In The News

This weekend the Trib has devoted a generous amount of ink and paper to differing views on President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate accord. Those opinions range widely, from Washington Post journalist Ben Adler’s concern for both environment and economy, increasingly dependent on renewable energy and green initiatives, to conservative Texas scholar Merrill Matthews’ fears that the accord made too many demands of developed nations for environmental change, which he suggests (and with strong evidence) is already being positively affected by free-market forces. 

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.