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Ryan & Rivlin on containing health care costs

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This week’s Economist has an article worth reading on the various proposals to curb the burgeoning federal deficit. In it, you can view a comparative table of deficit cutting options (would include it here but it’s worth reading the whole thing). As Economics 21 notes, Many critics have taken Bowles-Simpson to task for “hand-waving” at Medicare cost growth by declaring an intention to cap Medicare to a growth rate of GDP growth + 1% while retaining its defined benefit structure. Given that Medicare has grown at a far faster rate in recent years, the idea is that this is a highly unrealistic projection. Happily, left and right have come together, respectively, in the persons of Paul Ryan (WI) and Alice […]

Groupon for the Public Sector?

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Groupon (and its group-buying competitors) are all the rage in retail right now. There’s a pretty healthy debate going on regarding the pros and cons of the Group-on model (see here, here, here, here, here and so forth), so I was intrigued a few weeks back when I saw that a quasi-public entity was the featured Boston Groupon of the day. Zoo New England runs the Franklin Park and Stone Zoos and receives a subsidy from the state of several million dollars. Its CEO, John Linehan, was kind enough to speak with me about the Zoo’s thinking behind the Groupon offer. (See Disclosure below) Much of the criticism of Groupon centers on several themes – does it draw new customers […]

Does the heroic reform model work?

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School Choice Models & Public School Reform from Mike Dean on Vimeo. With the recent electoral defeat of Mayor Adrian Fenty, a strong advocate of school reform and school choice, and the subsequent resignation of DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, many have reflected on the attempt to fix the DC schools from within. The recent release of the film Waiting for ‘Superman’ has, while drawing attention to the plight of children trapped in mediocre public schools, also advanced the motif of the “heroic superintendent.” I’ve never been terribly convinced by the “heroic superintendent” line of thinking. And my guess is that the long line of foundations and private investors who have bet the house on a single personality’s heroic endeavors […]

Questioning the Convergence on National Standards

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The Southern writer Flannery O’Connor’s Everything that Rises Must Converge is a collection of tragicomic pulp fiction stories about dangerous human flaws and the “blind wills and low dodges of the heart” found in everyday life. People have failings. That’s the way we’re built and that’s the way of the world. But there are “game days” when a lot is riding on decisions and you have to muster the courage of your convictions for the benefit of all. This summer, that game day came on a scorcher in late July and concerned whether Massachusetts should or should not adopt national standards. In exchange for $250 million in federal support over four years (about 1/144 of overall school spending over that […]

Pete Peters

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Four things come quickly, indelibly, to mind about the life of Pete Peters. First is the power of a single committed human being to effect good in the world. This represents the final rejection of determinist nonsense that, for example, the sonnets of Shakespeare were all written in the primordial universe that emerged from the Big Bang. In human affairs, there are choices, and those who choose to do for others can create innocence out of cynicism. When they are gifted and persistent, as Pete was, they can palpably improve the world. Secondly, Pete had faith, as Lincoln put it at Cooper Union, that “right makes might.” He put his faith in reason and in the ability of ideas to […]