In “Mortality and morbidity in the 21st century,” Princeton Professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton follow up on their groundbreaking 2015 paper that revealed a shocking increase in midlife mortality among white non-Hispanic Americans, exploring patterns and contributing factors to the troubling trend. Case and Deaton find that while midlife […] Read more »
It turns out Donald Trump is not an Artist of the Deal
… This week, Trump suffered a major defeat when he couldn’t force a House vote for the healthcare bill he endorsed. … Power is cumulative; it rests on what the late presidential scholar Richard E. Neustadt called “reputation.” “The greatest danger to a president’s influence,” he wrote, is whether other […] Read more »
Here are 3 things we learned from Republicans’ failure to repeal Obamacare
The Republican campaign to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act ended abruptly Friday afternoon. Speaker Paul D. Ryan declared, after aborting a vote on the GOP plan, that “Obamacare is the law of the land.” The failure of the GOP campaign offers several lessons for understanding the first two […] Read more »
The Trouble With Killing Obamacare’s ‘Essential Health Benefits’
Get ready for the “mommy tax.” One of the most powerful arguments against House Republicans’ embattled legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act has been that it imposes an “age tax” by raising health-insurance premiums and out-of-pocket expenses for older, working adults. To woo recalcitrant conservatives whose resistance forced the […] Read more »
A postponed health-care vote, a big GOP embarrassment and no good options ahead
… For seven years, Republican politicians have made one overriding bargain with their conservative constituency, which was that they would repeal Obamacare as their first order of business if they ever had the power to do so. Now that they have the power, they still haven’t found a way to […] Read more »
Trump Has No Good Options On Health Care
Sometimes in a poker hand, you find yourself with no good choices. You’ve invested a lot of money in the pot. But then your opponent unexpectedly makes a large bet and you have a marginal hand. Your options — folding, calling and reraising (as a bluff) — are all money-losing […] Read more »