IPI Ideas

Every state is struggling to find ways to reform and improve Medicaid. Most of them are overlooking an important option: Integrating technology into Medicaid could increase access, lower costs and improve the quality of care.

The dismal track record of municipal Wi-Fi and broadband networks is a lesson in why municipalities should stick with their core competencies and not attempt to compete in the private sector. States like North Carolina are well-advised to place restrictions and taxpayer protections on municipalities that nonetheless insist on putting taxpayers at risk on municipal communications ventures.

Understanding the role and purpose of the Tenth Amendment is absolutely critical to maintaining the kind of government and country the Founding Fathers intended.

The well-kept secret of health policy over the past year is that the uninsured can be covered at relatively modest additional net cost, without the government takeover of health care, rationing, or any new health care bureaucracy, all of which were essential to Obamacare.

Copyright is actually a bundle of rights--rights that do not get treated equally. Technological convergence has highlighted the omission of equal treatment for performance rights. Music performers should be remunerated for the use of their work, especially as others are profiting from building a business around those same creations.

If any of the estimated $1.5 trillion in retained overseas earnings of American companies are returned home, they are taxed at the federal corporate tax rate of 35%, one of the highest in the world, besides taxes paid to the host countries. Repeating the highly successful 2005 tax repatriation allowing these funds to come home subject to a 5.25% rate would bring hundreds of billions in new capital into the America economy.

Amazon.com and Overstock.com are suing New York to keep their customers (and themselves) free of New York State sales tax. While tax collectors have shown great imagination in finding new ways to milk the Internet for new revenues, New York is one of few states trying to impose sales tax directly on online purchases.

A tremendous amount of research and investment is being directed at the search for technological breakthroughs to provide cleaner, more efficient, cheaper and more abundant sources of energy. There will be a huge demand for the wide diffusion of this innovation in years to come. This paper discusses the elements necessary in a global approach that prioritizes real world impact, but also respects intellectual property and the innovation process.

As Congress and the FCC consider calls from activist groups demanding restrictions on how network companies manage their networks, they should begin with the understanding that Internet bandwidth, like everything else, is a scarce commodity and must be managed to give businesses and consumers the kind of speedy and robust Internet that we have all come to depend on—both now and in the future.