Bernie Sanders to Introduce Medicare-For-All Bill

In an op-ed for the New York Times, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) says that he plans to introduce a bill that would replace private health insurance with Medicare for “every family in America.” Sanders, who bills himself as a democratic socialist, believes that the answer to the Obamacare crisis is more government control of the nation’s healthcare.

Under the Sanders plan, a four-year transition period would move the country from private health insurance to a national single-payer plan. Sanders describes the details of the transition:

“In the first year, benefits to older people would be expanded to include dental care, vision coverage and hearing aids, and the eligibility age for Medicare would be lowered to 55. All children under the age of 18 would also be covered. In the second year, the eligibility age would be lowered to 45 and in the third year to 35. By the fourth year, every man, woman and child in the country would be covered by Medicare for All.”

Sen. John Barasso (R-Wy.) pre-empted many of Sanders’ arguments in a Tuesday op-ed on Fox News. Barasso, a medical doctor, pointed out that single-payer plans in other countries have not worked out well. “The British have found rationing necessary partly because of the exorbitant cost of ‘free’ medical care,” he wrote. Barasso also cited “the shortage of professionals to provide this care” as the number of British doctors, nurses and midwives has dropped in recent years.

While Sanders and others cite poor outcomes of American healthcare, Barasso points out, “The U.K. ranks 20th out of 24 western countries for breast cancer survival. The U.S. is first. For ischemic stroke the U.K. is 25th out of 30 countries. The U.S. is fourth.”

While Sanders’ proposal will be a nonstarter in the Republican-controlled Congress, it could portend things to come if Democrats return to the majority. Opinion polls in recent months have indicated a growing support for a federal role in healthcare. Pew Research found that 60 percent of Americans say that it is the federal government’s responsibility to ensure healthcare coverage for all Americans. Last spring, an Economist/You Gov poll found that that 60 percent favored a Medicare-for-all approach. That number includes 40 percent of Trump voters.

While most conservatives and Republicans will ridicule Sanders’ proposal as radical and dead-on-arrival, the idea of Medicare-for-all might have broader appeal than they suspect. If conservatives do not confront the idea head-on by enacting a better proposal, it is very possible that Republicans could face an invigorated Democratic Party in 2018 and 2020.

It is a cautionary tale to recall that Republicans defeated Hillarycare in the 1990s, but then failed to enact healthcare reforms of their own during the Bush Administration. That failure led directly to the election of Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act.

Originally published on The Resurgent

A battle over spending is shaping up between President Trump and congressional Republicans. Many of Trump’s campaign promises involved spending large amounts of tax money on items from the military to infrastructure. Now budget hawks in Congress are gearing up to try to prevent the deficit from exploding over the next four years.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the tensions surfaced in the confirmation hearing of Mick Mulvaney, a South Carolina congressman who has been nominated by Mr. Trump to head the White House Office of Management and Budget. Mulvaney faced sharp questions from two different camps in the GOP. On one side were defense hawks who were concerned about Rep. Mulvaney’s past votes to cut military spending. On the other were those at odds with Mr. Trump’s campaign promise not to cut Social Security or Medicare.

While the Trump Administration has indicated that it plans some cuts in government spending, the elephant in the room is that programs like the National Endowment for the Arts and the Center for Public Broadcasting aren’t what’s busting the federal budget. Even foreign aid only represents about one percent of federal spending.

Let’s face it, America. We have an entitlement problem.

Entitlements make up about half of the federal budget. The largest entitlement of all is a program that many don’t even think of as an entitlement. Social Security accounts for 24 percent of the federal budget and is the largest single budget item. Health spending in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and Obamacare subsidies account for another 25 percent. Defense spending is a distant third at 16 percent. Entitlement spending is expected to rise even further as Baby Boomers age and leave the workforce.

“I’m not looking to pick a fight with the president of the United States, but if his goal is to put the country on a fiscally sound course, he’s going to have to address entitlement reform,” Rep. Tom Cole (R., Okla.) told the Journal. “Anybody who is going to balance the budget on discretionary spending [cuts] is on a fool’s errand.”

