Archive for March, 2009
The Early-Ed Big Lie
In a speech on education this morning at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, President Obama repeats questionable statistics in support of his bid to expand the government’s monopoly on education back to the womb, asserting that “$1 of early education leads to $10 in saved social services.”
Unfortunately he’s referring to small-scale programs that involved extensive and often intensive total-family intervention rather than simple “early education.”
In contrast to the– real-world school choice programs have been tested extensively with solid, random-assignment studies. Nine out of ten of these studies find statistically significant improvement in academic achievement for at least one subgroup.
Obama should follow the scientific evidence on what works in education; school choice, not “early education.”
Homeless Scare Numbers
The National Center on Family Homelessness has generated headlines today by releasing a report that claims “one in 50 children is homeless in the United States every year.” That would be a total of 1.5 million homeless children, a truly shocking figure. The number is all the more shocking because the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development says there actually only 671,000 people were homeless in 2007 (the last year for which data is available), of which only about 249,000 were people in families. Assuming even one adult per family would mean there were around 166,000 homeless children, far too many, but also far fewer than 1.5 million.
What accounts for the discrepancy? First, the National Center uses an incredibly broad definition of homeless. For example, in addition to those we usually think of as homeless (those living in shelters or on the streets), they also include people “Sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason.” Under this definition, when your out-of-work in-law crashes on your couch, he’s homeless. The National Center also includes people “living in motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camping grounds,” children awaiting foster care placement, and children of migratory farm workers. And, a child needs only to fall into one of these categories for a single day to qualify as homeless.
Second, this study, like the HUD study as well, are not actual counts of the homeless, but estimates and extrapolations based on reports by various government agencies. The Census Bureau does attempt to do an actual head count of the homeless (170,000 in 2000), but that estimate is both out-of-date and generally criticized as an undercount. Still, going from that estimate to 1.5 million homeless children seems quite a stretch.
Homelessness is clearly a problem, and for the children involved, a tragedy, but scare headlines are a poor substitute for thoughtful public policy.
Obama Intel Chief Sought National ID?
While Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee have written a letter objecting to the experience level of National Intelligence Council Chairman Chas Freeman, Ashley Rindsberg at the Huffington Post reveals that Freeman advocated creating a national identity system in the US as a part of the “war on terror.”
During a 9/11 Commission interview, Freeman remarked that of three major changes the US government should make to effectively combat terror, one was that “the United States should implement a national identity system, so we better know who is who.”
Seems Freeman lost track of why we have intelligence and security – to preserve our freedoms. We don’t abandon our freedoms to preserve our intelligence. Not that a national ID would help with that . . . .
He Has a Point
Stung by accusations that he is a “socialist,” President Obama pointed out to two New York Times reporters that, “it wasn’t under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. It wasn’t on my watch. And it wasn’t on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement -– the prescription drug plan — without a source of funding.”
Not to defend Obama’s unprecedented increase on government spending or plans to involve the government in almost every area of our lives…but he does have a point. As I pointed out in Leviathan on the Right, the Bush administration’s brand of big-government conservatism was, at the very least, the greatest expansion of government from Lyndon Johnson to, well, Barack Obama.
Looking to a Failed Model for Health Care Reform
CNN health care correspondent Sanjay Gupta, who was briefly considered for surgeon general in the Obama administration, reports that the administration is looking to Massachusetts as a model for its forthcoming health care reform proposal. That model would involve an individual mandate, an employer mandate, a “connector” with increased insurance regulation, and massive subsidies for the middle class.
Given that the Massachusetts plan is expected to run $2-4 billion over budget over the next 10 years, has failed to come close to universal coverage, has done nothing to reduce health care costs (indeed, may have driven up insurance costs), and has actually led to increased wait time for primary care physicians, that may not be the best model out there. In fact, perhaps the Obama administration might like to look at studies by David Hyman and me detailing the Massachusetts model’s many problems.
Mr. President, If You’re Involved It’s Already Politicized
Yesterday, President Obama coupled his lifting of an executive order banning federal funding for embryonic stem cell research with the signing of a memorandum directing “the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop a strategy for restoring scientific integrity to government decision making.” In other words, at the very moment he was directly injecting politics into science by forcing taxpayers to fund research that many find immoral – and that could be funded privately – Obama declared that he wouldn’t politicize science.
Don’t insult our intelligence. When government pays for scientific work that science is politicized. Yes, it could be argued that government not funding something is also political, but which is inherently more politicized, government forcing people to fund research, or leaving it to private individuals to voluntarily support scientific endeavors they believe of value?
You don’t have to be a scientist to grasp the obvious answer to that one. And as I’ve laid out very clearly regarding education, this kind of compelled support ultimately leads not only to ugly politicization, but social conflict and division.
Culture wars, anyone?
The rhetoric supporting federal funding of embryonic stem cell research – and lots of other science – may sound noble, but the means-ends calculations are anything but. They are divisive incursions on liberty, and make political conflict inevitable.
The Healthcare Economist on Comparative-Effectiveness Research
Jason Shafrin agrees with me that the public-goods case for government-funded comparative-effectiveness research is weak, though he argues that political constraints make my proposed solutions difficult.
Bailouts, Big Spending and Bull
John Stossel joined economists from around the country Thursday at the Cato Institute for a taping of a 20/20 special that will air Friday March 13 called “Bailouts, Big Spending and Bull.”
