Let\u2019s review the bidding now that Obama\/Pelosicare has passed the House.<\/p>\n
As reported here two weeks ago, according to one of the nation\u2019s leading experts on the federal budget, former OBM deputy director and Hoover Institution economist John Cogan, by mid century without the president\u2019s agenda, the federal spending including Medicare and Medicaid are on track to consume 34 percent of national income.<\/p>\n
With the president\u2019s program, that number will jump to 60 percent. \u00a0Cogan noted that the peak year for U.S. government spending as a percent of GDP was in World War II, when it hit 40 percent for one year. \u00a0We are, as he said, entering uncharted economic and fiscal territory.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t have to be this way. \u00a0There are inexpensive, more effective health reform alternatives on the table.<\/p>\n
The president points (correctly) to the need for greater competition among health insurance providers? \u00a0But lack of competition is a result not of market failures but state government mandates. \u00a0The answer isn\u2019t a fabulously expensive public option. \u00a0It is to legislate that an insurance plan that is approved in one state will be salable in all. Instantly you would solve the one-state-few-competitors issue. \u00a0And you would introduce competition between the states. \u00a0National competition would force states to determine which of their mandates is truly necessary and which is a payoff to special interests. Do the people of Massachusetts really need every health policy to include in vitro fertilization? No wonder they have among the nation\u2019s highest insurance prices.<\/p>\n
The president points (again correctly) to the pace of health care inflation generally. \u00a0But as economist from Milton Friedman on have noted, health care inflation in the U.S. is a result of breaking the link between the payer of services and the receiver of services\u2014and this, too, is a result of government policies, in this case tax policies. \u00a0U.S. tax law heavily discriminates against those who buy health insurance or health care services on their own. \u00a0The tax breaks for buying through your employer make other options prohibitively expensive. \u00a0So level the playing field. \u00a0Give individuals the same breaks that their places of work receive. \u00a0The result would be instant pressure on all providers to increase productivity \u2013 and stagnating productivity is the central problem in our health system.<\/p>\n
But the House has passed a bill that does nothing to reduce mandates (just the opposite, they\u2019ll add a federal layer), nothing to create a national market for health insurance, and nothing to give individuals control over their own health plans. \u00a0It does however mandate personal spending that can rise as high as 20 percent of income (see here: http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/yggstf<\/span><\/a> ).<\/p>\n Here is where it comes down. \u00a0The House bill is built on the same social democratic model as Medicare. \u00a0When that program was passed in 1966, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that by 1990 it would cost $12 billion. \u00a0The actual number was $107 billion (see here: http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/yac7tg9<\/span><\/a> ). \u00a0Before the current administration took office, among Washington\u2019s great worries was that the program\u2019s unfunded liability (now running over $74 trillion, multiple times larger than our deficit) would bankrupt the nation. \u00a0So in what the president\u2019s budget back in February termed \u201cA New Era of Responsibility,\u201d the House of Representatives proposes to layer on top of that program a new and vastly more expensive program.<\/p>\n We all have our favorite explanation for what has made the Democrats in Washington go mad. \u00a0Power crazed ideology? \u00a0As the president says, a chance like this comes along only once in a generation. \u00a0Good thing, too. Otherwise we\u2019d already be asking other countries for foreign aide. \u00a0Or is it putting special interests before public interest? \u00a0The public employee unions wouldn\u2019t accept anything that would reduce the need for their members staffing state regulatory authorities. \u00a0Pick your poison.<\/p>\n Whatever the reason, the consequences are serious.<\/p>\n Consider this: George Washington and Alexander Hamilton created in the United States government the world\u2019s most credit worthy entity. With that legacy, we bought Louisiana, built the national roads and harbors that allowed the opening of the Midwest, won the Civil War, provided more national roads and waterways to support industrialization, and in the past century won World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, saving civilization not once but twice. \u00a0And because we saved civilization, freedom has reached more of the world than ever before in history, and, according to the World Bank, the number of people living in extreme poverty around the globe is on track to fall to fifty percent of its 1990 level by 2015 (see: http:\/\/www.worldwatch.org\/node\/6269<\/span><\/a> ).<\/p>\n It is not too much to say that Congress\u2019 coming health care votes will be not just about whether we reform America\u2019s health care and health insurance markets foolishly or intelligently. \u00a0They will also be about whether we preserve George Washington\u2019s legacy for the generations to come.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let\u2019s review the bidding now that Obama\/Pelosicare has passed the House. As reported here two weeks ago, according to one of the nation\u2019s leading experts on the federal budget, former OBM deputy director and Hoover Institution economist John Cogan, by mid century without the president\u2019s agenda, the federal spending including Medicare and Medicaid are on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economic-policy-health-care","tag-hugh-hewitt"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":454,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions\/454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}