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If you live in Texas, the only health insurance you can buy is insurance regulated under Texas law.  But if bills before Congress (most notably, one sponsored by Arizona Republican Congressman John Shadegg), are enacted, Texans would be able to buy insurance regulated, say, by the laws of Virginia, or the laws of Delaware, or 47 other states, says John C. Goodman, President, CEO and the Kellye Wright Fellow of the National Center for Policy Analysis. 

Proponents claim this would greatly increase competition.  Opponents claim it would undermine "consumer protections."  Both claims are mainly wrong, says Goodman.  We should not expect the number of insurance companies trying to sell us insurance in Dallas, Texas to change at all, he explains.  And if we are worried about consumer protections, we could continue to buy Texas-regulated insurance, just as we have before. 

One thing that would not survive 50 state regulatory regime competition is guaranteed-issue and community rating in the individual market, says Goodman: 

• In the six states that impose such requirements the vast majority of people who are relatively healthy are overcharged so that the small percent who are sick can be undercharged.
• This form of private sector socialism would quickly dissolve, as the healthy sought cheaper insurance under other regulatory regimes. 

This would be a good outcome for healthy people because lower premiums would encourage the uninsured to buy insurance, says Goodman.  But would people with pre-existing conditions (who remain in shrinking pools with rising per capita costs) be unfairly burdened? 

• The solution that would face the least political resistance would be to exempt these six states from the proposal, unless they opt in.
• But a better solution would be for states to find more rational ways of subsidizing the care of high-cost patients. 

According to University of Minnesota economists Steve Parente and Roger Feldman: 

• Cross-state purchasing of health insurance would induce 12 million more people to obtain health insurance.
• That number would double if tax subsidies for health insurance were equalized — thus insuring 80 percent of the number of uninsured people the Senate (ObamaCare) health bill aims to insure — without any net cost to the federal government. 

Source: John C. Goodman, "Should We Be Able to Buy Health Insurance Across State Lines? " National Center for Policy Analysis, March 8, 2010. 

For text:

http://www.john-goodman-blog.com/should-we-be-able-to-buy-health-insurance-across-state-lines/ 

For more on Health Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=16

Related Blogs

President Obama last week sent a letter to congressional leaders indicating his support for including $50 million to fund demonstration projects to test medical malpractice case alternatives such as health courts.  Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius already has $23 million that she is preparing to hand out in grants for this purpose.  But are health courts the solution to the nation’s medical malpractice difficulties, asks the National Journal?  What are the best ideas for solving the problem of defensive medicine, and how significant is defensive medicine to lowering health care costs in the country? 

According to John C. Goodman, President, CEO and the Kellye Wright Fellow of the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), President Obama has no solution to the malpractice problem. 

The NCPA, has developed a very radical solution — one that would get victims compensated quickly, regardless of fault, and erect economic incentives to reduce adverse medical outcomes, whether or not they involve malpractice, says Goodman: 

• Basically, the family of any patient who experiences an unexpected (iatrogenic) hospital death would receive a check for, say, $250,000 (or maybe even $500,000) provided they waive in advance their common law right to file a tort claim.
• The insurers who pay off on these episode-specific policies would then become the monitors of doctor behavior and hospital quality.
• Those with lower mortality rates (for whatever reason) would pay lower premiums and therefore be able to charge lower fees to patients. 

Source: Marilyn Werber Serafini, "Medical Malpractice Solution?" NationalJournal.com, March 8, 2010; and John C. Goodman, "A Better Solution," NationalJournal.com, March 8, 2010. 

For text:

http://healthcare.nationaljournal.com/2010/03/medical-malpractice-solution.php?rss=1  

For NCPA plan:

http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/statehcreform/Chapter_10_Pages%20from%20State_HC_Reform_6-8-07-2.pdf

For more on Health Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=16

Rarely has a law hurt more vulnerable people more quickly than when Congress raised the minimum wage in three stages to $7.25 an hour from $5.15 an hour, beginning in May 2007, says the Wall Street Journal. 

A comparison of the three-stage increase in the minimum wage with the jobless rate for teens age 16 to 19 since 2007 reveals the following: 

• The first increase, to $5.85 from $5.15, came after a decade of no increases, and when the overall jobless rate was below 5 percent and the teen rate was 14.9 percent.
• The demand for labor was sufficiently strong in many areas that most employers were probably willing to absorb the higher wage.
• But as the minimum wage increased even as the overall job market began to worsen, the damage to teen job seekers became more severe.
• By the time the third increase to $7.25 from $6.55 took effect in July 2009, the teen jobless rate was 24.3 percent, and by October it peaked at 27.6 percent before dropping to 26.4 percent in January 2010.  

