Commentary
California
California Benefits Mandate Mania: 85,000 To Lose Health Insurance
What is the point of passing a law that requires independent analyses of the costs of mandating which benefits health plans must cover, if the lawmakers are then free to ignore the results of the independent analyses? The California Legislature is considering ten bills mandating benefits that will cost $2.7 ...
Business & Economics
Commie Dearest
The Sacramento Union, April 17, 2008 SACRAMENTO – The Senate Education Committee held a hearing earlier this month on SB 1322, which allowed members of the Communist Party USA to teach and hold meetings in California’s public schools. This measure, authored by state Sen. Alan Lowenthal, a southern California Democrat, ...
Commentary
Health Plan Oversight: Will That Be One Regulator, or Two?
California’s health plans have the pleasure of two regulators, whereas other states have to make do with one. If you are a “health service plan” (generally Health Maintenance Organizations and some other forms of health plan), you are regulated by the Department of Managed Health Care. If you write “disability ...
Commentary
California’s Physicians: Do They Know Who Their Customers Are?
No sooner had I wondered at the CMA’s short-sighted and self-destructive sponsorship of a bill that would reduce competition in health insurance, than I see that they are sponsoring yet another bill that will further degrade the physician-patient relationship. A little background: Since 1994 it has been illegal in California ...
Commentary
Eat your greens: Shrinking our footprint will take more than a calculator
Two items rattled across my desk that, at first glance, didn’t appear to share much in common. The first, a letter from former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall and his wife, Lee Udall, to their grandchildren, appeared in Colorado-based High Country News, “a nonprofit media organization whose mission ...
Commentary
Massachusetts Health Reform: Can the Last Smoker Cover the Last Uninsured Bay Stater?
The Boston Globe ran a story about the 2nd anniversary of former Governor Romney’s signing Chapter 58, the landmark Massachusetts health “reform”, which resulted in a joint individual and employer mandate to purchase insurance. According to the Globe, it’s still a “work in progress.” What “progress” remains to be done? ...
Business & Economics
North Carolina Found to be Friendly to Business in Tort Cases
That’s the conclusion reached by a new study from the Pacific Research Institute, a San Francisco think tank that advocates for free-market policy solutions. The 2008 U.S. Tort Liability Index found that North Carolina was the third best state in the country in terms of having relatively low tort costs ...
Business & Economics
Why Google Won’t Spare Any Change
East Valley Tribune (AZ), April 12, 2008, p. 71 Google’s innovation gives way to lobbying What can you buy for $45 billion? Just about anything you want — except, of course, the world’s second-most popular search engine. Yahoo recently rejected Microsoft’s enormous offer. And now the jilted tech giant has ...
California
California’s Physicians: Do They Know Who the Enemy Is?
The California Medical Association is supporting a bill that will reduce competition amongst the state’s health plans, which will have the secondary effect of reducing doctors’ negotiating position with respect to health plans and, therefore, likely lower physicians’ remuneration. How’s that for short-sighted? The CMA has been duped by state ...
Agriculture
Jump-Starting The Economy
If the presidential candidates are serious about bolstering the economy, they should address one of the major drags on it–widespread abuse of the tort system. The role of the tort system in compensating victims for their injuries is certainly valuable. But meritless plaintiffs and their opportunistic personal-injury attorneys clog the ...
California Benefits Mandate Mania: 85,000 To Lose Health Insurance
What is the point of passing a law that requires independent analyses of the costs of mandating which benefits health plans must cover, if the lawmakers are then free to ignore the results of the independent analyses? The California Legislature is considering ten bills mandating benefits that will cost $2.7 ...
Commie Dearest
The Sacramento Union, April 17, 2008 SACRAMENTO – The Senate Education Committee held a hearing earlier this month on SB 1322, which allowed members of the Communist Party USA to teach and hold meetings in California’s public schools. This measure, authored by state Sen. Alan Lowenthal, a southern California Democrat, ...
Health Plan Oversight: Will That Be One Regulator, or Two?
California’s health plans have the pleasure of two regulators, whereas other states have to make do with one. If you are a “health service plan” (generally Health Maintenance Organizations and some other forms of health plan), you are regulated by the Department of Managed Health Care. If you write “disability ...
California’s Physicians: Do They Know Who Their Customers Are?
No sooner had I wondered at the CMA’s short-sighted and self-destructive sponsorship of a bill that would reduce competition in health insurance, than I see that they are sponsoring yet another bill that will further degrade the physician-patient relationship. A little background: Since 1994 it has been illegal in California ...
Eat your greens: Shrinking our footprint will take more than a calculator
Two items rattled across my desk that, at first glance, didn’t appear to share much in common. The first, a letter from former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall and his wife, Lee Udall, to their grandchildren, appeared in Colorado-based High Country News, “a nonprofit media organization whose mission ...
Massachusetts Health Reform: Can the Last Smoker Cover the Last Uninsured Bay Stater?
The Boston Globe ran a story about the 2nd anniversary of former Governor Romney’s signing Chapter 58, the landmark Massachusetts health “reform”, which resulted in a joint individual and employer mandate to purchase insurance. According to the Globe, it’s still a “work in progress.” What “progress” remains to be done? ...
North Carolina Found to be Friendly to Business in Tort Cases
That’s the conclusion reached by a new study from the Pacific Research Institute, a San Francisco think tank that advocates for free-market policy solutions. The 2008 U.S. Tort Liability Index found that North Carolina was the third best state in the country in terms of having relatively low tort costs ...
Why Google Won’t Spare Any Change
East Valley Tribune (AZ), April 12, 2008, p. 71 Google’s innovation gives way to lobbying What can you buy for $45 billion? Just about anything you want — except, of course, the world’s second-most popular search engine. Yahoo recently rejected Microsoft’s enormous offer. And now the jilted tech giant has ...
California’s Physicians: Do They Know Who the Enemy Is?
The California Medical Association is supporting a bill that will reduce competition amongst the state’s health plans, which will have the secondary effect of reducing doctors’ negotiating position with respect to health plans and, therefore, likely lower physicians’ remuneration. How’s that for short-sighted? The CMA has been duped by state ...
Jump-Starting The Economy
If the presidential candidates are serious about bolstering the economy, they should address one of the major drags on it–widespread abuse of the tort system. The role of the tort system in compensating victims for their injuries is certainly valuable. But meritless plaintiffs and their opportunistic personal-injury attorneys clog the ...
