Red Clay Citizen

Giuliani's Remarks about Democrats

Giuliani said two things today at the Conservative Leadership Conference that lit this blogger up: 

First, he said: "I'll be darned if I'm going to concede that Democrats care more about poor people than we do."  This is a message that was awkwardly put by Bush in 2000 as "compassionate conservatism."  But what Giuliani is angling at is that conservative/free-market types want to quibble with the idea that a) government can help people more than free individuals can (social entrepreneurship), that the liberals have cornered the market on benevolence in general, and that government programs actually help the poor rather than trap them in poverty. (Besides: it's easier to be generous with other people's money.) And if Rudy has in mind compromise measures to aid the poor?  They'll be more about helping them with credits and tax breaks than handouts and new programs. (Note his record in NYC.)

Second, Giuliani said: "They're moving toward socialized medicine so fast, it'll make your head spin." And he's right. They're doing it at the state level and national level. If they don't do it incrementally through the expansion of SCHIP (Medicaid), they'll do it by enacting a single payer system at the national level. Single-payer is codeword for socialized Medicine. I've raised my concerns about it here, here and here. It will do nothing but displace the costs of routine care, and make you wait in line for months for a broken leg--all while paying more in taxes.  Is that really what we want?

Cannon: Medicaid

Cannon (paraphrasing): Conservatives don't understand that they have the better side of the argument:

-Tax burden of Medicaid: $1100 per capita.
-Covers 4 people for the price of 10 (6 people lose their health insurance).
-Increases price of private care (prescriptions by 13 percent!)
-Traps families in low-wage jobs.
-Covers more than just the poor.  Creates artificial poverty among those who could afford it.
-Lowers the quality care of care.
-Makes states grovel to DC for (matching funds).

Costs of Medicaid are growing. The trendline shows that the system is gobbling up more and more people. Why does Medicaid grow? In your state, you can get Big Government at 1/3 the price! Consider the following:

-NC pays 1/3, DC pays 2/3.
-Incentive to expand, never an incentive to cut.
It's the best hope for socialize medicine (since more and more are people entering every day).

How does Medicaid trap NC families in low wage jobs?  There is no financial incentive to get higher wage job after a certain point (due to total gov't benefits). That is, the more you earn, the fewer overall benefits you recieve -- which creates incentives to subsist (much like Welfare did prior to 1996). When the worker improves her condition with a better job, the effective tax rate on her earnings becomes 100 percent.  In other words, she starts losing out by doing better. Medicaid thus keeps people in poverty, keeping them in the low-wage trap. Expanding medicaid would result in more of the same trap, only deeper. Incentives matter.

Expand Medicaid, then? Bad Idea. Instead: Make it only for the truly needy and cut it back. It's analogous to Welfare Reform, which was a HUGE success.  The same could be true for Medicaid.

If you want to make it more affordable, reduce mandates!  (I, for example, don't need to buy coverage for alcoholism, in vitro fertilization etc. etc. But I'm forced to pay for it in NC.) That makes our state among the most regulated states in the US. But we can change that.

Post Giuliani - CLC Panel on Healthcare

As we wait to start the panel on healthcare, I'm reminded of Rudy Giuliani's just-uttered lunchtime remarks on the healthcare status quo.  That is: healthcare is currently not free. And we're (or rather the Democrats are) moving (us) towards socialized medicine. Healthcare is currently a hodgepodge of control among HMOs, government bureaucrats, and the service providers who benefit from the arrangements created by the former two. Only returning individual choice to healthcare - like every other aspect of the economy - will improve quality and lower cost.

Rep. Marilyn Avila (R-Wake) : House Bill 901 in NC to recognize the "right to healthcare." Abhorrent. She wants to ask why we're failing to understand healthcare as a commodity -- that is, something that must be bought and sold.  How can healthcare be available for the greatest number of people who can afford to pay?  It's time for fundamental reform.

Panel: Cannon, Colletti, Newman, Kansler.

Live Blogging from CLC

When I'm not running around, I'll try to do some live blogging from the Conservative Leadership Conference here in downtown Raleigh.  Today we've got Rudy Giuliani kicking off the event.  Should be interesting. Stay tuned.

Red and Circus

Protestors are planning to rain on the CLC picnic, says Under the Dome. We'll all be in the hotel sitting comfortably with our rubber chicken, iced tea, and registration materials, unable to hear the commotion. Nor will we care. The N&O is being as helpful to spread the word about the protest as they are the event.

Anyway: Come one, come all. These circuses never show the left in a positive light. How many signs will have "(Insert demand) NOW!" on them? A shame Dick Cheney couldn't make it -- fer giggles, anyway.

Environmentalism v. the Poor (Again)

2 million acres gone by 2027!? ... This post at BlueNC laments the development of Wake County and other urban areas in North Carolina. They want open spaces and other natural areas protected from developers:

Environment North Carolina just released a report showing that the Triangle will lose 37% of its natural areas, the Charlotte area will lose 30% of its natural areas by 2027 unless legislative action is taken. Developed area is increasing faster that the increase in population.

