Health Care 
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Cato Scholars Evaluate State of the Union Address
A group of Cato scholars -- ranging in discipline from education to foreign policy to economics to health care and more -- analyze President Obama's State of the Union speech. They evaluate the strength of his policy positions, including what he did well and what he could do to improve.
What Republicans Can & Can't Do
Michael Tanner, a senior fellow and health care reform specialist at the Cato Institute, lays out what Republicans can and can't do regarding the healthcare bill that congressional Democrats forced to passage this past spring. More than reveling in their symbolic victory, Republicans need to work around the barriers erected by Democrats, the president, or legal procedure. Forcing Dems to answer specific questions on-the-record removes deniability and encourages accountability. Tanner notes that complete repeal is quite unlikely before 2012, but Republicans can responsibly represent voters' discontent by beginning "the step-by-step dismantling of ObamaCare," adding free-market reforms or defunding it entirely. A lot has changed now that the “power of the purse” has changed hands.
Taking Government to a Whole New Level
Cato chairman Robert Levy explains the new role of government that Congress has brought into existence with its expansive policies. Specifically addressing Obamacare legislation, Levy uses analogy to illustrate that the new legislation is an unprecedented advance of government into citizens' lives, and raises serious questions of its constitutionality. Government has never before been afforded authority to mandate the active economic actions of its people, but with Obamacare it does explicitly that. Levy warns, "Beware the new role for government that the political class has put on the table."
Free Cato E-Book on Healthcare
America is at a major crossroads in the debate on healthcare, especially in light of the push towards government control through Obamacare. While some blame markets and advocate for centralized control, others call attention to myriad industries where markets increase efficiency, lower costs and expand reach. Cato scholars Michael Tanner and Michael Cannon explain ways for developing a healthcare system that provides consumer choice and competition, analyzing the best and worst ideas in health care reform on both the right and left. For a limited time, their book, Healthy Competition: What's holding healthcare back and how to fix it, is offered as a free download. Check it out today, and understand what’s going wrong with healthcare and how to fix it!
The Real Health Care Debate: Who Decides?
Cato's Doug Bandow presents the case for patient control of health insurance in Investor's Business Daily. He says, "'Reform' is a question of direction. Expand government, and especially federal, control. Or increase patient choice and private options." If people decide which cars to buy, how much to spend on art, how big of a house to buy, why should the most important decisions about their health be made by somebody else, especially impersonal government? Bandow advocates for the control of health insurance to be moved out of the hands of employers, not into the hands of government but back to the individual citizens.
Healthcare Hoopla
Michael McConnell, law professor at Stanford University and scholar at the Hoover Institution, discusses the revived healthcare debate in light of the Constitution. He says that the current 'reconciliation' process being pursued by House Democrats would "enable Congress to vote on legislation that fixes flaws in the Senate health-care bill without facing a Senate filibuster, and without requiring House members to vote in favor of a Senate bill that is now politically toxic." All niceties aside, however, McConnell notes that such a process explicitly violates the Constitution, and a 1998 Supreme Court decision. Democrats are seeking for a way to enact invasive laws while retaining political anonymity. "The Constitution," McConnell says, "was drafted to prevent that."
Cato scholar Michael Cannon presents several other affronts to liberty by the House healthcare push on the Cato blog here.
Beware: Excessive and Unreasonable Power
In an article appearing in The Freeman, Steven Horwitz explains that Obama's revised healthcare push makes matters worse than the original bill because it "combine(s) two bad ideas: price controls and rejection of the rule of law." Price controls cause private insurers to lose incentives and leave the market, paving the way for even more government intervention. Horwitz claims that the more important problem is Obama's proposed government "oversight," because it undermines the Rule of Law, which requires that policies are predictable and applicable to all, including government. Horwitz warns, "When the State steps between buyer and seller, we get bad economic consequences along with growth in unreasonable, excessive, and discretionary government power."
