Today’s Honolulu Advertiser is urging us to turn off our lights tonight for just one hour. According to the editorial, if we observe “earth hour” we will be doing a small part to save the globe. But why stop with just earth hour when we could follow the lead of those who observe earth year?
Posted by Harry Messenheimer
Update: check out this commentary by Professors Perry and Boudreaux.
Lingle-Aiona Initiatives 2008, recently published in the Honolulu Advertiser are available on-line using this link. This post relates to healthcare, one of 14 initiative areas contained in the document. Some initiatives are recycled or continued from prior years. Stay tuned to see how the bills/initiatives progress.
Healthcare - CCA-23(08)/HB3102/SB3024 caps various limits for malpractice awards; GOV-13(08)/HB3123/SB3045 to reduce the number of instance where a certificate of need (CON) is required to begin or end offering medical services, change location of services or construct any type of medical facility, requiring public hearings and to giving greater weigh to county councils’ decisions in these matters.
By Brian T. Schwartz at TCS Daily:
Remember how in grade school, the teacher would punish the whole class for the actions of just a few disruptive students? This is an early lesson in collective punishment, which is usually practiced during wartime or under martial law.Collective punishment has now arrived with compulsory medical insurance. Known as an “individual mandate,” politicians of both major parties have supported it. Compulsory politically-defined insurance is law in Massachusetts, is up for consideration in California and Colorado, and Democratic presidential candidates endorse it nationally.
Politicians peddle compulsory insurance under the guise of “personal responsibility.” The story is that the uninsured receive medical care without paying for it. Their freeloading passes costs onto the insured, which increases premium costs. Compulsory insurance, say its supporters, can remedy this problem by forcing both the insured and uninsured to purchase medical insurance - as defined by politicians.
This rationale is flawed. (more…)
Our failures in medical care are catching up to us as well as the Brits and Canadians. Now we find “Medical Travel Today” as a way to find quality care at a decent cost. Check it out here (requires email for free subscription)
In what has become an annual ritual, Medicare announces a cut in physicians’ fees, and physicians threaten that patients will lose access to care. And this time they really mean it.
An average 10.1% fee cut was slated to take effect on Jan 1, 2008. Two-thirds of the doctors in Sarasota County said they would stop accepting new Medicare patients if federal payments don’t improve.
For the first time in either group’s memory, the AMA and the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) are working together to lobby Congress on this issue.
The Honorable John Shadegg
United States House of Representatives
306 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Representative Shadegg:
On behalf of the 362,000 members of the National Taxpayers Union (NTU), I write in strong support of the Health Care Choice Act. By allowing consumers to purchase health care from out-of-state providers, this legislation would greatly expand the variety of insurance choices in the marketplace, thus reducing the effect of onerous state regulations and bringing costs down.
The number of Americans lacking health insurance is of great concern to many, but it should not serve as a pretext for larger, more intrusive government. The Health Care Choice Act simply opens up restricted state markets and gives consumers additional coverage options — without the creation of yet another federal program or bureaucracy. This approach addresses the problem while respecting markets and personal freedom.
Excerpt from The Pew Charitable Trusts report press release on funding government retiree benefits. Read the whole press release here. It’s a good summary.
Pensions
Nationally, state pension plans are in reasonably good shape. At the end of fiscal year (FY) 2006, states had set aside over $1.99 trillion of the $2.35 trillion they had made in pension promises—leaving about $361 billion unfunded.
But the good news nationally masks important variations across the states:
View the whole 73-page report here. View the Hawaii fact sheet here. Read the Honolulu Advertiser article that finds the report says “Hawaii’s $6.8 billion long-term bill for government retiree healthcare is the second-worst among states when viewed on a per-capita basis.”
This week, the DVD of Michael Moore’s Sicko hits the shelves. To commemorate, the next issue of ‘Grass in Review‘ will take a look at health care, and Moore’s film specifically.
Much talk about health issues in the U.S. focuses on the plight of the uninsured. Connie Marshner at TCS Daily examines one solution to this problem: free charitable clinics.
Read more here.
Some polls show health care as the top domestic policy issue among the American electorate. It will surely be a major issue in the 2008 Presidential elections. According to Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute, “Health care reform is hot this election season and Presidential hopefuls from both parties appear weekly with promises of reforms that will supposedly solve our system’s problems with universal coverage at affordable costs.”
Candidates probably won’t be looking too seriously at adopting the European single-payer model in the U.S., but they may find themselves looking a bit closer to home, namely Massachusetts. Should they? Ms. Pipes has her doubts:
Read the rest of her analysis here.
Merrill Matthews, Jr, Resident Scholar at the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) has created a 60 second sound byte on this topic. You can also read the text if you don’t want to use Windows Media Player or other program to play the file, but I recommend you do.
Use this link to view/hear the soundbyte.