George Will
Sunday, February 14, 2010
WASHINGTON -- Only two things are infinite -- the expanding universe and Democrats' hostility to the District of Columbia's school choice program. Killing this small program, which currently benefits 1,300 mostly poor and minority children, is odious and indicative. It is a small piece of something large -- the Democrats' dependency agenda, which aims to multiply the ways Americans are dependent on government.
Democrats, in their canine devotion to teachers unions, oppose empowering poor children to escape dependency on even terrible government schools. Unions and their poodles say school choice siphons money from public schools. But federal money funds D.C.'s program, so killing it denies education money to D.C. while increasing the number of pupils D.C. must support.
Most Democrats favor a "public option" -- a government health insurance program. They say there is insufficient competition among the 1,300 private providers of insurance, so people should not be dependent on those insurers. But tuition vouchers redeemable at private as well as public schools is a "private option" providing minimal competition with public schools. Government, with 89 percent of the pupils, dominates education grades K through 12. So, do Democrats favor vouchers to reduce American's dependence on government education? Of course not.
For congressional Democrats, however, expanding dependency on government is an end in itself. They began the Obama administration by expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program. It was created for children of the working poor but the expansion made millions of middle-class children eligible -- some in households earning $125,000. The aim was to swell the number of people who grow up assuming that dependency on government health care is normal.
Many Democrats favor -- as Barack Obama did in 2003 -- a "single-payer" health insurance system, which means universal dependency on government. The "public option" insurance proposal was to be a step toward that. So was the proposed "alternative" of making 55- to 64-year-olds eligible for Medicare. Both of these dependency multipliers will be revived.
As will the Democrats' drive for "cramdown" legislation that would empower government (courts) to shred mortgage contracts, thereby making borrowers eager to embrace dependency on judges. Soon, the two most important financial decisions most families make -- to get a mortgage and a college tuition loan -- will almost always be transactions with the government.
The government used TARP funds not for their stipulated purpose of buying the "toxic assets" of banks, but to pull auto companies and other economic entities into the spreading web of dependency. Servile -- because dependent -- banks were pliable during the farce of Chrysler's bankruptcy, but secured creditors resisted when settled law was disregarded. Nevertheless, those creditors received less per dollar than did an unsecured creditor, the United Auto Workers, which relishes dependency on government as an alternative to economic realism.
Democrats' "reforms" of the financial sector may aim to reduce financial institutions to dependent appendages of the government. By reducing banks to public utilities, credit, which is the lifeblood of capitalism, could be priced and allocated by government.
Many Democrats are untroubled by governments' rampant abuses of eminent-domain powers. Wealthy interests embrace dependency on collaborative governments that seize property from less wealthy people and transfer it to those wealthy interests who will pay more taxes to those governments.
Many Democrats, opposing the Supreme Court, advocate new campaign finance "reforms" that will further empower government to regulate the quantity, timing and content of speech about government. Otherwise voters will hear more such speech than government considers good for them. Such paternalism is American progressivism's oldest tradition.
A century ago, Herbert Croly published "The Promise of American Life," a book -- still in print -- that was prophetic about today's progressives. Contemplating with distaste America's "unregenerate citizens," he said "the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities." Therefore, Croly said, national life should be a "school" taught by the government: "The exigencies of such schooling frequently demand severe coercive measures, but what schooling does not?" Unregenerate Americans would be "saved many costly perversions" if "the official schoolmasters are wise, and the pupils neither truant nor insubordinate."
Subordination is dependency seen from above. Today, it is seen approvingly by progressives imposing, from above, their dependency agenda.
There is no school choice here; no voucher will enable Americans to escape from enveloping dependency on this "government as school." The dependency agenda is progressive education for children of all ages, meaning all ages treated as children.
Showing posts with label SCHIP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SCHIP. Show all posts
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Monday, February 2, 2009
Does SCHIP Work?
Obama wants to expand the program, but eliminating it would be best for all involved.
By Michael F. Cannon
Monday, February 2, 2009
Pres. Barack Obama proclaimed in his inaugural address, “The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.” If he was serious, he should veto the $115 billion expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program that is soon to reach his desk—and insist that Congress eliminate the program entirely.
For two years, SCHIP has been mired in an ideological standoff. Republicans described the Democrats’ proposed expansions—which were more moderate than those in the current bill—as “socialized medicine.” SCHIP supporters, like Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman and columnist E.J. Dionne, claim the program works.
Researchers who actually study the program find that SCHIP does help uninsured children find coverage, but at great expense. They find no evidence that SCHIP actually improves health outcomes, or that the program addresses the systemic quality problems that confront even insured children.
SCHIP’s great expense stems from the fact that in many cases, it simply enrolls children who were already insured privately. Economists Jonathan Gruber and Kosali Simon estimate that out of every ten children added to the SCHIP rolls, six already had private coverage. Only in government is a program deemed to “work” when it covers four uninsured children for the price of ten.
The current proposal will only exacerbate this problem. Congressional Democrats want to expand SCHIP to children in families of four earning up to $80,000 per year. The Congressional Budget Office reports that 77 percent of such children already have private health insurance.
In terms of actually improving health outcomes, SCHIP looks even worse. Economist Robert Kaestner and his colleagues conclude, “The proposition that health insurance is the cure for adverse health outcomes among poor and near-poor children has not been adequately demonstrated.” About SCHIP specifically, they write, “It is remarkable that there is so little empirical evidence to support so large an expenditure.”
Economists Helen Levy and David Meltzer write that there is “no evidence” that SCHIP and similar programs are a cost-effective way of improving children's health. They observe that targeted health programs, policies that increase incomes, or even improved educational opportunities could deliver greater health improvements per dollar spent.