Tea Partiers Should Get Serious
There is no doubt that "Tea Partiers" have impacted the political climate over the past year. But, for their impact to be more than superficial, they need to be more consistent, says Cato VP Gene Healy. Specifically, reformers need to focus on ceasing the “profoundly unconservative project of trying to socially engineer failed societies like Afghanistan into modernity,” and should adopt more ambitious healthcare goals, like Paul Ryan’s ‘Roadmap for America’s Future.’ "What this country needs is a political movement that will pressure (politicians) to change their ways,” Healy claims, adding that the Tea Partiers could do just that, "if they're serious."
Is Obamacare Unconstitutional?
In an NPR audio clip and article, lawyers and scholars discuss the constitutionality of the Obamacare legislation that mandates individuals to purchase insurance or face fines. Some scholars, including Cato's Randy Barnett, say that there is no precedent for, in essence, taxing people just for living. Barnett states that that such a mandate extends beyond the enumerated powers of the Constitution. Others, in favor of the mandate, say that there is a first time for everything, citing the creation of the Social Security Administration as an example of a broad and monumental new federal program. Scholars on both sides say that this debate may end up before the Supreme Court.
To listen to the 4 minute audio clip of this story, click here.
The Senate Pulled a Fast One
An enormously broad healthcare bill barely passed in the Senate early this week, as most Americans were heading home for the holidays and not paying much attention to politics. Michael Cannon, Cato's director of health policy studies, comments that many people have been seduced by the concept of an 'individual mandate,' which is included in the bill's final form and uses the force of law to coerce people into buying insurance, whether or not they want it. The utopian ideals of the health bill distracted people, even though it "was an audacious proposal from the start, as it made their health care plan even more left-wing than the Clinton plan, which voters soundly rejected for being too statist." Now that the bill has moved one step closer to becoming law, Cannon notes, "The question now is whether the Left, the Right, and the mainstream will recognize the Senate health care bill for what it is."
The Cold Heart of Obamacare
Cato fellow Nat Hentoff presents what's at stake in the current healthcare reform bills. He proposes that the biggest reform that takes place is that the current bills insert government bureaucracy between patients and their doctors. Calling this intervention "death panels" misses the point, not because it's false but because it under-exaggerates the personal intrusion of government in people's private lives. "If congressional Democrats succeed in passing their health-care "reform" measure to send to the White House for President Obama's signature, then they and he are determining your health decisions."
Obamacare Is Unconstitutional
While the houses of congress have been debating Obamacare for months, one thing that has apparently been left out of the discussion is the Constitution. Gene Healy notes that, sadly, this has been the trend in American politics for some time. Legislators and the Courts often cite the Commerce Clause of the Constitution to support reaching federal hands into individuals' lives, and history bears witness to this. However, Healy contends, that is no excuse for Congress to default on their oath to protect the Constitution.
What is the House thinking?
John Stossel, former 20/20 news anchor and Fox News contributor, writes that he is embarrassed by the number of U.S. House members who support the current healthcare bill. "The notion that a small group of politicians can know enough to design something so complex and so personal is astounding," says Stossel. No matter how intelligent, top-down decision makers are no match for the discovery process of the market, which was described by F. A. Hayek. Government strong-arming cannot overcome the laws of supply and demand. The embarrassing part is that House members shouldn't need more than a Freshman course in economics to figure that out.
Report: ObamaCare Bad Deal for Young Adults
Economics professor and Cato scholar Aaron Yelowitz publishes a brief policy study on the effects of government healthcare reform on young people. He finds that they will bear a disproportionate burden of the costs, including the possibility of having their premiums doubled. Yelowitz explains the irony, "Barack Obama won the presidency with 66 percent of the vote among (young) adults... Yet his health care overhaul could impose its greatest burdens on young adults."
