To reduce the risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19, many Louisianans are foregoing shopping in stores and are instead, ordering their necessities online through services like Amazon, Postmates, and Instacart. But these delivered goods are still interacting with human handlers multiple times before they make it to consumers. What if there was a way to...

The Pelican Institute recently participated in Healthcare Solutions Week, an opportunity for people of all political persuasions (and none at all) to discuss how to properly address the United States’ ongoing healthcare issues. This is an issue we feel most keenly here in Louisiana—with our ranking in most healthcare categories near the worst in the...

Everyone knows that the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or “Obamacare,” has not worked out as originally planned. State officials, however, still face considerable pressure to accept Medicaid expansion. Louisiana’s leaders must continue to resist the plan and come up with an alternative.

While Louisiana faces many of the same fiscal issues faced by other states, our problems have been compounded by the fact that we have an appropriations process that is particularly inflexible.

Louisiana legislators may not have the power to fix what is wrong with the federal welfare state. But they can refuse to expand it in their own backyards.

Supporters of the law argue that states should move quickly to create state insurance exchanges in order to ensure a higher level of state control, but this notion is an illusion. The law’s provisions would actually require Louisiana and its citizens to cede decision-making power to the federal government.

Although the Supreme Court let most of the ACA stand, Louisiana policymakers can still play an important role in the health care reform debate. Most importantly, they should refuse to expand the state’s Medicaid rolls and take a wait-and-see approach to state insurance exchanges.

Last week the Louisiana Budget Project (LBP) published a response to our critique of the health insurance exchange proposed by Sen. Karen Carter Peterson in SB744. We have reviewed their arguments in favor of the exchange and find them unpersuasive.

Louisiana should not devote resources to a program it won’t control and may soon be rendered obsolete This evening, Louisiana’s Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to hear SB744. This bill would require Louisiana to create an “exchange” to facilitate the purchase and sale of health insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as...

Republicans did not do enough to advance free market reforms within the health care system when they last controlled both houses of Congress, some of the medical doctors who now serve in the House have said. Rep. Fleming and Rep. Cassidy are both calling for reforms built around "price transparency."