It’s not even clear that SCHIP’s method for improving children's health—expanding insurance coverage—is the right one. The New England Journal of Medicine reports large gaps between the quality of care children receive and what they should receive, even if the children have insurance. That study’s authors conclude, “Expansion of access to care through insurance coverage, which is the focus of national health care policy related to children, will not, by itself, eliminate the deficits in the quality of care.”
One thing SCHIP does accomplish is to discourage work. SCHIP and similar programs create enormous disincentives to climb the economic ladder. A single mother of two earning minimum wage in New Mexico who increased her earnings by $30,000 would find no change in her net income: She would pay an additional $4,000 in taxes and lose $26,000 in SCHIP and other government benefits, according to data compiled by the Urban Institute for the federal government.
Expanding SCHIP would pull even more families into that low-wage trap. Since income is an important determinant of health outcomes, expanding SCHIP could actually harm many children’s health.
The one positive thing that can be said of SCHIP is that, for all the inefficiencies and perverse incentives it creates, it does insure some children who wouldn’t have had coverage otherwise. But oddly enough, eliminating SCHIP could have this effect to an even greater degree.
When Congress eliminated Medicaid benefits for non-citizen immigrants in 1996, opponents predicted an explosion in the number of uninsured immigrants. But according to Harvard economist George Borjas, that didn’t happen: Immigrants sought out jobs that provided benefits, and were so successful that the employer-provided insurance completely offset the loss in government benefits. In fact, in the states that offered the fewest benefits, the immigrant insurance rate rose.
SCHIP families, which are more affluent than the families affected by the 1996 policy, would likely fare even better.
If President Obama wants to cover more uninsured children, he should set ideology aside and repeal SCHIP. After all, you can’t argue with what works.
By Michael F. Cannon
Monday, February 2, 2009
Pres. Barack Obama proclaimed in his inaugural address, “The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.” If he was serious, he should veto the $115 billion expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program that is soon to reach his desk—and insist that Congress eliminate the program entirely.
For two years, SCHIP has been mired in an ideological standoff. Republicans described the Democrats’ proposed expansions—which were more moderate than those in the current bill—as “socialized medicine.” SCHIP supporters, like Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman and columnist E.J. Dionne, claim the program works.
Researchers who actually study the program find that SCHIP does help uninsured children find coverage, but at great expense. They find no evidence that SCHIP actually improves health outcomes, or that the program addresses the systemic quality problems that confront even insured children.
SCHIP’s great expense stems from the fact that in many cases, it simply enrolls children who were already insured privately. Economists Jonathan Gruber and Kosali Simon estimate that out of every ten children added to the SCHIP rolls, six already had private coverage. Only in government is a program deemed to “work” when it covers four uninsured children for the price of ten.
The current proposal will only exacerbate this problem. Congressional Democrats want to expand SCHIP to children in families of four earning up to $80,000 per year. The Congressional Budget Office reports that 77 percent of such children already have private health insurance.
In terms of actually improving health outcomes, SCHIP looks even worse. Economist Robert Kaestner and his colleagues conclude, “The proposition that health insurance is the cure for adverse health outcomes among poor and near-poor children has not been adequately demonstrated.” About SCHIP specifically, they write, “It is remarkable that there is so little empirical evidence to support so large an expenditure.”
Economists Helen Levy and David Meltzer write that there is “no evidence” that SCHIP and similar programs are a cost-effective way of improving children's health. They observe that targeted health programs, policies that increase incomes, or even improved educational opportunities could deliver greater health improvements per dollar spent.
It’s not even clear that SCHIP’s method for improving children's health—expanding insurance coverage—is the right one. The New England Journal of Medicine reports large gaps between the quality of care children receive and what they should receive, even if the children have insurance. That study’s authors conclude, “Expansion of access to care through insurance coverage, which is the focus of national health care policy related to children, will not, by itself, eliminate the deficits in the quality of care.”
One thing SCHIP does accomplish is to discourage work. SCHIP and similar programs create enormous disincentives to climb the economic ladder. A single mother of two earning minimum wage in New Mexico who increased her earnings by $30,000 would find no change in her net income: She would pay an additional $4,000 in taxes and lose $26,000 in SCHIP and other government benefits, according to data compiled by the Urban Institute for the federal government.
Expanding SCHIP would pull even more families into that low-wage trap. Since income is an important determinant of health outcomes, expanding SCHIP could actually harm many children’s health.
The one positive thing that can be said of SCHIP is that, for all the inefficiencies and perverse incentives it creates, it does insure some children who wouldn’t have had coverage otherwise. But oddly enough, eliminating SCHIP could have this effect to an even greater degree.
When Congress eliminated Medicaid benefits for non-citizen immigrants in 1996, opponents predicted an explosion in the number of uninsured immigrants. But according to Harvard economist George Borjas, that didn’t happen: Immigrants sought out jobs that provided benefits, and were so successful that the employer-provided insurance completely offset the loss in government benefits. In fact, in the states that offered the fewest benefits, the immigrant insurance rate rose.
SCHIP families, which are more affluent than the families affected by the 1996 policy, would likely fare even better.
If President Obama wants to cover more uninsured children, he should set ideology aside and repeal SCHIP. After all, you can’t argue with what works.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Schip Wreck
Oregon voters send a message on HillaryCare.
Wall Street Journal
Thursday, November 8, 2007 12:01 a.m.
Oregon voters passed judgment Tuesday on a plan that would have made their state children's health insurance program "universal." Sound familiar?
It should, because Oregon reproduced the current Schip fracas in D.C. on the state level--and the referendum took a major shellacking, with voters siding three to two against. Oregon's expansion was almost identical to the one backed by Congressional Democrats, so let's conduct a post-mortem, which may also be a portent.
