Medical debt imposes a crushing burden on millions of Americans. More than 40 percent of Americans owe medical debt, with 18 percent owing $2,500 or more.
Concerned by this issue, states and local governments have passed or are considering programs to fund debt relief. On Monday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker announced a plan to eliminate $1 billion in medical debt per year. This adds to more than $12 billion in passed or proposed medical debt relief by 20 other states or local ...
Opinion
Is Trump founding a dynasty?
It makes sense that Donald Trump thinks in terms of dynasties. After all, although he claims to be a self-made man, an investigation by the New York Times in 2018 reported that he had received the equivalent of $413 million from his father Fred, a New York City property developer. He is head of the Trump Organization, based at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, where his sons Donald Jr. and Eric are executive vice presidents.
Trump also regards his name as a powerful brand....
Biden’s ‘tax cut’ rhetoric is really just code for benefit increases
President Biden’s rhetoric about his new budget proposal suggests it is full of tax relief for working families. For example, one White House fact sheet is headlined “The President’s Budget Cuts Taxes for Working Families and Makes Big Corporations and the Wealthy Pay Their Fair Share.”
Taking from the rich to give more to working (and even non-working) families is a familiar theme in Democrats’ income redistribution playbook. But the Biden administra...
It’s too easy to get the wrong idea about rural rage
“White Rural Rage” is a book version of a clickbait article written by two people who don’t seem to engage with rural Americans regularly and who used other people’s data to come up with their conclusions about why rural Americans lean right. I am not an academic or journalist, like the two authors, but I am the only Democrat at the state level or higher among 32 counties in Northwest Iowa and someone who ran for Congress in 2018 in a district Trump won by 27 points in 2016 and...
Lessons from the National Association of Realtors settlement for the 2024 election
A couple of weeks ago, the National Association of Realtors agreed to settle more than a dozen cases alleging that the organization and brokerage firms associated with it violated antitrust laws by setting industrywide standard commissions, paid by sellers of homes. The NAR agreed to pay $418 million in damages and adopt a new business model.
If a federal judge approves the settlement, commissions — currently set at 5 to 6 percent of the sale price of a home, in contrast to 1 ...
Addiction treatment in prison is a crucial part of solving the opioid crisis
Two decades into an opioid crisis that has claimed more than 1 million American lives, policymakers are still searching for ways to reduce overdose deaths. They would do well to focus on jails and prisons.
There are 4,000 correctional facilities in the U.S., of which only a few dozen operate on-site opioid treatment programs. On any given day, there are almost 2 million incarcerated, about 15 percent of whom meet screening criteria for opioid use disorder. For many, incarcerat...
Remove the barriers keeping women from addressing colorectal cancer
This may be a month of fun and festivities with St. Patrick’s Day rolling right into March Madness, but it also commemorates two serious topics: women’s history and colorectal awareness. While the overlap may be purely coincidental, the timing appropriately underscores the need for improved awareness, screening and treatment for colorectal cancer, especially among women.
Though overall rates of new colorectal cancer cases have declined in the past decade or two, cases among pe...
Matthews: Autocrats gonna mandate: health insurance, vaccines, EVs and more
The White House and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are denying that recent EPA regulations are meant to mandate that everyone switch from gas-powered to an electric vehicle (EV). Don’t you believe ’em. Progressive elites rely on the power of government to force you to do what they think you should be doing. In other words, autocrats gonna mandate.
We’ve seen this movie before. Recall that the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) went into effect 10 years ago. O...
How Biden can win in the swing states by learning from New York City’s subways
Warning that Donald Trump is a “threat to democracy” is too abstract a message to sway many citizens to vote for President Biden.
Instead, his campaign needs to show voters how the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will benefit them in the years ahead — especially in the swing states.
Biden’s signature legislation allocates substantial funds to Arizona ($7.307 billion), Georgia ($12.388 billion), Michigan ($10.783 billion), North Carolina ($10.395 billion),...
Why Trump can’t escape his appellate bond dilemma
The two recent verdicts against former President Donald Trump — one in federal court and the other in New York state court — have thrust an esoteric area of law into the spotlight: appellate bonds. There are two main questions: Can Trump raise the cash necessary to allow him time to appeal the verdicts while staving off enforcement? And how can the winning plaintiffs collect on their judgments?
Trump has secured a bond in the federal case won by journalist E. Jean Car...