Reason Foundation

Recent Research and Commentary

Republicans: Take The Reins

Democrats botched health care reform. Now is your chance to turn it around.

January 27, 2010

Shikha Dalmia

Scott Brown's stunning victory might have thrown Democrats' grand health care designs into disarray, but the cold, hard reality remains that Republicans are still the minority party. Hence, they will be tempted to go along with some version of ObamaCare-lite—subsidies for poor, uninsured folks and regulations on rich, evil insurance companies—and call it a day. That, however, would be a huge missed opportunity.

Three Reasons Why The Dems Are in Big, Big Trouble. And One Reason Why They're Not.

What Obama—and the GOP—should learn from the Coakley defeat and slumping poll

January 20, 2010

Nick Gillespie, Matt Welch

Martha Coakley's resounding defeat in the Massachusetts Senate race is hardly the sort of anniversary gift President Barack Obama could have predicted. Yet there it was, wrapped in a bow and plopped on his doorstep like a flaming bag of dog poo to mark the end of his first year in office.

Among other things, Scott Brown's upset victory means that Obama, who flew up to the Bay State to campaign for the deservedly doomed Coakley in the race's twilight, is zero for three when it comes to high-profile two-minute drills for beloved causes (remember getting Chicago the Olympics and putting together a global carbon deal at the U.N climate conference in Copenhagen?).

There are at least three basic reasons, plain as the nose on your face, that the Democrats and Obama are in trouble for the near future.

How is the Bay State's Experiment with Universal Coverage Working Out?

January 18, 2010, 6:31pm

Shikha Dalmia

ObamaCare: First They Came for the Undocumented Aliens!

January 18, 2010, 5:40pm

Shikha Dalmia

The Lou Dobbs Option

The Senate health care bill's anti-undocumented-immigrant provisions ought to be deal-breakers for civil libertarians

January 15, 2010

Shikha Dalmia

No one can accuse the health care legislation currently in the works of being perfect. But whether the flaws in the final sausage after the House and Senate bills are reconciled are acceptable to self-respecting progressives ought to depend on this: Do they help—or hinder—the ultimate objective of universal coverage?

By this measure, if the provisions in the current Senate bill concerning undocumented aliens make it into the final bill, progressives, who put principle above politics, should bid adios to the whole effort. The bill would turn the undocumented into a permanent underclass of health care have-nots, making universal coverage unattainable.

Beware Of The ObamaCare Revolution

If the bill passes next month, the U.S. health care system will face chronic political warfare

January 13, 2010

Shikha Dalmia

"I am not the first president to take up this cause [of health care reform], but I am determined to be the last one," President Barack Obama declared in September. But history will force the president to eat his smooth bravado if he signs anything resembling what's on the table right now.

Far from settling the issue once and for all, the bill will usher even fiercer confrontations—not only on health care but on constitutional matters of governance as well—that will make the current battle look like the political equivalent of a spit-ball fight.

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