Can Romney Lead the Fight against ObamaCare? ( Health, Welfare & Entitlements )

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="384" caption="Romney"][/caption]Conventional wisdom holds that offshore oil and gas production harms the surrounding environment. This blanket "wisdom" ignores the fact that the largest source of marine hydrocarbon pollution is offshore nature

Obamacare and its Impact on Doctors

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Don’t expect doctors to give the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act a clean bill of health. The act will reinforce the worst features of existing third-party payment arrangements in both the private and public sectors — arrangements that already compromise the professional independence and integrity of the medical profession.

Reflections on Christianity and Economic Research

Judith Dean, currently an international economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission, has a worthwhile exploration of the relationship between Christian faith and economic research ( HT )

The Deadly Impact of the Death Tax ( Tax and Budget Policy )

Australia got rid of its death tax in 1979. A couple of Aussie academics investigated whether the elimination of the tax had any impact on death rates. They found the ultimate example of supply-side economics, as reported in the abstract of their study .

Doctors vs. Obamacare—and Vice Versa

Don't expect doctors to give the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act a clean bill of health. The act will reinforce the worst features of existing third-party payment arrangements in both the private and public sectors, arrangements that already compromise the professional independence and integrity of the medical profession.

RomneyCare Advocates: We Swear, This Time Centralized Planning Will Work ( Health, Welfare & Entitlements )

You know things aren’t going well in Massachusetts when supporters of RomneyCare write “there’s some evidence that the reforms signed into law by Mitt Romney in 2006 are struggling.”  That’s how The Washington Post ’s Ezra Klein puts it in a post defending RomneyCare.  The New Republic ’s Jonathan Cohn offers a similar defense. Klein mentions only a few of the difficulties confronting Massachusetts.  Here are a few more: The Commonwealth Fund reports that even though Massachusetts already had the highest health insurance premiums in the nation, premiums rose faster post-RomneyCare than anywhere else; 21-46 percent faster than the national average

The Politics of WikiLeaks ( Foreign Policy and National Security )

In publishing a massive trove of government documents on the war in Afghanistan, WikiLeaks has done a useful thing. And because it often publishes information that is embarrassing to government, rather than dangerous to it, WikiLeaks is a good thing for democracy.

Do More, Spend More ( Foreign Policy and National Security )

Defense News today features a story that unintentionally provides an window into what is wrong with the Washington Foreign Policy Establishment (WFPE)— a group of supposedly smart people that has repeatedly failed to come up with a credible plan that may enable the United States to shed some of the burdens of global governance.