A fight that is likely to come before entitlement reform is Mr. Trump’s plan for an infrastructure stimulus. Rep. Mulvaney and many Republicans were critical of the infrastructure spending plan before the election, but a separate Journal article noted that Democrats were embracing the $1 trillion proposal.

“We’re challenging him to join us even if his Republican colleagues in the House and Senate aren’t for it,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said. This raises the possibility that President Trump could form a bipartisan alliance with congressional Democrats to enact his spending proposals as well as block conservative attempts at entitlement reform.

The Republican budget hawks will have allies in the Trump Administration. Mr. Mulvaney, a proponent of entitlement reform during his four terms in Congress, said, “I haven’t been quiet and shy since I’ve been here. The president knew what he was getting when he asked me to fill this role.”

Likewise, the fiscally conservative Heritage Foundation was influential in the Trump transition team. Since the group holds President Trump’s ear, reports like the one that advise him to “not be taken in by hyperbolic rhetoric about the state of the nation’s infrastructure or lured by false promises of stimulus-induced job creation” may prove influential in the long term.

The Trump campaign has led to a Trump Administration that is filled with contradictions. Trump’s promises of spending, some made as recently as last week, conflict with his appointment of fiscal conservatives like Mulvaney. Other appointees, such as Steven Mnuchin, seem to be more squishy on deficit spending.

Will Trump follow his advisors or his instincts? Will Republicans back him if Trump follows his liberal inclinations on spending? Stay tuned and find out.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Bill Clinton bashes Obamacare - then asks for more

In a rare Democratic moment of truth, Bill Clinton almost sounded like a conservative for a few minutes in Flint, Mich. on Monday. In his remarks, which were covered by CNN, Clinton called Obamacare the “craziest thing in the world.” On Tuesday, Mr. Clinton tried to walk back his comments and may have inadvertently provided insight into Hillary Clinton’s new healthcare strategy if the she wins the election.

"So you've got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It's the craziest thing in the world," Clinton said on Monday according to CNN.

He tried to rebut criticism from the left on Tuesday, telling an Ohio crowd, “Look, the Affordable Health Care Act [sic] did a world of good, and the 50-something efforts to repeal it that the Republicans have staged were a terrible mistake. We, for the first time in our history, at least are providing insurance to more than 90% of our people.”

“But there is a group of people -- mostly small business owners and employees -- who make just a little too much money to qualify for Medicaid expansion or for the tax incentives who can't get affordable health insurance premiums in a lot of places,” Clinton continued. “And the reason is they're not in big pools. So they have no bargaining power.”

Clinton’s criticisms of the Affordable Care Act mirror concerns of conservatives before the law was passed. Adverse selection, in which people who are already sick sign up for health insurance while the healthy pay the fine instead, played a large role in driving up prices. Obamacare depended on enlisting young, healthy people to pay the costs for people were older and unhealthy. That has not happened. The problem is so bad that many health insurance companies are choosing to leave the market completely, rather than continue to absorb losses.

As prices increase, companies are passing more costs along to their employees or dropping health insurance coverage altogether. If you still have an employer health insurance plan, you’re probably paying a higher monthly premium as well as higher deductibles and copayments. Many companies, particularly small businesses, are opting out of providing health insurance altogether.

Those who still have insurance may not be able to go to the doctor. As Clinton pointed out, 25 million more people now have insurance, but there are just as many doctors as there were before Obamacare. This increased demand has caused a doctor shortage in many areas. The Fiscal Times estimates that “demand for physicians will grow by 11 percent to 17 percent through 2025, while the number of doctors will increase only by 4 percent to 12 percent.”  It’s going to get hard to get an appointment.

The original goal of the Affordable Care Act was to insure everyone in the United States. Has it been successful? The Kaiser Foundation estimates that the uninsured rate declined from a high of 18.2 percent in 2010 to 10.5 percent in 2015. Even after the devastation wrought by the ACA, more than 28 million Americans remain uninsured. The most common reason for not having insurance according to Kaiser is that it costs too much.

