No, digital is not always best



In today’s digital world, it’s easy to think that everyone loves everything digital. After all, many businesses conspicuously post a “No Cash Accepted” sign in their windows, and it’s getting increasingly harder to remember the days when no one needed a charged cell phone to get into a concert or board an airplane.

But don’t let this electronic ubiquity fool you. Lots of people still prefer paper bills, statement printouts, physical mail, and other such hard copies.

The proposed rule plays right into the hands of scammers and identity thieves.

Let’s dig in a little on this.

The U.S. Department of Labor and the Securities and Exchange Commission are each proposing a rule, “Regulation E-Delivery,” that would switch from paper to digital the default way that Americans receive certain critical communications. In other words, this new rule would mean that Americans would automatically receive communications electronically and would affirmatively have to ask to revert to paper delivery.

Let’s look at each one of these entities separately.

The DOL’s proposed rule would automatically move Americans to electronic delivery of their health plan documents, unless they actively work directly with their insurers to revert to paper delivery. This move would risk vulnerable Americans having more difficult access to — or missing altogether — critical health insurance information if they miss a notice or can't reliably access the internet.

Americans should have the right to choose how they receive critical health plan documents, like HIPAA and COBRA notices, benefits summaries, and other important disclosures. Regulation E-Delivery would flip the choice from automatic-paper to automatic-digital, resulting in major hurdles for specific populations, particularly seniors, rural residents without reliable internet, and low-income households.

The proposal would automatically move people to Regulation E-Delivery, unless they actively work with each insurer to restore paper delivery. This is the opposite of how the system should work. People should not default because they miss a notice or because — like most people — they have trouble navigating large corporate bureaucracy.

The people most comfortable with Regulation E-Delivery are the most tech-literate folks and can much more easily opt-in under the current system. Those who depend on paper often lack that same digital literacy. This effort seems like a solution in search of a problem that doesn’t exist.

Right now, people who want electronic delivery can easily choose it, and those who want paper can keep getting it without having to do anything. There's no reason to flip that on its head.

Some people argue that this proposal is a cost-saving measure, but is that really believable?

Health insurance companies have a history of pocketing savings and not passing them along to their customers. Also, has anyone done a serious analysis of the costs to consumers for missed notices or out-of-date information? This proposal leans heavily on cutting corporate paper, printing, and postage costs, without seriously weighing what that means for the people on the receiving end.

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The SEC's proposed Regulation E-Delivery would make electronic delivery the default for sensitive financial documents, reversing today's arrangement where those documents arrive on paper, unless for them electronically.

The Regulation E-Delivery hurdles would be much more complicated than a simple “opt-out” checkbox. Investors could be required to contact each financial firm separately — through multiple websites, portals, or telephone systems — to preserve or restore paper delivery across their accounts.

This mandate disadvantages folks who either are not as savvy with digital communications or who have unreliable internet/cell service. These people would be the least likely to successfully navigate the many barriers that this new rule would require to preserve paper communication.

The proposed rule plays right into the hands of scammers and identity thieves by requiring the same basic “click the link” actions that investors have been conditioned to avoid.

Some people simply prefer physical copies of certain things. Perhaps you’re the type of person who prefers a physical book — not an e-reader — to read on the beach. Or perhaps you’d rather have a printed, rather than a texted, receipt from a restaurant. Similarly, many Americans still prefer important health care and financial documents in paper form, as they can be easier to read, file, and refer to.

It also is questionable whether a paper option would even remain that long if Regulation E-Delivery goes into effect. Millions of Americans have learned the hard way that the federal government’s promise of consumer choice is not always worth the paper it’s printed on.

Remember when President Obama promised Americans that they could keep their doctors under Obamacare? Forgive us if we take the Regulation E-Delivery promise of enduring choice between paper and electronic delivery with a similar dose of skepticism.

The DOL and the SEC should reject this proposed rule and keep the current system, where Americans can keep what they have now or choose for themselves whether they want to switch to digital.

'Clean energy' isn't telling the whole story



Picture a family with three cars. Mom and Dad both drive to work. The kids need rides to school and practice. The cars cost money, gas, repairs, and insurance, but they start when you turn the key. That is the whole point.

