Projecting the Future Diabetes Population Size and Related Costs for the U.S.
By James C. Capretta, Elbert S. Huang, Anirban Basu, Michael O’Grady
Posted: Monday, November 30, 2009
Between 2009 and 2034, the number of people with diagnosed and undiagnosed diabetesis projected to increase from 23.7 million to 44.1 million. Without far-reaching changes in public or private strategies, the costs associated with caring for diabetic patients will add a significant strain to an already overburdened health-care system.  [Read More]

Using Clinical Information To Project Federal Health Care Spending
How Congress could use a diabetes spending projection model to help inform budget decisions.
By James C. Capretta, Elbert S. Huang, Anirban Basu, Michael J. O’Grady
Posted: Friday, September 25, 2009
Type 2 diabetes is a prime example of a chronic illness with long-term health and cost consequences. This paper present results from an epidemiologically based cost projection model which shows that more intensive interventions early in the disease's natural progression can avoid some costly complications later, thus partially offsetting the costs of the more intensive management of the disease.  [Read More]

Health-Care Cost Projections for Diabetes and other Chronic Diseases: The Current Context and Potential Enhancements
By James C. Capretta, Michael J. O’Grady
Posted: Friday, September 25, 2009
Sound policymaking for diabetes interventions and other chronic conditions with similar natural histories is likely to require cost estimates beyond ten years. These estimates will also need to incorporate the latest, most rigorous evidence from clinical medicine regarding the health status changes that might be expected from various interventions.  [Read More]

Infant Industry: The Past and Future of the American System
Seminar at the Lehrman American Studies Center, Princeton University, 17 June 2008
By John D. Mueller
Posted: Tuesday, September 1, 2009
A single coherent tradition links all economically and politically successful American economic policy from George Washington through Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan. Tracing its origins and development helps us understand why the success of the American experiment at first critically depended -- and depends now in a more literal sense-on promoting the nation's ‘infant industry.'  [Read More]

Wrong Big Picture, Dangerous Fine Print
But otherwise Obamacare is swell
By James C. Capretta, Tevi Tory
Posted: Friday, July 31, 2009
Public alarm is likely to intensify in the weeks ahead as the details of the health-care bills being rushed through Congress become more widely known.  Among other things, these bills would force all Americans into health insurance plans which pay for abortions.  [Read More]

100 Days Later
More audacity than we had hoped?
By James C. Capretta
Posted: Wednesday, April 29, 2009
In the first 100 days of the Obama administration, the president and his allies have shown they can expand government without Republican support. But can they impose discipline on their own too?  [Read More]

Medicare and the Reform of U.S. Health Care
By James C. Capretta
Posted: Monday, April 6, 2009
So far, the health-care debate has focused on how to cover the uninsured.  But the rapid rise in costs is the heart of the problem, and slowing the pace of cost escalation will require grappling with the difficult subject of Medicare reform.  [Read More]

Great Society II
With a budget proposal, Obama's governing philosophy comes fully into view
By James C. Capretta
Posted: Thursday, March 19, 2009
Despite the rhetoric, the vast majority of the Administration's requested spending will have no bearing whatsoever on the prospects for reversing the current downturn.  [Read More]

Final Money
The downside to the fact that the U.S. dollar is the world's official reserve currency.
By Jeffrey Bell
Posted: Tuesday, March 10, 2009
The dollar's status as the world economy's official reserve currency can explain many of the problems we've seen lately in the world of American investment.  [Read More]

Placing Health-Care Options in the Hands of Private Companies
By James C. Capretta
Posted: Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Some of the nation's largest employers, like Wal-Mart and Toyota, have developed new and better ways to deliver convenient, high-quality health care to their workers.  This kind of private sector innovation would be lost with a full government takeover.  [Read More]