Putting Private Insurance Out of Business
Cato scholar Michael Tanner talks about the argument that the government sponsored 'public option' will be competitive. While the public option may, at first, be in the same market as private plans, it will not be competitive for several reasons. Tanner says, “because the public option is ultimately supported by the taxpayers, the playing field can never be level." Also, “the program carries with it an implicit guarantee against future losses," so it will distort normal competition (we already know what happens to private banks that are deemed "too big to fail"). Tanner lists several other key reasons for the uncompetitiveness of a public option, which leaves many wondering at the real reason for such a massive extension of the public arm into private matters.
Cognitive Dissonance on Health Care Reform
Cato health policy scholar, Michael Tanner, describes the popular contradiction in the health care reform debate. The public is increasingly resistant of government control in their lives, yet many favor a public option for government health insurance. The problem, says Tanner, is that the government doesn't play fair, and it will offer an artificially lower price tag while charging the real cost to tax payers. Tanner explains, "All of this means that the government-run plan would be significantly cheaper than private insurance, not because it would out-compete private insurance or because it was more efficient, but because it had unfair advantages."
Food Fight: Whole Foods on Health Care
reason.tv has produced a video documenting the debate on Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal this summer. In it Mackey claimed that the solution to health care reform is less government and more personal choice. This short video contrasts the union members trying to boycott Whole Foods and the employees who love their healthcare plans. In a clear and creative way, Reason offers some food for thought.
Health Care Reform: The Long-Term Perspective
Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) disagrees that the current healthcare bill is the only option. He discusses the major problems with the current proposals and presents his own proposal for reform. "We’re dangerously close to becoming a social welfare state similar to Europe. When society goes down that road, it loses sight of liberty and becomes more concerned with security — both economic and other forms. When a country becomes a social welfare state, its society stagnates. Standards of living go down. Creativity, innovation, achievement, production, risk — these wash away, leaving high unemployment. We don’t want to go down that path."
Senate Health Regulation Bill Includes National ID Plan
Cato scholar Jim Harper notes that pushes for increased transparency in Congress have given greater access to many of the healthcare bills being proposed, and the more that he reads the more scary it gets. He notes that in all of the healthcare bills he's seen there have been provisions calling for "Eligibility Verification," and that such requirements lead to long verification lines, more bureaucracy, and ultimately, national ID cards. Harper concludes that this is an idea “all freedom-loving Americans should reject.”
Obama resorts to Big Brother tactics, erects 'straw men'
Timothy Carney, of the Washington Examiner, recently asked Obama officials who the President was referring to as “opponents” in his health reform speeches. Obama claims that those fighting against his health care reforms are “well-financed” and profit from keeping the system as-is, while has steered clear of naming names. No officials would answer Carney's questions. Carney proposes and refutes several possibilities of his own, but is left with a question: Why might the President and his administration be fostering such unsubstantiated claims? He concludes, "For Obama, a nameless enemy is more useful because it allows people to imagine whatever 'well-financed forces' they like as the enemy." He adds, "It's called demagoguery."
I Am Finally Scared of a White House Administration
Cato Senior Fellow Nat Hentoff, this week on RealClearPolitics.com, writes an article about the truly scary parts of the new healthcare plans. He discusses that the real danger in Obamacare is not just whether or not the bill passes or what's included in it, but the inevitable developments following new laws. "Whatever bill passes, hundreds of bureaucrats in the federal agencies will have years to promulgate scores of regulations to govern the details of the law," states Hentoff. He concludes with the point that whatever is not ruled out, could eventually be slipped in.
Debunking Congress' "Fantasyland"
From clunkers to cap-and-trade to the Stimulus to Health care, Cato scholar Richard Rahn assesses the mental health of Congress and the Administration's recent initiatives, offers up a diagnosis, and proposes a list of alternatives. He postulates, "These folks are telling us that their new medical system will cover more people, will cost less, give us better care and not add to the budget deficit -- hmmm. Fantasyland!"
Romney would be a great GOP presidential candidate, except for...
