Academic Perspective

With a new president, Barack Obama, Congress set out to tackle the president’s two biggest goals: to repair the economy and pass healthcare reform. A year later, new healthcare bills have been passed and the economy is on its way to recovery. But all these changes happened with no shortage of fanfare. 2009 was marked by raucous healthcare debate, media controversies, and economic turmoil. [...]

Since it became clear that the U.S. was in the midst of an economic recession in 2008, the federal government has invested trillions to promote economic stability and, eventually, growth. These investments can be classified into two primary categories: bank bailouts and broader economic stimulus. [...]

The healthcare debate this summer was marked by raucous shouting, grandstanding, and distortions of the plans being considered, but out of it emerged a healthcare proposal that has already passed in the House of Representatives and is currently under consideration in the Senate. [...]

Healthcare: Part 2. Congress’s Healthcare Bill
“At present the United States has the unenviable distinction of being the only great industrial nation without universal health insurance.” This quote comes from Progressive Magazine, and was published in 1917. At that point, one attempt to reform the American healthcare system by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 had already [...]