June 30, 2021 — One obstacle to productive public discourse and deliberation is a syndrome whereby the media, whether mainstream or otherwise, present policies in a manner that could be called “false imbalance.” No, I don’t mean “false balance.” False imbalance is quite different. It refers to the temptation to cast in a negative light, policies that in fact are reasonable attempts to balance competing objectives. Examples can be drawn from health care, fiscal policy, and monetary policy.
July 26, 2017 — Why do Republican politicians seem unable to come together on a bill to “repeal and replace” the 2010 Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare? After all, they have spent 7 years with that as their single-minded goal, they campaigned on it in the 2016 presidential election, and they now control all branches of government.
My preceding blog post described how market-oriented mechanisms to address environmentally damaging emissions, particularly the cap-and-trade system for SO2 in the United States, have recently been overtaken by less efficient regulatory approaches such as renewables mandates. One reason is that Republicans — who originally were supporters of cap-and-trade — turned against it, even demonized it.
One can draw an interesting analogy between the evolution of Republican political attitudes toward market mechanisms in the area of federal environmental regulation and hostility to the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The linchpin of the program is the attempt to make sure that all Americans have health insurance, via the individual mandate. But Obamacare is a market mechanism, in that health insurers and health care providers remain private and compete against each other.