John Buntin

Recent Articles

• A Medicaid Fraud-Stopping Model
• Jun 1, 2010
• Five years ago, New York state was burned by revelations of pervasive Medicaid fraud. Now the state is showing other states how scams can be stopped.
• 4 Comments

• Do Sin Taxes Pay?
• May 21, 2010
• Cigarette and alcohol taxes should be higher. Soda taxes are a good idea too.

• Talking Heads Over the Years
• May 11, 2010
• Talking to the feds is easier — and more important — in the Obama era.

• Getting a Handle on Health Reform
• May 5, 2010
• The most recent issue of the Columbia Journalism Review includes a guide to health reform (PDF), courtesy of the Commonwealth Fund. Although it's designed ...

• Mile-High Health Reform
• May 1, 2010
• Dr. Patricia Gabow molds Denver's public health system into a national model.

• Protecting and Preserving the Tenderloin
• May 1, 2010
• Can police Chief George Gascón clean up this San Francisco district without pushing the poor out?
• 2 Comments

• Downtown L.A.: The Future of San Francisco's Tenderloin?
• Apr 20, 2010
• I recently "put to bed" (as we say in the magazine biz) a story about San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon's efforts ...
• 3 Comments

• Urban Planning: Urgent Necessity or Dangerous Distraction?
• Apr 2, 2010
• Today's Guardian has a story that describes the urban mega-city as "the greatest design challenge" of our time. Given the numbers that ...
• 1 Comments

• Waste Not
• Apr 1, 2010
• Elkridge, Md.'s material recovery facility sorts 65 tons of recyclable material per hour.

• DNA Becomes Routine in Crime-Solving
• Apr 1, 2010
• It was as if, Detective Phil Stanford sometimes thought, Washington Park was being burglarized by ghosts. Most burglaries follow a pattern. Typically they occur during...
• 1 Comments

• The Wave of Influence
• Mar 31, 2010
• In this era of instant climate information from The Weather Channel, Weatherunderground.com and Accuweather.com, the United States' 49 state climatologists might seem like dinosaurs....

• How to Apologize Like Tiger Woods
• Mar 26, 2010
• We all make mistakes. If it's a really big mistake (say, an unauthorized "hike along the Appalachian trail") and you're an ...
• 2 Comments

• Will Health Reform Result in Financial Armageddon?
• Mar 23, 2010
• That, basically, is the question taken up by health economists Michael Chernew and Katherine Baicker and Dr. John Hsu in their latest New England Journal ...
• 3 Comments

• Ultimate Fighting + 2010 Census = ?
• Mar 22, 2010
• A promising innovation? That seems to be what Nevada thinks. In last month's issue of Governing, my colleague Josh Goodman examined how state local ...

• Mapping State Efforts to Nullify Health Reforms
• Mar 11, 2010
• One of the most controversial tactics in the fight against health reform has been the conservative push to nullify health reform at the state level. ...