Like Beltway Democrats, Governor Ted Kulongoski and his legislature wanted to broaden eligibility for Oregon's "Healthy Kids" Schip program to 300% of the federal poverty level. They would also allow all families to opt in, regardless of income, though higher earners wouldn't get subsidies. Again like Congress, Salem intended to pay for the expansion with cigarette taxes, which would increase to $2.02 from $1.18 a pack. That would be one of the highest state tobacco levies in the nation.
Democrats couldn't dredge up the three-fifths approval required for a tax increase in the legislature, so they kicked the expansion over to the ballot. And already, Measure 50's defeat is being blamed on $12 million in advertising by Big Tobacco. "What happened was, the tobacco industry bought the election," Governor Kulongoski declared yesterday.
We're surprised the Governor thinks voters in his left-leaning state are so easily gulled--especially in a contest between "healthy kids" and cigarettes. More persuasive is the notion that voters didn't want to pass a state tax increase to finance a health-care expansion that Congress might soon pass, along with buckets of federal dollars. But most likely, voters understood that a tax increase on cigarettes is still a tax increase, and a highly regressive one at that. Only about 20% of Oregonians smoke, and most of those are lower income.
They may also have figured that to the extent tobacco taxes reduce smoking, they will soon not yield enough revenue to pay for ever-growing health costs. An analysis by William Conerly, a member of Governor Kulongoski's own Council of Economic Advisors, found that a straight Schip expansion funded by a tobacco tax was unsustainable, with costs exceeding revenues by $115 million by 2017.
Counting "crowd out"--the migration to public from private insurance--Mr. Conerly predicted a $638 million deficit within the decade. Oregon tried a similar universal health experiment in the 1990s, only to see it raise havoc, and voters may not have been eager for a low-budget sequel.
There are political lessons here, in case anyone in Washington is paying attention. Voters are rightly concerned about health care and would like everyone to have insurance, but they realize that government programs are very expensive. Americans also don't seem to want to pay for health-care reforms directly through higher taxes. That accounts for the reliance by politicians on the easier sell of tobacco taxes, and it also explains why Congress has disguised the real cost of its Schip contraption with a $30 billion budget gimmick. (No thanks to GOP Senators Orrin Hatch and Chuck Grassley.)
As for state-level reforms beyond Schip, California may be the next overhyped reform to fail. The last, best hope for Arnold Schwarzenegger's foundering "universal" plan is to imitate Oregon by passing a legislative blueprint and then dumping funding responsibility onto the voters via a referendum. Tuesday's vote doesn't bode well for that prospect.
As for 2008, most of the national press corps has already assumed "universal" coverage will both carry Hillary Clinton to the White House and march easily into law. The message from the Oregon trail is--not so fast, especially if her Republican opponent advances a credible free-market alternative.
Wall Street Journal
Thursday, November 8, 2007 12:01 a.m.
Oregon voters passed judgment Tuesday on a plan that would have made their state children's health insurance program "universal." Sound familiar?
It should, because Oregon reproduced the current Schip fracas in D.C. on the state level--and the referendum took a major shellacking, with voters siding three to two against. Oregon's expansion was almost identical to the one backed by Congressional Democrats, so let's conduct a post-mortem, which may also be a portent.
Like Beltway Democrats, Governor Ted Kulongoski and his legislature wanted to broaden eligibility for Oregon's "Healthy Kids" Schip program to 300% of the federal poverty level. They would also allow all families to opt in, regardless of income, though higher earners wouldn't get subsidies. Again like Congress, Salem intended to pay for the expansion with cigarette taxes, which would increase to $2.02 from $1.18 a pack. That would be one of the highest state tobacco levies in the nation.
Democrats couldn't dredge up the three-fifths approval required for a tax increase in the legislature, so they kicked the expansion over to the ballot. And already, Measure 50's defeat is being blamed on $12 million in advertising by Big Tobacco. "What happened was, the tobacco industry bought the election," Governor Kulongoski declared yesterday.
We're surprised the Governor thinks voters in his left-leaning state are so easily gulled--especially in a contest between "healthy kids" and cigarettes. More persuasive is the notion that voters didn't want to pass a state tax increase to finance a health-care expansion that Congress might soon pass, along with buckets of federal dollars. But most likely, voters understood that a tax increase on cigarettes is still a tax increase, and a highly regressive one at that. Only about 20% of Oregonians smoke, and most of those are lower income.
They may also have figured that to the extent tobacco taxes reduce smoking, they will soon not yield enough revenue to pay for ever-growing health costs. An analysis by William Conerly, a member of Governor Kulongoski's own Council of Economic Advisors, found that a straight Schip expansion funded by a tobacco tax was unsustainable, with costs exceeding revenues by $115 million by 2017.
Counting "crowd out"--the migration to public from private insurance--Mr. Conerly predicted a $638 million deficit within the decade. Oregon tried a similar universal health experiment in the 1990s, only to see it raise havoc, and voters may not have been eager for a low-budget sequel.
There are political lessons here, in case anyone in Washington is paying attention. Voters are rightly concerned about health care and would like everyone to have insurance, but they realize that government programs are very expensive. Americans also don't seem to want to pay for health-care reforms directly through higher taxes. That accounts for the reliance by politicians on the easier sell of tobacco taxes, and it also explains why Congress has disguised the real cost of its Schip contraption with a $30 billion budget gimmick. (No thanks to GOP Senators Orrin Hatch and Chuck Grassley.)
As for state-level reforms beyond Schip, California may be the next overhyped reform to fail. The last, best hope for Arnold Schwarzenegger's foundering "universal" plan is to imitate Oregon by passing a legislative blueprint and then dumping funding responsibility onto the voters via a referendum. Tuesday's vote doesn't bode well for that prospect.
