The Patriot Post Digest 1-23-2014

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The Patriot Post Digest 1-23-2014
From The Federalist Patriot
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Daily Digest

Jan. 23, 2014

THE FOUNDATION

“If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted. … If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the Divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the laws.” –Noah Webster

TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS

Abortion ‘Fulfills Dreams’

Celebrating the most tragic Supreme Court decision in history1, Barack Obama urged his cadres to “recommit” themselves to the “guiding principle” of abortion on demand. Why? “Because this is a country where everyone deserves the same freedom and opportunities to fulfill their dreams.” Well, not everyone – 56 million dead Americans would certainly object to that characterization. Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, tweeted something perhaps even more mindless: “Happy 41st birthday, Roe v. Wade.” Did they really just use the word “birthday” to celebrate a decision that prevents birthdays? What a gruesome thing to celebrate.

What Does NAACP Stand For?

North Carolina NAACP president William Barber II reflected on Martin Luther King Jr. Day by slamming one of the Senate’s only two black members, Tim Scott. “A ventriloquist can always find a good dummy,” Barber said of Scott. “The extreme right wing down here [in South Carolina] finds a black guy to be senator and claims he’s the first black senator since Reconstruction and then he goes to Washington, DC, and articulates the agenda of the Tea Party.” On the contrary, Scott is no dummy. He thinks for himself, unlike too many blacks on the Democrat Poverty Plantation. And say, isn’t it supposed to be the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People? (Don’t miss Scott’s outstanding reply2.)

20% Receive Food Stamps

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, otherwise known as food stamps, should be just that – supplemental. Under Barack Obama, however, the number of people on the dole has skyrocketed to a full 20% of the population. According to the USDA, in an average month in 2013 there were 47,636,084 individuals who received food stamps, up 1,027,012 from the previous year. The program clocked in at just under $80 billion, an increase of 164% over the last 10 years. The question is, why are so many people in such dire need during the Obama “recovery”? Well, as Mark Alexander argued Wednesday, Obama’s economic plan is income inequality3.

Cost of Cutting Red Tape

Barack Obama loves to brag about how he’s running a smarter government, but Executive Order 13563, which was ostensibly designed to “cut red tape” by eliminating “redundant, inconsistent, or overlapping” regulations, has actually added $10.2 billion in regulatory burdens to the already sluggish economy. That comes largely due to 1.5 billion additional hours of paperwork – a 17% increase – necessary to comply with regulations. “It would take more than 750,000 employees working full-time to complete the new annual paperwork added since 2010,” said Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy at American Action Forum.

Uninsured Not Enrolling

The purpose of ObamaCare, we were told, was to provide millions of uninsured Americans easy access to affordable health coverage. What consumers have found instead are subpar plans that cost more – a side effect that explains this astounding statistic: According to Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini, “Right now we only see that 11% of the population is people that were formerly uninsured are now insured, so we didn’t really eat into the uninsured population.” Put another way, a whopping 89% of enrollees so far already had insurance before the overhaul (don’t forget that a large percentage of signs ups were tossed onto the exchange by their employers). Score one for big government.

For more, visit Right Hooks4.
Don’t Miss Alexander’s Column

Read Obama’s Class Warfare Deception3.

If you’d like to receive Alexander’s Column by email, update your subscription here5.

RIGHT ANALYSIS
A Conservative Health Plan

Obviously, ObamaCare’s federal takeover of the American health care system was a bad solution and unconstitutional power grab. But what is the solution to a system that was broken before ObamaCare expanded that system? That’s the question Manhattan Institute senior fellow Avik Roy attempts to answer6.

First, we evaluate the problem. In 2010, the U.S. spent more per person on health care than all but three other nations, and much of that was already government spending. Roy points out, “Although the quality of care in the U.S. is high, it is not meaningfully higher than that of its industrialized peers.” That high cost is also due to the health insurance system, which Roy says is “too expensive because of decades of unwise government policy,” leaving millions of Americans uninsured.

Second, we set the goal. But the problem there, Roy writes, is that “the Right shares no vision of what a conservative health care system should look like. As a result, health care policymaking has fallen mostly to the other side, with disastrous results.” We could start by saying that “universal coverage is a morally worthy goal.” The question is how we get there. Roy points to Switzerland and Singapore as examples of policies that ensure universal coverage at far less cost. “Switzerland has a system of universal, subsidized private insurance exchanges that look much like Paul Ryan’s Medicare-reform plan and Obamacare’s exchanges,” Roy writes.

However, “From a fiscal standpoint,” Roy adds, “Singapore is far better than even Switzerland. Singapore’s public spending on health care as a fraction of GDP is 86 percent lower than America’s. That’s because every Singaporean has a health savings account, which is used to pay for non-catastrophic medical expenses. Singaporeans pay a payroll tax, which is then redirected into the HSA in a manner similar to our Social Security system. But unlike Social Security, the Singaporean HSA is controlled by the individual and supplemented with a government-sponsored catastrophic coverage plan.”

Since health savings accounts were enacted into law in 2003, more Americans have enrolled in them every year and the cost savings are evident7, despite the cost increases caused by ObamaCare. HSAs are desirable because they put the consumer in charge of their own spending, and people are inclined to compare prices when the cost of care comes out of their own pocket instead of being provided “free” by the insurance company.

That said, Roy argues that while the Singapore model is more conservative, the Swiss model is more “politically feasible,” not least because reforms to Medicare and Medicaid could be incorporated. Certainly, if conservatives ever do succeed in repealing ObamaCare, replacing it with true reform is just as essential. Are the ideas above perfect? No, but they represent a starting point.