Universal Health Care in U.S. Gets "No Pass"

Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and a Democrat-majority legislature passed “universal” health insurance, gaining budget-busting cost overruns and a state begging breathlessly for $21 billion more federal transfer payments to fund it for three more years.

This is a reprint from Pacific Research Center Vol. 14 No. 3: January 21, 2009
Lessons from States with “Universal” Health Care
By John R. Graham, Director, Health Care Studies

Last January, governor Schwarzenegger’s expensive and unwieldy proposal for so-called “universal” health care finally gasped its last breath, after a long year of lobbying and coalition-building by the governor’s team. A year later, in 2009, legislators should attempt to learn from two states that have legislated “universal” care.

Hawaii imposed universal health care in 1974 by passing a law compelling employers to provide health insurance and forcing them to pay half the cost of a plan directly. Facing resistance from small businesses, the state has never been able to “close the deal.” As late as 1993, a supportive scholar described Hawaii’s efforts at “universal” coverage as “lodged somewhere in midstream.”

On the other hand, also in 1993, managers in the state’s health department managed to convince themselves that Hawaii had covered 95 percent of its population. As it turns out, in 1974, one in 50 Hawaii residents was uninsured. Today, after more than three decades of mandatory insurance, that number stands at one in 10. Of course, Hawaii is not immune to national trends, but scholars have concluded that the state’s pay-or-play mandate might have reduced the ranks of the uninsured by 5 to 8 percent at best. The plan fails to deliver, but Hawaiian advocates of government-dictated health care just won’t quit.

Last year they rolled out yet another program – “Keiki Care,” compulsory “free” health insurance for children without coverage, who are in families with incomes too high for Medicaid or other state programs. Republican governor Linda Lingle shuttered it in October, barely seven months after its launch, after learning that 85 percent of the kids enrolled had previously been covered by a private, non-profit plan for only $55 per month.

Republican governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts collaborated with a Democrat-majority legislature to pass “universal” health insurance in April 2006. Although he tried to backpedal during the presidential primaries, he cannot avoid the plan’s legacy: budget-busting cost overruns and a state begging breathlessly for $21 billion more federal transfer payments to fund it for three more years.

Notwithstanding a bailout from the federal government, the state has had to raise taxes on businesses – a task the legislature delegated to the bureaucrats who run the program. While hospitals' uncompensated care dropped from $166 million in the first quarter of 2007 down to $98 million in the first quarter of 2008, or $272 million annually, the budget for “universal” health care in Massachusetts is running at $869 million: $3.19 of taxpayers' dollars spent for every dollar of uncompensated care avoided.

Californians can be grateful that governor Schwarzenegger failed to impose a similar regime but those who proposed it are more active than ever. David Zingale, who spearheaded the governor’s initiative, has joined the California Endowment, a foundation with $3 billion in assets, to lobby for health reform in Sacramento. These folks mean business.

The California Endowment spent $10 million in advertising for health “reform” in 2007. But the Endowment is not a charity that has succeeded in raising money through voluntary philanthropic donations. Rather, it is sitting on a pot of gold that the state taxed from Blue Cross of California’s surplus back in 1996, as a cost of getting the state’s permission to convert to a for-profit health plan. And to what end?

Such conversions were necessary because non-profit health plans were increasingly poorly capitalized as health costs rose, and threatened with insolvency. For-profit conversions simply allow beneficiaries to transfer some of the risk of rising health costs to shareholders.

The California Endowment does conduct some valuable research. Nevertheless, by imposing a special tax on Blue Cross to found this unaccountable organization, California has actually reduced the amount of money available for private health care, and increased the amount of money “invested” in advertising campaigns supporting government-run health care.

That kind of government plan, the evidence from Hawaii and Massachusetts suggests, tends to promise more than it can deliver and introduce more problems than it solves. In 2009, California taxpayers should demand more freedom to purchase the health care that best meets their needs. Making Health Savings Accounts tax deductible would be a good place for legislators to start.

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Understanding: Islamicism; Militant Feminism

From Act for America

Once again we have witnessed an Islamic terrorist attack incited and justified through appeals to Islam by its perpetrators. On one level it is understandable why so many in the West are unwilling or unable to connect the militant ideology of political Islam to the thousands of Islamic terror attacks that have been committed worldwide since 9/11. We extol the virtues of tolerance and pluralism and believe others in the world do so as well, so it is easy to dismiss such attacks as the work of a few “extremists,” rather than the product of adherence to an ideology.

