The Heartland Institute

The failure of Medicare’s demonstration projects to reduce the costs of care has been the subject of much disappointment in the health policy world. Recall that these are critical to President Obama’s challenge “To find out what works and then go do it.” If nothing works, the fallback weapon in Obamacare is to reduce fees ...

What constitutes an affordable “green” light bulb? According to the U.S. Department of Energy, $50 per light bulb is our most promising future. No Likely Market The Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded a $10 million prize to Philips, a Dutch electronics company that is one of the leading manufacturers of light bulbs sold ...

A bill offering South Carolina parents education tax credits and allowing tax-credit scholarships passed the House March 29—a first for any such measure since school choice became key to the Republican agenda in 2004. With a 62-38 vote, the bill now awaits discussion by the Senate’s Finance Committee. It likely faces an uphill ...

The Internet often is depicted as the bête noire of traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers. As soon as the traditional tech-savvy household plugged in a dial-up modem to a computer in the 1990s, consumers opened up their wallets, gave up credit-card numbers to Web-based retail operations, and waited at the door for UPS to ...

There is strong evidence that instructional materials play a pivotal role in student learning and, compared to more popular reforms like merit pay and school turnarounds, changing them for the better is easy, inexpensive, and quick, conclude Matthew Chingos and Grover Whitehurst in a report for the Brookings Institution. At the ...

A new report by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University finds that contrary to promises by President Obama and others in arguing for the passage of his health care law, Obamacare actually adds to the deficit, as opposed to decreasing it. Much of this has to do with the double-counting of funding within the law, a ...

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) signed into law by President Obama in 2010 will significantly worsen the federal government’s fiscal position relative to previous law. Supporters argued that this comprehensive health care reform would deliver a much-needed correction to the government’s unsustainable fiscal outlook ...

States that have imposed renewable power mandates during recent years are seeing electricity prices rise dramatically, reports a newly published study by the nonpartisan Manhattan Institute. The rising electricity prices are most dramatic in seven coal-producing states that have nevertheless “diversified” their electricity with renewable ...

Apple’s attempts to jumpstart consumer interest in its e-readers have prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to announce it will bring an antitrust suit against the company and five of the nation’s largest publishers. The DoJ claims Apple colluded with the publishers to raise prices of book downloads. If the DoJ is successful ...

As the 21st Century evolves and our economy begins to recover, there is near-universal agreement on the importance of expanding Americans’ access to high-speed Internet service. President Obama, countless Members of Congress, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and consumer advocates from across the political spectrum have ...

I recently came across a trailer for a 2008 film dubbed by Wired magazine as that year’s “scariest movie at the Sundance Film Festival.” Knowing any film taking the title of most alarmist in a festival known for over-the-top environmental alarmism must be a real doozy, I watched the trailer for “Flow: For the Love of Water ...

Green jobs programs enacted by various states are causing economic harm on an economy-wide basis that outweighs the limited economic benefits within the “green” energy sector, according to a newly published study by the nonpartisan State Budget Solutions. Job Destruction Outweighs Creation The report, Green Jobs Don’t Grow on Trees ...

Idaho Gov. C.L. Otter signed a bill to lift the state’s cap on the number of new charter schools allowed to open each year. “Idaho does not rank very high among states with charter schools and corresponding charter school laws,” noted state Rep. Bob Nonini (R-Coeur d'Alene), the bill sponsor. The new law overrides two charter ...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has reaffirmed that bisphenol A, a chemical used in certain plastics and resins, poses no identified risks to human health at current exposure levels. FDA’s decision came in response to a Natural Resources Defense Council petition for the agency to ban BPA in food packaging and containers ...

On the first day of class last fall, I asked my college students to spend ten minutes writing a brief essay explaining their definition of the American Dream and what they expected the federal government to do to help them achieve it. The first part of all their essays was pretty standard stuff. They wanted to have a ...

Rising levels of ground-based ozone in the western United States can be traced to emissions in Asia that are transported across the Pacific Ocean by westerly winds, according to a new study in the Journal of Geophysical Research. Significant Asian Impact As much as 20 percent of the ground-level ozone measured in California ...

The polar bear population along the western shore of Hudson Bay, Canada is substantially larger than what had been predicted by global warming alarmists, the Canadian government reported after conducting an aerial survey of the region. Government scientists estimate the polar bear population along the western shore of Hudson Bay ...

The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1992 decision in Quill Corporation v. North Dakota protects out-of-state businesses in the Internet era from overreaching by revenue-hungry states. The Court’s decision prevents a state from forcing an out-of-state business to serve as the state’s sales tax collector if the business has no physical ...

Privacy is one of our most cherished values, especially in this increasingly connected world. There is no question that we all want to be able to protect ourselves from harms or intrusions into our lives by the government or marketers. Some argue for new, invasive laws and government mandates to protect our privacy. But why ...

A group of Republican lawmakers in Washington, DC introduced a new plan to return more power to the states by combining Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program into a single block grant. The State Health Flexibility Act—sponsored by Indiana Republican Rep. Todd Rokita, with Republican Reps. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas ...