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.

Paul Krugman’s space aliens won’t create jobs, repealing health control law will

This article was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on September 10, 2011 in response to this question:

What do you think will help decrease unemployment and underemployment? What role do you think the government can, or should, play in encouraging job growth?

Space aliens attack!  Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman says we need scientists to “fake an alien threat.”   ”A massive buildup to counter” the threat, real or not, would end the economic slump “in eighteen months,” he said. Dr. Krugman unwittingly shows how loony Keynesian economic “stimulus” schemes are.

As an EconStories rap explains: “If every worker was staffed in the army and fleet, we’d have full employment and nothing to eat. Jobs are a means, not the ends in themselves. People work to live better, to put food on the shelves. Real growth means production of what people demand. That’s entrepreneurship not your central plan.”

Repealing parts or all of last year’s health control law [HR 3590] would encourage real growth. One-third of small business owners sited the law’s requirements as the greatest or second greatest “obstacle to hiring more employees,” reports a recent U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey. Three of four business owners “somewhat agreed” that the law “makes it harder … to hire more employees.”

For example, the law compels employers to buy insurance for full-time employees.  In response, half of surveyed employers said they would “change their workforce strategy so that fewer employees work 30 hours or more a week,” reports Mercer consultants.

Is it merely coincidence that private-sector jobs growth stalled after health “reform” passed?  Economist James Sherk shows that in the fifteen months before “reform,” average monthly job growth exceeded 67,000 jobs. Since then, it has plummeted to around 6,500 jobs per month. Don’t blame alien abductions.

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Thanks to Grace-Marie Turner for her article: Repealing Health Care Legislation Will Create Jobs. That’s where I first read about a few of the health care bill references above.

 

If low-income Coloradans spend big bucks on booze, candy, & movies, they can afford higher Medicaid copays

Are Colorado Medicaid recipients spending hundreds of dollars on candy, booze, cigarettes, and movies while the state forces taxpayers to fund their medical care?  Yes, suggests the 2009 Consumer Expenditure Survey.

“Colorado faces a deficit of about half a billion for next year,” the Associated Press reports.  Instead of increasing taxes, Colorado legislature should spend taxpayers’ money more wisely. One way is to increase enrollment fees and co-payments for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Plan Plus (CHP+). These programs account for ten percent of the state budget.

Typical Medicaid co-pays are at most $3. CHP+ co-pays are at most $5, and enrolling one child is just $25 annually. The 2009 Expenditure Survey data suggests that some Medicaid recipients and parents with kids in CHP+ can afford more.

On average, the lowest income households, less than $5,000, spend almost $1,900 on sweets, alcohol, tobacco, and entertainment. Oddly, households with incomes between $5,000 and $10,000 spend less on these items – around $1,400. The groups’ non-income demographics are similar: people, wage-earners, children, and retirees per household.

Colorado CHP+ could emulate New Hampshire’s tax-funded “Healthy Kids” program. As in Colorado, parents earning between 185% and 250% of the Federal Poverty Level are eligible, though well above the poverty line. The monthly fee is $32.  Typical co-pays are $10, $100 for ER visits, and between $10 and $30 for prescriptions.

Many parents in this income range buy private insurance for their kids, reports the Congressional Budget Office. Higher fees and co-pays could encourage more parents to follow suit.

The Boulder Daily Camera published this article on March 26, 2011.

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One objection that I’ve seen to higher-copays is that patients or parents of children will forgo treatment, and wait until medical conditions get very serious before seeking treatment. If so, the argument goes, it would cost taxpayers more in the long run.

For sake of argument, let’s say this is true.  Then:

1. This shows one reason that replacing Medicaid with a voucher for  nominally “private” insurance is better. After all, government issues food stamps for food rather than running its own grocery stores.