The fatal flaw in this thinking is this: How can we successfully win a war on Islamic terrorism if we don’t correctly define the threat doctrine that motivates its adherents?

It is argued that most of the world’s Muslims are not terrorists. While true, this fact is irrelevant. Most of the world’s Muslims have never read the Qur’an or the Hadith in a language they can understand. They have not read the hundreds of passages that call for jihad against infidels, nor do they renounce such passages. They do not organize en masse to denounce the terrorist acts perpetrated by other Muslims in the name of Islam, nor do they denounce the frequent exhortations to world subjugation found in the holy books of Islam.

Yes, there are Muslims who have denounced the Mumbai attacks. But examine their denunciations closely and you will be hard-pressed to find renunciations of the supremacist doctrine of political Islam -- the foundation for jihad -- which emanates from its holy books. This is the justification commonly cited by terrorists for their actions. We in the West must come to grips with the uncomfortable fact that terrorism is a symptom of this militant, supremacist ideology.

Terrorism is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

And it is but one of many means used by those who are devoted to the supremacist ideology of political Islam. [all emphases added]

From Pacific Research Institute

by Sally C. Pipes, President and CEO

The national election has finally passed, thankfully without any mandate for 50-50 gender representation of the kind favored by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Susan Pinker, author of "The Sexual Paradox", [wrote] on the ability to make choices as “one of the benefits of living in a postfeminist Western democracy.” Does this mean that facts and common sense have finally prevailed against militant feminism, and that we can all celebrate the victory and get on with our lives? If a recent math controversy is any indication, the answer is no.

Last summer, a study of more than seven million students from grades 2-11, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and published in the journal Science, said that boys and girls perform equally well in math. At least, that is how the story was brokered to the public.

In her story on the study, Wendy Hansen of the Los Angeles Times could not resist taking a swing at Larry Summers, who as president of Harvard reportedly said that boys are more likely than girls to be math geniuses. Mr. Summers didn’t exactly say that, though it is true. As Susan Pinker has pointed out, there are more male geniuses, and also more male idiots. Male dominance of the idiot ranks, which can be easily verified in politics, does not appear to bother feminists in the slightest.

On the other coast, Tamar Lewin of the New York Times had Larry Summers questioning women’s intrinsic ability. He didn’t actually question it, however, but only suggested it was something to consider for further study. As for Tamar Lewin’s portrayal of the new study, she had boys and girls in a dead heat in the math competition. As the headline put it, “No Gap for Girls.” The results of the study are a bit more nuanced than that, as Heather MacDonald pointed out so clearly in City Journal.

Boys’ and girls’ average scores are similar, she noted, but boys outnumber girls among students in both the highest and the lowest score ranges. That also squares with Susan Pinker’s observation on genius, but not with Tamar Lewin’s contention that in every category girls did as well as boys. They didn’t.

“This statement is simply wrong,” Heather MacDonald wrote, pointing out that among white 11th-graders, there were twice as many boys as girls above the 99th percentile. Furthermore, among mathematically gifted adolescents, between five and 10 times as many boys as girls have been found to receive near-perfect scores on the math SATs. So why the misleading report?

Since boys and girls perform the same in math, the reasoning goes, any gender imbalance in a math, science, or engineering department, any “underrepresentation,” in other words, can only be due to bias and discrimination. That’s where they are going with the skewed reports. Every workplace, according to the dogma, should break down 50-50 between men and women. If not, it’s all due to stereotypes and prejudice, to be remedied, of course, by government action. We have already noted that the Title IX troops are leading a surge aimed at math and engineering departments.

The study published in Science has some valuable lessons, but not the ones touted by Tamar Lewin. “Far from raising the presumption of gender bias among schools and colleges,” says Heather MacDonald, “the Science study strengthens a competing hypothesis: that the main drivers of success in scientific fields are aptitude and knowledge, in conjunction with personal choices about career and family that feminists refuse to acknowledge.”

With careful scholars such as Louann Brizendine, Susan Pinker, and Christina Hoff Sommers, there is now much more that feminists can refuse to acknowledge. Excuse me if I call this feminaticism: the persistent refusal to acknowledge any science or reality that raises doubts about feminist dogma, and the pursuit of misguided public policies based on those dogmas, even when discredited.

As Heather MacDonald also pointed out, the Wall Street Journal got the story right on the math study, that average scores are similar but that boys predominate at the margins. The author was Keith J. Winstein, so maybe men are also better at journalism about math. Feminaticism, however, seems to have eager advocates in the prestige press, as well as the academy and the legislature. That means, alas, that we can’t relax or take anything for granted, even in a post-feminist Western democracy where women enjoy boundless choices.

