The Rio Grande Foundation hosted David Boaz in Albuquerque a few weeks ago and Bob Clark had us both on the air. The interview is now available online.

I have often written on the myth that America has a health care system that resembles a “free market.” Here and here just to name a few recent examples. Well, I was up to my old tricks again in a recent letter that appeared in Albuquerque’s alternative weekly, The Alibi. The letter is copied and pasted below:

[Re: News Feature, “Health Care on Life Support,” July 16-22] Simon McCormack did a reasonably good job of discussing some of the problems currently facing American health care and some of the “reform” options now percolating in Congress. But, as is too often the case, the story aligns “free markets” with the status quo. Dr. Jason Cohen in particular is quoted in the story saying that certain doctors, insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry support the current “privatized model.”

While I’d like to give the media the benefit of the doubt in confusing the current health care system with a free market system, one would think that it would be hard to overlook the fact that government spending on health care accounts for 46 percent of all such spending. That hardly sounds “free market” to me.

Additionally, federal tax policies favor third-party-purchased coverage by allowing employers to purchase coverage tax-free, thus taking cost decisions out of the hands of individuals and reducing the incentives for average workers to be cost-conscious consumers when it comes to health care. As if that is not enough, states also regulate care, thus piling on costly mandates. New Mexico has 51 of them.

America’s health care system is by no means perfect, but the supporters of “reform” have not shown how still more government intervention in health care will result in higher quality, less expensive care.

An additional example, that I have not previously used is that Congress could mandate that insurance companies take “all-comers” by passing a regulation called “guaranteed issue” and it could also add on an individual mandate (I’m describing the basics of the Massachusetts plan and parts of Obama’s). Given these regulations which would dramatically alter (for the worse) the health care system, it is worth noting that these do not result in “socialized” medicine or even government taking over an increased level of government spending. Needless to say, numbers can be deceptive, but Americans should not labor under the misperception that we have anything close to a free market health care system.

On Saturday’s show, AM 1550 KIVA station owner Don Davis hosted. We discussed the Rio Grande Foundation’s recent study on the financial condition of the Rail Runner and an opinion piece I wrote on the train which included analysis of the potential expansion of the train. Listen to the show here.

Using “feel-good” rhetoric and positive words to sell legislative ideas is nothing new. Remember the PATRIOT Act? Who could vote against the PATRIOT Act, especially right after 9/11.

Anyway, at least with the health care bill now moving through Congress, at least we still have time to stop bad things from happening. The National Taxpayers Union has put together a great one-page flier illustrating how often President Obama and those in Congress who want to further expand government control over health care use positive rhetoric about choice, freedom, and competition while in a count of the actual words contained in the bill, words like taxes, regulation, and penalty are used far more frequently. That’s a fairly succinct illustration of the rhetoric vs. reality on the health care issue. Might be something useful to print and bring/hand out at town hall meetings.

With the Albuquerque Journal focusing like a laser on New Mexico’s poor education results recently (and justifiably show), I questioned Richardson’s credentials as an “education governor.” Thankfully, we at the Rio Grande Foundation are not the only advocates of real education solutions. Our friends at Educate New Mexico are just one of several groups that have been working on proposals that would improve educational opportunities in New Mexico.

Late last week, Daniel Ulibarri, the Executive Director of Educate New Mexico wrote an excellent opinion piece explaining and making the case for tax credits. It can be found here.

We at the Rio Grande Foundation have long been critical of the Rail Runner. But Governor Richardson calls it a “success” and politicians around the state want the train extended to their communities. The ultimate plan seems to be to run it south to El Paso and north to Denver.

Unfortunately, as Jim Scarantino points out in his new report for the Rio Grande Foundation, “Red Ink Express,” and I point out in my article “Reports of Rail Runner’s success greatly exaggerated,” the Rail Runner is not a success, at least when it comes to operating with minimal government subsidy (and that doesn’t even include the massive $400 million taxpayers invested to build the system).

