Free Republic

Medicare’s trust fund will run out of money in just over 10 years, according to a new report from the program’s trustees. Once that happens, the federal government won’t collect enough in payroll taxes to cover beneficiaries’ hospital bills. Congress could hike taxes to cover the shortfall. Or it could ration care to save money. Or it could modernize and restructure Medicare — by giving beneficiaries means-tested vouchers to buy private insurance. Doing so would protect taxpayers now, preserve the program for future generations and even provide higher-quality care to seniors. Medicare‘s spending isn’t sustainable. Congress can stave off massive...

Last week, a dear friend of Accuracy in Academia, author M. Stanton Evans (1934-2015), would have turned 83. Although he focused most of his energies in his later years on researching and writing about the history of espionage and internal security in the United States, he had quite a background in economics as well, much to the benefit of his readers over the course of his career. Indeed, he studied under the noted Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. On at least half a dozen occasions, I heard him outline what he saw as five essentials for a functioning economy. They...

When the governor called, Sherry Japhet answered. Japhet is a freelance makeup artist from Boise, Idaho. She's worked in the business for more than 20 years, but without a license. That's never been a problem for her. She's landed gigs from coast-to-coast, working on television sets and for fashion magazines. Some of those calls came from Idaho Gov. Butch Otter. Japhet has helped Otter and his wife, Lori, look their best for televised public service announcements and political ads. No more, she says.

Speaking to workers and business people in Italy’s port city of Genoa Saturday, Pope Francis surprised his hearers by praising entrepreneurship and touting the importance of healthy businesses for the economy. “There can’t be a good economy without good businessmen, without their capacity to create and to produce,” he said, shattering his reputation as an enemy of the free market economy. The Pope recognized that the essential value of work and employment is only possible when companies are sound and successful. Without denouncing unemployment benefits, Francis insisted that state intervention wasn’t a real solution. “A monthly check from the state...

Dr. Josh of Atlas MD says NO to ObamaCare. Working directly with his patients, and cutting out the insurance and government bureaucrats, lowers costs for the patients and increases the quality of care they receive.

I believe we may be on the cusp of a new global prosperity led by the United States in a fashion that more resembles a free market, than that of a collective cooperative like we've seen the statists trying to put into place for a few generations Moderation, is the key. For example, food can be a good thing, but if you go to any extreme, be it eating too much, or eating too little, you run the risk of being overweight, or starving yourself to death. Moderation is an important concept in pretty much everything. In politics, the term...

Common Sense Medicine: Restoring the Patient/Physician Relationship Common Sense Medicine, hot off the press, is a powerful, easy-to-read, and entertaining exposé of the root problems plaguing American medicine and the simple solutions to increase access to high-quality, low-cost medical care!We are offering bulk discounts on this POWERFUL new book.Buy copies to give to patients, friends, and family!...A Kindle version is available...Read PDF version: http://aapsonline.org/CommonSenseMedicine.pdfCommon Sense Medicine: Restoring the Patient/Physician Relationship by Association of American Physicians and Surgeons on Scribd ...Meet the Author: Jeff DanbyJeff received a Bachelor of Arts in History with Honors from DePaul University in 1985, and...

The first sentence of Congress’ Obamacare repeal should read: “There shall be a free market in health insurance.” Right there, I’ve solved the health insurance crisis for 90 percent of Americans. Unfortunately, no one can imagine what a free market in health care looks like because we haven’t had one for nearly a century. On NBC’s “Meet the Press” this weekend, for example, Chuck Todd told Sen. Tom Cotton that his proposal to create affordable health care that would be widely available, “sounds good,” but “do you understand why some people think that’s an impossible promise to keep?” (The “do...

The Index of Economic Freedom is my favorite annual publication from the Heritage Foundation. It’s a rich source of information, using dozens of data sources, about economic liberty around the world. I first wrote about the Index back in 2010 and shared the bad news that the U.S. score dropped dramatically in Obama’s first year. Well, the new Index lets us see the net effect of Obama’s entire tenure. The worse news is that the U.S. score has dropped to 75.1 on a 0-100 scale. And the worst news is that this represents America’s lowest score in the twenty-plus years...

A recent report by the Economic Policy Institute blamed trade with China for the loss of 3.4 million manufacturing jobs since 2001. Don Boudreaux of George Mason University analyzes this claim in detail here, where he points out that innovation and automation are more likely culprits. But whether the jobs are lost as a result of international trade or domestic commerce, his most important point is that this is creative destruction. Stifled Creativity It is to creative destruction, a process first properly recognized by Joseph Schumpeter (whose 134th birthday it is today), that we owe much of human progress and...

