Americans spend more than $234 billion a year on legally purchased chemical entities. Although the expense is a small part of our nation’s $1.8 trillion health care bill, the dollars involved are substantial, amounting to more than $2,000 per household per year.
On May 30, 2005, the French people voted to reject the proposed European Union (EU) Constitution. Exit polls showed that the majority of those who voted against the Constitution did so because they believed it would result in an influx of "Polish plumbers"-cheap Eastern European workers lured westward by France's higher wages and better workplace benefits.
The problem for the Democrats is that the American people don't believe in class warfare. They don't hate the rich because they are rich. On the contrary, they want nothing more than to emulate them. And many Americans believe that they have a good shot at joining the ranks of the rich. The data confirm that such hopes and expectations are not unrealistic.
This is the third edition of the annual report, Economic Freedom of North America. The statistical results of this year's study persuasively confirm those published in the previous two editions: economic freedom is a powerful driver of growth and prosperity and those provinces and states that have low levels of economic freedom continue to leave their citizens poorer than they need or should be.
The fact that millions of Americans do not have health insurance is said to be a major problem, if not the major problem, of the United States health care system.
Reforming the Health Care System was held March 18, 2005 at Ball State University as part of a larger conference, Health by Design. Reforming the Health Care System featured a debate between Kenneth E. Thorpe, Ph.D. of Emory University and John C. Goodman, Ph.D. of the National Center for Policy Analysis. Their presentations were transcribed and are presented in this booklet. The speakers and publishers thank editor Richard D. Western, proofreader Diane Bast, and graphic designer Amy McIntyre for their work in pulling together this finished product.
Infections contracted in hospitals are the fourth largest killer in America. Every year in this country, two million patients contract infections in hospitals, and an estimated 103,000 die as a result, as many deaths as from AIDS, breast cancer, and auto accidents combined.
Measuring Labour Markets in Canada and the United States: 2004 Edition is the second instalment in ongoing research to assess the performance of labour markets and explain why results differ among jurisdictions.
It seems unlikely that HSAs would exist today were it not for the activities of the NCPA, although other groups were also important – including the Council for Affordable Health Insurance (CAHI), the MSA Coalition and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
The modern era has inherited two models of health insurance: the fee-for-service model and the HMO model. Neither is appropriate to the Information Age.
The statistical results of this year's study persuasively confirm those published last year: economic freedom is a powerful driver of growth and prosperity and those provinces and states that have low levels of economic freedom continue to leave their citizens poorer than they need or should be.
The entire developed world stands at the fore of a phenomenal demographic transition. Over the next 30 years, the number of elderly in the U.S., the EU, and Japan will more than double. At the same time, the number of workers available to pay the elderly their government-guaranteed pension and health care benefits will rise by less than 10 percent. With no change in policy, paying the elderly their promised benefits will, it appears, require a doubling or more of payroll taxes.
The regulatory climate for very small, neighborhood-based businesses, or microenterprises, in large American cities can significantly influence urban economic dynamism. Case studies of Boston, Dallas, Atlanta, and Los Angeles help illuminate the complexity and detail of regulatory barriers to entrepreneurship and identify programs and other efforts to encourage neighborhood-based development.
The principles of the American political process were slowly being fonnulated in the decades before the American Revolution and the writing of the Constitution of the United States of America. The sources were largely English and had a profound impact on Americans of the 18th century. The Framers left us with an intellectual heritage in which rights flow from one's nature as a human being. By adherence to the rule of law, private property and individuals are protected from the potential tyranny of the many (democracy) and the totalitarianism or authoritarianism of the few (central control, collectivism). To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, Liberty requires continuous diligence to preserve freedom.
Whether you're a steelworker or a waitress, a bus driver or an accountant, a large part of your earnings goes to the Social Security payroll tax every pay period. If you work for somebody else, part of the tax IS withheld from your paycheck, and your employer pays an equal amount on your behalf. If you work for yourself, you pay both parts.
There are remarkable differences among the people we label as 'poor'. The poverty population includes the elderly poor as well as unwed teenage mothers. It includes people with university degrees as well as people who are functionally illiterate. It includes the healthy as well as the sick. It includes people who are able to support themselves through productive work as well as people who are mentally impaired. It includes people who use the welfare system only for temporary relief as well as people who become perpetual wards of the state