Governor Bill Richardson is all over the morning paper talking about his education reform ideas. He claims his “bold plan” will result in 10,000 more high school grads. I love it when politicians claim they can sway the actions of multitudes of individuals with the wave of a hand or a simple policy change. Of course, his new-found concern is education is a result of the state finally admitting that the real graduation rate in New Mexico is 54 percent.

This data is not “new.” Similar data has been available for years stating that only 50 percent of New Mexico high schoolers graduate. The difference is that the political establishment is finally admitting it. Unfortunately, Richardson’s “reforms” which at best replicate the better aspects of No Child Left Behind (testing across all ethnic groups) and at worst simply hide behind politically-correct pandering (creation of an Office of Hispanic Education) will do nothing to improve graduation rates.

Governor, you said when you first ran for Governor you supported education tax credits to provide for school choice. How about advocating for those? How about vouchers narrowly targeted at foster care and special needs kids? How about we use Florida, where Hispanic students perform better than the average New Mexico student, as a model?

The folks at Health Care News are covering the debate over Obama’s health care proposal and state health care issues like no one else. I have been pleased to provide my perspective on various stories that have been published in the paper and online. I have several quotes sprinkled throughout the August edition.

First and foremost, I discuss the strategies that need to be employed by opponents of Obama’s health care plan.

I also weigh in on the Pfizer drug company’s offering free medications to unemployed Americans, discuss efforts in <a href="“>Michigan and Arizona proposal to expand Medicaid, and lastly I comment on Sen. Jon Kyl’s legislation, introduced in the US Senate, to prevent health care rationing.

In case you are not already aware given the debates rampaging in Washington, we are having a mayoral election in Albuquerque this October. There are three candidates, two of whom, Richard Romero and RJ Berry, have been on “Speaking Freely” (I like both of them personally a great deal). Listen to Richard’s show here and RJ’s here. We are working to get Mayor Marty on the show as well now that he is officially in the race.

Anyway, I’ve looked at the visions and policy prescriptions from each candidate. Berry, Romero, and Chavez. Unfortunately for the challengers, it seems that Mayor Marty has spent a lot more time on his vision than they have and he seems to steal their thunder, particularly on the issues of open government and transparency.

The challengers, while I do believe they will shake things up, haven’t used their own issue and vision statements to differentiate themselves from the policies of the current Administration in two major ways: taxes and business friendliness.

As the Rio Grande Foundation has pointed out in the past, Albuquerque has the heaviest tax burden of any city in the state. This is mostly the result of our heavy property tax burden, but the Mayor has been party to several local tax hikes. Also, while the Mayor promotes jobs and small business, he and his Administration makes it more difficult for businesses to set up shop in the City.

The good news is that the Rio Grande Foundation has created a candidate survey for all mayoral and council candidates in the City. The results will be posted soon and our questions may give the candidates yet another opportunity to differentiate themselves. Keep an eye out for that!

As a state and local think tank, we opposed the federal stimulus bill, but did not articulate many of the specific reasons for our opposition — aside from the fact that temporary economic stimuli have never worked. That said, two of our economists on staff, Ken Brown and Micha Gisser recently tackled the stimulus on the pages of the Albuquerque Journal’s Business Journal.

The article, “Stimulus plan too big, too late to help,” can be found here.

The Lewin Group, a highly respected health care policy and management consulting firm, has examined the impact of the American Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 (H.R. 3200).

In New Mexico, the impact of the health care bill on private coverage, the uninsured, physicians and hospitals, as found by the Lewin Group, is as follows:

– 45 percent of privately insured New Mexico residents would transition out of private insurance.
– 51 percent of New Mexico residents with employer-based coverage would lose their current insurance.
– 82 percent of New Mexico residents in a health insurance exchange would end up in the public plan.
– 49 percent of the uninsured in New Mexico would still lack coverage.
– Physicians in New Mexico could see their net annual income decline by $136.7 million, as a consequence of the new public plan.
– Hospitals in New Mexico could have their net annual income fall by about $314.6 million, with hospital total margins dropping to 1 percent.

