Today, Cole Bunzel writes about how the flickering chance of Saudi Arabia and Israel normalizing ties was dashed after October 7, 2023, and how the Trump administration could get talks going again. Tom Church and Daniel Heil discuss who should shoulder the costs of Medicare reform. And Eric Hanushek discusses what needs to change in K–12 education now that new test data indicates student achievement was declining well before the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns and has continued to slide since.
Determining America’s Role in the World
Writing in the latest issue of The Caravan, Hoover Fellow Cole Bunzel says the Israeli war in Gaza has pushed Saudi Arabia far away from the long-held Trump administration aim of encouraging the Saudis to normalize relations with Israel. Bunzel cites the public statements of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, columns in Saudi media, and opinion polling all showing a slow warming towards Israel up until October 7, 2023. Since then, all efforts towards normalization have stalled. Bunzel says things won’t start moving in the right direction again until the Gaza war ends. “The Trump administration ought to focus its efforts on removing the structural barriers standing in the way of such a deal,” he writes. “This begins with finding an end to the war in Gaza and helping to foster a political order in the territory that enjoys broad regional buy-in.” Read more here.
Health Care
In a new Substack post, policy fellows Tom Church and Daniel Heil write about the need to control Medicare cost growth and who will shoulder the burden of cost control measures. In short, costs must be somehow shifted from the federal government to one of five groups: enrollees, medical care providers, hospitals, health insurers, or drug and device manufacturers. Congress might end up having to shift burdens toward all five groups, but Church and Heil write that the best reforms will incentivize patients to consume less low-value treatment. Church and Heil cite a 1980s reform that fixed the payment a hospital would receive from Medicare to the diagnosis of the patient, rather than an open-ended, theoretically unlimited reimbursement tied to how long a patient stayed in hospital. Once implemented, the measure cut the number of days a Medicare recipient remained in hospital after a diagnosis by about 20 percent. Read more here.
Reforming K–12 Education
With new data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showing that average student achievement continued to decline in 2024, Senior Fellow Eric Hanushek writes in The74Million.org that the problem started well before the COVID-19 pandemic-era school shutdowns and is continuing even as all schools are operating as normal today. After more than a decade of gains in math and reading, the drop-off began in 2013 and has now hit its lowest point since the federal government began gathering the data in the 1990s. Hanushek says this new data proves schools should return to an “outcome-based accountability” approach. “Instead of treating all schools the same regardless of performance, policymakers should pay attention to how well they are performing,” he writes. “High-performing systems should get operational flexibility. Low-performing systems need structured intervention.” Read more here.
The Environment
On the latest episode of the Resources Radio podcast, Senior Fellow Dominic Parker speaks with host Margaret A. Walls about his research into how early US environmental management agencies influenced the survival of threatened species. He tells Walls about the connection between state wildlife agencies, the sale of hunting and fishing licenses, and how wildlife agencies use those funds to ensure a balanced ecosystem and the continued availability of game for hunters. Without this system that extended private property rights and regulation into the natural realm in the mid–20th century, there was nothing preventing over-hunting and overexploitation of natural resources. Listen to the conversation here.
On his Substack, Visiting Fellow Matthew Kahn writes about Elon Musk’s recent appearance on the All-In Podcast, where he speaks about colonizing Mars as a means of ensuring humanity’s survival. Musk says the real test of Mars settlement won’t be if humanity can establish a base there, it will be how long it will take for that base or settlement to be able to support itself in the event that resupply missions from Earth are interrupted. Kahn asks if taxpayers should help Musk achieve this aim faster. “An interesting public policy question in this age of industrial policy is whether society should subsidize Musk’s efforts to colonize Mars,” Kahn writes. “If a subsidy increases the probability that his initiative succeeds and is viable sooner, how much does each American value this real option?” Read more here.
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