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A Better Way to Negotiate Healthcare Costs
Tweet Share on Facebook April 6, 2012 Comment (2)Jeff Weiss is an adjunct professor of Business Administration at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business and a partner at Vantage Partners, LLC.
Healthcare costs are a constant focus of attention. They have a huge impact on the U.S. economy, and it is no surprise to anyone that a great deal of legislative and policy changes have been crafted in the last few years primarily in the name of making healthcare more affordable for all. What is puzzling is that little attention has been paid to the arcane methods that insurance companies (payers) and hospital systems (providers) both continue to use to negotiate their contracts. In a throwback to the '80s, these contracts are still negotiated employing a zero sum or, as it is often called, a positional bargaining approach to negotiation. Ways to together improve patient outcomes, delivery of healthcare, research, or myriad other forms of value rarely enter into the conversation, and opportunities for real economic savings are left on the table.
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3 Conservative Myths About Government
Tweet Share on Facebook April 5, 2012 Comment (13)Chad Stone is chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The Path to Prosperity blueprint of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan—the foundation for the budget that the House passed last week—reflects conservative politicians' war on government. As my Center on Budget and Policy Priorities colleagues conclude about a Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, analysis of the Ryan plan:
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The Truth About Corporate Tax Rates
Tweet Share on Facebook April 4, 2012 Comment (8)David Brodwin is a cofounder and board member of American Sustainable Business Council.
A furious debate rages between those wanting to cut taxes on U.S. corporations and those hoping to raise them. The two sides come armed with opposing and contradictory "facts." Some claim U.S. corporate taxes rank highest in the developed world. Others argue the opposite. When we cut through the rhetoric, a clear but complex answer emerges: Corporate taxes should be increased for most companies—and decreased for a few. The tax structure needs to be repaired to eliminate bad incentives that threaten our economy.
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Why It Doesn't Feel Like the Economy Is Getting Better
Tweet Share on Facebook April 3, 2012 Comment (2)Antony Davies is an affiliated senior scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and an associate professor of economics at Duquesne University.
The latest unemployment figures come out this week and they will likely show unemployment either holding steady or declining slightly. The official unemployment rate is still above 8 percent, and even if it were to continue the downward trend we've seen since November, it would be another couple of months before we saw it drop below 8 percent. The good news that the White House will try to sell this week is that unemployment has been on a steady march downward from its 10 percent high in late 2009. If the economy has been steadily improving for the past 30 months, then why have repeated Gallup polls on economic confidence shown people to be consistently dissatisfied with the economy?
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Barack Obama Brings Back the 'Liberal Ratchet'
Tweet Share on Facebook April 2, 2012 Comment (3)James Rickards is a hedge fund manager in New York City and the author of Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis from Portfolio/Penguin. Follow him on Twitter: @JamesGRickards.
One of the early challenges facing the Reagan administration was how to dismantle what was known as the "liberal ratchet". A ratchet is a tool designed to turn one way but never reverse. The liberal ratchet referred to the fact that in a policy debate, the liberal position might win or lose, but, if the liberal position won, they would never give back their gains. Government could become more liberal but it would never become less liberal. In the end, liberals would triumph. All they needed was patience to weather those periods when they got less than everything they wanted.
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World's Highest Corporate Tax Rate Hurts U.S. Economically
Tweet Share on Facebook April 2, 2012 Comment (8)Joseph Mason is the Moyse/LBA Chair of Banking at the Ourso School of Business at Louisiana State University and a senior fellow at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
United States-based companies and hardworking Americans face a steadily growing problem, one oddly self-imposed by Uncle Sam. Our current tax system puts businesses and workers at a competitive disadvantage in the global market and discourages companies from investing in operations here at home.