While the Washington Post attacked the Lewin Group in a recent story, the story was unable to refute the numbers cited above. More importantly, Lewin’s clients include the government and groups with a variety of perspectives, including the left-leaning Commonwealth Fund.

The numbers above should be a wake-up call to those who think that Obamacare will solve our health care problems.

I couldn’t make this week’s episode of Speaking Freely. I was actually heading to a meeting in Santa Fe (I took the RailRunner and that is a different story). Anyway, earlier in the week Jim asked the Democratic Party which is located next door to the KIVA Studios and they told him they would send someone to discuss the health care proposal making its way through Congress…but they never sent anyone. So, Jim and the producer Double C ad-libbed and took calls on the issue. Listen to the show here.

Recently, one of Governor Richardson’s lead advisors on health care issues argued on the pages of the Albuquerque Journal that the so-called “public option” is the best fix for our health care system.

A national public option is perhaps the most important step in the reform process. What can a public option do to fix the well-identified problems? First, by being a good public option that is national in scope, it will allow for the creation of one large actuarial pool across state lines, thereby dispersing risk and allowing small state like New Mexico to take advantage of large pools.

Second, every American should be able to obtain coverage. This means coverage under a private plan, or coverage under a public plan. Patients should not be turned away because of a pre-existing medical condition and they should not be turned away because they cannot afford coverage.

Third, a good public option must include coverage of all essential medical services. This includes preventative care, maternity leave, disease management, and more.

Finally, a good public insurance option will enforce transparency and comparative costs across plans and providers, as well as report on benchmarks of quality and outcomes.

By “public option,” Tryon means “Medicare for all.” Of course, enlarging actuarial pools is a nice idea, but allowing patients to wait until they are sick in order to get insurance is like buying auto insurance after an accident. Nice idea, but hardly fair.

As he states in point three, a public option must be very robust. This is means that young people will be forced to pay more for costly insurance plans. No “bare bones” policies will be available and this likely means that my Health Savings Account will be eliminated as an option.

Of course, advocates of “Medicare for All” never mention the unfunded liabilities associated with Medicare. They also love to claim that a “public option” won’t crowd out private insurance because, “if the free market is so efficient, it should be able to compete with a government-subsidized plan.” Of course, they also fail to realize that simply taking money from unwilling taxpayers is, at least currently, very efficient. They don’t seem to believe that the “crowd out” effect (as it relates to demand) matters.

The quote above is from Mahatma Gandhi and it described how his movement eventually achieved victory. Apparently, although we skipped the ridicule part, from reading the pages of the Albuquerque Journal, we at the Rio Grande Foundation must be getting close to victory. After all, our opponents are fighting us and our ideas harder than ever. Why else would readers attack us three times in published letters during just the past week? To me, that seems to indicate a high level of effectiveness and proximity to victory.

First, on Monday, a reader wrote this letter in response to my recent article on “Health Care for All.” Yesterday, I picked up the paper only to see a reader attempt to discredit another organization, CARE, through their association with us. In a letter entitled, “Jimmy Carter Had It Right,” Marita K. Noon’s commentary “Green on the Surface, Dirty Underneath,” is fitting for the executive director of the Citizens Alliance for Responsible Energy — an ally of the Rio Grande Foundation.

Lastly, in today’s paper, a letter writer again decries our opposition to “Medicare for All,” stating:

“Think Tank Needs To Get Real on Need for Health-Care Reform”

THINK-TANK ESSAYS on real-life issues are always interesting to read but are generally lacking in usefulness, and Paul Gessing’s recent op-ed on health-care reform is no exception. He suggests that we limit the government’s role in the health-care industry in order to “ restore the doctor-patient relationship by empowering consumers to shop around for the highest quality care at the best price.”

Where is he? When I had health insurance, the company would send me a list of approved doctors, hospitals and pharmacies that they had already forged working agreements with and that would guarantee their profitability but not my satisfaction.

