Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has talked the talk about occupational licensing, saying she wants to make Michigan’s regulatory structure better. It’s less clear whether the departments she oversees, and the Legislature, will walk the walk.
Michigan licenses hundreds of occupations, covering 20-25% of the state workforce. Many licensing requirements are arbitrary or overly restrictive. Others make no sense — as in, not at all.
Pharmacy benefit managers, commonly known as PBMs, are the unseen middlemen of the health care system. They were originally created to negotiate discounts and streamline drug benefits for insurers, employers and government insurance programs. PBMs have evolved into powerful entities with significant influence over how much we pay for medications.
This article originally appeared in the Detroit News February 25, 2025.
The Michigan Legislature just reformed the twin catastrophes of paid sick leave and minimum wage, blunting the effects of these job-destroying policies. Policymakers deserve credit for this welcome fix. Three observations:
The federal government created the 340B Drug Discount Program in 1992 to help safety-net hospitals and clinics serve low-income and uninsured patients. By requiring pharmaceutical companies to sell medications at steep discounts, the program aimed to expand access to care and lower drug costs for people who need it most.
The Michigan Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill that “prohibits drug manufacturers from restricting hospitals’ access to discounted drugs under the federal 340B Drug Pricing Program.” Currently, hospitals can force drug manufacturers to sell them products at a deep discount and then resell those drugs for a large gain.
Michigan lawmakers want to connect everyone to high-speed, broadband internet. And they have billions of dollars to do it. But their plan to do so isn’t a good one. In fact, it is almost guaranteed to spend too much money to connect very few people, and to take a long time doing so.
This article originally appeared at Reason on February 20, 2025.
Aside from their millions of customers, it seems everyone loves to hate dollar stores. Critics claim they are akin to a "disease" that reveals the worst of capitalism. Others say dollar stores hurt communities, are a blight to nature, peddle cheap products, and mislead customers into believing their prices are lower than other stores.
Hawaii is home to some of the rarest creatures and environments in the country. It also boasts some of the steepest housing costs. Dr. Keli‘i Akina, president and CEO of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, discusses the institute’s work to improve the cost of living in Hawaii on The Overton Window podcast. Through collaboration and data-driven policymaking, he emphasizes the importance of working across political lines to create meaningful change.
This article originally appeared in the Detroit News February 4 2025.
Imagine this: You pick up your child from school and smell alcohol on her teacher’s breath.
You ask another parent for advice and learn that it’s not the first time, or the second time or the third.
The United States House of Representatives condemned the Department of Energy's restrictive and unnecessary ban on tankless natural gas water heaters in a Feb. 27 resolution. By passing H.J. Res. 20 with a vote of 221-198-2, the House used the Congressional Review Act to express its disapproval of the ban, which was rushed into place in the final days of the Biden Administration.
Michigan is finally accepting applications for its convoluted plan to spending the state's $1.5 billion share of federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funds. The Michigan High-Speed Internet Office opened the application process for projects to build internet infrastructure January 9. The application period will end April 9. After years of delays, the office now appears determined to rush the spending that Congress authorized in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
The wind blows and the sun shines without costing anyone a dime. Compared to fossil fuels or nuclear energy, which require mining and drilling, powering society with these free renewable sources of energy must be the most efficient choice, right?
So the thinking goes. But unfortunately, the thinking often stops there, before policymakers consider the problems involved in harnessing the power of the wind and sun.
Michigan lawmakers face a critical decision: continue a pattern of overspending or embrace fiscal restraint to secure a stronger, more prosperous future. With a history of unsustainable spending and missed opportunities, legislators should choose a responsible approach to budgeting that protects taxpayers and ensures economic stability.
This article originally appeared at Reason November 8, 2024.
Industrial policy is having a moment. This is the idea that the government—state or federal—can provide a boost to "strategically important" industries. This is sometimes for national security reasons, but more often, it is done in the name of a country's economic future and competitiveness.
Interest groups have a strategy that gets them what they want whether Republicans or Democrats are in charge of the government. They get legislators to ignore their own self-interest in the policies they’re pitching and instead pretend that these favors are about expanding assistance programs or cutting taxes.
All Michigan employers — private, nonprofit and public — had to prepare for changes to minimum wages and paid sick leave rules that would have gone into effect on Feb. 21. Then legislators changed those rules at the last minute to mitigate their expected harms.
The federal government gives states money to do things they wouldn’t do otherwise. And it also gives states money to do things they would do without federal support. This is bizarre when you think about it. It’s all money that comes from taxpayers.
Federal government transfers to state government are large and growing. Around 40% of Michigan’s budget comes from Washington, up from around 30% two decades ago. Michigan and other states depend more and more on federal money to support their budget. This gives Congress more power over policies in the states.
Businesses across the country are grappling with labor shortages, and unnecessary licensing requirements only make matters worse. Lee McGrath, former director of legislation, and Meagan Forbes, the current director of legislation at the Institute for Justice, discussed the Institute’s efforts to push the Overton Window toward reforming occupational licensing on The Overton Window Podcast.
By Jason Hayes
The Mackinac Center recently joined a coalition letter signed by more than 50 free-market groups. The coalition has asked Congress to prioritize repealing the Green New Deal provisions of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act.
The Act introduced over $1 trillion in subsidies to promote a transition from reliable fossil fuel and nuclear energy sources to variable, weather-dependent sources such as wind and solar. These subsidies distort energy markets and create other problems for anyone who depends on electricity:
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel refuses to give up her campaign of lawfare against oil companies, pushing allegations that oil and gas companies cause global warming and thus inflict damage on the state. Nessel recruited three out-of-state private law firms that specialize in activist litigation to bring the case on behalf of the state. Nessel claims that climate change, most of which occurs outside of the state’s borders, will decrease Michigan tourism, harm state agriculture and deplete Michigan’s tax base.
It seems like Michigan lawmakers have been fighting about road spending for forever. This is because the state is responsible for keeping roads in good working order, and that requires political solutions. There has been a never-ending debate over what those solutions should be. The latest disagreement is between House Republicans, whose Speaker Matt Hall of Richland Township wants to spend more on roads without raising taxes, and Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who wants to spend more on roads by raising taxes.
Michigan is now operating under the 2025 state budget that was enacted by the Democratic legislature and signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last June. The budget is the largest in the state’s history, and it includes nearly $994 million in pork spending as calculated by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
By Molly Macek
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s executive budget proposal would cut funding for schools serving some of the state’s neediest students. It would also fund preschool for all the state’s four-year-olds even though many parents have no interest in enrolling their children. Worse still, the budget fails to fix the dire state of Michigan’s K-12 education system.
We can understand why people think tariffs are a good idea. People who favor higher taxes on imports believe that raising the costs of goods from other countries will help the local economy. The idea goes that in the short term, people and companies will be more likely to buy from American companies that make the same products as foreign ones.