2. Would you choose to donate to a charity that allows its recipients to spend money on entertainment and leisure while skimping on medical care?   I don’t think so. If Medicaid & CHP+ recipients respond this way to higher co-pays, this reveals a flaw with the programs themselves.  A good private charity would not allow such behavior. Or, if it did, it would quickly lose donations when word got out.

Government shouldn’t force taxpayers to donate to a specific charity, or any charity. But if government “must” force donations, at least it’s better to allow taxpayers to choose the charity. For more, see: <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-t-schwartz/questioning-your-compassi_b_574030.html”>Questioning your “compassionate” politics.

Should you trust the Colorado Trust?

Should you trust the Colorado Trust?  Its CEO, Dr. Ned Calonge, repeats a common health care falsehood: that the cost-shift from the uninsured’s outstanding medical bills justifies mandatory insurance (Nov. 19). While the cost-shift increases premiums, the amount is small compared to cost-shifting from mandatory insurance and Medicaid.

In Colorado, the cost-shift from the uninsured is just $85 per insured person. This is according to research done for Colorado’s 208 Commission, which Dr. Calonge himself praises.

Key findings include that “the uninsured pay for about half of their care out-of-pocket” while only “20 percent is uncompensated care from providers.” An Urban Institute study provides further evidence that uninsured cost-shifting is small — at most “only 1.7% of private insurance premiums.”

By outlawing affordable plans, mandatory insurance increases premiums by much more. Consider the federal health control bill, HR 3590. It requires that all plans include at least ten mandated benefits, such as maternity care and substance abuse treatment, whether you want them or not. A typical mandated benefit increases premiums by about 0.75%, concludes a 2008 MIT study.

By underpaying doctors, Medicaid is also guilty of large cost-shifting. But Dr. Calonge withholds this information when noting that HR 3590 expands Medicaid eligibility. A Milliman actuarial study concluded that the cost-shift from Medicaid and Medicare adds $1788 to the annual insurance premium for a family of four. The uninsured pay more of their medical bills than Medicaid does for its participants, reported Reuters in 2008. What’s more, a CDC study found that people “with Medicaid coverage were more likely to have had multiple visits to [emergency departments] … than those with private insurance and the uninsured.”

Dr. Calonge wants to “promote an honest debate” about health care. But the cost-shift argument for mandatory insurance has no place in one.

This letter to the editor was published in the Northern Colorado Business Report on December 3, 2010.

This is a shorter version of my article, Amendment 63 vs. Cost-Shift Hypocrisy, published in the Huffington Post.

Amendment 63′s Foes Only Want You for Your Body

Should Colorado mandate that each car owner buy a comprehensive lifetime vehicle warranty? By the logic of a common argument against Colorado Amendment 63 and for mandatory medical insurance, the answer is “Yes.” Mandatory insurance treats your body as a means to political ends, rather than respecting your rights as an individual.

An editorial in the Boulder Daily Camera provides an example. It states:

The individual mandate widens the pool of people with bodies — bodies that, inevitably and without fail, need some medical care at some point — that pay for health insurance. The mix of the extremely healthy, the healthy, the sick and the acutely ill is one way to make our health care system healthier.

This argument illustrates H.L. Mencken‘s observation: “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

Read the rest of this article at the Huffington Post: Amendment 63′s Foes Only Want You for Your Body.

Quoted in Remapping Debate on mandatory insurance, Amendment 63

Remapping Debate, a publication of the The Anti-Discrimination Center, quoted me in its article about Colorado Amendment 63:

Amendment 63 does state that Colorado is prohibited from either initiating action on the state level or from taking action “at the instance” of the federal government. However, the entire scope of “at the instance of” is similarly not clearly defined. According to Brian Schwartz, a blogger at the Independence Institute, one circumstance this would cover is where — perhaps in the aftermath of the federal act being found unconstitutional — “the federal government might pressure states to do what they want [them] to do.”

For more, read this articles that summarize arguments against mandatory health insurance.

