“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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

But rather than empowering you as a customer, mandatory insurance further empowers insurers — not just by forcing you to buy their products, but by outlawing affordable plans. It limits co-payments and deductibles and forces you to buy insurance with costly mandated benefits. These controls further block patients from being the customers who doctors and insurers seek to please.

But what about uninsured free-riders? The Blue Book summarizes this flawed “cost-shifting” argument for mandatory insurance: It “prevents the insured population from having to cover” medical expenses of the uninsured. But mandatory insurance imposes a far greater cost-shift by forcing you to buy more coverage than you might otherwise want. This excess cost forces you to add a large charitable donation to your insurance premium.

Echoing a flawed Families USA study, Boulder Congressman Jared Polis’s website says families pay an “annual hidden tax of $1,100 … to cover the cost of the uninsured.”  The study’s flaws include “inflating estimates of uncompensated care” and “disregarding important sources of payment” such as community health centers, government programs, and car insurance, notes Independence Institute economist Linda Gorman.

The actual cost-shift is small: just $85 per insured Coloradan according to a 2007 Lewin Group study. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation report came to a similar conclusion – that the cost-shift is at most “1.7% of private insurance premiums.”

Mandatory insurance increases premiums much more than this by mandating excessive coverage. For example, legal insurance includes costly mandated benefits you may not want. A typical mandate adds 0.75 percent to premium costs, concludes a 2008 study led by MIT economist Amanda Kowalski. HR 3590 (“ObamaCare”) will require everyone’s plan to include at least ten, including preventive care, maternity care, and substance abuse services.

Consider Massachusetts, which has enforced mandatory coverage since 2006. It “has the most expensive family health insurance premiums in the country,” reports the Boston Globe. The least expensive plans in Worcester, MA cost about three times as much as those sold in comparable cities like Fort Collins. The Massachusetts Medical Society reports “long wait times for appointments” and “more practices closed to new patients.”

The Blue Book’s “Arguments Against” correctly note that by 2014 the federal government will enforce a Massachusetts-style mandate on nationwide, and that Amendment 63 could not block this federal law. But Amendment 63 will be critical if the U.S. Supreme Court finds mandatory insurance unconstitutional. The feds may respond by requiring states to enforce mandatory insurance before they can receive federal funds.

Amendment 63 would also protect our right to pay doctors directly for medical care. The Blue Book’s argument says this is “unnecessary” because “no law restricts this practice.”  This argument is silly, as is the related argument that Amendment 63 could impede “current and future health laws and regulations.” This is the whole point of Amendment 63: to prohibit further government abuses of our right to pay for medical care as we see fit

Such arguments evade the core issue: While medical care is not a right, we each have the right to seek it through voluntary exchange with others. This means the tax code should be “medical care neutral” instead of punishing self-insurance while rewarding or mandating excessive insurance. It also means politicians should stop forbidding us from buying more affordable insurance policies sold in other states. This would make insurance affordable for millions of uninsured Americans.  Rather than add to health-damaging political controls that violate our liberty, politicians should repeal them.

This article was originally published in the Boulder Daily Camera on October 3, 2010.

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

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.

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.