A recent Townhall op-ed by Stephen Moore argues that Republicans can win on healthcare affordability by taking on the interests that profit from a costly and opaque system. That argument deserves attention, especially when paired with fresh evidence showing just how much the biggest health insurers have been making while Washington kept the Obamacare subsidy machine running. The latest chart on insurer operating profits makes the point clearly. UnitedHealth, CVS/Aetna, Cigna

The Working Families Tax Cuts include one of the clearest pro-worker reforms in the law: no tax on tips. Eligible workers can deduct up to $25,000 in qualified tips earned starting in 2025, whether they take the standard deduction or itemize. For millions of Americans in restaurants, hospitality, transportation, and personal service jobs, that means more of their earnings stay in their own pockets. Federal estimates say about 6 million workers report tipped wages, and the ave

Social Security is running out of time. The Social Security trust fund is projected to be depleted in 2032, and Washington has already missed the chance to fix the problem gradually. That failure has consequences. Reform can no longer be delayed, and it can no longer be painless. The real question now is who should bear the burden. Taxpayers should not be forced to send even more money into a broken system. The fairest remaining option is to reduce benefits on a means-tested

Earlier this week, the Center for a Free Economy pointed to economist Mark Perry’s well-known “Chart of the Century” to make a simple point. The prices that have risen fastest in America are not random. They are concentrated in sectors where government plays the biggest role. That pattern is hard to miss. Hospital services, college tuition, child care, and medical care services have all risen far faster than overall inflation since 2000. By contrast, products and services wit

The latest IRS migration data shows that Americans are still moving to low-tax states and taking income, investment, and economic opportunity with them . From 2022 to 2023, Florida alone posted a net adjusted gross income gain of about $21 billion. At the same time, high-tax states such as California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New Jersey posted some of the largest losses. The pattern is hard to miss. People and money are flowing toward lower-tax, faster-growing s

This week, the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee will mark up five narrow bills that would each, in their own way, make the tax code work better for taxpayers. The Center for a Free Economy is proud to endorse all five bills. They are: H.R. 2347, the "Survivor Justice Tax Prevention Act," sponsored by Congressman Lloyd Smucker (R-Penn.) This bill would make it clear that monies taxpayers receive as damages for sexual assault do not require invasive and re-traumatizing inq

Hospital prices have been out of control for years, and Congress is finally starting to ask why. At a U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health hearing last week on health care affordability, lawmakers focused on one of the biggest drivers of rising costs: large nonprofit hospital systems that enjoy major public subsidies while doing too little to justify them. That is a welcome shift. Washington often talks about health care costs in broad terms. But this proble

The Working Families Tax Cuts, enacted through H.R. 1, expanded education choice in the tax code by creating a new federal scholarship tax credit and broadening how families can use 529 savings. That is a meaningful shift in the right direction. Families need more than one path. Parents should be able to choose the school, tutoring, or support that fits their child instead of being boxed into a one-size-fits-all system. A New Federal Tax Credit for Education Freedom One of th

Washington’s priorities are badly out of balance. As Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in Senate Finance Committee testimony , the federal government allocates about $6 to seniors for every $1 it allocates to children under 18. That would be troubling enough on its own. It is worse because children are now the poorest cohort in America, while seniors as a group are no longer. Washington is allocating more to the politically pow