The segment is based on Reason TV‘s Drew Carey Project, and examines “bailouts, medical marijuana, universal preschool, private highways, border walls, and the myth of the struggling middle class.”
Check your local listings for exact air time.
Photos by Kelly Anne Creazzo
More Praise for Cochrane’s ‘Health-Status Insurance’
This time, it’s coming from Reihan Salam at Forbes.com:
Choice and Security: Professor John Cochrane’s advice to President Obama
Last week, at a White House forum on reforming health care, President Obama issued a challenge to advocates of less government control of the medical marketplace.
“If there is a way of getting this done [i.e., reforming health care] where we’re driving down costs and people are getting health insurance at an affordable rate and have choice of doctor, have flexibility in terms of their plans, and we could do that entirely through the market, I’d be happy to do it that way.”
More to the point, Obama added that he’d be just as happy to pursue an approach that involved more government control as well, and that seems to be the tack he’s taking…
Congressional Republicans have criticized Obama’s approach, and they’ve been particularly hostile to the idea of a new public insurance plan. They argue that Obama’s reforms will eventually lead to a nationalized health care system. But as of yet they’ve failed to offer an alternative that meets Obama’s criteria for a successful health care reform.
Enter John Cochrane, an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Professor Cochrane has long advocated a proposal he calls “health-status insurance,” an approach that could guarantee long-term health security while also freeing medical insurers to compete for customers. To most health care reformers, this sounds like a contradiction in terms.
Cochrane’s paper is, “Health-Status Insurance: How Markets Can Provide Health Security.”
New Podcast: ‘El Salvador’s Choice’
El Salvador is becoming an economic success story in Central America, says Cato scholar Juan Carlos Hidalgo.
Since 1992, the country has undertaken an aggressive program of liberalization that has transformed its economy and yielded major improvements in various socioeconomic areas. In a new study, Hidalgo explains how El Salvador “is showing the rest of the region how economic freedom can pave the way for development and how globalization offers great opportunities for developing countries that are willing to implement a coherent set of mutually supportive market reforms.”
In today’s Cato Daily Podcast, Hidalgo explains how despite recent economic reforms, next week’s election in El Salvador could end with a government that has great admiration for the policies of Hugo Chavez that would turn El Salvador away from market-based reforms.
A third of the [voting] population is under thirty. So that means many young voters don’t remember El Salvador as it was during the early 1990’s… Young people have trouble paying for their cell phone bills, have trouble paying their gas bills and have trouble paying for tuition in colleges. What they don’t remember is fifteen years ago they didn’t have cars, their parents didn’t have cars, their parents didn’t have any cell phones and their parents lived in shanty towns….
…Even though they talk about emulating the socialist revolution in Venezuela, they haven’t been explicit about dismantling democratic institutions in El Salvador.
Events This Week at Cato
Thursday, March 12
12:00 PM (Luncheon to Follow)
BOOK FORUM: Cato senior fellow in environmental studies Patrick J. Michaels will discuss his new book, Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know with David Legates, Delaware state climatologist and director of the Delaware Environmental Observing System.
The book illustrates the crucial unreported news about climate change: that changes in hurricanes will be small, that global warming is likely to be modest, and that contrary to daily headlines, there is no apocalypse on the horizon.
Free registration for this event is now open, and it will be simulcast live on Cato’s Web site.
Transportation Reauthorization: Looking Beyond the Recession
1:30 PM (Refreshments Provided)
CAPITOL HILL BRIEFING: Randal O’Toole, Cato senior fellow and author of The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future, will join Robert Poole, director of Transportation Studies at the Reason Foundation for a discussion on transportation reform during the recession.
Register here for this free event.
Friday, March 13
12:00 PM (Luncheon to Follow)
Most defense analysts agree: the Pentagon is in serious need of reform. Acquisition programs run above cost and behind schedule. The U.S. defense budget is higher than at any point during the Cold War, but capability has not kept pace. We field fewer ships, aircraft, and tanks than we did in the days of lower procurement spending. And our defense spending prepares us better for the conventional wars we imagine than the unconventional conflicts we fight.
Featuring Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information; Colonel Douglas Macgregor, U.S. Army (Retired), Straus Military Reform Project adviser; Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight; Thomas Ricks, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and special military correspondent for the Washington Post; and Benjamin Friedman, research fellow in defense and homeland security at the Cato Institute.
Please register for this free event or watch live online.
Schism in the Church of Universal Coverage
On the Diane Rehm Show last week, I predicted that all the lovey-dovey coalition-forming by the Church of Universal Coverage would fall apart as soon as people started talking about actual reforms instead of vague principles.
Today, The New York Times reports:
Two labor unions have pulled out of a broad coalition seeking agreement on major changes in the health care system.
The action, by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Service Employees International Union, shows the seeds of discord behind the optimistic talk at a White House conference on health care this week.
It also illustrates the difficulty of reaching agreement on two of the knottiest issues in the health care debate: whether to offer a new government-sponsored insurance option, and whether to require employers to help pay for employee health benefits.
I made a similar prediction in this op-ed, where I urged that a new government-sponsored insurance option and mandates are two of three proposals that must be blocked at all costs. The third: price controls.
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