In The News

It is becoming extremely difficult to disguise or defend the Affordable Care Act's collapsing individual health insurance marketplace, but that isn't keeping the left from trying. ObamaCare defenders now claim that premiums are rising because Trump won't guarantee to pay insurers certain subsidies for covering low-income people.

"The U.S. has a trade deficit because consumers have money to spend — and they spend it," said Merrill Matthews, IPI resident scholar, in a recent post. "Moreover, when U.S. consumers buy foreign goods and services (the current account), that money returns in the form of investment (the capital account). In other words, the accounts balance."

Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation examined state high-risk pools and determined what made certain state pools successful. 

The American Health Care Act is now in the Senate’s hands, and Wednesday’s score will inform senators’ work as they draft their own version of the bill, experts say.

A tax compromise that Trump could claim credit for isn’t hard to imagine. Business would be pleased. “A quarter of a loaf is better than none,” says Tom Giovanetti, president of the center-right Institute for Policy Innovation in Irving, Texas.

Merrill Matthews, resident scholar at the Institute for Policy Innovation, said Wednesday that "Republicans will think they dodged the bullet with this. They will feel it could have been worse."

Just ahead of the report's release, the Institute for Policy Innovation issued a statement reacting to yet another health insurer's decision to pull out of Obamacare. "Democrats sold Obamacare as a way to expand access to health insurance and lower the costs. Just the opposite is happening," said Merrill Matthews, IPI resident scholar. "What we are seeing is a collapse of the individual insurance market."

The decision on whether to remain in the Paris Agreement should lie with the Senate, which is empowered by the Constitution to ratify treaties.

Today, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City announced it will join a long and quickly growing list of health insurers that have concluded Democrats and President Obama had no idea how to reform the health insurance system when they imposed the Affordable Care Act on the country. 

In yet another legislative cycle, Texas voters have sent a substantial cadre of conservative legislators to Austin, and yet again, anything resembling a free-market agenda has barely budged.