What is the Clinton solution to the continuing healthcare crisis? Last January, Hillary Clinton told a crowd in Iowa, “It was called Hillarycare before it was called Obamacare. I don't want to start over.”

Bill hints that she won’t start over. Slate has a quote that many articles covering the story didn’t include that hints at where the Clintons want to go. “So here’s the simplest thing,” Bill Clinton said, “Figure out an affordable rate and let people use that, something that won’t undermine your quality of life, won’t interfere with your ability to make expenses, wont’ interfere with your ability to save for your kids’ college education, and let people buy into Medicare or Medicaid.”

So the Clintonian answer to the health insurance crisis is more government. Bill would let people buy into a Medicare and Medicaid at “an affordable rate” that probably has no relationship to the market rate for insurance. This can be understood as price controls and a public option.

Voters should know that a third of doctors are already not accepting new Medicare patients according to Investor’s Business Daily. Both programs are also in financial trouble already. Medicare’s trust fund is projected to be insolvent in 15 years. Medicaid, whose cost is split by the states and the federal government, already represents 20 percent of state budgets even before the costs of the Obamacare Medicaid expansion kick in.

Bill’s idea does not address the economic problems of Obamacare at all. It just changes the insurance provider from private companies to the government. In other words, Hillarycare would impoverish the government the way Obamacare has broken the insurance companies.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Why you should vote for Mitt Romney

Recently Examiner made the case against Barack Obama’s reelection. There are a multitude of reasons to vote against Obama, but that is only half of the equation. There are many reasons to make a positive choice to vote for Mitt Romney.

First, when it comes to the economy, Mitt Romney is the anti-Obama. Obama’s plan, only unveiled on October 23, is to raise taxes, increase regulation and spend even more. On the other hand, Mitt Romney wants to reform the tax system by lowering rates and eliminating loopholes that favor the wealthy. He wants to replace burdensome regulations like those in Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank finance law with rules that reflect market realities and common sense. Romney would immediately reduce spending to 2008 levels. Romney proposes to cut spending back to 20 percent of GDP (from its high last year of 24.3 percent) by the end of his first term. In spite of Obama’s claims in the debates and on the campaign trail, Romney does provide specifics. You can find the details of his plan on his website.

Romney’s economic plan is based on history. Tax rate cuts have led to economic growth at several points in U.S. history, most famously under John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Higher taxes and higher government spending has the opposite effect. These policies led to the Great Depression and the stagflation of the 1970s. The same is true in other countries as well. When Ireland cut its taxes and government, it went from one of the poorest nations in Europe to one of the most successful. When Japan tried to stimulate its way out of a recession it led to a “Lost Decade.”

Romney is also the anti-Obama on many social issues. Where President Obama negotiated a UN small arms treaty that threatens American Second Amendment rights, Mitt Romney promises to respect the rights of gun owners and is endorsed by the National Rifle Association. Where Obama presided over the erosion of religious freedom, Romney has a long record of supporting religious liberty. Where President Obama is out of the closet as a supporter of same-sex marriage, Romney favors an amendment to the Constitution defining marriage as being between one man and one woman. Noted evangelist Billy Graham told Mitt Romney, “I’ll do all I can to help you. And you can quote me on that” according to the Washington Post. Graham also took out several full page newspaper ads urging voters “to vote for those who protect the sanctity of life and support the Biblical definition of marriage….”“

The second reason to vote for Mitt Romney is his choice of running mate. Paul Ryan is the most serious reformer in Congress. Ryan is the only person of either party to put forth a credible plan for saving Medicare and balancing the budget. Ryan’s plan, the “Roadmap for America’s Future,” preserves Medicare and Social Security in their current form for seniors while giving younger Americans more choice in their health care and retirement planning. Ryan’s plan also does not raise taxes. By choosing Paul Ryan to be his vice president, Mitt Romney showed that he is serious about reforming the federal government.

