What to do about 47 million uninsured nationwide and 1.4 million Illinoisans without insurance?  This has become a central issue in the debate over health care.  In recent years, mandates, both on individuals and businesses, have emerged as a popular solution among policymakers to address the chronic problem of the uninsured and uncompensated care. Last...

WHY HEALTH CARE COSTS SO MUCH AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT (Springfield, Ill.) Government intervention in the economy, whenever it is tried, often comes with unintended consequences that make matters worse.  The arena of health care is no exception. Over recent decades, the debate over what has caused health care costs to rise so...

Illinois’ Medicaid program suffers from a number of maladies that increase costs for all while deteriorating service for its enrollees.  Among these are a perverse set of incentives—incentives that not only perpetuate a culture of dependency among Medicaid recipients, but that also block potential reforms to fix the system. Because Medicaid is a joint federal...