Colorado Amendment 63: refuting the “cost-shift” & other flawed opposition

Health care needs real reform, but mandatory insurance does the opposite by entrenching the worst of current policies. It bans affordable insurance, increases costs, and further extends insurers’ government-granted privileges at patients’ expense. Amendment 63 would prohibit the Colorado legislature from imposing mandatory insurance. Don’t be seduced by flawed arguments against Amendment 63, which the Colorado Legislative Council summarizes in its “Blue Book” mailed to voters.

Mandatory insurance will not remedy rising medical costs. Medical care and insurance prices soar because insurers, Medicaid, Medicare have replaced patients as paying customers for routine and discretionary care. Thanks to mandated insurance benefits, a pro-insurance tax code, and Medicare and Medicaid, most health plans are prepaid health care rather than insurance. Patients don’t care about prices or lower-cost treatment options. Doctors have an incentive to exaggerate diagnoses that justify costly treatment.

Prices stabilize or decline when patients pay directly for treatment. Examples include cosmetic surgery, refractive eye surgery, and like it or not, abortion. Meanwhile, prices of high-deductible insurance have increased less than comprehensive prepaid plans.

Amendment 63 vs. the Unlicensed Vampire Alarmists

Critics of Amendment 63 try to scare voters by saying it would hinder the state’s ability to license doctors. This argument is nonsense. Based on the critics’ logic, the Colorado Constitution would allow violent felons to by armed in prison.

I make this argument in the Huffington Post. Read the whole article: Amendment 63 vs. the Unlicensed Vampire Alarmists.

The ObamaCare scam

The Daily Camera asked its editorial advisory board members their view of ObamaCare, formally HR 3590. My response was published in the March 27 edition:

ObamaCare is a scam. It further empowers politicians to dictate how you seek medical care and support charities. Politicians should protect, rather than violate, your right to make these choices. The bill is not reform. Rather, it spreads a disease that masquerades as its own cure: authoritarian politically-controlled medicine.

The alleged “right” to health care gives this phony reform a moral facade. In practice, the “right” to health care means government decides when it’s “right” for you to get it.

More fundamentally, health care is not a right. Rights are freedoms to act, not entitlements to what others produce. Say you break your arm and cannot afford treatment. It’s admirable for doctors to voluntarily donate their time or for charities to help you pay.

A government-fabricated “right” to health care is compulsory charity, which violates actual rights. Government would either force doctors to mend your arm, or force others to pay. ObamaCare’s compulsory charity includes explicit taxes and taxes hidden in legislation that inflates insurance premiums.

We need authentic reform. Political controls have wedged insurers between patients and doctors, and employers between patients and insurers.  Legislation shields insurers from competition and outlaws affordable insurance. Patients are rarely the paying customer, so no one has incentive to please them.

ObamaCare exacerbates these problems by expanding Massachusetts’ phony reform nationally. Expect similar outcomes as its controls pile on: higher insurance premiums and poor access to doctors. New taxes will also stifle medical innovation and economic growth.

For real, effective, and moral reform, see healthcare.cato.org.

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Thanks to Ari Armstrong and Paul Hsieh for their edits and suggestions.

Tuesday @ noon: Honk against health care takeover

From Americans for Prosperity:

1.  Go to Honkno.com and sign up to take part in the ”Honk Against the Health Care Takeover” event at 12 Noon your time [Tuesday].  It’s simple and fun.  You go to the website, punch in your zip code and up pops the closest congressional district offices to you.  You can print off a “Honking Against the Health Care Takeover” sign for your car.  Then, with this sign in your car or truck go to your congressional district offices and let them hear your horns and see your protest.  If you want to be a “car caravan” leader, you can punch in where you’ll be at 11:30am and ask fellow grassroots activists to join you!

2.  Make sure that you and every single person you know directly contacts Congress by calling, emailing and visiting your congressional district office.  Make sure to forward this email, and click HERE to contact your legislator now.

For health care talking points, check out my post at Patient Power Now:
Health care “reform” bill is immoral & won’t work.