As for 2008, most of the national press corps has already assumed "universal" coverage will both carry Hillary Clinton to the White House and march easily into law. The message from the Oregon trail is--not so fast, especially if her Republican opponent advances a credible free-market alternative.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Democrats Show Their Partisan Colors on SCHIP
By Congressman Thomas Price
Thursday, November 1, 2007
It has been stunning how quickly Democrat leaders have shown their true colors this Congress, pandering and playing politics to usurp ever more personal and economic freedom. The current debate over the future of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is a perfect example.
SCHIP was designed in a bipartisan effort a decade ago to provide health care assistance for low-income children in a household with income that exceeds Medicaid eligibility, but may not be enough to afford private insurance, roughly $42,000 per year today. The program insures millions of low-income children, and Republicans are supportive of continuing it according to the original intent.
Democrats in Congress, however, would not allow for common-sense reauthorization without inserting partisan politics. Democrats have proposed to take control of healthcare away from families and doctors and expand SCHIP to children in households making up to $62,000 per year, a level at which over two-thirds of Americans already have personal health care coverage. They would allow adults to be covered before children and refuse to ensure that illegal aliens do not have access to a taxpayer-funded program.
Speaker Pelosi has repeatedly insisted that this expansion put ten million children on government-run health care, regardless of how many children are forced to leave personal, private coverage for the bureaucratic, government program. It is estimated that under the Democrats’ plan, two million American children who already have personal care would be forced out of private insurance to receive taxpayer-funded, government-run health care.
With an issue as important as our nation’s health care, we must not allow politics to get in the way of responsible policy. This flawed proposal would lead to even greater dependence on the government for health care. As a nation, we should promote the goal of reducing the number of Americans reliant upon government assistance and allow for personal choices in healthcare decisions.
It is amazing how far Congress has come from the bipartisan welfare reform agreement of 1996. A great accomplishment of the Republican-controlled Congress, the reform provided incentives for people to stand up for themselves and lessen dependency on the federal government. Today, this SCHIP proposal offers incentives for Americans to leave the free market in favor of bureaucratic health care. Rather than encouraging personal and economic freedom, we are now encouraging government assistance. This reversal of policy is inexcusable.
Democrats have tried to sell this debate as cost versus compassion. While our budget is clearly out of control, this debate is about more than cost or compassion. It is about who controls medical decisions, some of the most important and personal decisions we make in our lives. As a physician, I know how dangerous government intrusion into health care decisions can be. When Washington has more control over health care, families and doctors have less. I can attest that this dangerous philosophy further erodes and threatens the vital doctor-patient relationship and quality care.
Conservatives should stand for free market solutions to our health care crisis. I have joined with colleagues in the House of Representatives and Senate to introduce an SCHIP solution that honors the intent of SCHIP – to help truly needy kids – while preserving and expanding the purchase of personal health care. The More Children, More Choices Act, H. R. 3888, fully funds SCHIP for the children it was intended to serve. To advance our shared goal of all Americans having health care coverage, the bill also provides tax credits for the purchase of personal coverage for children in households making up to $62,000.
This alternative would reach the same number of children as the Democrat plan, without removing children from personal health care and without any increased taxes! But Speaker Pelosi has no intention of negotiating with Republicans to find a truly bipartisan solution. This debate from the outset to the end will be about scoring political points – no matter who is exploited in the process. Sadly, it is all we have come to expect from Speaker Pelosi’s House of Politics.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
It has been stunning how quickly Democrat leaders have shown their true colors this Congress, pandering and playing politics to usurp ever more personal and economic freedom. The current debate over the future of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is a perfect example.
SCHIP was designed in a bipartisan effort a decade ago to provide health care assistance for low-income children in a household with income that exceeds Medicaid eligibility, but may not be enough to afford private insurance, roughly $42,000 per year today. The program insures millions of low-income children, and Republicans are supportive of continuing it according to the original intent.
Democrats in Congress, however, would not allow for common-sense reauthorization without inserting partisan politics. Democrats have proposed to take control of healthcare away from families and doctors and expand SCHIP to children in households making up to $62,000 per year, a level at which over two-thirds of Americans already have personal health care coverage. They would allow adults to be covered before children and refuse to ensure that illegal aliens do not have access to a taxpayer-funded program.
Speaker Pelosi has repeatedly insisted that this expansion put ten million children on government-run health care, regardless of how many children are forced to leave personal, private coverage for the bureaucratic, government program. It is estimated that under the Democrats’ plan, two million American children who already have personal care would be forced out of private insurance to receive taxpayer-funded, government-run health care.
With an issue as important as our nation’s health care, we must not allow politics to get in the way of responsible policy. This flawed proposal would lead to even greater dependence on the government for health care. As a nation, we should promote the goal of reducing the number of Americans reliant upon government assistance and allow for personal choices in healthcare decisions.
It is amazing how far Congress has come from the bipartisan welfare reform agreement of 1996. A great accomplishment of the Republican-controlled Congress, the reform provided incentives for people to stand up for themselves and lessen dependency on the federal government. Today, this SCHIP proposal offers incentives for Americans to leave the free market in favor of bureaucratic health care. Rather than encouraging personal and economic freedom, we are now encouraging government assistance. This reversal of policy is inexcusable.
Democrats have tried to sell this debate as cost versus compassion. While our budget is clearly out of control, this debate is about more than cost or compassion. It is about who controls medical decisions, some of the most important and personal decisions we make in our lives. As a physician, I know how dangerous government intrusion into health care decisions can be. When Washington has more control over health care, families and doctors have less. I can attest that this dangerous philosophy further erodes and threatens the vital doctor-patient relationship and quality care.