I currently have no health insurance because the last company I had a relationship with gave me an offer of $800 a month, with a $50 co-pay and a $2,000 deductible. I shopped, but the only others doing business in my area were mysteriously similar in terms and money.

We will get health-care reform. Approximately 48 million Americans have no health care, and millions more have it but can’t afford to use it. I will guess that when the uninsured number reaches 100 million, in say seven years, the medical-industrial complex will realize that they have priced themselves out of the market and that there are no more new customers to be had.

They will then run panic-stricken to the federal government and beg for a bailout. They will then call it health-care reform.

The writer seems to believe that our opposition to government-run health care results from alleged support of the insurance industry as it currently exists and functions. This could not be further from the truth. The key to free market health care and reforming the existing system is to do away with the third-party-payer system which places undue emphasis on health insurance companies. Insurance should play a role that is limited to true insurance and should not be the first place we go when Americans seek health care.

An excellent article appeared recently in the American Spectator. Rather than directly targeting what we know — Obama’s plan will dramatically increase federal control over Americans’ health care — the author, Philip Klein targets an even more important topic, what we know but that isn’t so.

Among the myths that hinder opponents of government-run health care are the “fact” that we have a free market health care system (I have written about this in the past and the “fact” that 46 million Americans are without health care. Many good points made in the article and if conservatives and free market advocates can kill this federal takeover and then work to expand free market health care while educating Americans about the 46 million, we’ll be in a much better position to enact positive reforms in the future.

If you did not attend the Rio Grande Foundation’s “Lights of Liberty” luncheon, you missed out on a truly amazing event (I’m not saying that because I’m the President of RGF). We had 170 liberty lovers gathered at the Marriott Pyramid in Albuquerque to witness several awards being given to the Foundation’s supporters and leaders in the fight for liberty including former Governor Gary Johnson and current Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones.

Also, David Boaz of the Cato Institute gave a powerful talk about “Liberty in Crisis.” The video can be found here:

On Saturday, July 25, 3rd district candidate Adam Kokesh dropped by the KIVA studios for an hour-long discussion of his personal history and campaign for Congress. Listen to the interview here.

David Boaz will appear on Bob Clark’s show this morning from 9am to 10am. Tune in! And don’t forget, the “Lights of Liberty” luncheon is today at the Albuquerque Pyramid hotel. See you there.

New Mexico State Senator Sue Wilson Beffort had an excellent opinion piece in today’s Albuquerque Journal. As Beffort points out, it is useful to note that New Mexico has a whole host of public programs available for the uninsured, that people with pre-existing health conditions are not denied insurance (as reform proponents often claim), and that prescription drugs are actually becoming more affordable for both the elderly and the general public. As Beffort summarizes her argument, Congress should consider maximizing these programs and their effectiveness before completely revising our entire health care system.

In addition to this piece, a reader attacked my recent opinion piece. The author, Leon Logan, writes:

Paul Gessing’s column on July 20 is pure propaganda that is a coordinated and intensive effort to maintain the status quo in health care.

He says that the “heavy hand” of the government and its bureaucracy are the reasons for our expensive health-care system. The Food and Drug Administration is given as an example. I suppose his “research” has determined that the “heavy hand” of the government was responsible for our current financial situation. Medicare’s bureaucracy is about one third that of private insurance “bureaucracy.”

The Rio Grande Foundation is supposed to be a “nonpartisan, tax exempt, research and educational organization.” I guess the fact that we have the most expensive health-care system in the world, rank about 35th in results … and the only “free market” system was too obscure for “research” to reveal.

Not surprisingly, Logan argues that I want the “status quo.” This is patently false and I mention some specific reforms at the end of the piece. I’ve also made the case for free market reforms elsewhere. And then he goes on to exempt the government from any and all responsibility for the current financial crisis, a very complex situation that resulted from many factors, including government policy.

Lastly, the cartoon below is an excellent summary of the “uninsured” situation in the United States.

