The American Medical Association and 90 other medical groups have just come out against a proposed tax code change that would allow trial lawyers to deduct certain litigation expenses, a change that might encourage those lawyers to file additional lawsuits. As Fox News reports: The coalition of medical groups sent [Treasury Secretary Tim] Geithner a letter Wednesday, stating its case, including a recent report by the AMA that found 95 medical liability claims were filed for every 100 physicians and that 65 percent of the claims are dropped or dismissed. Average defense costs range up to more than $100,000 and take physicians away from patient care
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The Trial Lawyer Tax Break?
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In a debate between Ezra Klein and Reihan Salam about the desirability of regulations requiring employers to give workers paid vacation, Klein writes : Broadly speaking, employees with the power to demand more paid vacation do so, and employees without the power to demand more paid vacation get less—or in some cases, no—paid vacation. A law guaranteeing paid vacation would primarily tilt the playing field toward low-income workers, rather than against them, as is the case now.
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There’s No Such Thing As a Free Vacation
* Another day, another multi-billion-dollar explosion in government employee pension costs. The University of California system is on the hook for $20 billion thanks to a 20-year-old decision to stop paying into the retirement system (in the belief that it was overfunded). Aside from demonstrating the limits of college-level math skills, this screwup adds more complexity to California’s public sector pension crisis, as UC system employees are outside the purview of the governor and thus are not part of the big pension rollback Gov.
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California Roundup: Professors Can’t Do Math
Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who may or may not ( wink, nudge, wink ) be running for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, is telling state agencies not to go after any of the new discretionary federal health care funds created by the PPACA . Republican Gov.
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ObamaCare Cash? Tim Pawlenty Says “No Thanks”
One of the reasons why local and state governments everywhere are broke is because they spend too much (yes, it’s true). Here’s a concrete example that I’m sure is typical. The Lakota School District is the second-largest district in Southwest Ohio
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Anatomy of an “Historic” Public-Sector Pay “Freeze”
Whole Foods co-CEO John Mackey, a Reason reader who has also supported Reason Foundation , the nonprofit that publishes this website, talks with USA Today in an interesting interview. Snippets: Q: It seems like every grocery store has found a way to look or act like Whole Foods.
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Whole Foods’ John Mackey in USA Today on Health Care, the FTC, Unions, & More
In his January State of the Union speech, President Obama woefully declared that “each time lobbyists game the system or politicians tear each other down instead of lifting this country up, we lose faith.” But by the following month, The Hill was reporting that “despite his push to rein in special interests, President Barack Obama sparked a boom on K Street.” Lobbyists for the health care industry in particular were given an enormous boost in Washington as the health care bill rolled slowly through Congress and then moved on to the regulatory phase. These days, though, much of the action on the health care front is moving to the states, which, thanks to the PPACA’s network of state-based health insurance exchanges, are responsible for managing a significant amount of the law’s implementation
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For Health Care Lobbyists, ObamaCare Is the Gift That Keeps On Giving
Over at Ezra Klein’s blog, Dylan Matthews compares the Congressional Budget Office’s projected revenues and outlays for the last ten years with the fiscal reality of the last decade.
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CBO Knows?
That’s the latest single-line animation from the fun folks at Electric Literature . What with the runaway spending, wars without end, and bizarre apologies to Liza Minelli that characterize this grim century, it’s always worth remembering that there are still really wonderful things out there in sick, sad world.
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A Brief Reminder of Why The Internets Are Really Cool
Last week, the Congressional Budget Office released its summer update , a report that includes some information pertinent to the new health care law—including one data point that we didn’t have before. In the past, when the CBO scored the health care bill, it had always mixed the new revenue and new spending calculations into a single element: the total effect on the deficit
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CBO on the Health Care Bill: More Spending, More Tax Revenue
