The Financial Alignment Initiative has set ambitious time frames for making sweeping changes in the care offered to dual eligibles.  Will dual eligibles be able to obtain the services they need once they are shifted into these new health plans? Will savings come at the expense of patient care, or will this approach lead to real efficiencies in delivering care?

As NATO summits go, this weekend's meeting of the alliance's members in Chicago may be memorable if only for being the least memorable one in recent history. Of course, quiet summits are not necessarily bad summits. 

There’s good reason to believe the relationship between Romney and the Tea Party-driven congressional Republicans will be exceptional only in the severity of its uneasiness. This is not an example of passionate matrimony, but a mere wedding of convenience—and it’s safe to say the honeymoon won’t last long.

The fat years of the housing bubble lasted from 1999 to 2006 - seven years. The bubble was deflating by the beginning of 2007 and collapsed into the panics of 2007-09. Since then we have been struggling in its deflated wake. If we get the Biblical sum of seven lean years, the housing and related debt markets will bottom in 2013 - not a bad forecast. 

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The health policy debate in the 2008 presidential campaign year needs to move beyond the well-rehearsed pattern of the past, which focused primarily on how to expand insurance coverage to more Americans and find (or hide) the amount of money needed to pay for more health care services. Expanding the...

We are scholars and analysts who support school choice in some fashion, though we have varied perspectives regarding the optimal nature, extent, and design of choice-based arrangements. Choice's track record so far is promising and provides support for continuing expansion of school choice policies.

China's new leadership is threatening to stay content with slower economic growth, and the country's manufacturing, housing, and export sectors are experiencing problems. Nonetheless, China has an opportunity to influence economic growth in 2012 through stimulus measures to its own economy.