After Repeal of Obamacare: Moving to Patient-Centered, Market-Based Health Care

HERITAGE FOUNDATION RESEARCH
Abstract: Obamacare moves American health care in the wrong direction by eroding the doctor–patient relationship, centralizing control, and increasing health costs. True health care reform would empower individuals, with their doctors, to make their own health care decisions free from government interference. Therefore, Obamacare should be stopped and fully repealed. Then Congress and the states should enact patient-centered, market-based reforms that better serve Americans.

Read more at Heritage.org

Note: Many of the solutions this Heritage paper presents are solutions Republicans have submitted in various bills since the healthcare debate began. Harry Reid and Senate Democrats have refused to consider free-market solutions, while the president deceitfully claims that Republicans have not offered any solutions for greater coverage and health care reform. --bc Read More......

NRA-ILA Alert: Proposed Hunter Orange Mandate in Oregon!

NRA-ILA EMAIL ALERT, 5/7/2010 - There are five different options under the proposed hunter orange rule currently being considered by the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission. They range from maintaining the status quo of no hunter orange requirement to a mandate for all firearms hunters other than those pursuing turkey and waterfowl. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife issued a Hunter Orange Report.pdf (HOR) to the Commission that contains creative statistics in support of a mandate. Even in this era of ever-expanding government mandates, the decision to wear hunter orange should be left up to the individual, not the state.

The HOR highlights the fact that only 19 percent of vision-related shooting incidents reported over a twenty year period in Oregon involved victims who were wearing hunter orange, suggesting that there would be fewer incidents if more hunters wore orange. The authors ignore the fact that in the same HOR document, there are estimates that only 15 to 25 percent of hunters voluntarily wear hunter orange. This makes as little sense as a report claiming that blue cars are safer than cars painted other colors because they are involved in only 19 percent of all accidents despite the fact that blue cars represent 19 percent of all vehicles on the public roads. The truth in both cases is that the results are more likely a function of random selection.

To their credit, the HOR authors recognize that Oregon is already a safe state for hunters even when compared to states like Washington that have imposed a hunter orange mandate. Washington has a rate of 4.65 incidents per 100,000 license sales compared to Oregon's rate of 1.56. This is strong evidence suggesting that the state's hunters can be trusted to make the decision that best suits their personal circumstances.

Please plan to attend a meeting on Monday, May 10th, and make your voice heard! The meeting is 7-9 p.m. at Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Headquarters, 3406 Cherry Ave. NE. Salem, OR 97303.

If you are unable to attend, please email your comments to ODFW.Comments@state.org. Read More......

John Boehner: June 26 Leader Alert

What You May Not Know About Speaker Pelosi's National Energy Tax: More Mandates, More Regulations, and More Costs Than Ever Before

WASHINGTON, 6/26 - Speaker Pelosi’s national energy tax is going to raise electricity prices, increase gasoline prices, and ship American jobs overseas to countries like China and India. This, we know. ∴ It would be a bureaucratic nightmare overseen by a confusing web of government agencies that would take and redistribute trillions of dollars from family budgets and workers payrolls. This, we also know. Even Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-MN) admitted in the Washington Post this morning that: “The truth is, nobody knows for sure how this is going to work.” How encouraging. ∴ But what don’t we know? Here are some facts you may not know about Speaker Pelosi’s national energy tax... Read more at the House Republican Leaders site... Read More......

Mandates costly? Who knew?

Want To Reduce Health Insurance Costs? Eliminate Mandates
Say Anything (Blog), May 20, 2008, posted by Rob

Or, in other words, make the health insurance market truly free. Or freer, at least.

A 2005 study by the Commonwealth Fund illustrates how insurance rates for young people are far higher in states with guaranteed issue and community rating than in states that do not have them. For instance:

• A healthy 25-year-old male could purchase a policy for $960 a year in Kentucky but would pay about $5,880 in New Jersey.
• A similar policy, available for about $1,548 in Kansas, costs $5,172 in New York.
• A policy priced at $1,692 in Iowa costs $2,664 in Washington and $4,032 in Massachusetts. . . .

Forcing insurers to cover benefits that many consumers may not want (or need) also drives up premiums. For instance, New Jersey is one of only four states to mandate coverage for chiropody. And it is one of only 13 states that mandate coverage for in vitro fertilization — adding 3 percent to 5 percent to the cost of premiums. Proponents often argue that their particular mandate costs little; but when all 42 of New Jersey’s mandated benefits are added together the costs are significant. Nationwide, as many as one-quarter of the uninsured may have been priced out of the market by costly mandates.

What’s troubling is how many politicians want to solve this problem which was created by too much government interference with more government interference in the form of expanded government-provided health care.

Read More......