The story is even worse for black teens, who often have lower than average education levels or live in areas with fewer job prospects: 

• Their jobless rate climbed from 38.5 percent before the third wage hike to 49.8 percent in November 2009, before falling back to 43.8 percent in January.
• For black male teens, the rate climbed to 52.2 percent in December 2009 from 39.2 percent in July.
• The difference between the jobless rates for black teens and the entire population widened by 6 percentage points from June 2007 to January 2010.  

A Congress that has spent $862 billion to create jobs thus managed with its wage increase to harm tens of thousands of entry-level job seekers.  And it did so in the name of "compassion" and a "living wage."  In many cases that wage has since become zero, says the Journal. 

Source: Editorial, "The Lost Wages of Youth," Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2010. 

For text:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704761004575096150953378366.html 

For more on Economic Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=17

Related Blogs

We’ve heard all the usual complaints about Obamacare, says John Stossel, a commentator with FOX News: it would cost too much, it would forbid insurance companies from penalizing behavior that leads to bad health, it would force everyone to buy insurance (the big cause of sky-high costs).  But now John C. Goodman, President, CEO and the Kellye Wright Fellow of the National Center for Policy Analysis points out that Obamacare’s inscrutable formulas would have yet another unintended consequence. 

• Employers of low-paid workers would have an incentive NOT to provide insurance, because the workers could get much greater subsidies in the individual market ($19,400 compared to $2,295).
• Employers of high-paid workers would have an incentive to KEEP providing insurance, because it’s tax-free and the workers wouldn’t qualify for subsidies anyway. 

Employers’ subsidies are based on the average income of all their workers.  So to take full advantage of the subsidies, Goodman points out: 

• Basically firms with high-income folks will fire their groundskeepers, maids, custodians, etc. and contract out that work to a firm that employs low-wage labor and provides no health insurance.
• But getting from point A to point B requires workers to change employers — and that will not be a smooth affair; a lot of people will be fired and have to search for new employment. 

We will be left with industrial organization dictated not by economics, but by a subsidy system that can only be called bizarre, says Goodman. 

Obamacare has another big problem: 

• The House version would create marginal tax rates in excess of 60 percent for workers earning as little as $25,000; this is caused by the steep withdrawal of health insurance subsidies (in the exchange) as income rises.
• As is well known by economists and policymakers alike, when people get to keep only one-third of each extra dollar they earn, they react in all kinds of ways that are harmful to the economy; they will choose more leisure and less work. 

Health reform is no bargain if it imposes on the middle class the same marginal tax rates that high-income earners faced during the years of stagflation, says Goodman. 

Source: John Stossel, "Obamacare is Coming," FOX Business, March 5, 2010; and John C. Goodman, "Obamacare with Lipstick," National Center for Policy Analysis, March 3, 2010. 

For Stossel text:

http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/03/05/obamacare-is-coming/#ixzz0hKniOh5V 

For Goodman text:

http://www.john-goodman-blog.com/obamacare-with-lipstick/#more-9235 

For more on Health Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=16

Because of the nature of Social Security, innovation and efficiency improvements can only play a limited role in controlling its costs, says Josh Barro, a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute. 

With Social Security, innovation is essentially useless.  It’s hard to imagine a simpler government program than Social Security, which involves taking money from some people and sending it to other people, says Barro: 

• No amount of innovation will allow the government to send out a $1,000 check at a cost below $1,000.
• And the Social Security Administration has little non-benefit fat to cut — over 98 percent of Social Security’s costs go to benefits, meaning opportunities for savings in overhead are severely limited.
• The only ways to save real money on Social Security are to send out smaller checks or fewer checks. 

One innovative proposal for Social Security — private accounts — isn’t a money saver either, says Barro: 

• Every payroll tax dollar moved to a private account is one that the government can’t use to finance current operations — and therefore is a dollar that the government must now borrow in public markets.
• The rise in government-issued debt would soak up exactly the amount of capital unleashed in accounts and the economic effect would be a wash. 

Of course, the government could cut other spending to avoid issuing more debt, says Barro.  Rep. Paul Ryan’s Roadmap plan couples private Social Security accounts with benefit cuts and increases in the retirement age.  But it’s the non-innovative components of Ryan’s plan that provide real savings: the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that his plan would cut the deficit more if he scrapped privatization and kept his other Social Security reforms. 

Source: Josh Barro, "Innovation Isn’t Enough to Fix Entitlements," Real Clear Markets, March 2, 2010. 

