Dons health care transparency fix, Hochul punts on spending cuts and other commentary

President Trump’s “executive order requiring ‘radical’ healthcare price transparency,” cheer Arthur B.Laffer & Cynthia A.

Fisher at Fox News, “will revolutionize healthcare.” It “doubles down on his first-term hospital and health insurance price transparency rules requiring the publication of actual prices of care and coverage.” And it’s needed: “Only 21.1% of hospitals nationwide are fully complying with” Trump’s first-term rules as the Biden team didn’t “meaningfully enforce” them.Health care “is the only economic sector where consumers cannot see real prices before they buy,” and thus “prices for the same care can range by 10 times, even at the same hospital.” “Trump’s new order increases enforcement to boost compliance” and “requires actual prices — not estimates — so patients can shop with financial certainty.” It “will finally make healthcare price transparency a reality.”New York’s “‘all-funds’ budget, including federal aid, totals $254.4 billion, an increase of 4.5 percent or roughly double the inflation rate,” reports the Empire Center’s Bill Hammond.

Medicaid “accounts for most of this year’s new spending,” as the Legislature’s addition “hikes the state share to almost $45 billion, an increase of 18.6 percent.” Ignoring the risks, “lawmakers approved an unusually large increase in spending.” Despite congressional plans to “constrain federal Medicaid funding,” economic uncertainty and Trump actions that have cost the state an estimated $1.3 billion, the budget “does not attempt to hedge against these threats.” Instead, Hochul and the Legislature say they will “cut spending later in the year as necessary.”President Trump insists he’ll “accept nothing less than ‘total dismantlement’ of Iran’s nuclear program,” notes Karen Elliott House at The Wall Street Journal.Yet “the mullahs in Tehran will never agree to that,” and Trump may be tempted ...