In this podcast Russell Roberts, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and EconTalk host, discusses, with Austin Frakt of Boston University and blogger at The Incidental Economist, Medicaid and the recent results of the Oregon Medicaid study, a randomized experiment that looked at individuals with and without access to Medicaid.

In a wide-ranging 2011 interview, US member of Congress and Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan of Wisconsin discusses the need to repeal and replace President Obama’s health care law, his ideas for fixing Medicare and Medicaid, and new concepts to reduce the debt and fix the federal budget.

David Davenport, counselor to the director and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, notes, on Townhall.com, that seven out of nine judges agreed that Congress trampled on states’ rights by threatening to withhold Medicaid funding if states did not follow Washington’s Medicaid directives. This could be a historic turning point for states’ rights, which had been giving way to federal power for decades.

David Davenport, counselor to the director and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, notes, on Townhall.com, that Roberts declared the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional under the commerce and spending clauses but strained to uphold the act under the taxing clauses. Did Roberts play politics to uphold Court’s reputation on the Constitution by straining to rewrite the law to save it?

Richard Epstein, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, New York University Law School, and John Yoo, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley law school, examine the merits of various constitutional arguments for the Supreme Court’s striking down Obamacare.

Hoover Institution Press released a book that challenges popular criticisms regarding access to and quality of medical care in the United States, In Excellent Health: Setting the Record Straight on America’s Health Care, by Scott W. Atlas, MD. In this book, Atlas exposes the facts about the state of America’s health care. He explains why the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of March 2010 (also known as Obamacare) is “grossly flawed” and proposes a logical reform plan designed to maintain choice and access to high-quality health care while also facilitating competition among insurers and providers. Atlas emphasizes that the fundamental challenge to reforming our health care system is devising public policies that empower more Americans to get better value for their health care dollar and to foster appropriate innovation that extends and improves life.

Charles Blahous, a Hoover research fellow currently serving as one of the two public trustees for the Social Security and Medicare Programs, discusses the collapse of the CLASS Act and how this will affect Obamacare.

US member of Congress Paul Ryan, representing Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, visited the Hoover Institution on Tuesday, September 27, 2011, to highlight the need to repeal and replace President Obama’s health care law.  “We know that the first step toward real, bipartisan advances in health policy must start with a full repeal of the president’s partisan law,” Ryan said during remarks to Hoover Institution supporters. Ryan underscored the need to engage the nation in a serious debate on health care and put forward a principled reform agenda that confronts health care inflation. He emphasized the need to transition from “the open-ended, defined-benefit approach of the past, to market-oriented, defined-contribution reforms that promote choice and competition.”

In this second edition of Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise, the authors offer market-based reform alternatives to ObamaCare—the health care reform proposed in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) in 2010.

Image credit: Stanford Visual Arts

STANFORD—The Hoover Institution hosted a donor retreat on November 17 and 18 during which experts in their fields discussed timely political and economic matters. Topics covered by the speakers at the retreat included a postelection President Obama, federalism, the economy, Social Security, health care reform, and an analysis of the election results.

Michael McConnell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, discusses the constitutionality of Democrats’ pushing through health care reform without a vote.

This paper provides a brief summary of the impact on health care utilization and federal revenues of three policy changes: making all purchases of health services tax deductible, reforming insurance regulation, and reforming medical malpractice liability laws. All numbers below are on an annual basis using 2008 values.

Scott Atlas, MD, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, discusses ideas to improve our health care system without positioning government as the dominant insurer.

David Brady, the deputy director and the Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, discusses American public opinion on changing the health care system with Hoover research fellow Russell Roberts.

Hoover senior fellow Scott Atlas gives ten facts showing why America’s health-care system is in better condition than you might suppose.