For text:

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2010/03/02/innovation_isnt_enough_to_fix_entitlements_98365.html

For more on Social Security Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=39

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In defending his decision to go nuclear (i.e., using reconciliation to pass his unpopular health care bill), President Obama talked Tuesday about insurance company "abuses."  He talked about premium hikes in California.  He talked about a sick mom in Wisconsin.  He even talked (in extremely modest ways) about Republican ideas like tort reform and fighting Medicare fraud. 

What Obama didn’t mention was Massachusetts or bringing the benefits of Bay State reform to all America.  Quite simply, he avoided mentioning the Bay State’s attempt at government-run health care because it has been a debacle in Massachusetts, says columnist Michael Graham, of the Boston Herald. 

Here are a few "highlights" of the current status of the Obamacare experiment in Massachusetts: 

• The Bay State’s "universal" health insurance scheme is already $47 million over budget for 2010; "Romneycare," or "Obamacare Beta" as some are calling it, will cost taxpayers more than $900 million next year alone.
• Average premiums are the highest in the nation and rising.
• The state also spends 27 percent more on health care services, per capita, than the national average; those costs, contrary to what we were promised, have been going up faster here than nearly everywhere else.
• It’s creating bizarre marketplace mutations; in Massachusetts, Obamacare 1.0 is such a mess the governor is talking about imposing draconian price controls.
• Gov. Deval Patrick (D) has even suggested going to "capitation," a system where doctors get a fixed amount of money per patient — and then that’s it; which means it would become in your doctor’s financial interest never to see you again. 

All this damage to the taxpayers, the insured and the responsible business owners . . . and for what?  The percentage of uninsured Bay State residents has gone from around 6 percent to around 3 percent.  In other words, it’s a dud, says Graham. 

The damage Obamacare would do to the current health care system — where 85 percent of Americans are happy with their health care, by the way — could be so great, the only institution big enough to repair it would be the government.  The fact that the government inflicted that damage would be a moot point, says Graham. 

Source: Michael Graham, "Romneycare model a dud," Boston Herald, March 4, 2010. 

For text:

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view.bg?articleid=1237112 

For more on Health Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=16

While Congress has been debating health reform, employers have been creating new consumer-driven health care plans.  In fact, CDHC plans are the only type of health insurance that has been shown to reliably change patient and doctor behavior in ways that lower costs and improve the quality of care, says Ronald E. Bachman, FSA, MAAA, is President and CEO of Healthcare Visions, Inc. and a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis. 

More than half of employers now offer consumer-driven options, including Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) or Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs).  In 2010, nearly 18 million people will be enrolled, says Bachman. 

Federal legislation can stop progress in its tracks, however. For example, the health care bill passed by the Senate (December 23, 2009) does not directly outlaw HSA-eligible plans, but it restricts HSA options in insidious ways that will delay, deny, defeat and ultimately kill them, says Bachman:  

• HSA health plans are insurance plans that allow an individual and/or his employer to deposit funds into a special savings account.
• The funds are not subject to the income tax if withdrawals are used to pay out-of-pocket medical expenses.
• Right now, HSA plans are the only form of health insurance under which an individual’s out-of-pocket exposure is limited by law.
• Currently, the limits are $5,950 for individuals and $11,900 for families.
• A plan could have lower deductibles and require patient copays up the total limit, or it could have deductibles as high as $5,950/$11,900 so long as the plan pays all costs above those amounts.  

However: 

• The Senate bill limits the deductible for small group plans to $2,000 for singles and $4,000 for families — roughly one-third the level allowed under current HSA law — with copays above the deductible.
• Many people would choose a $5,950 deductible over a $2,000 deductible and place the premium savings in an HAS, but this is a choice the Senate bill would deny them.  

Source: Ronald E. Bachman, "Congress Declares War on Health Savings Accounts," March 5, 2010. 

For text:

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba698

For more on Health Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=16

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Utah is not the only Western state that is rejecting the left’s global warming regulation policies.  Last month Ariz. Gov. Jan Brewer (R) signed an executive order stating that Arizona will not endorse any emission-control plan that could raise costs for consumers and businesses, says the Heritage Foundation.  

What does it all mean?  According to the Arizona Republic: 

• The state will no longer participate in a groundbreaking attempt to limit greenhouse gas emissions across the West, a change in policy by Gov. Jan Brewer that will include a review of all the state’s efforts to combat climate change.
• Ariz. officials said the policy shift was rooted in concerns that the controversial emissions plan would slow the state’s economic recovery.  