Then a salesman shows up with an amazing deal. He has a solar-powered car and a wind-powered car. No gas needed. The fuel is free. Who wouldn’t want that? They buy both, figuring they will save money and finally dump a couple of the old cars.

Regular people do not need politicians picking their power plants for them.

Then reality shows up.

The solar car runs when the sun is out. The wind car runs when the wind is blowing. Dad still leaves at 7:30 on dark winter mornings. Mom still has to pick up a kid at five o'clock when the air is dead calm. Families go where they need to go, not when the weather cooperates.

So they keep all three reliable cars. Now they own five.

Five cars do not fit in the driveway. So they pour more concrete and build a bigger garage. Someone suggests big batteries to store power for the days when the sun and wind quit. That costs a fortune too.

The salesman talked a lot about free fuel. He never mentioned the two extra cars, the bigger garage, the batteries, or the fact that you still need the old cars anyway.

Welcome to America's electricity policy.

Wind turbines and solar panels really do make electricity without buying fuel. That is the selling point. But electricity has to be there the instant you flip the switch.

Factories cannot sit idle until the wind picks up. Hospitals cannot ask patients to wait for better weather. Families expect the furnace, the refrigerator, and the lights to work every single time.

Because wind and solar depend on the weather, adding them does not allow us to retire the dependable plants.

Natural gas, nuclear, coal, and hydro still have to be on standby when renewables produce little or nothing. We pay for two systems and get one grid's worth of reliable power.

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Then come the wires. Wind and solar sit far from where people live, so they need new transmission lines, substations, and grid upgrades. The Energy Department's own draft transmission study points to one of the largest build-outs in our history.

Batteries help, but only for a few hours. Most grid batteries can only run for about four hours.

None of this means wind and solar are worthless, but it does mean we should count the whole bill honestly.

The real question is not how cheap the electricity is when the generator is running. It is what it costs to keep reliable power available whenever people need it.

That price includes generation, transmission, grid upgrades, storage, backup capacity, and enough always-on power for calm, cloudy days. It also includes where the hardware comes from. Most of the world's solar panels are made in China, which is building coal plants to run those factories.

If wind and solar still look cheapest after every cost is counted, let them win on the merits. If nuclear, natural gas, coal, hydro, or something better delivers more value, that should win instead.

Regular people do not need politicians picking their power plants for them. They need honest prices, real competition, and electricity that shows up when the switch is flipped.

Free fuel sounds great. But before we buy the fourth and fifth cars, somebody ought to ask whether we are actually saving money or just paying for more cars, more concrete, and a bigger garage to get to the same places.

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Medicare red tape turned insurers into villains



Imagine your doctor diagnoses you with Alzheimer’s disease, evaluates your needs and risks, and recommends a tailored treatment plan to extend your healthy years. Who should have the final say over whether you pursue that care: you, your family, and your doctor — or an insurance company that has never met you?

For most Americans, the answer is obvious. Doctors and patients should make care decisions.

If policymakers want fewer insurance denials, they should stop creating incentives for them.

Yet in many cases, insurers end up with the final say.

New polling from Market Institute and President Trump’s pollster Fabrizio Ward found that 89% of registered voters believe doctors often choose not to prescribe Alzheimer’s tests or treatments because they know insurers are unlikely to cover them and patients cannot afford to pay out of pocket.

Voters are recognizing a real trend. Alzheimer’s patients have made headlines for benefiting from new treatments, only to receive abrupt coverage denials from their insurance companies.

Treatment allowed one patient, Lori Baetz, to return to her daily routine. When coverage was pulled back, she deteriorated, even getting lost in her own neighborhood. Lori’s neurologist, Dr. Cara Leahy, wrote that her patients are repeatedly denied coverage. Similar denials are happening across the country, including in New Jersey and North Carolina, and across insurers.

Thousands of Americans find these delays and denials unjust. In fact, a shocking 41% of young Americans said the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was “acceptable.” One voter from a Market Institute focus group said of insurance companies, “They just want to wear you down ... so you just give up.”

Americans’ frustration is understandable. But insurance companies are often following rules set by the federal government.

The real culprits are the behind-the-scenes government policies that encourage insurers to delay and deny coverage.