Conservatives should stand for free market solutions to our health care crisis. I have joined with colleagues in the House of Representatives and Senate to introduce an SCHIP solution that honors the intent of SCHIP – to help truly needy kids – while preserving and expanding the purchase of personal health care. The More Children, More Choices Act, H. R. 3888, fully funds SCHIP for the children it was intended to serve. To advance our shared goal of all Americans having health care coverage, the bill also provides tax credits for the purchase of personal coverage for children in households making up to $62,000.
This alternative would reach the same number of children as the Democrat plan, without removing children from personal health care and without any increased taxes! But Speaker Pelosi has no intention of negotiating with Republicans to find a truly bipartisan solution. This debate from the outset to the end will be about scoring political points – no matter who is exploited in the process. Sadly, it is all we have come to expect from Speaker Pelosi’s House of Politics.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
A Depressing Lack of Bad News
By Rich Tucker
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Bad news, folks. We’re winning in Iraq.
According to a front page story in The Washington Post, “The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group.”
Wait -- isn’t that good news? As Charlie Gibson put it on ABC’s World News Tonight, “One item from Baghdad, today. The news is that there is no news. The police told us that to their knowledge, there were no major acts of violence. Attacks are down in Baghdad, and today, no bombings or roadside explosions were reported.”
Oh, come on, Post. Come on, ABC. You’re not trying hard enough. Any story can be bad news if you’re willing to dig deep enough.
Luckily for us, the Baghdad bureau of McClatchy Newspapers did just that. “A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months,” Jay Price and Qasim Zein reported. “That’s cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds.”
See, finding the bad news is easy. The reporters even managed to find a struggling, out-of-work deathworker to comment. “Certainly, when the number of dead increases I feel happy, like all workers in the graveyard,” 30-year-old Basim Hameed lamented. “This happiness comes from the increase in the amount of money we have.”
Well, maybe not.
Few of us have more money than rock stars, yet that money can’t buy them love or, apparently, good health. A recent study of 1,000 rockers found that rockers are “two to three times more likely to suffer a premature death than the general population.” The Rolling Stones are the exception that proves the rule. Mark Bellis, the lead author of the study, suggests this may be because impoverished former rockers often lack health insurance.
There’s a simple solution to all this, and it’s amazing that nobody’s thought of it yet. We need to make rock stars eligible for SCHIP.
For those who haven’t been paying attention, that’s the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, launched in the 1990s to provide health care to children whose parents were too poor to purchase insurance.
Like all government programs, SCHIP is expanding, not contracting. This month lawmakers approved bill a bill that would have made government health care available to families that earn three times the federal poverty level, as much as $62,000 for a family of four. That earned a sensible, and -- sadly -- rare, veto from President Bush, a veto that’s now been upheld.
Still, the SCHIP debate has been enlightening. In trying to make their case, Democrats rolled out spokeschildren including Graeme Frost, a Maryland 12-year-old who’d benefited from SCHIP. But the Frost family is, by all accounts, what we once would have called “middle class.” If they need federal health care to make ends meet, who doesn’t?
The problem may well be our perception of the economy. By most measures, things are good. The stock market is near a record high. Our economy adds jobs month in and month out. Eight million new jobs in the last four years.
Yet in the midst of the boom, Americans don’t feel wealthier. In fact, a recent CNN poll showed that 46 percent of Americans think our economy is in recession. A mere 51 percent don’t. Clearly the mainstream media’s relentless focus on bad economic news is taking its toll.
For example, it hammers away on the supposed collapse in the mortgage market, even though housing prices almost everywhere have soared in recent years, and any slowdown in growth now is probably a correction, not a catastrophe. Such examples fit the media’s storyline that many, if not most, Americans are just a paycheck away from disaster.
Yet the reality is we’ve never had it so good. We have more gadgets and conveniences than ever. What hinders us more than anything are the poor choices we often make.
As W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas noted in 2004, today’s Americans work less and can afford more than families in the 1970s did. “Hard data on work, leisure and consumption belie the image of overworked, overspent Americans,” they wrote in Investors Business Daily. “Americans aren’t working harder to afford the house, car and creature comforts usually associated with a middle-class lifestyle.”
In other words, we spend more these days because we choose to spend more, and because we have more to spend. Those are good problems to have.
We finally have a viable exit strategy from the war in Iraq. We’re going to win and come home. Too bad we haven’t yet fashioned a strategy for escaping the media’s relentless focus on bad news.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Bad news, folks. We’re winning in Iraq.
According to a front page story in The Washington Post, “The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group.”
Wait -- isn’t that good news? As Charlie Gibson put it on ABC’s World News Tonight, “One item from Baghdad, today. The news is that there is no news. The police told us that to their knowledge, there were no major acts of violence. Attacks are down in Baghdad, and today, no bombings or roadside explosions were reported.”
Oh, come on, Post. Come on, ABC. You’re not trying hard enough. Any story can be bad news if you’re willing to dig deep enough.
Luckily for us, the Baghdad bureau of McClatchy Newspapers did just that. “A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months,” Jay Price and Qasim Zein reported. “That’s cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds.”
See, finding the bad news is easy. The reporters even managed to find a struggling, out-of-work deathworker to comment. “Certainly, when the number of dead increases I feel happy, like all workers in the graveyard,” 30-year-old Basim Hameed lamented. “This happiness comes from the increase in the amount of money we have.”
Well, maybe not.
Few of us have more money than rock stars, yet that money can’t buy them love or, apparently, good health. A recent study of 1,000 rockers found that rockers are “two to three times more likely to suffer a premature death than the general population.” The Rolling Stones are the exception that proves the rule. Mark Bellis, the lead author of the study, suggests this may be because impoverished former rockers often lack health insurance.
