Romney is lame, young Rs like Ron Paul equally, might like Gary Johnson more if he got any press

This article originally appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera on October 22, 2011.

“Unlike the incumbent, I won’t make the economy worse, I won’t keep spending us to the brink of fiscal catastrophe, and I won’t lie to you.” That’s what a Republican candidate should declare to defeat Barack Obama, writes Reason magazine’s editor-in-chief.  Can the GOP front-runner Mitt Romney assert this credibly?

Like a typical Republican politician, Romney talks a good game about effectively reforming costly fraud-ridden government dependency programs. But he opposes cuts to the military’s bloated budget. He claims to support repealing ObamaCare, but still defends the failing state-level version of Obamacare that he signed into law in Massachusetts. Worse yet, in 2007, Romney said that for national health care policy, “What you have to do is what we did in Massachusetts.”

Compare Romney’s proposals to the bold fiscal plan of candidate Ron Paul, who tied Romney for first in a Reason-Rupe survey of young Republicans. Paul’s plan would eliminate the budget deficit in three years by cutting government jobs, spending, and taxes, while eliminating foreign “aid,” corporate subsidies, burdensome regulations, five unconstitutional federal departments, and the dollar’s money monopoly.

More than Ron Paul, many young voters might prefer former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson. His fiscal policy resembles Paul’s, while he is more pro-liberty on gay marriage and immigration. But TV networks have unjustly excluded Johnson from polls and debates despite his strong polling relative to invited candidates. The “Gary Johnson rule,” says the campaign website, is to continuously shift debate eligibility criteria to exclude candidates named Gary Johnson.

Value freedom? Watch The Singing Revolution

The documentary’s trailer:

Interview with one of the directors giving background and summary:

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For a couple more videos and background, see Reason.tv’s page on Estonia and the Singing Revolution and the documentary’s website.

Tell Washington: Hands off your health care!

Yes, their grimy hands are already on it, and that’s the problem. From Patients First:

While millions of Americans spoke up during the summer against a government takeover of health care, Congress has retreated to its bubble and ignored your concerns. We need to remind them we still oppose a trillion dollar health care bill that will take away resources for senior citizens and devastate small businesses.
…
Can you spare one minute to prevent a government takeover of our health care? Patients First’s Facebook application makes calling Congress easier than ever. In one step you can identify your Congressman and his or her phone number. Call your Congressman at your own convenience (or even leave a voicemail after business hours). It’s never been easier to make your voice heard in Washington.

A health care “system” is the problem

In response to the question: “As Congress debates health care reform, tell us what — if anything — you think should be changed about the U.S. health care system?”

Having a health care “system” is itself the problem. It implies that politicians dictate your medical choices, at your expense, regardless of whether their “system” serves your individual needs and preferences.

Consumers are frustrated with the low-quality politicized school systems and the regularly-jammed highway systems. We are quite pleased with our iPods and laptops. But there is no government-run consumer electronics “system”; instead, there’s a relatively free market.  A free market would do the same for medicine.

But politicians have imposed their will upon what should be individual medical decisions, resulting in an un-free market. The tax code punishes you for not buying insurance through your employer, so you’re stuck with your employer’s few options. This coddles insurance companies, who are accountable to your employers instead of you. Politicians manipulate the tax code so we buy excessive insurance coverage, which discourages both price competition and prudent medical spending.

Politicians forbid us from buying more affordable insurance available to residents of other states. They force us to buy expensive policies loaded with mandated benefits many customers don’t want. They force taxpayers to fund Medicaid and Medicare, which cause medical inflation, increase insurance premiums, and will bankrupt the country.

Politicians empower the FDA to enforce a default ban on all new drugs, which stifles innovation and deprives patients of life-saving medications.

Politicians should not dictate your medical and insurance decisions, you should. Only a free market empowers patients in this way, requires makes insurers and physicians to be accountable to them.

This was originally published in the Daily Camera (Boulder, CO) on July 18, 2009.

Mandatory insurance makes affordable insurance illegal

This video by the Independence Institute shows one downside we can expect from a nation-wide mandate that we all buy insurance — as politicians define it.

For more on why and how the “Massachusetts Model” would drive up costs and lead to political rationing of medical care, see here.

Obama: Spending & debt both problem and solution

Tad DeHaven at Cato:

Time-out.  The administration accurately states that federal spending and debt have increased at a detrimental pace this decade.  Then it says we’re in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. 

