Publications
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Research & Commentary: Minimum Wages Hikes Are on the Table for West Virginia
Publication -Research and Commentaries -The West Virginia House of Representatives is considering House Bill 4534, legislation that would raise the minimum wage in the Mountain State to $15 per hour by September 30, 2029. The legislation would incrementally raise the minimum wage beginning with an increase to $10 per hour beginning September 30, 2024, then increasing by $1 per hour […] -
Research & Commentary: Minimum Wages Hikes Are on the Table for West Virginia
Publication -Research and Commentaries -The West Virginia House of Representatives is considering House Bill 4256, legislation that would raise the minimum wage in the Mountain State to $15 per hour, by December 31, 2029. The legislation would incrementally raise the minimum wage beginning with an increase to $10 per hour beginning December 31, 2024, then increasing by $1 per hour […] -
Research & Commentary: Minimum Wages Hikes Are on the Table for Oklahoma
Publication -Research and Commentaries -The Oklahoma Senate is considering Senate Bill 1276, legislation that would raise the minimum wage in the Sooner State to $13 per hour by November 1, 2024. The legislation would incrementally raise the minimum wage beginning with an increase to $13 per, then increasing by $0.50 per hour every year over a five-year period after […] -
Research & Commentary: New York May Continue to Increase the Minimum Wage
Publication -Research and Commentaries -The New York Senate is considering Senate Bill 8154, legislation that would raise the minimum wage in the Empire State to $17 per hour by January 1, 2025. The legislation would incrementally raise the minimum wage beginning with an increase to $16 per hour, then increasing to $17 per hour on January 1, 2026, or, […] -
- Health Care News
‘March-in” Policy Threatens Research for Rare Disease Treatment
Publication -The federal government is moving forward with controlling drug costs by approving “march-in” authority on drug pricing. The Biden administration announced on December 7 that it would be directing government entities to employ the “march-in” clause under the Patent and Trademark Act Amendments, also called the Bayh-Dole Act, to curb the pricing of certain medications. […] -
CPI-X: A Novel Method to Decrease Spending and the National Debt
Publication -Policy Briefs -U.S. federal spending is out of control, and has been for several decades. In 1970, the federal government’s budget totaled $232 billion. In 2024, federal spending will rise to $7.9 trillion, an increase of 3,320 percent over the past 54 years. Even worse, federal spending is forecast to surge to $12.95 trillion by 2038. Decades […] -
Research & Commentary: Expansion of Missouri Empowerment Scholarship Program Would Benefit Low-Income Show-Me State Families
Publication -Research and Commentaries -Legislation in the Missouri Senate would raise the funding cap of the Missouri Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Program, a tax-credit scholarship-funded education savings account (ESA) program, by 50 percent and open up eligibility for the program to all Missouri children from families with household incomes below 400 percent of the federal poverty level. Currently, the Empowerment […] -
Research & Commentary: Expanding Budget for South Dakota’s Tax-Credit Scholarship Program More Necessary than Ever
Publication -Research and Commentaries -Legislation making its way through the South Dakota Senate would expand the budget for the Partners in Education Tax Credit Program (PETCP), a tax-credit scholarship program for low-income students, by $1.5 million, with program’s new budget cap being $5 million. This would represent a 42 percent increase from PETCP’s current budget cap of $3.5 million. […] -
Research & Commentary: Education Savings Accounts for Low-Income and Special Needs Children Would Be a Step Forward for Virginia
Publication -Research and Commentaries -Legislation introduced in the Virginia General Assembly would establish the Education Excellence for All Program, an education savings account (ESA) program open to low-income children and students with disabilities. These accounts would cover tuition, fees, and curricula for children at private and parochial schools, as well as textbooks and uniforms, private tutoring services, educational therapies, […] -
Research & Commentary: Anti-ESG Bill In South Carolina Will Ensure Palmetto State Pension Funds Invested Appropriately
Publication -Research and Commentaries -Legislation in the South Carolina Senate would combat environmental, social and governance (ESG) scoring systems and ensure state pension funds are invested solely to achieve the maximum return on investment for pensioners, rather than advancing social or political causes that may likely lead to lower returns and financial underperformance. ESG scores are essentially a risk assessment mechanism increasingly […] -
- Health Care News
Fetal Tissue Experiments Under Federal Investigation
Publication -The alleged illegal harvesting of body parts from late-term aborted babies at the University of Pittsburgh (UP) is at the center of a two-year-old investigation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), recently obtained emails confirm. OIG investigators are said to be focusing on lab experiments conducted from […] -
- Health Care News
Racial Quotas for State Medical Boards Under Fire
