The Trump administration is moving forward with a new approach to the 340B drug discount program that will require participating drug manufacturers to provide discounts through rebates only after claims are submitted and verified. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) announced a revised 340B Rebate Model Pilot Program that will apply to certain drugs beginning in 2026. The announcement moves the rebate model from a proposed reform toward implementation as t

A new proposal from a center-left fiscal policy organization highlights a path to strengthen Social Security without imposing large tax increases on workers and small businesses. Rather than raising payroll taxes, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) has proposed slowing future benefit growth for the highest-income retirees while preserving full inflation protection for low- and middle-income seniors. If a center-left fiscal policy organization is proposing t

For the first time, half of the world's billionaire wealth was created by self-made entrepreneurs in competitive industries rather than inherited fortunes or politically connected businesses. That milestone, identified in a new Economist analysis of roughly 7,000 billionaires and highlighted by economist Edward Conard, undercuts one of the central arguments for imposing wealth taxes. The argument for taxing billionaire wealth often rests on the assumption that extreme wealth

Higher education has long been promoted as the surest path to economic opportunity. New voting data suggests that promise has fallen short for a growing segment of Americans, with political consequences that extend well beyond college campuses. Analysis from the Cooperative Election Study, highlighted by Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin, found that educational attainment has become one of the strongest predictors of presidential voting behavior. The most Democratic-leaning group

Tariffs were promoted as a way to rebuild American manufacturing, strengthen the economy, and create more factory jobs. More than a year after the largest tariff increases took effect, the results tell a different story. Americans continue to face higher prices, manufacturers are struggling to fill existing jobs, and the economic burden of higher import taxes has offset much of the tax relief Congress enacted through H.R. 1, the "Working Families Tax Cuts." Public opinion has

The Trump administration continues implementing the Medicaid provisions of H.R. 1, the "Working Families Tax Cuts," through a proposed rule that would place new limits on state directed payments (SDPs). The proposal addresses financing arrangements that have allowed some states to draw significantly more federal Medicaid funding through payment mechanisms rather than direct improvements in patient care. Public comments submitted by the Paragon Health Institute support the rul

The United States is often described as a nation where roughly two-thirds of households own their homes. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the national homeownership rate currently stands at 65.3%. New research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis shows that the 65.3% figure does not accurately represent the share of American adults who own homes. The Minneapolis Fed has introduced a new measurement called the Homeowners-to-Population Ratio (HPOP), which measures t

Many families assume older children have already missed their chance to benefit from Trump Accounts. That misconception stems largely from the federal government's $1,000 seed contribution, which is limited to children born during the program's eligibility window. The opportunity, however, extends well beyond the federal deposit. Private organizations, employers, and families are increasingly using Trump Accounts to help older children begin building long-term savings, even i

Patients should not have to guess what medical care will cost before receiving treatment. Yet many of the nation's largest tax exempt hospitals continue to resist a basic principle of a competitive marketplace: price transparency. That resistance is difficult to justify given the substantial public benefits these institutions receive. Tax exempt hospitals receive billions of dollars each year in federal, state, and local tax advantages in exchange for fulfilling charitable mi

Center for a Free Economy President Ryan Ellis has published a new op-ed in National Review Online examining how aggressive state escheatment laws are putting long-term investors at risk. In "The Backdoor Property Tax You've Never Heard Of," Ellis explains how some states have transformed unclaimed property laws from a consumer protection into a growing source of government revenue, creating incentives to seize and liquidate investment accounts that were never truly abandoned

The Center for a Free Economy (CFE) led a coalition of more than 40 taxpayer, free market, consumer, and public policy organizations in a letter urging Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-TX) to advance H.R. 4780, the "USTRx Act." The legislation would create a Chief Pharmaceutical Trade Negotiator within the Office of the United States Trade Representative to combat foreign government price controls and other unfair trade practices that drive up prescription drug costs for American pati

Strong patent protections are essential to preserving America's leadership in innovation, investment, and technological advancement. The Center for a Free Economy (CFE) recently submitted a letter to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary supporting S. 1546, the "Patent Eligibility Restoration Act of 2025," legislation that would replace court-imposed patent eligibility standards with clear statutory rules established by Congress. CFE argues that the bill would restore gr

