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Len Nichols, a health economist at the New America Foundation, was giving a talk in the Midwest recently when an employer asked him a question that went something like this: I can fight health-care costs by moving jobs overseas, but then who’s going to be able to buy my middle-class goods? As jobs disappear, so does access to affordable health insurance in many cases, and consumers grappling with less income and unstable coverage rightly pinch their pennies.

Nichols… more

Many voters want mandatory insurance, employer role, yet candidates Differ (MarketWatch) "Mandates make markets work better because they reduce the adverse selection risk significantly, and thereby enable you to do the kind of regulation the Democrats want to do to make the market fair," said Len Nichols, a health economist and director of the health policy program at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group in Washington.

"There's a lot of stuff that doesn't hang together… more

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- When Microsoft Corp. delivers a mysterious prototype for government testing this coming week, it will mark a crucial juncture for a high-stakes bid to change the way consumers get their Internet access. That bid has cast Microsoft and a group of powerful allies from Silicon Valley in the relatively unfamiliar role of Washington policy players. Microsoft's (MSFT) prototype, delivered on behalf of the group, is a wireless device that could provide the… more