Newsletter

Supreme Court: It took the court more than six months to decide (7-2) that plaintiffs didn’t have standing to challenge Obamacare’s individual mandate. The accurate headline would be “SCOTUS punts,” but instead we read, “Supreme Court upholds Obamacare for the third time.” Sigh. Since Congress had set the individual mandate penalty at zero in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the … [Read more...] about Three Quick Takes

Today we are focusing on the latter in an article just published in The Hill, written by leading long-term care expert Steve Moses and Galen Senior Fellow and Medicaid expert Brian Blase. The title says it all:  “Using Medicaid to protect inheritances.” Here’s the issue: Many affluent Americans are hiring lawyers to protect their estates so they don’t have to spend their own … [Read more...] about Taxpayers Protecting Inheritances

I boarded an airplane Tuesday for the first time in 18 months to attend an actual, real-life, in person conference in Austin.   How great it was to see friends and colleagues in person and not on Zoom. Bringing the third dimension back into play somehow sparks energy, enthusiasm, and creativity in conversations and makes everything feel real and right again. The occasion was the … [Read more...] about A New Breath of Freedom

Many of you know that a key project of the Galen Institute since our inception is facilitating the work of the Health Policy Consensus Group, an affiliation that has grown to include more than 275 leaders in the free-market health care and health policy space. And this month, we welcome Laura Trueman to bring her extraordinary expertise in consensus-building and outreach to the Galen team … [Read more...] about Welcome, Laura!

While Congress failed to pass legislation in 2017 that would chart a new path for health reform, the Trump administration made important progress through administrative actions to give consumers more affordable choices for health insurance and offer states more options to take care of vulnerable patients with high health costs.The Biden administration is working to pull the plug on many of these … [Read more...] about Undoing Progress

The Biden administration this week made “the single worst presidential economic decision since Nixon’s wage-and-price controls,” The Wall Street Journal wrote in its lead editorial today. And we agree. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said Wednesday the U.S. would agree to “waive” intellectual property rights to Covid-19 vaccines and treatments and encourage other … [Read more...] about An Appalling Theft

The Biden administration is making great strides toward the liberal goal of government controlling American health care.   Passage of the American Rescue Plan included a big leap that could lure millions more people away from employer coverage into Obamacare by lifting the income cap on eligibility. The administration wants to make the two-year expansion in the bill … [Read more...] about Slippery Slope

The global urgency to vaccinate people against Covid-19 is facing two big hurdles, both of which can be attributed to faulty government decisions. First, U.S. officials have halted administration of Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine pending an investigation about six women who developed a rare blood clot disorder after receiving the vaccine, one of whom has died.  All … [Read more...] about Not even penny wise