America continues to produce more new millionaires than any other country in the world, offering fresh evidence that economic growth and opportunity remain widely available. While critics often argue that the middle class is disappearing because Americans are falling behind, long-term income data suggest a different trend. A growing share of households have moved into higher income brackets, reflecting rising prosperity rather than widespread economic decline. According to th

Millions of Americans purchasing health insurance through the Obamacare exchanges could face another year of double-digit premium increases. While those headlines focus on the cost of coverage, they overlook who ultimately pays for much of those increases. Obamacare's subsidy structure protects many exchange enrollees from rising premiums by shifting most of the added cost to taxpayers. As benchmark premiums rise, federal premium tax credits rise with them. Instead of reducin

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) continues to lose billions of taxpayer dollars to improper payments despite years of reform efforts. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), SNAP made $10.1 billion in improper payments during fiscal year 2025, representing 10.6 percent of all benefits distributed. More than $8.8 billion resulted from overpayments, meaning recipients received more assistance than program rules permitted. The latest figures a

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has ordered an investigation into a tax exempt hospital that advertised childbirth services near the U.S.-Mexico border just days after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship. With the Court reaffirming that children born on U.S. soil generally acquire U.S. citizenship under the 14th Amendment, Mission Regional Medical Center's campaign encouraging expectant mothers from Mexico to give birt

Conventional wisdom often suggests that cutting income tax rates inevitably reduces government revenue. Montana's experience tells a different story. After steadily lowering its top individual income tax rate from 11.0 percent in the 1980s to 5.4 percent today, the state has experienced substantial growth in income tax collections. Rather than shrinking the tax base, Montana's reforms appear to have strengthened it by encouraging greater economic activity. Lower Rates, Higher

Tax-exempt hospitals receive billions of dollars in federal, state, and local tax benefits each year in exchange for serving charitable missions. Too often, however, some large nonprofit hospital systems have used that privileged status to expand revenues, enrich executives, and exploit government programs while providing taxpayers with little transparency about how those tax subsidies are used. The U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means recently approved H.R. 9504, the Tax E

The Center for a Free Economy (CFE) submitted the following comments for the record to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in response to the agency's proposed rulemaking on Medicaid reimbursement reform. The Center for a Free Economy (CFE) appreciates the opportunity to comment on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) proposed rule regarding Medicaid managed care State Directed Payments (SDPs) and Medicaid fee-for-service targeted payment policie

Tariffs have raised prices for consumers, increased costs for businesses, and offset part of the economic benefit of H.R. 1, the Working Families Tax Cuts. The Trump Administration now has an opportunity to correct course by pairing targeted tariff relief with the law’s strongest pro-growth provisions. The new U.S.-China Board of Trade is a useful start. According to Skadden, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is seeking public input on roughly $30 billion in Chinese

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has spent years advocating for one of the largest payroll tax increases in recent history. She now has an unexpected Republican ally: Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH). Their proposal would eliminate the Social Security payroll tax cap, producing an estimated $3 trillion tax increase while pushing the top federal marginal tax rate above 50 percent for many affected taxpayers. Yet despite asking Republicans to support one of the largest tax increases

One year after President Trump signed H.R. 1, the Working Families Tax Cuts, millions of Americans are seeing the benefits in their paychecks, tax returns, and household budgets. Workers, seniors, parents, and families are keeping more of what they earn through lower taxes and expanded opportunities to save and invest. Over the past year, the Center for a Free Economy has tracked these reforms through research, blog posts, and educational videos that explain how the Working F

Social Security's financial outlook continues to worsen, yet many policymakers continue to promote higher payroll taxes as the primary solution. New analysis suggests that approach would impose significant costs on workers while doing little to address the program's underlying problem. A recent Cato Institute analysis found that Social Security's Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund is now projected to become insolvent in 2032, one year earlier than previously expected.

