Here’s a list of articles that I have been reading today (organized by topic):
Financial Crisis
- The Coming Reset in State Government, by Mitch Daniels
Wall Street Journal: “My fellow governors and I are likely facing a permanent reduction in tax revenues.”
Health Care Reform
- Forecasting the Cost of U.S. Healthcare, by Robert Fogel
The American: “There is no need to suppress the demand for healthcare. Expenditures on healthcare are driven by demand, which is spurred by income and by advances in biotechnology that make health interventions increasingly effective.” Nobel laureate Fogel notes, among other things, that “the long-term income elasticity of the demand for healthcare is 1.6—for every 1 percent increase in a family’s income, the family wants to increase its expenditures on healthcare by 1.6 percent.”
- Let’s Get Fundamental, by David Brooks
New York Times: “President Obama has drifted away from tackling the real problem with health care: perverse incentives.”
Politics
- Obama’s Magic Evaporates in the Heat of the Health-Reform Debate, by Charles Krauthammer
Washington Post: “What happened to President Obama? His wax wings having melted, he is the man who fell to earth. What happened to bring his popularity down further than that of any new president in polling history save Gerald Ford (post-Nixon pardon)?”
- Harry Jekyll and Harry Hyde, by Kim Strassel
- Coruscating on Thin Ice, by Peggy Noonan
Wall Street Journal: “The Obama administration is young and out of touch.”