The economic costs of cap-and-trade planned for the nation as a whole are bad enough, says Heritage: 

• A national cap-and-trade program would make the United States about $9.4 trillion poorer by 2035.
• Much of this decline would be from reduced economic productivity and job loss.
• Under the House legislation there would be 1.15 million fewer jobs on average than without a cap-and-trade bill.  

Western states would be particularly hard hit, says Heritage senior fellow Ben Lieberman: 

• Coal mining will be very hard hit, so Montana and Wyoming and other coal-producing states will see this important sector of their economies shrink significantly.
• The promise of oil shale in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming will never be realized under the House bill.
• Agriculture is hard hit, particularly things common in parts of the West that are not well positioned to partially defray their costs by availing themselves of offsets, like ranching on federal lands, fruits and vegetables, and potatoes.
• Since rural Westerners have to drive long distances during the course of each day, gasoline and diesel price increases hurt them more than other Americans. 

Source: Conn Carroll, "AZ Rejects Economy Killing Energy Taxes," Heritage Foundation, February 12, 2010. 

For text:

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/02/12/outside-the-beltway-az-quits-climate-endeavor/  

For report:

http://www.azcentral.com/12news/news/articles/2010/02/11/20100211climate-brewer0211-CP.html

For more on Economic Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=17

James Madison’s words regarding the “ultimate authority” for defending liberty (Federalist No. 46) ring as true today as in 1787, when he penned them.

Likewise, so do the words of his appointee to the Supreme Court, Justice Joseph Story, who wrote in his 1833 “Commentaries on the Constitution,” “The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”

In recent decades, the “enterprises of ambition” and “usurpation and arbitrary power” among Leftist politicians and their corrupt judicial lap dogs have become malignant, eating away at our Essential Liberty and our constitutional Rule of Law. This has never been more so than since the charlatan Barack Hussein Obama duped 67 million Americans into seating him in the executive branch.

Now more than ever, armed Patriots must stand ready, in the words of Patrick Henry, to “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel.”

In June 2008, the Supreme Court, by a narrow 5-4 vote (Scalia, Alito, Roberts, Thomas and Kennedy), reaffirmed, in District of Columbia v. Heller, that the people’s inherent right to keep and bear arms is plainly enumerated in our Constitution. The Court ruled that the Second Amendment ensures an individual right, that DC could not ban handguns, and that operable guns may be maintained in the homes of law-abiding DC residents.

This was an important decision affirming the plain language of our Second Amendment and its proscription against government infringement on “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

However, Heller pertained to a federal district, and while our Bill of Rights has primacy over state and municipal firearm restrictions, a Supreme Court case to give judicial precedent to that primacy has yet to be decided.

In his dissenting opinion in Heller, 89-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens expressed concern that the case “may well be just the first of an unknown number of dominoes to be knocked off the table,” should “the reality that the need to defend oneself may suddenly arise in a host of locations outside the home.”

One might only hope!

This week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in McDonald v. Chicago, the next test case for the Second Amendment, which will determine if Chicago’s onerous gun restrictions are in violation of the Constitution’s plain language prohibition of such regulations by states and municipalities.

Otis McDonald, the 76-year-old plaintiff in this case, is challenging Chicago regulations that make it unlawful for him to keep a handgun in his home for self-defense.

My colleague Dave Hardy, a scholar of constitutional law, particularly the Second Amendment, summarized the arguments as follows: “McDonald v. Chicago illustrated the dichotomy between a government of laws and a government of men. One wing of the Court (perhaps the majority) looked to the essential enumeration of the right to arms; the other seemed to argue that since they, as powerful individuals, did not care for the right, or thought it was one of the Framers’ bad ideas, they could disregard it.”

That is an apt summary of how all cases are handled by the federal judiciary.

Typical of Leftmedia summations, The New York Times opined, “At least five justices appeared poised to expand the scope of the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to bear arms.”

Expand?

Only the most uninformed opinion would suggest that asserting the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms in Chicago is an expansion of the Second Amendment’s scope. But considering the source…

Mr. McDonald’s lawyers insist that the 14th Amendment’s “privileges or immunities” clause (“no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States”) is grounds for overturning Chicago’s gun restrictions, and those of other states and municipalities across the our great nation.

Unfortunately, trying to establish a 14th Amendment precedent in and of itself undermines the authority of our Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

Recall that there was great debate among our Founders concerning the need for any Bill of Rights. It was argued that such a specific enumeration of rights was redundant and unnecessary to the Constitution and that listed (and unlisted) rights might then be construed as malleable rather than unalienable, as amendable rather than “endowed by our Creator” as noted in the Constitution’s supreme guidance, the Declaration of Independence.”

