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NPR Explains It All
By: Benjamin Zycher, Ph.D
9.30.2009
National Public Radio yesterday, in collaboration with Kaiser Health News, proceeded to explain to the unwashed the nature of the "underinsurance" problem. And what an explanation it is. The underinsured "have health benefits that don't adequately cover their medical expenses." Such coverage often is characterized by "high deductibles and co-payments, as well as exemptions for specific conditions or expensive treaments, or limit[s on] annual and lifetime benefits."
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No Ed Reform Cred for the Obama Administration
By: Vicki E. Murray, Ph.D, Evelyn B. Stacey
9.28.2009
Last week's Washington Post editorial congratulates the Obama's administration for a quiet success toward reforming America's public schooling system. Unfortunately, congratulations are premature. Consider the actions behind the administration's calm, cool exterior. Each state is competing for $4.5 billion in exchange for greater federal control over education. Education Stimulus Watch Special Report by Andy Smarick of the American Enterprise Institute cautions that "States' unprecedented budgetary challenges combined with the administration's prescriptiveness could lead to partially disingenuous proposals and the half-hearted implementations of promised reforms."
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Governor to Impose $Quarter-Billion Tax Hike on California
By: Thomas Tanton
9.25.2009
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently ordered the Air Resources Board to increase the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to 33 percent by 2020. The Governor’s directive is one more regulation under the California Global Warming Solutions Act, commonly known as AB 32, the state’s pervasive environmental law, signed by Schwarzenegger back in 2006. The objective of this colossal regulatory policy is to reduce California’s greenhouse emissions by 25 percent by 2020. This new step by the Governor will impose a hidden tax on California of at least $290 million per year—just when our economy is trying to recover from near-fatal injuries—many of which were government induced.
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The LA Times Reports; You Decide
By: Benjamin Zycher, Ph.D
9.24.2009
Two Los Angeles Times reporters today inform us that without price controls on health coverage, an individual mandate would yield a continuation of "the skyrocketing premium increases of recent years." Implicitly, therefore, price controls would reduce costs and so make consumers better off.
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Cantor Misses an Opportunity on Health Reform
By: John R. Graham
9.24.2009
I would likely be the least effective politician ever to host a town hall, so I should probably keep my trap shut. Nevertheless, I am always surprised at how Republican politicians let opportunities to discuss an alternative vision of health reform fly by, without even trying to wave them down.
Here's Rep. Eric Cantor at a town hall in Virginia the other day, faced with woman whose close relative has just been diagnosed with tumors. No doubt, it's awful for a politician to have to deal with someone's personal tragedy, face-to-face, during a town hall. It's easy for me to criticise Mr. Cantor after the fact. However, his answer to the questioner's challenge rests firmly on the status quo: The woman should investigate Medicaid, or charity care, or other ways to navigate the current system, now that she's lost her employer-based health benefits.
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Humana, Inc.'s Unconditional Surrender to Censorship
By: John R. Graham
9.23.2009
Remember the White House's attempt to stifle the health-policy debate by encouraging its cadres to forward "fishy" rumors about health reform to Linda Douglass in the health czar's office? Most of us treated it as a joke. Many of us even "informed" on ourselves by adding Ms. Douglass to our e-mail lists.
Well, we got that wrong. We should have taken it much more seriously, as evidenced by the government censoring Humana's communications with its Medicare Advantage members about health reform. Incredibly, the Left doesn't see anything wrong with this. In fact, an activist over at Huffington Post announced that HuffPo has decided to collaborate with the White House by encouraging its fans to send examples of mailed "scare tactics" to a HuffPo e-mail address for compilation.
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Baucus Believes Politicians Alone Should Control Health-Reform Debate
By: John R. Graham
9.22.2009
Back on June 5, the left wing was very upset that Senator Baucus chaired a Senate Finance Committee hearing on health reform without inviting advocates of government-monopoly (a.k.a. single-payer) health care to the table. So, they disrupted the hearing (although I'm not sure why, because most analysts understand that "public option," "co-op," "gateway," "exchange," etc., are all code-words for "single-payer five to ten years down the road"). The extremists noted that only lobbyists from the health-care industry had seats at the table, and inferred that Senator Baucus is unduly influenced by campaign contributions.
