Medicare

Today we remember Medicare's establishment in July 1965 as a ringing affirmation of the ideal of social insurance. Less well remembered is how close Washington came to creating a very different system. Not long before Medicare's passage, the Kennedy administration seemed on the verge of a compromise with Senator Jacob Javits, the moderate Republican from New York. Senator Javits and his allies wanted to give private insurance a leading place in the new program so government could play a smaller… more

Last week, when Senate leaders announced they had agreed upon a bipartisan compromise for Medicare reform, Majority Leader Bill Frist insisted that the new proposal "meets all of the president's principles that have been laid out to date." Nothing could be further from the truth. When George W. Bush unveiled his vision for Medicare reform during January's State of the Union address, he was intent upon transforming it from a government-run insurance program into a system of competing private insurance… more

The latest in gimmicky government policies, the much-touted but meaningless "lock box" has taken the US by storm. The president, prominent Republican members of Congress and … more

The annual deadline for filing income tax returns came and went last week with surprisingly little of the usual fanfare and political grandstanding. Lest one be tempted to think that the quiet surrounding Tax Day was mostly due to the good economic times, a more convincing explanation may lie in the widespread ignorance that the largest levy that three-quarters of American families now pay is not the income tax, but the regressive payroll tax.

If Texas Gov. George W. Bush and… more