foundation, discusses internet sales tax and the marketplace fairness act. ...