There’s a simple solution to all this, and it’s amazing that nobody’s thought of it yet. We need to make rock stars eligible for SCHIP.
For those who haven’t been paying attention, that’s the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, launched in the 1990s to provide health care to children whose parents were too poor to purchase insurance.
Like all government programs, SCHIP is expanding, not contracting. This month lawmakers approved bill a bill that would have made government health care available to families that earn three times the federal poverty level, as much as $62,000 for a family of four. That earned a sensible, and -- sadly -- rare, veto from President Bush, a veto that’s now been upheld.
Still, the SCHIP debate has been enlightening. In trying to make their case, Democrats rolled out spokeschildren including Graeme Frost, a Maryland 12-year-old who’d benefited from SCHIP. But the Frost family is, by all accounts, what we once would have called “middle class.” If they need federal health care to make ends meet, who doesn’t?
The problem may well be our perception of the economy. By most measures, things are good. The stock market is near a record high. Our economy adds jobs month in and month out. Eight million new jobs in the last four years.
Yet in the midst of the boom, Americans don’t feel wealthier. In fact, a recent CNN poll showed that 46 percent of Americans think our economy is in recession. A mere 51 percent don’t. Clearly the mainstream media’s relentless focus on bad economic news is taking its toll.
For example, it hammers away on the supposed collapse in the mortgage market, even though housing prices almost everywhere have soared in recent years, and any slowdown in growth now is probably a correction, not a catastrophe. Such examples fit the media’s storyline that many, if not most, Americans are just a paycheck away from disaster.
Yet the reality is we’ve never had it so good. We have more gadgets and conveniences than ever. What hinders us more than anything are the poor choices we often make.
As W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas noted in 2004, today’s Americans work less and can afford more than families in the 1970s did. “Hard data on work, leisure and consumption belie the image of overworked, overspent Americans,” they wrote in Investors Business Daily. “Americans aren’t working harder to afford the house, car and creature comforts usually associated with a middle-class lifestyle.”
In other words, we spend more these days because we choose to spend more, and because we have more to spend. Those are good problems to have.
We finally have a viable exit strategy from the war in Iraq. We’re going to win and come home. Too bad we haven’t yet fashioned a strategy for escaping the media’s relentless focus on bad news.
Friday, October 19, 2007
The Liberal Compassion Mirage
By David Limbaugh
Friday, October 19, 2007
Two recent news items remind us of the disconnect between the Democrats' claimed monopoly on compassion and the effects of their policies.
First, consider the emotionally charged public debate over President Bush's veto of a proposed expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Programs.
Standing by congressional Democrats in their push to override the veto, singer Paul Simon said with earnest indignation, "The president's veto of the reauthorization of SCHIP appears to be a heartless act. I'm here today to ask those of you who supported the veto to reexamine your conscience, to find compassion in your heart for our most vulnerable and sweetest citizens, our children."
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, the compassionate Simon is obviously unaware that the matter is not as simple as merely throwing money at the problem. To quote House Minority Leader John Boehner, "There are 500,000 kids in America who are eligible for this program who have not been signed up, yet there are some 700,000 adults who are already on the program."
Simon, unlike the Democrats pulling his puppet strings, must not realize that President Bush supports a $5 billion expansion, not reduction, of the program, or that the Democrats' plan goes far beyond providing a safety net to the needy. It would allow states to make coverage available to families with incomes greater than $60,000 a year, which would entice people who can well afford private health insurance to opt for state coverage.
Is it good for the children for Democrats to exploit them as props in their quest to force socialized medicine on this nation, one incremental step at a time? Will the inevitably long waiting lines and substantially reduced quality of care be good for the children?
Why can't congressional Democrats just admit they have a soft spot for socialism: that they believe capitalism results in too much economic disparity and that government -– the Constitution be damned –- should redistribute wealth to suit their ideas of fairness? Never mind that a command-control economy results in a smaller economic pie. What matters is they care, and by gosh, they're willing to forcibly transfer other people's money to prove it.
As another example, consider the Democrats' obstruction of President Bush's efforts to reform Social Security. Who can forget the Democrats' (Bill Clinton's, Al Gore's) insistence that the future solvency of this entitlement was in such jeopardy that it must be placed off limits in a lock box?
Yet when President Bush attempted to reform this "third rail of politics," Democrats didn't just oppose the eminently sensible "partial privatization" aspect of his plan. They went further, completely reversing themselves and denying the system was in trouble at all. Our old friend Sen. Harry Reid said, "Social Security is not in crisis. It's a crisis the president's created, period. … The president has never seen a crisis he hasn't created. … [Bush is] exaggerating the solvency."
This time they went to the other end of the chronological spectrum and used seniors as props. Here again, they pretended to be intervening for the very group of people their demagogic opposition was sure to harm: future Social Security recipients.
Demonstrating once more their contempt for the private sector and free markets, they tried to scare seniors into believing President Bush was imperiling Social Security with his very modest proposal to allow participants to invest a small portion of their own funds.
Bush's valiant effort was dead on arrival, and we kicked the ball down the road. This week, we were reminded of the consequences of this reckless procrastination when the first baby boomer of a projected 80 million, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, applied for her benefits. Despite the Democrats' denials in the name of protecting seniors –- most of whom are not yet seniors –- Social Security outlays are projected to exceed its receipts by 2041.
In the meantime, Democrat presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton, in the spirit of compassion, is advancing new plans every other week to dole out yet more government money to various groups of voters, er, beneficiaries. These newly promised funds obviously will not be available to pay off maturing Social Security IOUs. But without the slightest self-consciousness, Hillary rails against President Bush for irresponsibly increasing the deficit -- though the deficit is, in fact, decreasing.
