Jonathan Cohn's Slant

A controversial provision of the Affordable Care Act will raise revenue by forcing small businesses to report business transactions more faithfully. The law's critics and even some of its supporters have, for some time, been trying to change that provision.Maybe these people have a point and maybe t ..

If you want a lengthy, detailed version of the debate, I highly recommend a 2005 exchange between economists Larry Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute* and Michael Podgursky of the University of Missouri-Columbia. Mishel argues that teachers have made less than other professionals of comparable ..

With Republican governors complaining that the Affordable Care Act doesn't give them enough flexibility, President Barack Obama on Monday offered a compromise: He'd allow them to opt out of the law altogether, just as long as they had an alternative method of providing universal coverage.Although a ..

Durant-Tuuri-Mott (DTM) Elementary School in Flint, Michigan, is exactly the kind of place that reformers had in mind when they crafted President Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in 2001. The facility is in obvious disrepair; eight out of ten students, most of whom are African American, qual ..

President Obama on Monday will release his budget request for the 2012 fiscal year. As you read commentary on it--or, if you’re as nerdy as I am, as you read the document itself--keep in mind that this is the first budget request he’ll be producing since the Republicans took over one house of Co ..

How extreme has the House Republican base become? Pretty extreme, I'd say, given that they think House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan is insufficiently serious about shrinking government.As you may recall, Ryan's big contribution to the political debate is his Roadmap for America's Future--a proposal for ..

Two weeks ago, before a lower federal judge in Florida declared the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional, another relatively obscure government figure generated news about health care reform. It was Richard Foster, the chief actuary at the federal agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid.During a Capi ..

A story in Sunday's New York Times had the headline "Obama to Press Centrist Agenda in His Address." It was the kind of article that both sources and editors undoubtedly imagined would set the tone for discussion on the Sunday morning shows. And, based on what I saw on television, the sources and ed ..

Note: This is the second in a series of posts examining some of the basic claims made by those who want to repeal health care reform.As the House begins its debate on whether to repeal the Affordable Care Act, you’re going to hear a lot about how it’s a “government takeover” of health care a ..

With the House Republicans planning a Wednesday vote on repealing the Affordable Care Act, I’m going to go back through some of their arguments over the next few days. And?I want to start with the argument that seems to be getting the most mileage lately, on Capitol Hill and in the media: The Repu ..

You've heard a lot of complaining about the Affordable Care Act from employers and members of the health care industry. But will they be cheering next week, when House Republicans vote to repeal it? It sure doesn't look like it. As National Public Radio, the Wall Street Journal, and several other ou ..

House Republicans have postponed their vote on repealing the Affordable Care Act until next week, because of the Arizona shooting. And even when that debate resumes, Jennifer Haberkorn and Carrie Budoff Brown report in Politico today, the House Republicans will likely adopt a more measured tone. The ..

This column is a collaboration between KHN and?The New Republic.I respect honest disagreements about policy. You think health care reform is a bad idea? That it will run up the deficit or make it harder to find a doctor? I think you're wrong, but that's a reasonable debate and I'm happy to have it, ..

The U.S. appears to be the only country in the developed world that forbids its government from accumulating debt without authorizing legislation. And that’s led to some scary moments, including one that the economist Henry Aaron shared with me recently.During the early years of the Kennedy Admini ..

With all of the focus on efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, another story about health care reform has gone largely unnoticed. The Obama Administration has been working furiously to draft the rules by which the new health care system will work. So far, they seem to be doing pretty well. But ..