Health Reform: Democrats are predicting doom and gloom if Republicans make good on their ObamaCare repeal plans. Aren't these the same Democrats who promised that ObamaCare would be a huge success? Early Thursday morning, the Senate voted 51-48 for a budget resolution that marks the first step toward the repeal of ObamaCare. Democrats say repealing ObamaCare will strip millions of Americans of insurance, leave people with pre-existing medical conditions unable to find coverage, increase the budget deficit, and be a political nightmare for Republicans... ...Republicans plan a transition away from ObamaCare to reforms that will make insurance more competitive and...

Why do government buildings and equipment seem so often to be run down? Why do U.S. Post Offices so often look so dilapidated like they haven’t been cleaned up since the 50s? The answer is the simple fact that people don’t really care too much about how they spend other people’s money or how they treat buildings and equipment in which they have no vested interest. Government money comes from private individuals who have little to say about how this money will be spent, so it’s “free money” to be spent however the government wishes. Government buildings and equipment belong...

An amateur racing driver and unrepentant Margaret Thatcher fan who has broken ranks with the traditionally statist line of the French right, he has promised a “radical shock” for France – tax cuts, public spending cuts, slashing public sector jobs and breaking trade union power.His popularity is also down to his careful appeal to the deeply socially conservative views of the Catholic right, promising to reverse certain recently won adoption rights for gay couples, preserve traditional family values and respect France’s Christian roots. ...It is, however, Fillon’s social conservatism and “family values” – including his private views on abortion and...

Americans want to have secure borders, sovereignty, one language, self-determination, and economic prosperity through free markets not through collectivism Two weeks before the most outrageous presidential election in history, the stakes for the economic future of our country are high. There is no question that the U.S. economy is in terrible shape and that the policy decisions made in the last ten years have negatively affected everyone who trades, invests, and use the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. Are voters going to choose free market economic recovery with Trump or global collectivism with Clinton? The government statistics claim that...

Coming up, an article by Reuben Ben Abraham of Los Angeles California. A senior member of the New England Alliance for Liberty and Free markets and a brilliant economist in the Austrian school gives us this insight in the superiority of the capitalist system over socialism... The article I am typing now deals with traits that show the superiority of capitalism, inspired by an incident that took place at a McDonalds restaurant one morning that illustrates capitalism. Anyway, this first incident I want to illustrate took place at McDonalds restaurant in Wilshire Boulevard across from Ross Department store and California...

As health insurers head for the exits, Americans who have been whipsawed by ObamaCare may get whacked again this fall:  First, they were thrown off private plans that were declared illegal, then they were forced into the ObamaCare exchanges, and now they could face the prospect of being shut out of coverage through their exchanges entirely for 2017.  In Arizona’s Pinal County, for example, no insurers are offering coverage through the exchange. While decisions won’t be final until next month, people in other counties could face a similar fate.Elsewhere, millions of Americans will have a “choice” of just one carrier,...

Just watched Trump on O'Reilly and he expounded on the minimum wage.Will someone in the know get to Trump and tell him to stifle his minimum wage talk.This is a free market issue...not a state or federal issue.

Marxists of the 21st century (not an oxymoron; they exist) have identified a new threat to the glorious proletariat revolution: PokemonGo. Of course, this is par for the course. The Soviet Union banned The Lord of the Rings. Leftist hero (and murderous thug) Che Guevara worked to suppress Jazz music in communist Cuba. The People's Republic of China censored Back to the Future because the regime thought that time travel undermined law and order. And on and on. Now Marxist sympathizers at the socialist magazine Jacobin think the new Pokemon-themed iPhone app—which is currently being enjoyed by millions of people...

[Begin at 1:07:30 into the speech. Speaking of Carrier Air Conditioner which relocated to Mexico.] "Every single time you make a beautiful air conditioner and want to sell it to the United States, there will be a 35% tax on it."

The vast majority of Americans say they prefer lower prices instead of paying a premium for items labeled “Made in the U.S.A.,” even if it means those cheaper items are made abroad, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll. While presidential candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are vowing to bring back millions of American jobs lost to China and other foreign competitors, public sentiment reflects core challenges confronting the U.S. economy. Incomes have barely improved, forcing many households to look for the most convenient bargains instead of goods made in America. Employers now seek workers with college degrees, leaving...