Can foreigners be lured by favorable VISA treatment into creating new jobs and bolstering home prices in the U.S.?
Yesterday’s Boston Globe had an interesting article about a program designed to increase business investment in the United States.
The immigrant investor program, created in 1990 by Congress to compete with a similar initiative in Canada, helps foreigners slash through the red tape in the US immigration system while allowing businesses … to raise the money they need to expand.
To contain ever-rising health care costs, a commission established by the state recommended a year ago that Massachusetts replace the traditional payment model in which each doctor is paid for delivering each medical service, with the “capitation” approach in which a group of doctors is paid an annual fee for providing a patient with all healthcare.
Local banks, insurers, financial firms brace for a new regimen of rules. Tracking these investments [derivatives] is critical, according to many observers. More important even than putting them on an exchange, said Pozen, the chairman of MFS Investment Management, is having a central clearing firm that processes those trades and can be examined by regulators.
CONGRESS RAISED the federal debt limit this month by $1.9 trillion to a record level of $14.3 trillion. Given the projected budget deficit for the next year, the gross public debt of the US government will probably hit that $14.3 trillion limit by the end of 2010. This huge expansion of public debt is not just an abstract concern of economists; it is likely to hurt the practical situation of most American families and firms.
By Robert Gavin. Robert Pozen, chairman of Boston mutual fund firm MFS Investment Management, recently published a new book, “Too Big to Save?,’’ which explores the global financial crisis and the steps needed to reform the US financial system.
Within the context of state-based Connectors implementing the individual mandate, the most viable definition of the public option is a state-based health care plan currently serving governmental employees. That approach would sidestep the ideological debate, while helping to achieve the consensus goal of constraining health care costs.
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Getting Medicare costs under control is no easy job. Congress recently overrode a scheduled 11 percent cut in Medicare’s physician fees by freezing them for the rest of 2008 with a slight raise in 2009. But the program’s finances will continue to worsen as baby boomers retire. Avoiding deep cuts in physician fees from 2010 onward will require a $20 billion fix every year for the following decade. But there is a straightforward way to pay for half of this fix.