The $2 billion loss by JPMorgan Chase has reawakened debate about whether banks are taking excessive risks, but many facts have gotten lost in the breathless media coverage.

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.

Patients would be better off if states were able to tailor the benefits that Medicaid covers—targeting resources to sicker people and giving healthy adults cheaper, basic coverage.

The PPACA's rate review and MLR provisions represent costly, bureaucratic interference with insurers' legitimate business decisions and state regulatory prerogatives. This will do little to enhance competition in health insurance markets and the availability and affordability of health insurance.

The problem of coverage for pre-existing conditions remains relatively small and limited to the individual health insurance market, despite exaggerated claims used to advance passage of the Affordable Care Act. Nevertheless, too many people still remained at risk of falling through the cracks of protective measures provided by HIPAA, COBRA, and state-run high risk pools.

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. 

We estimate that a family affordability rule could initially lead to as many as 1.3 million more workers accessing exchange subsidies for themselves and their families than under a single affordability rule. If employees pay 50 percent of the premiums in the future, this number increases to 6 million.