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What Is a Tax?
By: Benjamin Zycher, Ph.D
9.21.2009
I did not watch the president on any of the Sunday talk shows yesterday, but as I understand it he got into a bit of a wrangle with one or more of the interviewers over the question of whether a requirement that individuals obtain health coverage would be "a tax." The obvious answer is yes: If someone chooses not to purchase coverage, that decision clearly must be driven by a conclusion that it is not worth what it costs. Accordingly,a mandate that such coverage be purchased anyway means that the individual would not get his money's worth (negative "consumer surplus" in economic jargon); and there is no distinction — none — to be drawn between that net loss and an alternative requirement that the individual simply write a check to the government for that amount. This is particularly clear given that the central purpose of the individual mandate is to finance coverage for those — people with pre-existing conditions, older individuals, etc. — for whom government-mandated coverage at government-determined prices is a great deal. In short: The mandate is a device designed to transfer wealth, and thus differs from a straightforward tax/transfer fiscal program in absolutely no dimension that is relevant for analytic purposes.
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Sen. Wyden Back in the Game: Now We're Getting Somewhere
By: John R. Graham
9.18.2009
If President Obama really wanted to get a bipartisan agreement on health reform that increases Americans' choices, instead of a federal take-over of our access to medical services, he didn't have to let every House and Senate committee squabble pointlessly over competing thousand-page bills.
All he had to do was look at the one bipartisan bill that has existed since 2007, the Healthy Americans Act (S.391 in the current Congress), a.k.a. Wyden-Bennett, which is sponsored by Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) and Sen. Bob Bennett (R., Utah). It's got 14 co-sponsors, ranging from Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) to Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.).
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The Weak Spots in the Baucus Bill
By: Jeffrey H. Anderson, Ph.D
9.18.2009
In his speech last week, President Obama said that 30 million Americans now lack health insurance. We are a nation of 300 million people. Thus, according to the president, 270 million people — 90% of Americans — already have health insurance.
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Senate's newly released Baucus bill would spend nearly $1 trillion over the next ten years while failing to cut that number of 30 million uninsured even in half.
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Obama and the Sunday Talkies
By: Benjamin Zycher, Ph.D
9.18.2009
I see that President Obama is going to be featured on four or five (!) of the Sunday talk shows this weekend. It is simply unbelievable to me that none of the political experts in the White House has told or convinced the president that more yakking on his part on health care or anything else would be counterproductive, and that this is the time for him to sit back and be presidential, while the crass politicians in Congress fight things out.
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Jesse Jackson on Health Reform!
By: John R. Graham
9.16.2009
For those who have been straddling the fence, weighing the arguments for and against the president's health-care agenda: You can put your minds to rest. The noted health economist, Jesse Jackson, has declared that the "reform" will be unequivocally beneficial.
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Paving the Road with Moderation
By: Benjamin Zycher, Ph.D
9.15.2009
It is absolutely essential that no health-care legislation pass Congress this year, in that any "compromise" that actually could get enough Democratic votes would lead inexorably toward socialized medicine. (If someone else has made this rather obvious point, I apologize.) An individual mandate is deemed necessary because of the perverse incentives inherent in guaranteed issue/community rating "reforms." I am a bit surprised that the Left does not recognize — yet — that the individual mandate moves legislation away from their ultimate goal, the destruction of private insurance and the massive movement of the citizenry (and noncitizenry) into dependence upon the federal government.
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Another Reason to Make Health Insurance the Property of the People
By: John R. Graham
9.14.2009
In any competition, there's nothing worse than having your own allies make unforced errors (or "own goals", in soccer-speak). So, President Obama's faction must be getting pretty frustrated with some recent New York Times articles.
Today, readers learned how ineffective Medicare is at covering patients needing kidney dialysis or transplant (over which it has exercised a monopoly since 1972.) Medicare stops paying for drugs that prevent the body's immune system from rejecting the transplant after three years. The article suggests that employer-based group-health insurance pays for the drug as long as the patient needs them. Unfortunately, for very sick patients who can't hold down a job, loss of employment results in an automatic sentence to Medicare's limited benefits.