Third, a recent Pew poll profiled in the Los Angeles Times indicates that a majority of Americans feel that Iran is a major threat and want the United States to take a “firm stand.” President Obama and Vice President Biden don’t seem to take the threat seriously. In the vice presidential debate, Biden said that he wasn’t worried about an Iranian nuclear weapon because “they have to be able to have something to put it in. There is no weapon that the Iranians have at this point.” The Wall Street Journal points out that building a weapon is the easy part. Iran is currently working on the hard part: amassing enough enriched uranium to explode one or several nuclear bombs. The Obama Administration resisted sanctions and issued waivers to Iran’s largest trading partners including China. Under Obama’s watch, Iran’s rate of enrichment has tripled according to the Washington Post.

As he made clear in the foreign policy debate, Mitt Romney wants peace not war, but realizes the danger to the United States that a nuclear Iran poses. Romney would make the sanctions even tougher, although time for sanctions to work is rapidly slipping away. Romney also pledges to support the Iranian opposition, noting on his website that President Obama missed the opportunity to support Iran’s Green Revolution in 2009. Romney says on his website, “Only if Iran understands that the United States is utterly determined when we say that their nuclear weapons program is unacceptable is there a possibility that they will give up their nuclear aspirations peacefully.”

Fourth, voters should not be concerned about the fictitious war on women that the Democrats allege that Mitt Romney and the Republicans are engaged in. In reality, the president does not have the power to end abortion, no matter how much he opposes it. In reality, no one has proposed banning contraception. In reality, the Democratic position is that taxpayers and employers should be forced to pay for contraceptive and abortifacient drugs, regardless of whether they want them or not. The issue isn’t the freedom to use contraceptives; the issue is the freedom to not purchase them.

The fifth reason to vote for Mitt Romney is because he isn’t a wild eyed, out-of-touch radical as the Democrats have led voters to believe. As Americans saw in the three debates, he is an intelligent, personable man with a command of the facts and issues that confront the United States. He is generous, having donated nearly 30 percent of his income to charity in 2011 according to the Wall Street Journal. His record in business and as governor of Massachusetts is one of building teams and getting things done.

When Americans go the polls on Nov. 6, they have a real choice. The two candidates differ on almost every issue. Americans must choose between a return to the policies that made the United States an economic powerhouse and the envy of the world or a continuation of the Obama Administration policies of the past four years. Choosing President Obama might very well lead to an American Lost Decade and a loss of liberty as well.

See reasons to NOT vote for Barack Obama

Originally published on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/article/why-you-should-vote-for-mitt-romney

The anti-choice Democrats

As Americans in Georgia and across the country begin to go to the polls (in Georgia early voting starts October 15) they should consider the freedom of choice and which party and candidate will really support their right to choose. Although the Democrats have traditionally assumed the mantle of “pro-choice” on the issue of abortion, there are many other issues on which the right of Americans to make choices for themselves is at stake.

One of the most obvious areas of concern this year is the right for Americans to make their own choices about health insurance. Even though President Obama has repeatedly (and as late as the first debate on October 3) said that Americans could keep their own health insurance if they liked their current plan, in reality Obamacare takes away the right to choose to self-insure or purchase a no-frills, high deductible policy. Under the president’s health care law, the federal government has the right to dictate the terms of health insurance policies that all Americans are now required to purchase. The law also provides a powerful incentive for companies to drop their group health plans and leave employees to purchase their own insurance on Obamacare’s exchanges.

Freedom of choice in Medicare is also at stake this November. President Obama and the Democrats oppose allowing seniors to choose private insurance policies subsidized by government price supports, which Obama derided in the debate as vouchers. Instead, the Democrats support the current system in which all seniors are forced into the government-run Medicare program in spite of the fact that fewer and fewer doctors accept the government insurance because its reimbursement rates are so far below the market prices for care. The problem will undoubtedly get worse as Obamacare forces an additional $700 billion in cuts on the Medicare program.

Yet another issue of health care choice is the Obama Administration’s mandate that all insurance policies cover contraceptive and abortifacient drugs. Regardless of whether a person wants or needs such coverage, all insurance policies must now include these drugs at no out-of-pocket cost. The effect is that the cost of these services is now included in the policy premium, contributing to the rising cost of health insurance. The choice to opt out of these coverages for religious reasons or personal preference is forbidden.

