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Manhattan Institute Submits Amicus Brief to SCOTUS in Case Challenging USPSTF Appointments

"A group of insurers challenged the [U.S. Preventive Services Task Force's] coverage mandates as invalid because its members were not constitutionally appointed as 'officers of the United States' under Article II's Appointments Clause.... The case is now before the Supreme Court, where MI has filed a brief supporting the challengers that explains the original meaning of superior and inferior officers for purposes of the Appointments Clause and overall political accountability." [Braidwood Mgmt, Inc. v. Becerra, No. 23-10326 (5th Cir. Jun. 21, 2024; cert. pet. granted Jan. 10, 2025)]

Manhattan Institute Testimony to the Senate HELP Committee on the Cost of Prescription Drugs: How the Delivery System Affects What Patients Pay (PDF)

"Broadly speaking, robust generic competition, along with the advent of large and sophisticated payers, has kept the relative share of health care costs attributable to medicines broadly stable, even as new medicines have become a cornerstone of treatment for acute and chronic illness. However, there are real challenges facing the health care system today, specifically for patients with serious chronic illnesses who are facing high coinsurance or deductibles largely for what are called 'specialty' medicines, and that challenge needs to be addressed."

Senate HELP Committee Hearing: The Future of Retirement

Dec. 10, 2025. Video with testimony from: [1] James R. Copland, Manhattan Institute; [2] Chad Williams, Edward Jones; [3] Richard Fiesta, Alliance for Retired Americans.

Rethinking Retirement: A Four-Pillar Framework for Security and Sustainability

"Since the 1990s, our retirement system has been based on three pillars: government benefits, pensions from employers, and additional private saving. This report redefines each pillar for the modern labor force and financial markets -- and it proposes adding a fourth.... As part of the second pillar, 401(k)s could provide retirees with stable income. Yet this option remains rare because of regulatory hurdles.... Reimagining the retirement system requires adding a fourth pillar: working into retirement.... [R]ight now, obstacles -- on both the supply and demand side -- prevent many older Americans from working at all, even if they would like to do so."

Trump's Push to Lower Drug Prices Misses the Mark

"America's high drug prices are largely self-inflicted. Foreign health systems often refuse to pay for expensive new treatments unless the price comes down. The Trump administration can't reduce America's high drug costs without addressing their domestic underlying causes: laws and regulations that force insurers and government programs to cover a wide array of drugs and new therapies without regard to value for money."

Let Workers Choose: A Better Approach to Workplace Health Insurance

"In theory, [ICHRAs] should be an attractive option, since the cheapest individual market plans now cost, on average, 31% less than comparable employer-purchased health-insurance plans. But very few firms currently offer ICHRA funds because federal regulations prohibit giving individual workers a choice between group health insurance and ICHRA.... [E]mployers should be allowed to offer workers a choice between both options, so long as their ICHRA contributions exceed minimum standards and their group plans conform to the same benefit requirements as those for the individual market."

Reforming Health Insurance: Competition Across State Lines

"[T]he precarious financing of state individual-market risk pools, as structured by ACA, is inherently incompatible with vigorous interstate competition. However, the large economies of scale associated with many health-care services make competition across state lines essential to the efficient provision of medical care. Such competition will require reestablishing an individual insurance market outside ACA's regulatory framework."

The Promise and Perils of Public Options

"[Is] there a genuine case to be made for the ideal of the government providing goods and services alongside private alternatives? ... [Two] law professors ... argue that there is -- citing the postal service, public defense attorneys, and municipal golf courses as examples ... [T]heir argument for establishing or expanding various 'public options' in a number of policy areas is most convincing as a critique of voucher-based government spending."

Texas Pension Board Is a Model for Pension Reform

"PRB is a state agency that oversees Texas's 90-plus defined-benefit public pension plans.... This paper and the accompanying model legislation make the case for a state-level pension review board. Policymakers who wish to implement a PRB-style agency in their state can use them as a road map."

Make 'Surprise Medical Bill' Arbitration Less Arbitrary

"[A] reasonable argument could be made for a strictly limited arbitration provision, to help fine-tune benchmark rates to adjust for localized market idiosyncrasies. But the outline of the revised bill goes far beyond this ... Rather than helping to ensure access to emergency care by refining benchmarks to account for local circumstances, this array of permitted justifications is so broad as to eliminate constraints and considerations of value-for-money from the determination of payment for emergency care altogether."