The Biden administration's health care legacy continues to create problems for taxpayers, patients, and the broader health care system. Years after key policies were enacted, the effects are still visible in Obamacare enrollment data and in the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act's drug price controls. The Trump administration has begun reversing several of these policies, but significant work remains. Biden’s Drug Price Controls Continue to Raise Concerns A recent

A proposal to impose a wealth tax on Americans is drawing attention not only for the size of the tax increase, but also for the extensive financial reporting and international coordination that would be required to enforce it. Recent analysis from Americans for Tax Reform examined Graham Platner’s tax agenda and found that it includes a 6 percent annual wealth tax as well as support for international efforts to establish a coordinated minimum tax on wealth. Such proposals rai

Four state Medicaid directors will testify before the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee this Thursday as lawmakers investigate billions of dollars in potential waste, fraud, and abuse within state Medicaid programs. The hearing, organized by the Committee’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, will examine fraud risks, oversight failures, and the safeguards states have in place to protect taxpayer-funded health care programs. State Medicaid directors from New Yor

The Trump Administration has taken a major step toward addressing a longstanding problem in the global pharmaceutical market: wealthy foreign governments benefiting from American medical innovation while using government price controls to pay artificially low prices for the medicines their citizens use. On June 18, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced the initiation of a Section 301 investigation into Germany's pharmaceutical pricing practices. The investigation

One of the more surprising developments in the retirement policy debate is coming from the political left. A new explainer from the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), an organization generally associated with progressive economic policy, acknowledges that the Trump administration's proposed TrumpIRA initiative could help millions of workers who currently lack access to workplace retirement plans. While disagreements remain over implementation and long-term

A federal program created to help vulnerable patients access affordable medications has increasingly become a financial windfall for large tax-exempt hospital systems. The Trump administration's proposed 340B Rebate Model Pilot Program seeks to bring greater transparency and accountability to a program that now exceeds $80 billion in annual discounted drug purchases. The Health Resources and Services Administration recently announced a request for information on a pilot progr

Americans are not imagining the affordability crisis. Real wages have stopped gaining ground, inflation remains embedded in household budgets, and new cost pressures from tariffs and energy instability are making everyday life more expensive. According to New York Times economics reporter Ben Casselman, inflation-adjusted wages have shown no net gain since President Trump returned to office. Price increases over the past few months have erased the real wage gains workers made

Obamacare created several costly federal programs, but the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) has become one of its clearest failures. The agency was supposed to reduce healthcare costs and improve quality through new payment models. Instead, it has spent billions of taxpayer dollars while producing little evidence that it has improved care or delivered savings. Congress now has an opportunity to end this wasteful experiment. Rep. Aaron Bean has introduced H.R

Joe Rogan’s discussion of nonprofit hospital abuses pushed a long-running health care problem into the national spotlight: many of America’s largest tax-exempt hospital systems are operating more like corporate conglomerates than charitable institutions. The Center for a Free Economy has been working extensively to expose this problem and advance reforms that bring more accountability, transparency, and competition to the hospital sector. CFE has repeatedly highlighted how la

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is considering S. 2658, the "Medication Affordability and Patent Integrity Act," a bill that supporters claim would improve transparency between the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). In reality, the legislation would weaken intellectual property protections, encourage more litigation, and burden federal agencies with new paperwork that could slow innovation and dr

President Trump has put a long-running problem in clear terms: foreign governments are using drug pricing policies that leave American patients paying too much of the world’s pharmaceutical research and development bill. Congress now has legislation that would help turn that concern into action. H.R. 4780, the “USTRx Act,” introduced by U.S. House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington and other lawmakers, would create a Chief Pharmaceutical Trade Negotiator within the Off

A new report from the Paragon Health Institute finds that 28 states now have more low-income Obamacare exchange enrollees than eligible residents in the income range receiving the program’s most generous subsidies, a striking sign that the program’s enrollment problems remain far from resolved. Paragon estimates that 6.2 million individuals are improperly enrolled in Affordable Care Act exchange plans in 2026. While that figure is slightly below the institute's estimate of 6.

