JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, has published a research article challenging the doctrine that price transparency leads to lower health costs. Sunita Desai, et al., found:

Two large employers represented in multiple market areas across the United States offered an online health care price transparency tool to their employees. One introduced it on April 1, 2011, and the other on January 1, 2012. The tool provided users information about what they would pay out of pocket for services from different physicians, hospitals, or other clinical sites. Using a matched difference-in-differences design, outpatient spending among employees offered the tool (n=148,655) was compared with that among employees from other companies not offered the tool (n=295,983) in the year before and after it was introduced.

Mean outpatient spending among employees offered the tool was $2,021 in the year before the tool was introduced and $2,233 in the year after. In comparison, among controls, mean outpatient spending changed from $1,985 to $2,138. After adjusting for demographic and health characteristics, being offered the tool was associated with a mean $59 (95% CI, $25-$93) increase in outpatient spending. Mean outpatient out-of-pocket spending among those offered the tool was $507 in the year before introduction of the tool and $555 in the year after. Among the comparison group, mean outpatient out-of-pocket spending changed from $490 to $520. Being offered the price transparency tool was associated with a mean $18 (95% CI, $12-$25) increase in out-of-pocket spending after adjusting for relevant factors. In the first 12 months, 10% of employees who were offered the tool used it at least once.

Captain America: Civil War blasted into U.S. theaters generating $192 million in its first weekend and more than $700 million worldwide. I’ll confess: I almost passed this one up: All I could envision were lots of explosions and major cities crumbling. I had my fill of that with the destruction of the fictional Sokovia in the predecessor film Avengers: Age of Ultron.

But Civil War, while a sequel to Age of Ultron, is in fact a very different film, and I’m glad I didn’t pass it up. Mainstream reviewers have emphasized the familial conflict between the Avengers as the core theme. But the glue that holds the entire plot together is a question of political philosophy that is crucial for liberty-minded viewers: Where do you draw the line when the State asks you to submit to its will?

True enough, much of the movie plays out as a test of loyalty between two literal brothers in arms: Ironman (aka Tony Stark) and Captain America (aka Steve Rogers). Both Robert Downey, Jr. (Ironman) and Chris Evans (Capt. America) give audiences top-notch performances—something easy to miss because their work is so consistently good—and the movie has great special effects although they never overwhelm the story or plot. One of the downsides to Civil War is the dizzying array of action heroes that end up on screen. This was inevitable, a necessary concession to the story, because a “civil war” between two people is an alley fight, not a challenge to civilization’s survival. Most of these heroes serve very transparent roles: They are in the film to take sides and fight. But others, such as a very youthful Spider-Man, become story pivots.

The educational establishment seems to be expending a great deal of effort these days to excise “offensive” material from the curricula of history and literature. For example, Mark Twain’s great anti-racist novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been removed from the study materials in many schools because of its use of the word “nigger” in the dialogue—as if any accurate representation of the time and place Twain portrays in this book could have been written without this key word. Recently this censorial campaign has reached such heights of stupidity that new editions of Twain’s books The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are being published with the word “nigger” replaced by the word “slave.” With friends like this misguided editor, anti-racists need no enemies. One is not likely to produce an intelligent end by the use of foolish means.

More generally, the wrongheaded effort to produce feel-good instruction in history and literature undermines the entire purpose of studying these subjects as part of a liberal education; it aims to make the students feel comfortable and unchallenged rather than to help them acquire knowledge and understanding of the human past and human nature with all its potential for both good and evil. A well-warranted study of history and literature certainly will on many occasions leave the students feeling very bad indeed, as they gain knowledge and understanding of the horrible deeds that people have done and of the twists and turns of human motivations, actions, and—all too often—crimes against their fellows, frequently founded on the most brutal and senseless rationalizations.

Libertarians and conservatives and others have spent five years complaining about the increased bureaucratic burden of Obamacare. New research by Sam Batkins of the American Action Forum, while not letting Obamacare off the hook, shows the problem predates the current administration. The following chart shows the burden of paperwork has increased linearly since at least 2005:

Source: S. Batkins, “The Explosive Growth in HHS Paperwork,” American Action Forum, Feb. 25, 2016.

Batkins measures the millions of hours of paperwork required to comply with regulations emitted by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. 2005 was the first year of the Medicare Part D drug benefit. So, regulations pertaining to that hand-out to seniors surely account for much of the burden. However, the law that brought the benefit into existence was signed in 2003. And before that we had the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996. And before that. . .

So, I expect that if Batkins extended his chart backwards in time, we would find the same linear trend going back decades, regardless which party was in power. It is difficult to see how the regulatory burden would improve as long as both parties insist it is the federal government’s responsibility to ensure access to health care.

When it comes to education reform, fads abound but genuine innovation is rare.

Fads masquerading as “innovations” have been wreaking havoc on American elementary and secondary education for decades, including new math, open classrooms, whole language, and Differentiated Instruction, which groups children by their “learning styles.” The latest fad is psychometric testing, which collects massive amounts of non-academic, personal student data through federally-mandated statewide “accountability” assessments.