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Union Power and Medical Waiting Times
By: John R. Graham
9.11.2009
I recently wrote a column describing one of the major (unstated) goals of the federal take-over of Americans' access to medical services: giving union bosses control of hospitals and other health-care providers.
The media will not figure this out, but a couple of stories the last few days suggest that this is already happening, and describe a negative relationship between union power in medical services and access to care.
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Interesting Moments from the President's Speech
By: Jeffrey H. Anderson, Ph.D
9.11.2009
There is much to be said — and much has already been said — about the president's health-care speech to the joint-session of Congress.
It was interesting that he began by reminding people of the economic downturn that his “stimulus” was supposed to reverse. His claim that things have already improved likely didn't ring true to those who actually live in this economy and don't merely have to rely on the president's rhetorical accounting. And it likely didn't inspire confidence to trust other elements of his big-government, “trust-me” agenda. So, it was a curious choice of beginnings.
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Review of the Obama Speech
By: Benjamin Zycher, Ph.D
9.10.2009
"If you misrepresent what's in the plan, we will call you out." Let us take President Obama at his word. Indeed, let us expand the principle of non-misrepresentation to include not only "what's in the plan," but also the arguments and premises used in support of it. Accordingly:
1. There is no "plan." There is only a group of incomplete bills in Congress, and a set of principles set forth by President Obama for greatly expanded federal meddling in the health-care sector, some of which clearly are firmer than others.
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Medical-Malpractice Reform: Will Republicans Take the Bait?
By: John R. Graham
9.10.2009
The only new thing in the president's speech was his death-bed conversion to medical-malpractice reform, an opportunity which he neglected in his speech to the American Medical Association on June 15. Whether this is merely an attempt to pull either Senator Snowe or Senator Collins onside, or a good-faith effort to rope a significant number of Republicans into a "bipartisan" federal take-over of Americans' access to medical services, history will tell. Certainly, otherwise grumpy Republican legislators thrust themselves up onto their hind legs to applaud the president's statement.
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Unreality Reigns Supreme
By: Benjamin Zycher, Ph.D
9.9.2009
Will he make a public option a necessary condition, or won't he? Will Harry and Louise, oops, Nancy deliver the votes or not? Will the blue dogs roll over to get their tummies scratched, and if so, by whom precisely? Can the Washington Post editorial board find enough flowery prose in its thesaurus to entice the fair Olympia to eat the forbidden fruit of the tree of government knowledge? When this 58th effort by The One fails to move the public, how many hours will it be before we are confronted with the sob stories, with the screaming rhetoric about the evil profiteers, about the moral equivalent of war, and the usual slobbering by the press?
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Obama in Fantasyland
By: Jeffrey H. Anderson, Ph.D
9.3.2009
Increasingly, the Obama administration and congressional leaders are claiming that the proposed Democratic health-care overhaul won’t cause taxpayers an extra dime. Yesterday, for example, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer asserted that the House health-care bill — which, according to the CBO, would raise taxes by $50 billion a year and deficits by $65 billion a year — won’t raise taxes or deficits. Rather, it will be paid for with “savings” from Medicare.
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Krugman Speaks!
By: Benjamin Zycher, Ph.D
9.2.2009
Why is it that health-care socialism — oops, reform — has proven so difficult to enact through Congress? Fear not, dear readers, the ineffable Paul Krugman has solved this particular puzzle by invoking the ghost of Richard Nixon, directly I might add, and not through the use of ouija boards and other similar tools needed by such amateurs and mere mortals as my good friend Michael Ledeen. Professor Krugman is on the case and he has solved it: This looming failure is the preferred outcome of "the right-wing fringe," "crazy [as] a pre-existing condition" (whatever that means), that has taken over the Republican party. Moreover, there is the "vast expansion of corporate influence" as illustrated by the "huge army of lobbyists permanently camped in the corridors of power," with their "misleading ads" and "fake grass-roots protests."
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