Weekend Links
- “Government should not subsidize health insurance — for the uninsured, the poor, the elderly or anyone else — or regulate health insurance markets.” Here’s why.
- This is what happens to health care when you are not the customer.
- An update on the EU Lisbon Treaty.
- Why Fannie and Freddie mustn’t be left out of reform efforts.
- Skepticism over nuclear diplomacy with Iran. (PDF) Subscribe to the Nuclear Proliferation Update here.
- Podcast: “Obama: Kinder Bud to Federalism?” featuring Aaron Houston of the Marijuana Policy Project.
Ad Campaign for Real Health Care Reform
Check your local paper today for Cato’s full-page ad about a better health care reform solution: “freedom. Freedom to choose your doctor and health plan. Freedom to spend your health care dollars as you choose. Freedom to make your own medical decisions. Freedom to keep a health plan you are satisfied with.”
It’s running today in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times.
Or find the ad here, along with radio ads as well. These ads aren’t cheap, so please consider making a contribution to support Cato’s health care reform efforts.
Filed under: Cato Publications; Health, Welfare & Entitlements
GOP 99% Socialist
As I note in my New York Post op-ed today, Republicans are fond of implying that President Obama is a big-spending socialist. But the House GOP recently offered a spending cut plan that was able to find savings worth less than one percent of Obama’s budget.
As Tad DeHaven and Brian Riedl have also pointed out, the GOP spending reform effort is rather pathetic. It proposed specific annual budget cuts of about $14 billion per year.
Consider that the center-left budget wonks at the Brookings Institution put their heads together a few years ago and came up with a “smaller government plan” that proposed about $342 billion in annual spending cuts (by 2014). The Brookings authors note:
These cuts are achieved by reducing government subsidies to commercial activities ($138 billion); by returning responsibility for education, housing, training, environmental, and law enforcement programs to the states ($123 billion) . . . by cutting entitlements such as Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare ($74 billion); and by eliminating some wasteful spending in these entitlement programs ($7 billion).
Thus, the Brooking’s scholars found cuts more than twenty times larger than the House GOP leadership cuts, and Brookings proposed its plan back when the deficit was about one-fifth of the size it is today. (Note that both the Brookings and GOP plans would also put a cap on overall nondefense discretionary spending, in addition to these specific cuts).
My point in the New York Post piece is that the GOP needs to challenge Obama’s big spending agenda at a more fundamental level. They need to do some careful research, pick out some big spending targets, and go on the offense. Why not propose to eliminate the Departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development? Why not sell off federal assets, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, in order to help pay down the federal debt? Why not open up the U.S. Postal Service to competition?
Obama won’t agree to these reforms at this point, but they would hopefully open a serious national debate about reforming our massive and sprawling federal government. Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the congressional Republicans in 1994 didn’t win by splitting hairs with the Democrats over 1% of spending. They offered a more fundamental critique.
At least, GOP leaders need to offer up spending reforms as bold as those of the Brookings Institution.
Remember, Government Control Ensures Good Health Care
Well, sometimes maybe.
An investigation has been launched after a woman admitted to Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital for an induced birth was forced into a do-it-yourself delivery last month, with only her common-law partner to assist.
“We’re taking it very seriously,” Dr. Matt Kalina, assistant director for professional services at the McGill University Health Centre, said. “We’re reviewing the specific events thoroughly with the family…. We’re using the lessons to improve our systems.”
At about 5 a. m. on May 13, medical help failed to appear even after Karine Lachapelle’s water broke.
Despite attempts to summon help by partner Mark Schouls, who was pushing the nurse-alert button with increasing frequency as Ms. Lachapelle’s contractions became more intense and closer, the two delivered their new son, Kristophe, entirely on their own.
Ms. Lachapelle pushed the child out past his shoulders and face down– allowing Mr. Schouls to get a grip and pull the newborn the rest of the way out, he recounted.
Obviously, the U.S. system has its problems. But it isn’t even really a private system, since the government pays for such a large share of medical costs and skews the entire insurance system through federal tax policy. Nevertheless, there are far more private options and patients have far more control than in government-run systems. It is imperative that any “reform” effort preserves both private alternatives and patient choice. Indeed, the only real reform would be to make health care truly consumer-directed.
Cato on Facebook
Cato on Twitter
Cato on YouTube
Cato Tweets