WRITING a budget should be about imposing order. In America, it frequently causes chaos. By letting funding for the federal government lapse on January 20th, Congress demonstrated, again, how hard it is for it to approve spending. The disruption might be worth it if America’s budget showdowns led to better policy. But they do not. Budget-making does not bring income and outlays into line. It does not allow lawmakers much opportunity to weigh competing claims on resources. And it fails to m...
United States
The safety net in Republican states is about to get skimpier
KENTUCKY, a poor, rural state nostalgic for coal, has never been quite sure of its politics. For three years it was the darling of Obamacare. Governor Steve Beshear, a rare Appalachian Democrat, complied with the reform by creating a statewide health-insurance exchange and expanding Medicaid (governmen...
The Museum of the Bible opens in Washington, DC
WHEN plans for the Museum of the Bible, which opens to the public in Washington, DC on November 18th, were first unveiled many predicted it would be a big, glossy advertisement for fundamentalist Christianity. The museum was founded and part-funded by Steve Green, a prominent evangelical and president of Hobby Lobby, a chain...
Chipped away
CONGRESS seldom agrees on health care, as is shown by the Republicans’ fruitless attempts to rip up the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. A longtime exception to partisan feuds was the Children’s Health Insurance Programme (CHIP), established in 1997. The scheme, which covers some 9m American children...
The Alexander-Murray bill does not solve all Obamacare’s problems
ON OCTOBER 25th the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its score of the Bipartisan Health Care Stabilisation Act, the cross-party effort by two senators, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Patty Murray of Washington, to shore up troubled health-insurance markets. The main goal of this bill is to restore, for two years,...
Op-Ed Contributor: How Republicans Can Make a Deal on Health Care
Give the states more flexibility in how they manage Obamacare.
The president’s indecision on health care is costly for middle-earners
INSURANCE is supposed to be about the careful management of risk. Recently, for America’s health insurers, it has had a lot to do with keeping track of President Donald Trump’s Twitter feed. On October 12th the White House announced that it would cut off payments to insurers that underpin parts of the ...
Donald Trump’s health-care orders will hurt middle-class, self-employed Americans
THE strange thing about Donald Trump’s new executive actions on health care is the identity of those who will suffer their consequences. On October 12th Mr Trump kicked off a deregulatory process to permit widespread formation of so-called Association Health Plans (AHPs), insurance policies run by groups of small firms. Then...
The New Health Care: Which Country Has the Best Health Care System? Readers Respond
“Americans should understand the tranquillity of spirit that truly universal health care brings to a population,” one reader who lives in France says.