But don't you ever forget how much she cares about the children whose financial future she's mortgaging. Just believe her and her colleagues that it is evil Republicans who are bankrupting our children with tax cuts that have grown the economy and shrunk the deficit.
Conservatives must be prepared in this campaign season to return to their own free-market principles and expose the liberals' compassion for the ruse it is.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Two recent news items remind us of the disconnect between the Democrats' claimed monopoly on compassion and the effects of their policies.
First, consider the emotionally charged public debate over President Bush's veto of a proposed expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Programs.
Standing by congressional Democrats in their push to override the veto, singer Paul Simon said with earnest indignation, "The president's veto of the reauthorization of SCHIP appears to be a heartless act. I'm here today to ask those of you who supported the veto to reexamine your conscience, to find compassion in your heart for our most vulnerable and sweetest citizens, our children."
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, the compassionate Simon is obviously unaware that the matter is not as simple as merely throwing money at the problem. To quote House Minority Leader John Boehner, "There are 500,000 kids in America who are eligible for this program who have not been signed up, yet there are some 700,000 adults who are already on the program."
Simon, unlike the Democrats pulling his puppet strings, must not realize that President Bush supports a $5 billion expansion, not reduction, of the program, or that the Democrats' plan goes far beyond providing a safety net to the needy. It would allow states to make coverage available to families with incomes greater than $60,000 a year, which would entice people who can well afford private health insurance to opt for state coverage.
Is it good for the children for Democrats to exploit them as props in their quest to force socialized medicine on this nation, one incremental step at a time? Will the inevitably long waiting lines and substantially reduced quality of care be good for the children?
Why can't congressional Democrats just admit they have a soft spot for socialism: that they believe capitalism results in too much economic disparity and that government -– the Constitution be damned –- should redistribute wealth to suit their ideas of fairness? Never mind that a command-control economy results in a smaller economic pie. What matters is they care, and by gosh, they're willing to forcibly transfer other people's money to prove it.
As another example, consider the Democrats' obstruction of President Bush's efforts to reform Social Security. Who can forget the Democrats' (Bill Clinton's, Al Gore's) insistence that the future solvency of this entitlement was in such jeopardy that it must be placed off limits in a lock box?
Yet when President Bush attempted to reform this "third rail of politics," Democrats didn't just oppose the eminently sensible "partial privatization" aspect of his plan. They went further, completely reversing themselves and denying the system was in trouble at all. Our old friend Sen. Harry Reid said, "Social Security is not in crisis. It's a crisis the president's created, period. … The president has never seen a crisis he hasn't created. … [Bush is] exaggerating the solvency."
This time they went to the other end of the chronological spectrum and used seniors as props. Here again, they pretended to be intervening for the very group of people their demagogic opposition was sure to harm: future Social Security recipients.
Demonstrating once more their contempt for the private sector and free markets, they tried to scare seniors into believing President Bush was imperiling Social Security with his very modest proposal to allow participants to invest a small portion of their own funds.
Bush's valiant effort was dead on arrival, and we kicked the ball down the road. This week, we were reminded of the consequences of this reckless procrastination when the first baby boomer of a projected 80 million, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, applied for her benefits. Despite the Democrats' denials in the name of protecting seniors –- most of whom are not yet seniors –- Social Security outlays are projected to exceed its receipts by 2041.
In the meantime, Democrat presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton, in the spirit of compassion, is advancing new plans every other week to dole out yet more government money to various groups of voters, er, beneficiaries. These newly promised funds obviously will not be available to pay off maturing Social Security IOUs. But without the slightest self-consciousness, Hillary rails against President Bush for irresponsibly increasing the deficit -- though the deficit is, in fact, decreasing.
But don't you ever forget how much she cares about the children whose financial future she's mortgaging. Just believe her and her colleagues that it is evil Republicans who are bankrupting our children with tax cuts that have grown the economy and shrunk the deficit.
Conservatives must be prepared in this campaign season to return to their own free-market principles and expose the liberals' compassion for the ruse it is.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Schip Howlers
When children become political props.
Wall Street Journal
Saturday, October 13, 2007 12:01 a.m.
After President Bush vetoed Congress's major expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, Nancy Pelosi declared: "President Bush used his cruel veto pen to say, 'I forbid 10 million children from getting the health benefits they deserve.' " As far as political self-parody goes, that one ought to enter the record books.
It's wrong on the facts, for one, which Speaker Pelosi knows. The Schip bill was not some all-or-nothing proposition: A continuing resolution fully funds the program through mid-November, so none of the 6.6 million recipients will lose coverage. And even if Washington can't agree by then, there will be another stopgap, because Schip might as well already be an entitlement. In truth, the Bush Administration endorses a modest expansion. A majority of Congress backs a much larger expansion. The controversy is over the role of government in health care.
The 10 million children that Ms. Pelosi cites are the sum of the current enrollees plus those who could join under the Democratic plan (which also has the support of some wayward Republicans). Never mind that up to 60% of these children already have private insurance, which Schip would displace as it moves up the income scale. Only by Beltway reasoning could "not expanding" count as "denying" public assistance. Hillary Clinton went further and said the President was actively "stealing" health care from needy kids.
Despite all that, after his veto Mr. Bush repeatedly signaled a willingness to compromise and spend more than the $5 billion he would prefer to pump in--which is by itself a 20% expansion. His offer has been spurned flatout, and an override vote is scheduled for next week. Despite their howls about "the children," Democrats and their media partners are happy to milk them for political gain.
