In just a few years, the 2010 health reform law will begin providing subsidies to help low- and moderate-income people buy health insurance. And that assistance is supposed to be delivered through tax credits—with payments going directly from the IRS to insurance companies.  But will those credits actually work? Maybe, but it won’t be easy. [...]

The House Republican plan to replace Medicare with vouchers could lower national health spending in only one of two ways: Either seniors would respond to higher out-of-pocket costs by using less—or more efficient–health care, or private insurance companies would ration their care for them. In effect, insurance company bureaucrats would replace those government bureaucrats so [...]

Want to know why caps on federal spending will never work? Just take a look at proposed Medicare vouchers that are included in the House-passed 2012 budget framework.  Faced with an arbitrary ceiling on spending, a determined Congress could easily turn those subsidies into tax credits. They’d  be exempt from spending limits but still add billions [...]

The Community Living Services and Supports (CLASS) Act is an extraordinary case study in both budget and health care politics, and in the toxic political environment in which those of us in Washington live. And it puts a critical question into stark focus:  Exactly how do we, as a society, want to provide for the [...]

Could Congress replace the current Medicare system with a voucher program, as former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin and House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) among others have suggested? It could if Republicans allow the 2010 health law to take effect and Democrats can bring themselves to stop defending a deeply flawed Medicare program. [...]

Today, the House will begin debating the “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act”—the Republican effort to reverse the far-reaching 2010 health measure. As has been widely noted, it is a symbolic vote that will lead nowhere—in part because, despite the GOP rhetoric, the public supports most of the law. With one exception. Americans detest the [...]

Last spring, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the new health legislation would reduce the deficit by $143 billion over ten years. Yesterday, CBO estimated that repealing that legislation would increase the deficit by $230 billion over ten years. What gives? Why would it cost $87 billion more to repeal the law than was saved by enacting [...]

Three-quarters of Americans believe that entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security “will create major economic problems” over the next 25 years. But two-thirds are opposed to addressing these challenges by reducing benefits, and 56 percent are against raising taxes. And congressional candidates, who read the polls, are scrambling to pander to the free-lunch [...]

Back in March, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the new health legislation would reduce the federal budget deficit by about $140 billion over the next ten years and by about 0.5% of gross domestic product in the decade after that. Ever since, analysts have been debating whether we should believe those estimates. Some say the legislation will deliver much larger budget savings than those modest estimates suggest, while others insist it will greatly increase future deficits.

While most everyone else in Washngton was viewing the cherry blossoms or otherwise enjoying a beautiful weekend, I was trapped indoors trying to get a handle on my taxes. Unlike most folks, as described in this great column in the Washington Post on Tax Myths by my Tax Policy Center colleagues Rosanne Altshuler and Bob Williams, I usually do my taxes myself and often without the aid of software. I'm a tax geek, so doing my return on my own gives me an up close and personal look at what I study. Plus I get a charge out of conquering the tax code. I did admit to being a tax geek.