[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5-BoR9hAvQ[/youtube] Dr. Norm Thurston is doing something extraordinary: he’s implementing consumer-driven health care fixes in Utah. When many employers recently started dropping health benefits the state reacted with reforms that make costs predictable for both employers and consumers. Predictability depends on accurate information for all sides. The Utah Health Exchange makes this possible. Here’s how it works: Companies choose a fixed amount to contribute toward employee health benefits. Employees contribute pretax money from their own paychecks, and they can make contributions from a spouse’s job or a second employer as well.
A new ad on health care from Family Research Council plants tongue firmly in cheek to make a serious point: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXHSw8-YP3w[/youtube] The earliest identified use of the phrase, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” dates, fittingly enough, to the Depression Era. And what is true of free lunches, is true of free health care: they do not exist. The deficits being contemplated in the bills now being crafted behind closed doors in Washington, D.C. stretch as far as the eye can see, and what the eye sees are …
The Washington Post reports today: The nation’s preeminent seniors group, AARP, has put the weight of its 40 million members behind health-care reform, saying many of the proposals will lower costs and increase the quality of care for older Americans. But not advertised in this lobbying campaign have been the group’s substantial earnings from insurance royalties and the potential benefits that could come its way from many of the reform proposals. The group and its subsidiaries collected more than $650 million in royalties and other fees last year from the …
Newsweek‘s Stefan Theil reports from Berlin: Climate change is the greatest new public-spending project in decades. Each year as much as $100 billion is spent by governments and consumers around the world on green subsidies designed to encourage wind, solar, and other -renewable-energy markets. The goals are worthy: reduce emissions, promote new sources of energy, and help create jobs in a growing industry. Yet this epic effort of lawmaking and spending has, naturally, also created an epic scramble for subsidies and regulatory favors. … It’s a genetic defect that not …
“Second verse same as the first, a little bit louder and a little bit worse.” This is the basic theme of the EPA’s analysis of the shrouded Boxer-Kerry Bill (S. 1733). Given just 12 days to analyze the Boxer-Kerry climate bill (that others were not allowed to review), the EPA relied on previous analysis and the similarities between Boxer-Kerry and previous climate bills, most notably Waxman-Markey (H.R. 2454). Comparing S. 1733 to H.R. 2454 they conclude (page 28): While there are some minor differences in the bills in several areas …
Last night on The Ed Show, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) debated Ralph Nader. Honesty ensued. Watch: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXPwr-MxvDQ[/youtube]
Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced that the health care legislation he is drafting will include a government-run health insurance plan, or as many on the left like to call it “the public option.” The new wrinkle that Reid has thrown into the proposal is an “opt out” clause which would require states to pass legislation by 2014 rejecting participation in the federal government run plan. None of the committees in the House or Senate ever even voted on this new opt out scheme. But that does not …
Spin the wheel and whatever number the ball lands on will be the new tipping point we must get below; if not, catastrophic global warming to cause 2012-style disasters on our planet. A few years ago the upper limit on carbon dioxide was 450 parts per million (ppm), which meant an 80 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Now it’s 350 ppm: In the past four years, climate scientists, led by NASA’s James Hansen, have dramatically altered the goal. To avoid the collapse of the continental ice-sheets and …
Behind closed doors, the House and Senate leaders are trying to cobble together very different and complex provisions of their respective bills. A key issue is the impact of the public plan, a government run health plan intended to compete against private health plans. In the House version of the bill (H.R. 3200), payment to doctors and hospitals will be pegged to Medicare rates. Specifically, the bill calls for payment for medical services to be set at Medicare payment levels with a 5 percent increase for only certain physicians. In …
The secret Obamacare negotiations have come to an end in Day 13th and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced today that the insiders have a deal. Senators Reid, Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Director of the Office of Management and Budget Peter Orszag and Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius have all been meeting in secret since Wednesday, October 14th. Below is a video of the announcement and we, the American people, do not have much …
