US News & World Report

U.S. News | Voters See Very Different Healthcare Plans from Obama, Clinton, and McCain

. . . "The middle class is worried about affordability. They see it in rising premiums and in copays," says Len Nichols, director of the Health Policy Program at the New America Foundation. Premiums rose 6.1 percent last year, more than twice the rate of inflation and significantly outstripping the 3.7 percent increase in workers' earnings, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's 2007 Employer Health… more

Look Twice at Loan Advice (U.S. News & World Report)

. . . Stephen Burd, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation, says many colleges are affordable without the help of private loans at all. Plus, Burd adds, federal loans also are due only after graduation, and the subsidized ones don't accrue interest while students are still in school, as most private loans do—a fact not mentioned in the ads. . .

Do Unions Still Shape the Healthcare Debate?

A survey released this week came to the unsurprising conclusion that people are having a hard time paying for healthcare. The totally nonrandom sample of more than 26,000 people who took the online survey skewed heavily toward the insured (77 percent), unionized (57 percent), college educated (80 percent), and white (86 percent). If anybody should be able to afford healthcare, it would be these folks, right? So it was interesting to see that… more

Global Public Opinion Turns Against the U.S. on Iran's Nuclear Program (U.S. News & World Report)

. . . Iranian policy figures, adds Afshin Molavi, an analyst with the New America Foundation in Washington, like to play off an expression favored by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She talks of U.S. support for an emerging "new Middle East" that includes political forces moving the region in the direction of moderation, democracy, and opposition to radical movements… more

Presidential Candidates Push Economic Stimulus Plans (US News & World Report)

As Republicans and Democrats in Congress negotiate the exact details of an economic stimulus package, that debate was mirrored today among the chief economic advisers to several of the major presidential candidates at a forum at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. While none of these plans will be enacted, at least not in full, each adviser claimed his plan shows the superior economic thinking… more

The devil is in the details of President Bush's plan to curb the nation's escalating home foreclosures by freezing for five years the introductory "teaser" interest rates on many subprime loans. Borrowers who qualify—Bush estimates that up to 1.2 million might be eligible—will also have the option of refinancing into a new mortgage or switching to a loan insured by the Federal Housing Administration.

Lenders had already been working out deals with strapped subprime borrowers, but only a small number of… more

In a broad-ranging talk at a dinner Tuesday night in Washington, GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska warned of dangers in the way the Bush administration is handling the Iran issue, previewing a major policy speech on Iran that he will give next week.

Hagel has announced that he will leave the Senate when his current term ends in a year; he has also said, after considering it, that he will not make a run for the presidency. His talk Tuesday… more

The more medical care you receive, the sicker you'll get. That's the stark message in Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer, Shannon Brownlee's new book. Brownlee, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation (and a former senior writer at U.S. News & World Report), examined research from around the country on which medical treatments actually make people healthier and what individuals can to do ensure that healthcare doesn't kill them.

Most of us think that… more

"Business Loves Hillary!" was the gushing declarative that appeared on a recent cover of Fortune. The magazine's political conclusion seemed validated by a June 26 Manhattan fundraiser for Senator Clinton hosted by multibillionaire business legend Warren Buffett. Clinton praised Buffett as "patriotic" for understanding it was the national duty of wealthier Americans to pay higher taxes.And guess what, if Clinton or any of the other Democratic presidential candidates gets elected, it's a fair bet that corporate America will… more

[Mortimer B. Zuckerman] is right that our nation needs to "equip Americans with the skills to make them mobile and give them greater economic security." Helping Americans learn better job skills will increase salaries, mobility, and prosperity. Job training is the sleeper issue of the 2008 presidential campaign. While candidates from both parties are talking about middle-class anxiety and inequality, neither party is addressing job skills. The party that begins to focus on job training and provides real solutions will… more