heritage foundation

Last year, for the first time ever, a majority of Americans eligible for Medicare were on privatized Medicare Advantage plans. If Republicans win the presidential race this year, the push to fully privatize Medicare, the government health insurance program for seniors and people with disabilities, will only intensify.  Conservative operatives have already sketched out what the GOP’s policy agenda would look like in the early days of a new Donald Trump presidency. As Rolling Stone has detailed, the proposed Project…

Big Pharma has invested big money in the organizations planning what a MAGA policy agenda will look like in a new Trump administration. Not surprisingly, that policy playbook contains a major gift for the drug industry: a swift end to the Biden administration’s landmark program to allow Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices. For two decades, Congress barred Medicare from negotiating prescription drug prices, which is a major reason why Americans pay higher prices for drugs than anyone else in the world. In 2022,…

Ron DeSantis shakes then-President Donald Trump’s hand in May 2019. Photo: Evan Vucci (AP)Two years goes by fast when it comes to politics. While the country is, in many ways, still recovering from the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump made his official 2024 announcement last week, and speculation on who the GOP presidential candidate will be has kicked off in earnest. Looking ahead to 2024, it’s remarkable to see what may have changed in the GOP when it comes to candidates’ messaging on climate and energy—and…

ID.me, the controversial biometric identification verification company whose facial match technology provoked a major privacy backlash at the IRS earlier this year, may have misled the public and lawmakers when its CEO claimed the U.S. lost $400 billion to fraudulent pandemic unemployment claims. Its biometric services, billed as a convenient and secure way to reduce pandemic related unemployment fraud, may have actually made it more difficult for those most in need of assistance to receive their aid. That new evidence,…

Image: Photo-illustration by GizmodoOn November 15, 2021, a Russian missile smashed into the defunct satellite Kosmos-1408, creating a cloud of debris that threatened astronauts aboard the International Space Station. That same day, a tweet from the 18th Space Defense Squadron—an arm of the U.S. Space Force—acknowledged the incident, saying it was tracking some 1,500 pieces associated with the event.The 18th Space Defense Squadron (18 SDS), located at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, manages the nation’s Space…

Adams poses with a Dilbert cutout in 2006.Photo: AP Photo (AP)Watch out, climate-conscious businesses: The guy who draws Dilbert is out to get you.Scott Adams, the creator of the long-running comic strip Dilbert, said in a YouTube video posted last week that he would be setting out to “take a shot at” or “destroy” the business practice of environmental social governance using his comic about a dude who works in a cubicle. Scary!Environmental social governance, more commonly referred to by its acronym ESG, is a set of…

Protesters wave a Pride flag in front of the Supreme Court a day after the Court struck down Roe v. Wade.Photo: Roberto Schmidt/AFP (Getty Images)I hesitated to come out. It was 2020 when I finally, finally started to see my queerness through the clouds. The world was burning (still is), suffering through a global pandemic (still is), reeling from a societal upheaval (still is), and American fascism was gaining strength at a terrifying speed (I repeat myself). The fact that I was suddenly going to start dating girls…