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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

In his $70 billion 2012 budget request for the U.S. Department of Education, President Barack Obama seeks to reduce funding for the nation’s top education comparison test, the National Assessment for Educational Progress, by $6 million. The money isn’t going back to the taxpayers, though. The president is requesting the same ...

Public-private partnerships can help solve some of the “horrific” problems currently being faced by governments, according to Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation of Chicago. Msall spoke during a March conference on private-public partnerships, presented by the Federation in partnership with the Federal Reserve Bank ...

What do you do if you are a global warming alarmist and real-world temperatures do not warm as much as your climate model predicted? Here’s one answer: you claim that your model’s propensity to predict more warming than has actually occurred shouldn’t prejudice your faith in the same model’s future predictions. Thus, anyone ...

A rise in shortages of key drugs is reaching crisis level for many patients nationwide as demand outpaces supply. Legislation has been introduced in Congress to address the issue, but questions remain as to whether the bill would address the real drivers of shortages. Cancer, Behavior Drugs Hardest Hit The American Society ...

It didn't take long for Don Berwick, the controversial former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Obama, to start being honest again about his anti-market views once he left the administration. In a forum with health care policy expert Jim Capretta, Berwick reacted strongly to the idea that ...

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 ...