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the SM of
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© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

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California’s Newest Chronic Disease: “Preventionitis”

Another Day Has Arrived

John R. Graham, the director of Health Care Studies for the Pacific Research Institute recently wrote that "Politicians interpret [ ] exercises in crystal-ball gazing as proof that they can never impose too much government control over people for their own good."

Before we get to what they saw in the particular crystal ball Graham is talking about, we must understand several things: 1) crystal balls are the same, in this case, as what is meant by the phrase "counting your chickens before they hatch." Politicians look at scientific data, as we shall see, and being the modern politicians that they are believe they have the right to implement policy and law based on the data.

In fact, they do, and they should. To ignore science would be catastrophic in many cases, not to mention silly and ignorant. But where these modern politicians go wrong is: 2) believing that the Constitution is a "living" document that allows them to ignore the original intent of the powers given to the Federal government, and to ignore that some powers were strictly given to the States, with all the rest of the powers not enumerated given to the individuals, to "the people", not collectively, but individually, making each of us sovereign and able to stand against the un-Constitutional abuses of government.

How can we know that the powers not enumerated as belonging to the Federal or the State governments are "reserved" to individuals? We can know this, because "the people", when not considered at individuals, are either entities of their respective States with Constitutional powers enumerated to them; or entities of the Federal government, with Constitutional powers enumerated to them.

(There is a flaw in that fact, a flaw which became law with the "citizens of the United States" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The States were empowered to protect their citizens from the over-reaching powers of the Federal government; we were never meant to be "citizens of" the Federal government. That clause literally and forever--until it is overturned--eliminated the original nature of the States as individual political entities united under law, and instead created, for the first time in Constitutional history, a single entity called the "United States."

(Before the Fourteenth Amendment we were Citizens with a capital "C" both in written law, and in popular writing such as newspapers. "Citizens" in the Fourteenth is spelled with a lower case "c" and never since have we citizens been Citizens.

(We belong to the Federal Government, which can manipulate us as much as the liberal courts will allow it to go. And if a court strikes down federal legislation or the policy implemented by a bureau, such as Health and Human Services, for example, there is always another day. Don't forget that the income tax was originally declared un-Constitutional, until another day arrived.

("Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day..." http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/search?q=citizens+of+the+United+States)

And so, by the powers reserved to the people, we know the Founding Fathers meant, by "the people", to mean the individuals who make up the non-political entity called "the people," which is nothing more than the concept of all individuals considered as a group, e.g., "the people at Fox News," or "the people in prison."

The power to "impose too much government control over people for their own good" was never an original intent of the Founders, who all believed that governments instituted among men ought to be limited.

Now, just what is it that John Graham is talking about, above?

"A major driver of health costs over the last couple of decades is chronic illness such as diabetes and heart disease. It's time to add another chronic ailment to the list: 'preventionitis,'" writes Graham.

"Because much chronic disease is associated with bad lifestyle choices, many succumb to the utopian delusion that investment in 'prevention' – eating better, exercising more, and so on – will cut society's health bill.

Exercise and a healthy diet are of course good ideas. The 'investment' that preventionistas advocate, however, is not a personal commitment to oneself, a family member, or a friend. On the contrary, it is massive government intervention to change society's habits, paid for by tax hikes." [emphasis added]

The science that the government of California is taking note of is a report funded by three non-profit groups: the Trust for America's Health, the California Endowment, and the Prevention Institute. "They conclude," Graham continues, "that investing 10 dollars per person annually in 'prevention' in California would result in savings 4.8 times greater than the costs, starting five years out.

Overall, they claim that annual savings would be $1.7 billion, measured in 2004 dollars. Statewide health spending in 2004 was $166 billion, so we are looking at annual savings of one percent. Ten years from now the annual savings would go up to $1.9 billion (2004 dollars), which would be much less than one percent of overall costs, because health costs will be much higher in 2014 than they were in 2004, even after adjusting for inflation.

"Even so, such estimates are fantastically over-precise. Politicians interpret these exercises in crystal-ball gazing as proof that they can never impose too much government control over people for their own good."

Over-estimating is not the Constitutional problem. Neither is the crystal-ball gazing, nor the science. The problem is the corruption of the Constitution.

Certainly, modern society has problems to take care of that the 18th Century could never have imagined, from the kind of road, water and sewer infrastructures we have, to the infrastructures created by the use of electricity and the internet, to name only a few.

