The Heartland Institute

One of the big questions on the minds of many in Washington at the moment is: what comes after the individual mandate? Should the Supreme Court strike the requirement down but not strike down President Obama's entire law, some substitute will likely be proposed by the White House and its allies in Congress. Health policy ...

Health insurance companies have experienced dramatically higher stock prices in the two years since the passage of President Obama’s health care law, thanks to the individual mandate to purchase their product. Wellpoint (WLP) was at about $80/share in 2007, dropped significantly in price shortly after the 2008 election, and is ...

Economist Jonathan Williams joins us to discuss the new edition of the Rich States, Poor States book, which evaluates each of the 50 states on taxes and other policies that shape their economies and add to or subtract from the financial well-being of their citizens. ...

A confidential memo from the director of Illinois’ largest state pension system said decades’ worth of unfunded liabilities may require the state to cut benefits for current and retired teachers. With the state currently owing $43 billion to the fund, Illinois Teachers Retirement System Director Dick Ingram cited forecasts predicting ...

State government tax collections in Fiscal 2011 showed strong year-over-year growth compared to fiscal 2010 collections, according to Census Bureau data released April 12. Fiscal 2011 ended on June 30, 2011 for 46 states. Fiscal 2011 total state government tax collections increased by 8.9 percent. Personal income tax grew by ...

Federal energy policies designed to rid the nation of traditional incandescent light bulbs continue to encounter popular resistance, with South Carolina’s legislature considering its own unique act of defiance. Intrastate Bulbs Considered Lawmakers in Columbia are pondering a proposed “Incandescent Light Bulb Freedom Act,” a measure ...

Benjamin Domenech talks with Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center regarding his recent conversation with Don Berwick and the benefits of premium support. ...

National Conference of Insurance Legislators Property and Casualty Insurance Committee VIA ELECTRONIC MAIL Members of the Committee: The Heartland Institute is a 28-year-old national nonprofit education and research organization, headquartered in Chicago and dedicated to discovering, developing, and promoting free-market solutions to a ...

One of the most dreaded days of the year is approaching … tax day. This year Tuesday, April 17 will be the last day people can file their taxes. It is also the Tax Foundation’s Tax Freedom Day , which calculates that Americans had to work more than a quarter of the year just to pay all the nation’s taxes for ...

Pharmaceutical sales are coming under criticism based on what appear to be legitimate but rare abuses of pharmaceutical salespeople promising more from a drug than they should and doctors allowing themselves to be pressured into prescribing. Unfortunately, these isolated incidents are being held up as evidence of the need for ...

Meredith, New York seems like an idyllic place—patchwork farms roll tranquilly along the western foothills of the Catskill Mountains, interspersed with small ponds and temperate woodlands. Gentle breezes blow through the tall grasses, symbolizing the town’s serene lifestyle. That same breeze, however, has divided Meredith’s 1,529 ...

The average Illinois household could be facing higher hospital bills under Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn’s $33.8 billion proposed budget, which decreases how much the state compensates providers treating patients on Medicaid. Quinn’s office said under normal circumstances Medicaid spending should jump by $2.7 billion. But spending on ...

Louisiana lawmakers sent to Gov. Bobby Jindal two education bills that would establish the largest voucher program in the country, curtail teacher tenure, tie educator pay and job security to student performance, and expand charter schools. House bills 974 and 976 passed by solid margins a month after they were introduced, amid ...

A panel of seven former U.S. Department of Agriculture secretaries representing Republican and Democratic presidents alike spoke in favor of genetic engineering and large, corporate farms at a Feb. 23 agriculture conference in Virginia. The former secretaries said environmental activist groups that oppose corporate farming and the ...

Academic Drug Detailing Problem A recent report from the Goldwater Institute highlights an upcoming issue in the pharmaceutical industry known as academic drug detailing. Through its academic drug detailing policy, the federal government will fund academics to reach out to physicians and specifically encourage them to prescribe generic ...

Guest Mike Wendy, director, Media Freedom.org, discusses the National Taxpayers Union policy paper on municipal broadband. ...

President Obama this week re-launched his advocacy for a "Buffett Rule," which maintains that no millionaire should pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than a middle-class family. On Tuesday, the National Economic Council issued a white paper justifying the Buffett Rule as a “basic principle of tax fairness.” Yet ...

One of the most frequently recurring justifications for housing densification policies (smart growth, growth management, livability, etc.) lies with the assumption that automobile-based mobility disadvantages lower-income citizens. Much of the solution, according to densification advocates, is to discourage driving and orient both urbanization ...

Two North Carolina municipalities are at odds over funding of one city’s broadband system. The City of Salisbury and the Town of Spencer—both located in Rowan County—will likely wind up in court to settle whether Salisbury possessed authority to borrow $5 million from Spencer’s water and sewer capital reserve fund to help finance ...

C-FIRE Deputy Director R.J. Lehmann talks with Dan Siemann, senior environmental policy analyst with the National Wildlife Federation, about a NWF legal battle seeking to get FEMA to halt issuing flood insurance policies to new development in certain areas of the Puget Sound until the federal government undertakes a set of ...