A growing coalition of conservatives is raising alarms about S. 4668, the "Protect College Sports Act," arguing that the legislation would move far beyond establishing rules for college athletics and instead place Washington at the center of the industry. The latest warning came from House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who told Politico that the Senate bill faces serious obstacles in the U.S. House. Scalise specifically cited concerns over student-athlete employment status a

A new Health and Human Services study adds a major data point to the Medicaid reform debate: community engagement requirements for able-bodied adults should lift between 1.6 million and 2.9 million people out of poverty. The finding strengthens the case for H.R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” and its effort to restore work, accountability, and fiscal discipline to welfare programs. The study, released by HHS’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluatio

The Trump administration is taking direct aim at one of Washington's least scrutinized spending pipelines: the federal grant system. Last week, the Office of Management and Budget unveiled a sweeping overhaul of how more than $1 trillion in federal grants and assistance are distributed, reviewed, and monitored. The new rule follows President Trump's Executive Order 14332, "Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking," and represents one of the most significant attempts in deca

America had a corporate flight problem before the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Companies had powerful incentives to move headquarters overseas, shift profits abroad, and escape a tax code that made the United States one of the least competitive places to do business. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act changed those incentives. It made America more competitive, helped stop corporate inversions, and delivered stronger revenue than critics predicted. New analysis from the Committee t

New enrollment data strengthen the case for Medicaid and CHIP integrity reforms in H.R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” New data from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) show that 74.9 million people were enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP in February 2026, about 3.5 million more than in February 2020, the month before the pandemic. That figure complicates the familiar claim that Congress is gutting Medicaid. The program remains larger than it was before COVID, even after stat

The Trump Accounts app is now live, marking another major step toward the July 4 launch of one of the most significant family wealth-building reforms in decades. The Treasury Department announced this week that the app is available in major app stores and will serve as the main public interface for Trump Accounts as families prepare to enroll. As Daily Wire reported, the app is designed to help families learn about the accounts, follow the rollout, and use financial literacy

Large nonprofit hospital systems are drawing the scrutiny they have long avoided. The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, led by Chairman Jason Smith, is continuing its oversight of hospital affordability, tax-exempt hospital networks, and the federal policies that have allowed major systems to expand while families face higher medical bills. The committee’s work is overdue. Hospital spending has become one of the largest cost pressures in American health care, and many of t

Thomas Massie and his supporters have long presented him as one of Congress’s leading libertarian voices. That reputation deserves scrutiny after his vote against H.R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which delivered the Working Families Tax Cuts, major welfare reforms, and $1.3 trillion in net spending cuts over the first decade. Massie’s defenders can respect his rhetoric on spending restraint. They cannot ignore the record. When Congress had a real opportunity to preve

Colleges are facing two pressures at once: fewer freshmen and less federal loan money to prop up tuition. Fertility peaked in 2007, and the post-2007 baby bust is now starting to reach college campuses. At the same time, H.R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” capped graduate student loans and is already pushing universities to cut prices. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board highlighted the shift in a new op-ed on MBA programs cutting tuition after Congress limited fede

Washington does not need another expensive housing program to see why buyers are struggling. Millions of homes already exist, but too many are being kept off the market by a tax code that has not kept up with reality. New data from the National Association of REALTORS (NAR) confirms what the Center for a Free Economy has been warning for months. The federal capital gains exclusion for primary home sales is outdated, unindexed, and increasingly out of step with home prices. Th

CFE has been warning CMS and Congress that Medicaid financing schemes are draining taxpayers, weakening program integrity, and turning a safety-net program into a payment machine for states and politically favored providers. CMS is now moving in the right direction. A new CMS proposed rule would strengthen oversight of Medicaid state directed payments, align more payments with Medicare standards, and bring more transparency to payment arrangements that have grown far beyond t

The Center for a Free Economy submits these comments in support of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s interim final order concluding that federal law preempts the Illinois Interchange Fee Prohibition Act. The OCC is right to act. Illinois is attempting to impose a state-level price control on the national payments system by prohibiting national banks and federal savings associations from charging or receiving payment card fees on the tax and gratuity portions of

American families are already paying more for groceries, gas, housing, insurance, and everyday goods. The latest inflation report shows the problem is not over, and Washington should stop pretending cheaper money will solve a price problem caused by too much money. Inflation Is Moving the Wrong Way Again CNBC reported that overall inflation rose 0.6 percent in April and 3.8 percent over the last 12 months, the highest annual inflation reading since May 2023. Core prices, whic