And the solution to the economic downturn caused in part by too much spending and debt is to increase deficit spending and further run up the national debt?  By the administration’s own logic, shouldn’t we be experiencing economic growth with all the deficit spending it “inherited?”

See also David R. Henderson:

How can he talk about fiscal responsibility when he has just signed a bill proposing a huge increase in the deficit and now is pushing another bill to increase the deficit even more?

But really, should we expect consistency and integrity from an elected politician?  What did you want, change?

Beware Udall’s health care policy

My contribution to the November 1, 2008 Daily Camera Editorial Advisory Board. (printed version)

Beware Mark Udall’s health care policy. He evaded a simple question in the Camera’s Candidate Profile: “Should the federal government follow the lead of Massachusetts and have a mandatory health care plan?”  His website clarifies: “I believe a requirement for health insurance coverage … will increase the distribution of health care costs over the entire population.”

He’s right, but this is wrong for consumers.  Mandatory insurance forces you to pay for other people’s health care at the expense of your own. When politicians force you to buy insurance, they decide what policy is acceptable, not you. They pander to special interests by mandating that your insurance include expensive benefits you may not want.

Consider Massachusetts.  The Boston Globe reports that residents whose insurance does not meet regulations “could face a hefty tax penalty.” Too bad for those who like their current policy.

Would Udall want this, or Massachusetts’ other problems?  Massachusetts authorities will “probably cut payments to doctors and hospitals” and “reduce choices for patients,” reports the Globe.  It also reports that “the wait to see primary care doctors in Massachusetts has grown to as long as 100 days.”

Udall also supports expanding SCHIP, government-controlled insurance for kids. For every ten kids in SCHIP, six drop private insurance. That’s unfair competition. Worse yet, SCHIP is a “low-wage trap” that punishes recipients for increasing their income.

But for politicians, SCHIP expansion can help create a generation who votes for politician-controlled medicine from cradle to grave. Just get them addicted as children.

Health care reform for nannies

The Rocky Mountain News published my letter to the editor on their site earlier this week:

Politicians shouldn’t force grown-ups to buy insurance

In “Health-care reform for grown-ups” (April 6), the Rocky’s editorial board says “it can live with” mandatory insurance proposed in Senate Bill 217 if “value benefit plans are indeed viable and available at modest costs.” But real grown-ups can’t “live with” politicians treating them like children.

Attempting to justify this nanny-state proposal, the editors perpetuate the fallacy that the “cost-shift from the uninsured” makes insurance so expensive: Such “uncompensated care totals $600 million … according to the blue ribbon commission.” Wrong.

In a January 26 Speakout printed here, Commission member Linda Gorman showed that the Commission’s figure was much less, and that the maximum annual cost-shift was “about $85 per insured individual.” How much will SB 217 cost taxpayers?

Maybe mothers can force their four-year-olds to eat their vegetables, but politicians shouldn’t force grown-ups to buy insurance. As grown-ups, we have the individual right to make that choice ourselves.

Governor Ritter holds children hostage to gain government market share

A March 5 article in Face the State quoted me in Medicaid expansion:

According to Brian Schwartz, a healthcare policy expert who testified before the 208 Commission, Ritter’s plan to increase enrollment in state sponsored insurance programs is only going to grow government unnecessarily and hurt Coloradans in the long run. “The children’s health plan is like the kiddie version of Medicaid,” said Schwartz. “Instead of passing more laws that unfairly compete with private companies and put people on crappy plans, why doesn’t the government look at what it is already doing make insurance so expensive?”

As I’ve written before, Medicaid is a horrible program that keeps the people is “aids” in a state of depending on government for lousy medical care. This blog post by Cato’s Michael Cannon (& challenge to Paul “everyone who disagrees with me has evil intentions” Krugman) includes several references on why SCHIP (Medicaid for kids) is a bad program.  Cannon has also written about it in the USA Today and a longer briefing paper. A good moral case against SCHIP is here.

Face the State on health care reform critiques

Face the State published an article summarizing the criticisms of Colorado’s “Blue Ribbon” Commission on Health Care Reform. I am mentioned in it:

The commission’s majority recommendations come after the panel rejected 31 other proposals submitted for consideration in 2007. Brian Schwartz, a Boulder-based optical engineer, saw his proposal nixed.On his Web site, Schwartz writes, “regarding health care reform, Bill Ritter claims to ‘refuse to throw more money at a problem without addressing the root causes of the crisis.’ Unfortunately, the 208 Commission on Health Care Reform does exactly that.”