Progressive education theories fuel these fads, and the federal government is the vehicle transporting them to American classrooms from coast to coast, most notably via Common Core “state” standards, which has been likened to the “Obamacare of education.”

A variety of new educational choice programs, however, are putting parents back in the driver’s seat where they belong.

Rhetoric is often insidious, especially in political and policy-related discourse. The words a writer or speaker uses to express his ideas may easily tilt the reader or listener’s evaluation toward unwarranted acceptance or rejection. Politicians and others who make public pronouncements understand this effect, and they choose their words with an eye toward using the terms that make their arguments and proposals most persuasive.

Perhaps the most dangerous examples pertain to the ordinary, oft-used words “we,” “us,” and “our.” The danger arises because these words relate to groups of people, perhaps to groups as small as those with only two individuals, but often to groups comprising hundreds of millions of persons. Speaking in terms of collectives predisposes everyone who reads or hears the words toward the assumption that a collective is the appropriate concept for the consideration of what is right or wrong, desirable or undesirable for the government to do.

But some actions the government may take or refrain from taking relate intrinsically to individuals alone. For example, justice and injustice are attributes of actions taken by and in regard to specific individuals. F. A. Hayek long ago exploded the fallacy of “social justice”—not that his debunking of the concept has had a noticeable effect on its widespread, seemingly ineradicable use in public debates. Indeed, an entire class of incoherent anti-liberty crusaders now consists of SJWs—so-called social justice warriors.

The Washington Post recently ran an article titled, “Surprise! NSA data will soon routinely be used for domestic policing that has nothing to do with terrorism.” In the article, journalist Radley Balko explains that provisions in the Patriot Act have allowed the National Security Agency to share information with a variety of other agencies, including the FBI and state and local law enforcement. The issue has received additional attention from the ACLU, but it’s made practically zero difference.

He goes on to say that now the NSA will be able to share data with agencies like the FBI and others “without first applying any screens for privacy.” This means that a variety of agencies will now have access to incredible amounts of data obtained without warrants. In the event one of these agencies looks through the data in the course of another investigation, it can use the data uncovered to put people in prison. Balko notes that, while shocking, this new revelation is simply the formalization of what we’ve seen for the past several years—the NSA sending data to the DEA and IRS to be used for purposes other than counterterrorism.

With the Snowdon leaks in 2013, the issue of the NSA’s domestic spying program was thrust into the limelight. People were shocked that programs intended to protect U.S. citizens from external threats had been used to violate individual liberties. Even those who had once said, “they can listen to me if they want, I have nothing to hide,” shifted uncomfortably in their seats when they learned of mass data recordings.

It’s National Teacher Appreciation Week, but many teachers don’t feel all that appreciated.

According to a recent US Department of Education survey, teachers’ perceptions about how much autonomy they have in the classroom has steadily declined since 2003—which corresponds with increasingly intrusive federal education mandates over testing, standards, and curriculum.

In particular, opposition to Common Core among teachers has quadrupled since 2013 and now stands at 50 percent.

Common Core is being blamed, at least in part, for the teacher shortages being reported from coast to coast, and by a margin of about 5 to 1 teachers would not recommend entering the profession.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

In spite of opposition from some members of the Ross Valley School District (RVSD), the California State Board of Education (CBOE) unanimously approved the transformation of an alternative education program into the Ross Valley Charter School. As the Heartland Institute’s School Reform News reporter Ashley Bateman recently wrote:

Vicki Alger, a research fellow with the Independent Institute, says RVSD students—who live in Marin County, which is located in the northern region of the San Francisco Bay Area (SFBA)—have fewer alternatives to government-run schools than other California children.

“More than 9,900 students are currently on charter school waiting lists throughout the [San Francisco] Bay Area, and Marin County has fewer charter schools than most other [SFBA] counties,” Alger said.

Alger says California charter schools have a proven track record of producing a higher level of student achievement.

“California charter schools, in general, have a strong record of success,” Alger said. “They have higher median performance on the state accountability system than traditional public schools, and charter schools serving historically disadvantaged students are more likely to be among the state’s top-performing schools.”

A cardinal rule of effective education policy is that parents need more, not fewer, options when it comes to their children’s education.

* * *

For the authoritative examination of the history and impact of the U.S. Department of Education and the need for innovative reforms based on educational choice and opportunity, see the Independent Institute’s widely acclaimed book, Failure: The Federal Misedukation of America’s Children, by Vicki E. Alger.

California Gov. Jerry Brown caved in recently to intense lobbying from labor-union leaders and signed a bill to raise the state’s minimum wage from $10 to $15 per hour by 2022.

“California is proving once again that it can get things done and help people get ahead,” Brown said.

Dream on, Gov. Brown – the only people who will get ahead are the members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), public-sector employees generally, and progressive activists.

Many other Californians will be hurt, especially young, less-skilled and less-well-educated blacks and Latinos, some of whom either will lose the jobs they have at $10 per hour or be unable to find work at all.