But these problems are made worse by assuming that because the Founders could not foresee them, we must ignore their--our--written Constitutional responsibilities. We cannot just willy-nilly do as we please depending on the Congressional, Judicial, and Presidential powers who are in office at the time of the decision making.

The Constitution must be changed as directed within the Constitution itself. Without that guarantee, we might as well quit pretending we rely on the Original Constitution and just admit that we manipulate it like so much Play-Doh.

Modern Americans who are not educated in the history of the Constitution, which is done on purpose by educators who become more left-and-liberal decade by decade, are in pursuit of absolute control over everyone else's lifestyle choices.

And instead of standing up and saying, "I refuse to control anyone's life," we all lie down and understand that we must allow ourselves to be controlled in things we wish we were not controlled, if we are to have the power to contol others where they wish they were not controlled.

That is the insidious and degrading power of modern liberalism. It must stop.

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the SM of
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The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism TM,
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger TM, and
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© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

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Economic Freedom Needed in the U.S.

Will Obama Make the U.S. More Economically Free?

A special California legislative session is beginning to deal with this fiscal year’s budget deficit, as high as $10 billion by some estimates.

California can learn from those states with the most economic freedom, because they perform better on all fronts.

In 2005:

-the 15 freest states grew at a rate more than six percent greater than the 15 states with the least economic freedom;

-per-capita income in the 15 most economically free states grew a full 31-percent faster than in the 15 states with the lowest levels of economic freedom;

-in the states with the most economic freedom, employment growth was a full 216% higher than other states, including California, which ranks a dismal 47th out of 50 states in economic freedom, according to PRI’s U.S. Economic Freedom Index;

-New York still ranks dead last;
-in California two years ago the unemployment rate was 4.6 percent--it is now 7.7 %, predictable in a state that maintains conditions hostile to job growth. Contrast the record of other western states;
-the unemployment rate in Utah is 3.5 percent, less than half of California’s and 'hardly a month goes by without Utah announcing a corporate relocation or a new factory". Condensed from: Pacific Research Institute Vol. 13 No. 45: November 5, 2008 K. Lloyd Billingsley Editorial Director

It causes alarm to think we may have elected a President who may create less economic freedom. Barak Obama inspires hope and good will, and perhaps many good things will come of his Presidency in the social/moral world. Perhaps there will be less racism, both overt, and the sort that is hidden but just as malignant. Perhaps black hopes will cause fathers to return to families they have long abandonded.

Perhaps--many many things. Obama is a breath of fresh air, he is not afraid to demonstrate his education by being the most erudite-sounding President-elect in my lifetime, and his communication skills appear to be greater than Ronald Reagan, "The Great Communicator."

But he is untested in the eyes of national affairs. All we know of him is that he is the most liberal, the Senator furthest to the left in his voting record, perhaps in the history of the Legislature.

As evidence, his website says things such as this: "Barack Obama and Joe Biden will enact a windfall profits tax on excessive oil company profits to give American families an immediate $1,000 emergency energy rebate to help families pay rising bills. This relief would be a down payment on the Obama-Biden long-term plan to provide middle-class families with at least $1,000 per year in permanent tax relief." [emphasis added] http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/#jumpstart

There is no ontological definition for windfall profits. When government decides what is an "excessive" profit margin, you can bet the governement will want to do something to "redistribute" all that money. Despite the enormous profits made by Exxon-Mobile, the oil industry makes a smaller percentage in returns for every dollar invested than do the majority of businesses. The same with the auto industry, which if it was doing well, could be targeted as easily as the oil companies. But it was revealed a few days ago that General Motors is burning through $1 billion a month because of lost revenues. What if it was making $1 billion a month because people liked the cars they made? Would that be excessive profits, subject to windfall taxes?

What about Wal-Mart, the most successful and biggest company in the world? Sure, they keep prices low for those Americans who can't afford the expensive department stores. But look at their profits! Whoo-weee! Now there's something Obama could easily tax!

But the point is, everything Obama has said he would do with the economy will only make it less free, less capitalistic, and more taxable, speaking in terms of wealth-spreading. (His words.)

If I understand his ideas of making NAFTA more fair--in other words, removing any incentives government may have previously offered to business who move work out of the U.S.--then I agree whole heartedly. If his idea is to punish businesses who move out, then I disagree.

The fact is, Obama inspires hope for a better world, but from everything he has said and done--so far--we can expect less economic freedom in the U.S. in the coming years, not more.

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the SM of
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC.
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism TM,
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger TM, and
Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger Extra TM are the educational arms of the LLC and are:

© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

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