Four lessons relevant to the Conservatives as they contemplate a possible return to power.

The future is on the way.  Leading-edge innovators, we are assured, have already moved on, and are earnestly focusing on the just the sort of problems - manufacturing, energy, transportation (and I'd add healthcare) - that urgently require imaginative solutions.

Reviewing "The Myth of The Paperless Office" for the New Yorker in 2002, Malcolm Gladwell argued that if the computer had come first, and paper didn't exist, someone would have had to invent it.  Paper, it turns out, is a lot more useful than we typically appreciate.

Health care policy and health care reform are back in the news in a big way. The Supreme Court is poised to hear oral arguments on the constitutionality of the 2010 health care overhaul. The Obama administration has just released guidelines for the operation of the state-based insurance exchanges that are the backbone of the law.

It is good that we will have some disclosure of the mega-donors to the spate of super PACs that have dominated the landscape and the airtime across the presidential primaries and caucuses so far — but it is ridiculous that reporting requirements are so lame that the first disclosure in six months will not come until after the Florida primary.

Durably improving health is really, really hard. I've discussed this in the context of drug discovery, which must contend with the ever-more-apparent reality that biology is incredibly complex, and science remarkably fragile. Here, I'd like to focus on another challenge: measuring and improving the quality of patient care.

For all the public wrangling we are seeing over the super committee — mostly centered on tax reform and revenues as a key component of a compromise — the big issue facing policymakers in the coming years is health care costs.

Rick Perry's promise to make Washington "as inconsequential in your lives as possible" is resonating in libertarian New Hampshire. He has moved into second place here after just a few days in the race, registering 18 percent support among Granite State Republicans. The secret to Perry's success? One word: jobs.