The clearest example is a Biden-era Medicare policy known as Coverage with Evidence Development.

After the Food and Drug Administration approved a new generation of Alzheimer’s therapies, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services took the unprecedented step of limiting Medicare coverage unless patients participated in government-approved studies and met additional requirements.

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That created a second layer of red tape after the FDA had already deemed the therapies safe and effective.

The decision sent a powerful signal throughout the health care system. When Medicare, the nation’s largest health care payer, treats FDA approval as insufficient, private insurers follow.

When Lori’s coverage was denied despite her positive response to treatment, the company described the therapy as “investigational/experimental,” even though the FDA had approved it. The company was following Medicare’s lead. When Medicare treats approved therapies as experimental by requiring additional paperwork and registration, insurers can cite the government’s own policy when denying coverage.

That bad policy worsens the financial and human cost of Alzheimer’s disease.

The lifetime cost of caring for a person with Alzheimer’s exceeds $400,000, with families shouldering roughly 70% of that burden through unpaid caregiving and out-of-pocket expenses.

Meanwhile, Medicare spends roughly $174 billion annually on Alzheimer’s patients, while Medicaid spends another $72 billion, much of it on long-term care. As Alzheimer’s cases double over the next few decades, those costs will continue to climb.

The good news is that treatment could help curb those mounting costs by keeping Americans independent and in the workforce longer.

According to USC Schaeffer research, providing treatment before symptoms fully emerge could add a full year of life, reduce nursing home stays by nearly two years, and lower medical spending by roughly $48,000 per patient. That means more Americans remaining independent, fewer families crushed by caregiving burdens, and more workers preserving their economic productivity.

Every patient who remains independent, stays out of a nursing home, or delays the need for full-time care represents both a human victory and an economic one.

If policymakers want fewer insurance denials, they should stop creating incentives for them.

The FDA is charged with determining whether a therapy is safe and effective. Once it does, CMS should not erect a second regulatory barrier that encourages insurers to do the same.

Until that changes, Americans will continue blaming insurance companies for behavior government policy encourages.

Trump is keeping his word on health care costs



For years, Washington insiders from both parties talked a big game about lowering health care costs. Yet somehow, the bills kept rising, families kept struggling, and the real power players in the system kept getting a free pass. Not anymore.

The Trump administration’s Department of Justice is finally taking aim at one of the biggest and most overlooked drivers of high health care costs: anticompetitive contracting by dominant hospital systems.

Hospitals are businesses first and foremost — and like any business, they’re out to maximize profits.

The recent lawsuits against giants like New York Presbyterian and Ohio Health are a clear signal that the era of unchecked hospital power is coming to an end.

Let’s be honest about what’s been happening. In city after city, hospital markets have quietly consolidated until competition barely exists. When nearly all metro areas have highly concentrated hospital systems, those systems use their leverage to lock in contracts that guarantee them top-tier placement in insurance networks while blocking efforts to guide patients toward more affordable care.

These so-called “anti-steering” provisions might sound technical, but their impact is simple: higher prices and fewer choices for American families.

When insurers and employers cannot design plans that reward lower-cost, high-quality providers, patients are forced into more expensive options whether they realize it or not. Workers pay more in premiums. Businesses face higher costs. Taxpayers pick up the tab through government programs.

What makes the Trump DOJ’s actions so important is that they are willing to challenge institutions that have long been treated as untouchable. Hospitals often enjoy a halo effect in their communities, and many do lifesaving work. But that does not give them the right to use their market dominance to shut out competition and inflate prices.

Hospitals are businesses first and foremost — and like any business, they’re out to maximize profits.

By going after these restrictive contracts, the administration is restoring something that has been missing from health care for far too long: real competition. When plans have the flexibility to exclude overpriced systems or steer patients toward better-value options, the entire market starts to work the way it is supposed to.

We already have evidence this works. Plans that avoid the most expensive hospital systems can significantly reduce costs — without negatively impacting the quality of the care being delivered — and even modest steering can deliver meaningful savings. In a system as large as American health care, those savings translate into billions of dollars and real relief for families.

