United Liberty

The Independence Institute put together a great video on mandatory health insurance programs, such as RomneyCare and what is being proposed by both parties in Washington:

A new study from the Employment Policies Institute shows that the uninsured aren’t entirely incapable of getting insurance:

As many of you know, ABC will be hosting a one-hour special with President Barack Obama on his health care proposal. ABC isn’t allowing opposing viewpoints or ads against the proposal during the airing, which is their prerogative.

If you are looking for an opposing viewpoint, the health care policy experts at the Cato Institute, Michael Cannon and Michael Tanner, will host a live-blog of the show.

Cato has also set up a website specifically on this issue. You can check it out here.

Hawaii is ending its universal health care plan for kids:

Hawaii is dropping the only state universal child health care program in the United States just seven months after it launched.

Gov. Linda Lingle’s administration cited budget shortfalls and other available health care options for eliminating funding for the program.

A state official said families were dropping private coverage so their children would be eligible for the subsidized plan.

“People who were already able to afford health care began to stop paying for it so they could get it for free,” said Dr. Kenny Fink, the administrator for Med-QUEST at the Department of Human Services. “I don’t believe that was the intent of the program.”

Peter Suderman on health care over at Reason…

You may have heard about the New York Times/CBS poll showing support for government-run health care. It turns out that the sample was tilted towards Barack Obama:

As can be plainly seen on page 7 of the poll’s data, only 73 percent of respondents divulged who they voted for last November. 48 percent said Obama, 25 percent McCain.

What this means is this poll surveyed 66 percent Obama supporters versus 34 percent McCain.

As the final tally last year was 53 percent to 46 percent, this poll WAY oversampled Obama voters.

After spending sometime this evening looking over the CBO report on the healthcare proposal in the Senate, this paragraph stood out to me (emphasis mine):

According to the preliminary analysis, once the proposal was fully implemented, the number of people who are uninsured would decline to about 36 million or 37 million, representing about 13 percent of the nonelderly population. (Roughly a third of those would be unauthorized immigrants or individuals who are eligible for Medicaid but not enrolled in that program.)

The Congressional Budget Office has released some preliminary findings on the health care overhaul by the Obama Administration, sponsored in the Senate by Ted Kennedy:

Two key proposals to improve access to health insurance could reduce the ranks of the uninsured but cost $1 trillion over 10 years, according to preliminary estimates released Monday by the Congressional Budget Office.

[…]
The report by CBO, an independent agency that scores legislative proposals for lawmakers, focuses on proposals to create health insurance exchanges and subsidize the cost of insurance for some households.

The agency estimated that the exchange and subsidies could reduce the number of uninsured people by roughly 16 million by 2015. It is estimated there would otherwise be 51 million uninsured that year.

Michael Tanner from the Cato Institute has some thoughts on President Barack Obama’s speech to the American Medical Association:

In his speech to the American Medical Association today, President Obama repeatedly denied that he supports “socialized medicine” or “government-run” health care.

A study by USA Today shows that each American family now owes $668,321 in unfunded liabilities, a 12 percent increase in the last year, with Medicare taking up half of what taxpayers owe:

Taxpayers are on the hook for an extra $55,000 a household to cover rising federal commitments made just in the past year for retirement benefits, the national debt and other government promises, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

 

The 12% rise in red ink in 2008 stems from an explosion of federal borrowing during the recession, plus an aging population driving up the costs of Medicare and Social Security.

That’s the biggest leap in the long-term burden on taxpayers since a Medicare prescription drug benefit was added in 2003.
[…]
USA TODAY used federal data to compute all government liabilities, from Treasury bonds to Medicare to military pensions.