In his weekly column, Cato VP Gene Healy writes about the issues that draw the GOP to Romney, and also the things that should turn them away. He says that Romney was seemingly "engineered and grown in a vat for the sole purpose of securing the nation's highest office," but later adds that "Conservatives ought to take a good look at the Romney record and ask themselves whether a man of such flexible convictions is the best they can do." (Cato scholar Michael Cannon also discussed Romney in the National Review, here.)
Obama vs. Mathematics
Cato Scholar Jagadeesh Gokhale and Warton School professor Kent Smetter write in a National Review article addressing President Obama's apparent challenge to the mathematical realities of his health-care plan. They cite that "The House plan has a present-value shortfall of $13.6 trillion," following with an analysis that "Shoring up these programs — another Obama campaign promise — would require collecting 328 percent more tax revenue from the rich." They conclude that such a policy shift would come at the cost of the American economy.
Cato Ads in National Media
As with the Stimulus ad, the Cato Institute continues to draw attention to the true dimensions of governmental irresponsibility. Starting the last week of July, Cato is running ads on Obama's Healthcare proposal in national newspapers and on the radio. In addition, Cato has launched a new website (healthcare.cato.org) to inform the public of the need for reform - the right, free-market and responsible reform.
Cato Institute Conference on Health Care Reform
The Cato Institute invites you to participate in a one-day conference, featuring health care experts from across the political landscape, on the state and future of health care reform in America. Even before the results of the 2008 elections were known, lawmakers in Washington, D.C., were preparing some of the most sweeping health care reforms America has seen in decades. The question is: will the reforms being crafted in Congress improve this picture, or make these problems even more acute?
January YouTube of the Month
Congratulations to Matt Bufton of the University of Windsor for submitting Cato on Campus' January YouTube of the Month. His video, "Health Care in Canada" provides a short discussion of how Canada's health care system actually prohibits competition, something almost no other developed country does.
Michael Cannon: "Healthy Competition: How to Free American Health Care"
Who: Michael Cannon What: Speech on "Healthy Competition: How to Free American Health Care" followed by a panel. Where: Disneyland Hotel Host: California Medical Association
Much to Lose in Fixing System
By Michael Tanner: "[n]ot all change is change for the better. And before we head down the road to a government-run health care system, we need to stop and think about what we stand to lose."
WHO's Watching Over You
From Agoraphilia. The WHO rankings, by purporting to measure the efficacy of healthcare systems, implicitly takes all differences in health outcomes not explained by spending or literacy and attributes them entirely to healthcare system performance. Nothing else, from tobacco use to nutrition to sheer luck, is taken into account.
Health and Medicine Research at Cato
Cato's health policy work is designed to show that the only way to make health care of ever-increasing quality available to an ever-increasing number of consumers is to put consumers in charge of their health care dollars and decisions. With that in mind, Cato has worked to familiarize the public, media and policymakers with the free-market alternative to managed care and single-payer plans?Äîhealth savings accounts (HSAs).
A Health Care Reading List
Michael Cannon, Cato's director of health care studies, has assembled a reading list compliling comprehensive literature on the issue of health care..
Healthy Competition, an e-newsletter
The dominant view in health policy is that greater government involvement is required to finance and deliver high-quality medical care. The Healthy Competition Newsletter will present what is a minority view in health policy, but one that is widely accepted in other policy spheres: that individual choice and free markets do the best job of providing high-quality products and services to consumers.
Medicare
Cato has consistently argued that Medicare cannot be saved by raising taxes and cutting benefits; rather, Medicare requires market-based structural reforms. Here you'll find a wide variety of papers detailing Medicare's long-term fiscal problems, the costs of the recent Medicare prescription drug benefit, and various reform proposals.
Medicaid
Medicaid has a structure of incentives that is both costly and inneficient. Cato argues that the federal government should follow the example of welfare reform and devolve control over Medicaid to the states.
Health Savings Accounts
Cato's research on Health Saving Accounts seeks ways to improve access to consumer-driven health care plans so that patients and doctors?Äînot third party payers?Äîhave the power to make crucial medical decisions.