Some consumers and businesses might see a little extra cash this summer as a result of the 2010 health care law. The Kaiser Family Foundation recently reported an estimated $1.3 billion in rebates will be delivered from health insurers who spent more than the law allotted on administrative expenses and profits.

President Obama promised that the brunt of any financial reckoning will fall mostly only on those making more than $250,000 annually. Under his healthcare plan, the economic agony starts at income levels that fall much lower than that.

Which politicians do you trust more to micromanage your health care: federal or state? That’s the false choice presented by two versions of “federalism” intended to divide responsibility for health policy between the national government and the states.

For all the talk about the Affordable Care Act's mandate to purchase insurance, you might think that the mandate is the linchpin of the entire law. It isn't, at least from the standpoint of whether the insurance market will collapse without it. 

Tom Miller's proposals for Medicaid reform. 

When he was director of central intelligence, Leon Panetta earned a reputation as an energetic advocate for his agency. When he replaced Robert Gates at the Pentagon, it was reasonable to hope that Panetta would continue to play the role of a senior statesman.

Regardless of whether proposed health insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act are ever implemented successfully, consumers and employers need better tools to compare the relative cost and quality of the health care they are likely to receive under different plan options.

Monday's release of the annual Medicare Trustees' report seems on the face of things to be a simple exercise in dry accounting – trust fund x will run out of money in year y.  In fact, it's much more than that.  It's an annual reminder that we are...