To that end, Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 84, “I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. … For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?”

Madison prevailed, however, and for clarity he introduced a preamble to the Bill of Rights: “The Conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution…”

In other words, the Bill of Rights was enumerated to ensure against encroachment on our inherent rights. Read in context, the Bill of Rights is both an affirmation of innate individual rights (as noted by Thomas Jefferson: “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time…”), and a clear delineation of constraints upon the central government.

Note that the Second Amendment is unique in the Bill of Rights in that it expressly asserts the “right to keep and bear arms” is “necessary,” more so than just important, to a “free state.”

But as feared by those who argued such rights should not be recorded, the “despotic branch,” as Jefferson presciently dubbed the judiciary, has endeavored to limit those enumerated rights by way of convoluted and fraudulent precedents.

Likewise, citing the 14th Amendment’s “privileges or immunities” clause suggests the Second Amendment was and remains amendable. That, of course, is an egregious affront to Essential Liberty — but that’s the way the game is played today.

Currently, 41 states issue concealed handgun carry permits, or don’t require them at all, for law-abiding citizens. Seven other states allow local municipalities to determine gun restrictions; Illinois and Wisconsin do not even allow that option.

Much of the debate about the need to infringe upon the right to bear arms is framed in terms of safety. Gun-control advocates argue that more guns equal more crime. Those advocating for more lenient gun laws argue that more guns equal less crime. Only one of these diametrically opposed views can be true.

While the latter group is factually and demonstrably correct, basing Second Amendment arguments on the issue of safety is as fallacious as attempting to assert the 14th Amendment argument.

In an editorial this week, the conservative Washington Times opined, “The year after the Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia’s handgun ban and gun-lock requirements, the capital city’s murder rate plummeted 25 percent. The high court should keep that in mind…”

No, they should not.

After all, violence is a cultural problem, not a gun problem, and certainly not a Second Amendment problem.

What each member of the Supreme Court must only keep in mind is the plain language of the Constitution, the Second Amendment and the First Principle of his or her oath: “To support and defend our Constitution,” as should everyone who has taken that oath.

Accordingly, the High Court should find that the gun restrictions in Chicago, and by extension, those in any other state, are in direct violation of the inherent rights of the people “to keep and bear arms.”

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Mark Alexander
Publisher, PatriotPost.US

Increasing the minimum wage was meant to raise the living standards of millions of Americans holding unskilled, entry level positions.  But it may have led to the elimination of 550,000 jobs — opening the possibility that such wage levels should be revised, suggests a new study from Ball State University. 

A study of part-time workers monitored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 1999 to 2009 found that raising the minimum wage to its current level of $7.25 during the recent recession caused some businesses to scale back on filling vacant positions or eliminate jobs altogether, says Michael J. Hicks, director of Ball State’s Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER). 

Other findings: 

• About 67 percent of teenagers and young adult minimum wage workers live in households with incomes at least twice the poverty level (for example $44,000 for a family of four).
• Adult workers toiling at minimum wage have limited skill.
• About two-thirds of all adult minimum wage workers have a high school degree or less.
• One benefit of the minimum wage keeping some of these workers out the labor market is that it forces them to obtain additional education and training in the workforce development network. 

Policy recommendations: 

• Creating lower minimum wages for students and new hires could preserve jobs.
• The student minimum wage would permit employers to hire seasonal workers without bearing the full cost of adult employment. 

Also: 

• Introducing a tenure-scaled minimum wage would remove the disincentive for employers to hire unskilled workers.
• Unskilled workers could be hired at lower wages but be paid more after 90 to 120 days of employment.
• Such a policy would allow more seasonal employment by youths and permit employers not to go through the expense of training unskilled workers. 

"Both of these policy recommendations would create different tiers of workers," says Hicks.  "While this is not typically a desirable outcome of legislation, it is a vast improvement on the current legislation, which has its own tiers of workers: those with jobs at the minimum wage, and those without jobs who would be willing to work at wages beneath the current federal minimum wage." 

Source: Michael J. Hicks, "Who Lost Jobs When the Minimum Wage Rose?" Ball State University, February 8, 2010. 

For text:

http://www.insideindianabusiness.com/newsitem.asp?ID=40017#middle  

For study:

http://cms.bsu.edu/Academics/CentersandInstitutes/BBR/~/media/393F0DC1A6E34964A6C2ECB6A5E10115.ashx 

For more on Economic Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=17