Before shedding any crocodile tears for the endangered Wake County Possumrat, let's consider, just for a moment, the poor people in an area so-called progressives claim to care about. When you slow development through legislative fiat, you make housing less affordable for everyone -- especially the poor. That is, you create an artificial scarcity which drives up property values for those lucky enough to live there already. So basically you create a subsidy for the rich! Doesn't sound very progressive to me. But then again, those on the left have never been particularly adept at considering unintended consequences of their reckless demands. Oh--and if you slow development in one county, neighboring counties grow.  That's called sprawl.  So you want to protect urban wilderness, but create more rural sprawl? (So much for smart growth.) Or do you simply want to arrest the economic growth and development that's propping up all your social programs? I'm not sure progressives can answer these tough questions.

Poor Mouthing the Freedom Budget

Fitzsimon over at NC Policy Watch takes a pot-shot at the John Locke foundation for their annual alternative NC budget, known as the "freedom budget." The Policy Watcher says:

While the House budget looks bad and Berger and Stam’s position that cutting taxes on the wealthy is more important than providing services is worse, neither comes close in absurdity to the latest from Raleigh’s leading free market fundamentalist think tank, a document released Tuesday called the “Freedom Budget”

The bizarre proposal not only ends the temporary tax increases, it cuts the state corporate tax rate too.  It slashes funding for teacher assistants, dramatically increases tuition at UNC campuses, effectively abolishes Smart Start, ends the program to help poor schools, abolishes the Housing Trust Fund, cuts health care programs for children, you get the idea.

Fitzsimon goes on to admonish free-marketeers for their concern about tax hikes. So perhaps we should explain why (again):  When you remove money from a market economy for the pet projects of a bureaucracy, that's less money available for economic growth. Of course, NCPW's soak-the-rich-for-said-pet-projects outlook is clear from the above. But for every dollar that is pulled from citizens' hands, that's a dollar than can't be directed toward philanthropy, investment, or other pursuits that actually contribute to economic expansion and improved communities. NCPW and liberal minds in general just (congenitally) can't seem to grasp that government growth is zero-sum, while markets are positive sum. (I know which side I'd like my money to be on.) Thus, the Locke Foundation is not so much preoccupied with greed as they are knowledgable about basic economics, i.e. avoiding dead-weight loss and other negative consequences of government expansion. Nevermind that people are getting fed up with Utopians who claim to know better about what should be done with their money than they are.  Fitzsimon's post should be called: "We'd rather crowd out everything."

Fitzsimon continues:

It is more of a Freedom from reality budget than a serious proposal, but it does allow Stam and Berger to seem more rational, with their disingenuous claim that increased state spending is somehow irresponsible, despite exploding enrollments at public schools, community colleges and universities, and the skyrocketing cost of health care.

If we can get past NCPW's rhetoric and on to the substance of the Freedom Budget as well as to the counterclaims about public schools and skyrocketing healthcare costs, we can point directly at the "progressives" in office for our state's plight in these areas. We get perennial NOs from the Left on vouchers, educator accountability, and competition for schools--all of which would result in both cost-savings and increased quality. We get NOs on efforts to deregulated and reform the horrible shambles that is state-monopoly/third-party/mandate-riddled healthcare. And we continue to expand so-called "entitlement" programs despite vaults of evidence for deleterious effects to the economy and for people's increased dependency on the state. So, Chris. We agree: let's have this conversation.
- Max Borders

Cannon Fodder

Michael Cannon - who'll be discussing healthcare reform at our Conservative Leadership Conference - has a solid piece over at TCSDaily.com.  Here's a juicy bit:

But if simply expanding coverage won't get us there, where should policymakers focus their efforts?

They could start with the fact that federal laws have created a health care system where patients are too often spending someone else's money when they purchase medical care. On average, third-parties pay for 86 cents out of every dollar of medical care American patients receive. That's about the same share as under Canada's socialized health care system.

As a result, U.S. patients demand too much medical care and pay too little attention to whether that care is cost-effective. Is it any wonder health insurance premiums are skyrocketing, our uninsured rate is too high, and quality is less than it should be?

There's a lesson here for those who want to cover the uninsured: focus on the incentives facing the 250 million Americans who have health insurance, not on the estimated 47 million who don't. If the federal government stopped encouraging people with health insurance to be less careful consumers, then coverage would be more affordable, the number of people without coverage would shrink, and the quality of care would improve.

Cannon adds that increased coverage will neither help lower skyrocketing costs, nor will it improve quality. Insuring the uninsured has become an unnecessary fixation. What we should be concentrating on, among other things, is increased access to healthcare. And that means undoing the regulatory havoc wreaked by state and federal governments.

Cooper: A Taste of Fame

We're fascinated by Attorney General Cooper's, eh hem, ethics after donning paladin's armor in the wake of the Duke Lacrosse case:

>He gave CBS's "60 Minutes" an exclusive interview.
>He then accepted tickets to a sumptuous social gala -- the Correspondent's Association annual dinner -- hob-knobbing with the likes of Katie Couric and Terri Hatcher.

We're assured of his ethical uprightness in that he "declined to accept any gift bags" at the event. (Hat tip: Under the Dome.)

Out of the Mouths of Babes

This young person's class project in Oregon brings some well-needed common sense to the global warming debate.  There is hope in the next generation.