Predictably, the corporate hospital industry is pushing back, claiming these lawsuits are misguided. But that is what you hear whenever someone finally challenges entrenched interests. The same voices that benefited from the status quo are now being asked to compete on a level playing field, and they do not like it.

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Instead of protecting powerful institutions, the Trump administration is standing up for patients, workers, and employers who have been footing the bill for far too long. It is a reminder that markets only work when competition is protected, and that means enforcing the rules when they are violated.

For decades, Americans have been told that health care costs are just too complicated to fix. But sometimes the problem is simpler than the experts admit. When a few dominant players can write the rules, everyone else loses. President Trump and the Department of Justice are finally rewriting that script.

Draining the swamp is not just about Washington politics. It is about rooting out the hidden arrangements and insider advantages that drive up costs across our economy, including in health care.

By taking on anticompetitive hospital contracting, the Trump administration is proving that no industry is above scrutiny.

That is a win for competition, a win for affordability, and most importantly, a win for the American people.

Christians win BIG: New York caves on forcing nuns and churches to fund abortion after knockout SCOTUS ruling



Christian organizations spent nearly a decade fighting New York's requirement that they pay for abortions. They came out victorious on Friday, thanks in part to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June.

In January 2017, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that the Empire State would require employers to not only pay for contraceptive drugs and devices but for "all medically necessary abortion services."

Cuomo, a Catholic, said that the mandate was one of a number of regulatory actions that would "help ensure that whatever happens at the federal level, women in our state will have cost-free access to reproductive health care."

'The state has given up its disgraceful campaign.'

While there was a religious exemption built into the mandate, it was extremely narrow.

As satisfaction of the mandate would violate their deeply held religious beliefs, a coalition of Christian groups ineligible for the exemption — including the Roman Catholic Dioceses of Albany and Ogdensburg, the Anglican Sisterhood of St. Mary, Our Savior's Lutheran Church, and First Bible Baptist Church — sued the State of New York, claiming it violated the First Amendment's free exercise clause and both religion clauses.

After years of legal setbacks, the Christian plaintiffs' fight was renewed in late 2021 when the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a mandate-affirming ruling by the state appellate court and ordered it to reconsider the case in light of its 2021 decision in Fulton v. Philadelphia. In Fulton, the SCOTUS ruled that the City of Philadelphia had violated Catholic Social Services' free exercise of religion by requiring the foster care agency to endorse homosexual couples as foster parents.

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Again, the state appellate court considered the case, and again it ruled against the plaintiffs and in favor of the abortion mandate.

The Supreme Court took up the Christian groups' subsequent appeal, and in June 2025, it ordered the Court of Appeals of New York to reconsider the case in light of its June 5 ruling in Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc. v. Wisconsin Labor. In that particular case, the high court unanimously held that by denying the Catholic Charities Bureau a tax exemption that is available for religious entities, Wisconsin had violated the First Amendment.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in the opinion for the court, "When the government distinguishes among religions based on theological differences in their provision of services, it imposes a denominational preference that must satisfy the highest level of judicial scrutiny."

That Supreme Court ruling boded poorly for New York, whose abortion mandate had a similarly narrow and problematic religious exemption.

On Friday, New York agreed to surrender its effort to coerce the Christian plaintiffs into funding abortions.

"For nearly a decade, New York bureaucrats tried to strong-arm nuns into paying for abortions because they serve all those in need," said Lori Windham, senior counsel at Becket and attorney for the plaintiffs, in a statement. "At long last, the state has given up its disgraceful campaign. This victory confirms that the government cannot punish religious ministries for living out their faith by serving everyone."

"The Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear that religious groups shouldn't be bullied for staying true to their faith," Windham added.

Per the terms of the settlement with self-identified Catholic Gov. Kathy Hochul's administration, the following entities will now be recognized as religious employers, thereby securing exemptions from the mandate: the Roman Catholic Dioceses of Albany and Ogdensburg and the Catholic Charities thereof; St. Gregory the Great Roman Catholic Church Society of Amherst; First Bible Baptist Church; Our Savior's Lutheran Church of Albany; Teresian House Nursing Home Company, Inc.; Teresian House Housing Corporation; and Depaul Housing Management Corporation.

The Sisterhood of Mary and the Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Brooklyn have dropped their free exercise claims against the state.

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