Entries for 'NCPA'

Medicaid beneficiaries have more difficulty getting primary care and they visit hospital emergency departments more often than those with private insurance....

A heavily subsidized solar company received a U.S. taxpayer loan guarantee to sell solar panels to itself....

... wind and solar power, after decades of government support, are still not independently viable for broad commercialization ....

Only two European countries, Greece and Ireland, have larger budget deficits as a percentage of GDP.  Just four European countries have larger national debts than we do -- Greece and Ireland again, plus Portugal and Italy .... 

Rhode Island, Washington, Tennessee, Florida and Idaho each have attempted efforts to change the system, and their experiences may prove insightful....

Hawaii can learn a great deal from European countries' experiences....

Health care spending increased continuously since the 1970s, consistently outstripping inflation and economic growth…. However, this trend has since turned negative with the rate dropping almost every year since 2002, reaching a low of less than 4 percent in 2009....

impending troubles to be faced by public-sector retirement funds....

Even with billions in US Tariff support, sugar just couldn't carry the ILWU in Hawaii....

Beginning in 2013, a tax will be imposed on the manufacture and importation of medical devices in an attempt to offset a portion of the $1 trillion cost of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act....

Americans following the current GOP brawl witnessed a series of attacks on Mitt Romney for the low effective tax rate he pays on his personal income.

 $500 million in green job training grants placed just 10 percent of trainees in jobs ....

O’Sullivan said. “We’re repulsed by some of our supposed brothers and sisters lining up with job killers like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council to destroy the lives of working men and women.”

Deficit hawks, environmentalists and food processors are celebrating the expiration of the ethanol tax credit.

tobacco-free hiring policies, designed to promote health and reduce insurance premiums, are under attack from the American Civil Liberties Union and the tobacco industry....

Many of these results stem from two large impacts of the law: shutting down health care facilities and sharply increasing demand as it extends coverage to millions of people.

...government price and output controls are largely to blame for shortages, as they cause distortions within the market and adverse motives among market participants, says Investor's Business Daily....

States are trapped between excessive regulation on one side and financial bankruptcy on the other....

...now comes the lapse of several federal supports or incentives which allowed people/companies/governments to install the charging stations necessary to keep these care running. No chargers, no driving....

...by relying on a technical system of price controls and complicated payout formulas, Congress is continuing to play the same game that it has for years in which it drives down direct costs in one area only to see them spring up elsewhere....

Medicine is undergoing industrialization where doctors who previously operated in small offices with relative autonomy are becoming owned commodities of large hospitals and health plans.... 

Instead of waging a war on the rich, a virtuous war should be waged on society's predators, pirates and parasites....

Psychology, economics and organizational science suggest that too many regulations may make society less safe .... 

Faced with mounting budget deficits, more states are expanding gambling options and loosening restrictions in a grab for revenue....

With Medicare's hospital trust fund set to be exhausted by 2024 according to the latest report from the program's trustees, federal officials are understandably looking for easy ways to cut spending ....

No matter how powerful or pervasive a regime is, it can still be overrun by the sheer superior numbers of the people it governs. However, this traditional political framework has been undermined by the development of the modern welfare state ....

Electric bills have skyrocketed in the last five years, a sharp reversal from a quarter-century when Americans enjoyed stable power bills even as they used more electricity, says USA Today.

Attempts to solve drug shortages with more regulations could actually worsen the problem ... the only way to alleviate the drug shortage is to make generic drugs more profitable.

Any program in which 60 percent of the graduates failed to find work for two consecutive years would face funding reductions ....

This is what happens when you let the government tell you how to live every tiny detail of your life.

For state governments, the coming Supreme Court ruling on health reform isn't an abstract argument about the U.S. Constitution. It's a highly practical question about whether, when and how to proceed with one of the health law's most important and complicated pieces: setting up health insurance exchanges....

Last week the Treasury Department revised its loss estimate for the General Motors (GM) bailout from $14.33 billion to $23.6 billion....

Indeed, costly emission cuts in Denmark and elsewhere are likely to lead to a partial relocation of CO2 emissions to more lenient countries, such as China ....

Companies involved in developing smart electric grids -- nine big tech firms that are also in many other businesses -- have risen 54 percent....

As first reported in Motor Trend, hybrid vehicles that operate on gasoline and electricity such as the Toyota Prius often produce less carbon dioxide than vehicles that operate solely on electricity such as the Nissan Leaf....

...reusable bags are only more environmentally friendly than plastic bags if they are used 103 times, yet on average they are used only 51 times before they are thrown away....

• First, the power lines and new infrastructure necessary to transport wind energy is enormously expensive.
• Second, much of the electricity produced is lost in transportation anyway.

Attempting to address concerns regarding global warming and the gradual increase of manmade emissions, the European Union has implemented an emissions trading scheme under which airlines will be forced to pay a carbon tax.  (Australia voted to enact a carbon tax Nov 8).

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has a particularly silly column today in the Seattle Times, proclaiming “That’s right: Solar power is now cost-effective.”

Coal receives about 6/100ths of a cent per kWh while solar receives an enormous 96.8 cents per kWh. Wind receives 5.25 cents per kWh and nuclear receives just under 1/3 of a cent per kWh.

Median post-tax income has increased, as has consumption....

Writing in TheWall Street Journal, [New York Senator Kirsten] Gillibrand’s piece was titled “Cap and Trade Could Be a Boon to New York.” It described the inherent complexity of cap-and-trade not as a drawback, but as an opportunity from which Wall Street brokers could profit.

...why has the incidence of disability diagnosis increased so drastically in 25 years? Several studies suggest that this increase has occurred because schools are incentivized to do so....

President Barack Obama makes it sound as if there are millionaires all over America paying taxes at lower rates than their secretaries. The data tell a different story, says the Associated Press.

Eliminating $380 billion in subsidies to industries that damage the environment could go a long way toward resolving U.S. budget challenges, a coalition of groups from across the political spectrum said in a new study, reports the Environment News Service.

A new report from the Department of Energy ... shows that "renewable" energy firms are heavily dependent on government support....

Myths about the dire effects of genetically modified foods on health and the environment abound, but they have not held up to scientific scrutiny. These crop modification methods are not dangerous.

The energy from hydrofracking can transform the U.S. energy outlook for a century. Let's not allow groundless fears to destroy our future....