Unfortunately, that narrative was bolstered this week by some conservative bloggers. After the Schip veto, Democrats chose a 12-year-old boy named Graeme Frost to deliver a two-minute rebuttal. While that was a political stunt, the Washington habit of employing "poster children" is hardly new. But the Internet mob leapt to some dubious conclusions and claimed the Frost kids shouldn't have been on Schip in the first place.
As it turns out, they belonged to just the sort of family that a modest Schip is supposed to help. One lesson from this meltdown is the limit of argument by anecdote. The larger point concerns policy assumptions. Everyone concedes it is hard for some lower-income families like the Frosts to find affordable private health coverage. The debate is over what the government should do about it.
The Democratic position is clear: Expand a government program and all will be cured. Mr. Bush's position recognizes that a subsidy like Schip is necessary is some cases because of government mandates and overregulation. Congress and the states consistently enact health-care policies that make insurance coverage more expensive, and then they wonder why people have trouble paying for it.
In a more rational world, liberals would embrace the health-care tax reforms that Mr. Bush advocates. The employer-based insurance tax deduction is a wealth transfer to those who need it least--the most affluent, with the most gold-plated plans. It launders health dollars through a third-party bureaucracy that encourages people to spend, reducing access and raising prices for the uninsured. On equity grounds alone, Democrats should support changing these incentives.
That they don't, or won't, suggests ulterior political motives, and that's where Schip comes in. All Democratic "universal" health-care plans combine more government subsidies with more coverage mandates. Today's Schip expansion is the down payment for 2009, when they want to extend it well into the middle class. The fact that there are better, and more economic, policies to cover more people is less important than getting ever more Americans on the government health care tab.
As for the GOP's Schip fans, most of them understand this but also don't want to be portrayed as voting against "children." Senators Orrin Hatch and Chuck Grassley were especially slippery in their letter to us yesterday in dodging any answer to our critique of the bill's $30 billion funding ruse. The bill includes a funding "cliff" that abruptly cuts off the higher spending in year five to conceal its true future costs under Congressional budget rules. It's precisely such fiscal fraudulence that cost Republicans their Congressional majority last year. Overriding Mr. Bush's veto won't help them get it back.
Wall Street Journal
Saturday, October 13, 2007 12:01 a.m.
After President Bush vetoed Congress's major expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, Nancy Pelosi declared: "President Bush used his cruel veto pen to say, 'I forbid 10 million children from getting the health benefits they deserve.' " As far as political self-parody goes, that one ought to enter the record books.
It's wrong on the facts, for one, which Speaker Pelosi knows. The Schip bill was not some all-or-nothing proposition: A continuing resolution fully funds the program through mid-November, so none of the 6.6 million recipients will lose coverage. And even if Washington can't agree by then, there will be another stopgap, because Schip might as well already be an entitlement. In truth, the Bush Administration endorses a modest expansion. A majority of Congress backs a much larger expansion. The controversy is over the role of government in health care.
The 10 million children that Ms. Pelosi cites are the sum of the current enrollees plus those who could join under the Democratic plan (which also has the support of some wayward Republicans). Never mind that up to 60% of these children already have private insurance, which Schip would displace as it moves up the income scale. Only by Beltway reasoning could "not expanding" count as "denying" public assistance. Hillary Clinton went further and said the President was actively "stealing" health care from needy kids.
Despite all that, after his veto Mr. Bush repeatedly signaled a willingness to compromise and spend more than the $5 billion he would prefer to pump in--which is by itself a 20% expansion. His offer has been spurned flatout, and an override vote is scheduled for next week. Despite their howls about "the children," Democrats and their media partners are happy to milk them for political gain.
Unfortunately, that narrative was bolstered this week by some conservative bloggers. After the Schip veto, Democrats chose a 12-year-old boy named Graeme Frost to deliver a two-minute rebuttal. While that was a political stunt, the Washington habit of employing "poster children" is hardly new. But the Internet mob leapt to some dubious conclusions and claimed the Frost kids shouldn't have been on Schip in the first place.
As it turns out, they belonged to just the sort of family that a modest Schip is supposed to help. One lesson from this meltdown is the limit of argument by anecdote. The larger point concerns policy assumptions. Everyone concedes it is hard for some lower-income families like the Frosts to find affordable private health coverage. The debate is over what the government should do about it.
The Democratic position is clear: Expand a government program and all will be cured. Mr. Bush's position recognizes that a subsidy like Schip is necessary is some cases because of government mandates and overregulation. Congress and the states consistently enact health-care policies that make insurance coverage more expensive, and then they wonder why people have trouble paying for it.
In a more rational world, liberals would embrace the health-care tax reforms that Mr. Bush advocates. The employer-based insurance tax deduction is a wealth transfer to those who need it least--the most affluent, with the most gold-plated plans. It launders health dollars through a third-party bureaucracy that encourages people to spend, reducing access and raising prices for the uninsured. On equity grounds alone, Democrats should support changing these incentives.
That they don't, or won't, suggests ulterior political motives, and that's where Schip comes in. All Democratic "universal" health-care plans combine more government subsidies with more coverage mandates. Today's Schip expansion is the down payment for 2009, when they want to extend it well into the middle class. The fact that there are better, and more economic, policies to cover more people is less important than getting ever more Americans on the government health care tab.
As for the GOP's Schip fans, most of them understand this but also don't want to be portrayed as voting against "children." Senators Orrin Hatch and Chuck Grassley were especially slippery in their letter to us yesterday in dodging any answer to our critique of the bill's $30 billion funding ruse. The bill includes a funding "cliff" that abruptly cuts off the higher spending in year five to conceal its true future costs under Congressional budget rules. It's precisely such fiscal fraudulence that cost Republicans their Congressional majority last year. Overriding Mr. Bush's veto won't help them get it back.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)