Publication -The nonprofit organization Do No Harm is challenging a 35-year-old law in Tennessee that requires the governor to appoint members to state licensing boards based on racial quotas in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, Nashville Division. The complaint claims Tenn. Code 8-1-111 and 63-3-103 (b) violate […] -
- Health Care News
Florida Surgeon General Calls for Halt to COVID-19 Shots
Publication -Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo called for a halt in the use of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA shots on January 3, after the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not respond to his questions on reports of DNA plasmid contaminants and oncogenic SV40 promoter genes, stated […] -
- Health Care News
Study Raises Questions About the Safety of mRNA Shots
Publication -A study in the journal Nature is raising alarms about just how much wasn’t known about the mRNA shots for COVID-19 before billions of people received them. The study, titled “N1-methylpseudouridylation of mRNA causes +1 ribosomal frameshifting,” was published on December 5 and had 20 authors, led by researchers at Cambridge University’s Medical Research Center […] -
- Health Care News
Physician Sues New Jersey Over Bar on Out-of-State Telehealth
Publication -A Boston-based physician who specializes in the treatment of rare childhood cancers is suing the New Jersey State Board of Medical Examiners for barring out-of-state physicians from telehealth consultations with Garden State patients across state lines. The case, Shannon MacDonald, M.D., et al. v. Otto Sabando, filed in the U.S. District Court for New Jersey, […] -
- Health Care News
Genetic Test for Opioid Addiction Wins FDA Approval
Publication -Patients now have access to a prescription genetic test that could indicate their risk of opioid use disorder (OUD) before beginning treatment with an opioid pain medication. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved AvertD, the first test of its kind, on December 19. The test, manufactured by AutoGenomics, Inc., can be used before a […] -
- Health Care News
FDA Wants to Expand Authority to Include Lab Developed Tests
Publication -After 30 years of wrangling with industry and Congress, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is in the formal process of trying to expand its authority to regulate lab developed tests (LDTs). The agency is reviewing some 6,707 comments it received during the 60-day comment period, which ended on December 4. The FDA contends LDTs […] -
- Health Care News
The Cure for U.S. Physician Burnout – Commentary
Publication -By Deane Waldman, M.D. The United States has a critical shortage of health care professionals: nurses, mental health therapists, and especially physicians. Burnout among these clinicians is the proximate cause of the shortage. Maximum wait times to see a primary care doctor can exceed four months, resulting in death by queue. “Death by queue” was coined for Great Britain’s vaunted National […] -
- Health Care News
Progressive Policies Expand Medicaid, Increase Dependency
Publication -Progressive policies expand Medicaid, increasing the number of people dependent on government for health care. By Eileen Griffin Medicaid spending has increased significantly as progressive policies made access easier and eliminated accountability. Medicaid expenditures increased 9.6 percent between 2021 and 2022, the Washington Examiner reports. In 2022, the program cost taxpayers $805 billion. The Affordable […] -
- Health Care News
Medicare Cuts Physician Reimbursements
Publication -Medicare has cut payments to doctors for 2024 by 1.25 percent due to a 3.34 percent reduction in the “conversion factor” used to calculate reimbursement rates under the Physician Fee Schedule (PFS). The cut follows a 2 percent physician payment reduction in 2023. Medicare’s “conversion factor” is a complicated system that assigns value to a […] -
- Health Care News
Betsy McCaughey: Free Health Insurance For Migrants Is Lunacy
Publication -Across the globe, millions of people are on the move, defying borders and violating laws to escape poor countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and break into rich countries. The United States is their No. 1 destination. The U.S. needs a strategy to limit the burden on Americans and protect our quality of life. […] -
Minimum Wage Hikes are Not the Solution for Wyoming in 2024
Publication -Research and Commentaries -Throughout 2023, every state in the nation has grappled with the many economic challenges that the year has brought. Inflation continues to make it difficult for middle class Americans to pay their bills, interest rates have risen, we have been in a clear recession by all definitions although the government refuses to acknowledge it, gas […] -
Minimum Wage Hikes are Not the Solution for Wisconsin in 2024
Publication -Research and Commentaries -Throughout 2023, every state in the nation has grappled with the many economic challenges that the year has brought. Inflation continues to make it difficult for middle class Americans to pay their bills, interest rates have risen, we have been in a clear recession by all definitions although the government refuses to acknowledge it, gas […] -
Minimum Wage Hikes are Not the Solution for West Virginia in 2024
Publication -Research and Commentaries -Throughout 2023, every state in the nation has grappled with the many economic challenges that the year has brought. Inflation continues to make it difficult for middle class Americans to pay their bills, interest rates have risen, we have been in a clear recession by all definitions although the government refuses to acknowledge it, gas […]