Our good friend Marita Noon over at the Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy had an excellent op-ed in the Albuquerque Journal recently (you can read it here). The basic point of the article is that even “green” energy sources like wind power require mineral resources from the earth. Unfortunately, environmental zealots, many of whom preach the benefits of green jobs that they say will inevitably result from a taxpayer-subsidized shift to their preferred sources of energy, often stand in the way of efforts to access those needed resources here at home.

Americans are abundantly knowledgeable about the shortcomings of their health care system. On top of this is the drivel from the mainstream media touting the wonders of socialized medicine overseas. Fortunately, there are many Americans who have first-hand experience with foreign medical systems. And, while personal stories vary based on the individual, the importance of these first-hand accounts cannot be denied.

The Rio Grande Foundation’s Research Director, Ken Brown’s wife Agnes is of Dutch decent and has had significant dealings with the system. In this brief article, “Dutch Health Care, I’ll Take Albuquerque,” Agnes Brown explains how the system places onerous restrictions on end-of-life care and burdens taxpayers.

Also, I will be debating Carol Miller on health care on “In Focus” on KNME (Channel 5 in Albuquerque) this evening at 7pm. Tune in.

The Rio Grande Foundation hasn’t really done any work on the wolf reintroduction issue. After all, the killing of wolves was subsidized by US taxpayers.

That said, we do have serious concerns about the cost and scope of federal programs. That is the tack that our investigative journalist, Jim Scarantino, took in his new report “Does the Federal Government Value Wolves More Than Humans? The Money Says It All.” The press release is available here.

Several governors around the nation have been speaking out in opposition or “with concern” about the health care plans being pushed by President Obama and Congressional Democrats. A New York Times article about this can be found here. In the article, New Mexico’s Bill Richardson is quoted as saying “I’m personally very concerned about the cost issue, particularly the $1 trillion figures being batted around.”

While not explicitly opposing the plan, Richardson’s comments are clearly negative and should be cheered by opponents of government-run health care. Of course, we all know that Richardson proposed his own government-run health care scheme a few years back. Richardson’s proposal was a bit more like the Massachusetts plan that is also failing, but there are enough differences between the two, that I suppose Richardson could support one and not the other.

At this point, an excellent question might be “What say you Diane Denish?”

President Obama has increased spending to unprecedented levels. This has rightfully caused a great deal of consternation among broad swaths of American society. Hopefully it will result in the deaths of legislation that would restrict our health care and energy choices while killing economic growth.

But which president bears the greatest responsibility for our current predicament? As much as Obama has done to grow the federal government, George W. Bush still retains the dubious distinction as the architect of our current economic mess. As Ivan Eland of the Independent Institute points out:

The U.S. government is deeper in debt than it has been since just after World War II. When Bill Clinton, who actually reduced the federal deficit as a portion of GDP, left office, the Congressional Budget Office projected an $800 billion dollar yearly budget surplus for the years 2009 to 2012. Now CBO projects an annual budget deficit of a whopping $1.2 trillion.

Although Republicans are blaming Barack Obama for this gargantuan budget gap, George W. Bush is responsible for 53 percent of the total, according to the New York Times. Another 37 percent is due to the recession of the early part of the decade and the global meltdown that began in late 2007. Obama is responsible for only 10 percent of the total. Yet the reason that Obama’s portion is so small is because George W. Bush, a big-government Republican, was in office for eight years, and Obama has been in office less than six months. Obama has been spending at a phenomenal rate—on a pork-filled stimulus bill and an expansive domestic agenda.

Thus, Obama is guilty of making Bush’s legacy of massive red ink even worse. Obama’s budget would double the projected deficit over the next 10 years. By 2019, federal spending is projected to be an eye-popping quarter of the nation’s GDP. By contrast, for four decades federal taxation has averaged about 18 percent of GDP. These massive deficits, accumulating as a monstrous national debt, could cause hyperinflation and the prolonged economic stagnation (stagflation) that would make the 1970s look like an economic picnic.

The good news is that Obama still has time to pull the country out of this economic nose-dive. If he fails to restrain the federal leviathan, he’ll undoubtedly surpass Bush in the big-spending, big-debtor category.