Most evidence suggests that tax expenditures for private health insurance in the U.S. perversely redistribute public resources for health care from low-waged, insecurely employed to high-waged, securely employed individuals. However, there is no inherent characteristic of tax mechanisms that precludes their use as a practical form of welfare to extend health insurance to more Americans. Tax expenditures and/or credits can be designed to effectively redistribute benefits to low income individuals, like the U .S. Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) which boosts incomes for low-income working families. In the realm of health insurance, tax expenditures can be used as a tool to extend coverage to low-income or other uninsured individuals, if program design takes such needs into account.
Debra Street’s interests are in the fields of public policy, particularly policies related to health/medicine and income security.
Brian Gran’s current research focuses on comparative social policy as it is formed in the intersection of the public and private sectors.
The current legal framework within which international adoptions are conducted lacks the capacity to ensure that the adoption process is transparent or ethical, or even that it comports with U.S. immigration law. Jurisdiction for international adoptions is split, in a haphazard fashion, between the Departments of Homeland Security, the Department of State, and the individual states. Despite a number of highly publicized scandals involving the trafficking of children for international adoptions, there is no U.S. federal law that criminalizes human trafficking for purposes of adoption.
Johanna Oreskovic is director of Post-Professional Education at UB Law School. She has been interested in international adoption for a number of years and in particular, in issues of ethics and transparency in the international adoption process. She is a graduate of UB Law School and is admitted to practice in New York and the Western District of New York. She has previously published articles in American labor history and American labor law, most recently, “Capturing Volition Itself: Employee Involvement and the TEAM Act,” in the Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law.
