Earlier this month, the California Assembly voted to give the state insurance commissioner the power to reject health insurance rate hikes that he deemed “excessive.” The state senate must now take up the measure, known as AB 52.

A virtual school would give students in rural and low-performing schools access to honors, enrichment and remediation courses, improving achievement and graduation rates at a lower cost than traditional classroom instruction, according to a report by the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy.

Virtual schools offer other advantages over bricks-and-mortar schools. For instance, distance is no barrier, and kids learn on their own time and at their own pace, the report said.

A successful welfare reform from the 1990s offers a model to reform a currently out-of-control program many Americans assume to be an entitlement, but which is actually welfare. The program is Medicaid, which should be easier to fix, politically, than the so-called entitlements of Social Security and Medicare.

In July, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) formally begins operations. Republicans oppose President Obama’s top choice, Elizabeth Warren, to head the new bureau, which should not have been created in the first place. The CFPB will drive up prices, but won’t actually protect consumers.

Consider first the sheer implausibility of this “reform.” Consumers who feel they are being ripped off by powerful forces are looking to Washington politicians to save them? Since when does anything coming out of Washington resemble integrity and financial prudence? The CFPB’s own website makes that point.

PRI's Lee Hoskins was featured on MSNBC's Closing Bell in response to the Federal Reserve's latest policy decision to keep interest rates as they are for an extended period of time. According to Dr. Hoskins, "The Federal Reserve should shift to a program of normalizing interest rates and stick to the one thing they can control which is inflation."

Reports from consulting firms don’t normally make national news. Then again, most such reports don’t predict the downfall of the American health care system.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee just scheduled hearings for next month on one of the most controversial components of ObamaCare — the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).

This 15-member, unelected Board will be charged with making recommendations for reducing Medicare spending if costs exceed a specified cap. Those recommendations will automatically become law unless Congress blocks them and offers equivalent spending cuts in their place.

“The primary concern should be whether care is medically effective. Doctors and patients should be in charge about health care, not government.  Various governmental agencies are making decisions about whether these drugs are cost-effective, not medically effective and these decisions are destroying the American spirit.”  

Democrats have recently seized on a novel way of reducing health care costs — threats.

The Obama Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently announced that any insurance company that wants to increase premiums more than 10% will have to get approval from the government. Congress didn’t pass a law mandating this draconian policy — HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius simply decreed it.

Congress remains gridlocked on many important issues but not every politician is afraid to challenge the unsustainable growth of Medicaid. Consider S. 1031, by Sen. Tom Coburn.

This measure would increase local control over Medicaid spending and improve the incentives that have led politicians to trap ever more low-income citizens in poverty and the poor access to care that characterizes this top-heavy system.

In a recent speech, President Obama set a goal to reduce America's oil imports by a third by 2025 — about 3 million to 4 million barrels a day. Unfortunately, Obama's own energy policies undercut his goal.

To reduce America's dependence on foreign sources, domestic energy producers will need to increase production significantly at competitive prices to make up the difference. It's unclear how the president expects them to do this under his "less drilling, more taxes" energy policies.