The mandate also applies regardless of whether the policy holder or insurance company believes that abortion and contraception is moral. There was a narrow exemption for churches, but not other religious organizations or individual religious believers. President Obama offered a further compromise that religious organizations would have to accept the coverages, but at no cost. The cost would be passed along to other insureds, again causing policy premiums to rise.

The freedom to choose your child’s school is also at issue. Most Democrats do not support school vouchers or school choice, largely due to the fact that the party is beholden to teacher’s unions. The recent Chicago teacher strike was not only about money; it was also about keeping bad teachers from being held accountable. Under the status quo, children are assigned to schools based on their residence, regardless of whether that school is failing or meets their needs. In several cases, parents have been arrested for sending their children to better schools outside their district.

In areas where parent trigger laws allow parents to fire school administrators and turn failing schools into charter schools, Democrat-supported unions wage wars of harassment on parents rather than surrender control of schools, even though some Democratic politicians and a large majority of voters support the trigger laws. Harassment of parents and endless legal wrangling effectively negate parental choice.

An old issue of choice is the choice to own a gun. Even though the Supreme Court has upheld the individual right to keep and bear arms, with every high profile shooting or terrorist attack Democratic operatives reiterate calls for gun control. Democrats and gun opponents have called to eliminate the freedom of choice to purchase handguns, semi-automatic weapons, assault weapons, guns that look like military weapons, magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, and ammunition.

The Democratic anti-choice tendencies extend even to mundane household items. In 2007, the Democratic congress banned incandescent light bulbs. The infamous light bulb ban prompted the closure of several U.S. factories that produced incandescent bulbs and forced Americans to purchase expensive and potentially hazardous compact fluorescent bulbs.

The lists of products that liberal Democrats oppose or want to force Americans to buy are long. In either case, it conflicts with the basic freedom of choice. Liberals have opposed the freedom to buy gas guzzling SUVs, soft drinks, chocolate milk, and coal-based electricity among other things. Conversely, they have favored forcing people to purchase health insurance, ethanol-based fuels, trigger locks, hybrid cars and to ride trains instead of driving. They also support government monopolies on health care, Social Security, college loans, and who knows what else.

On social issues, the Democrats also oppose choice that conflicts with liberal orthodoxy. It is now taboo and bigoted to be a supporter of traditional marriage as Chick-fil-a CEO Dan Cathy discovered. Likewise, Democrats and liberals have little tolerance for those who revere life over abortion. Democrats even favor disclosure of the names of petition signers and donors to opposition groups so they can be singled out for partisan attacks and intimidation.

Perhaps the most telling difference between the Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats oppose giving Americans the choice of how to spend their own money. This is true on two levels. As given in the above examples, Democrats are more than happy to mandate that all Americans spend money on products that Democrats believe they should buy.

On another level, Democrats want to spend Americans’ money through higher taxes. After four years, President Obama’s only real plan to heal the economy and close the deficit is by raising taxes. If taxes go up it is axiomatic that there will be less money left in their paycheck to take home. The increased taxes will go directly to support federal spending at the cost of the spending power of individual Americans.

It isn’t even a question of whether President Obama will raise taxes on just the rich or the middle class as well. He already has raised taxes on the middle class numerous times. Obamacare is a bundle of tax increases masquerading as a health care law. Americans for Tax Reform has compiled a list of 21 new or higher taxes that President Obama has signed into law. Many of these taxes fall directly on the middle class. Many are part of Obamacare.

In the end, the anti-choice positions of liberals and Democrats underscore the fundamental difference between the parties. Conservative Republicans believe that people should be free to make their own decisions about what is best for their life as long as it does not hurt others. This position accepts that sometimes people will make mistakes and bad decisions. If people aren’t free to fail, then they aren’t really free.

To the contrary, leftists believe that, left to the own devices, people will not make the best decision. They believe that, because people cannot be trusted to do what is best for themselves, that government experts must tell them what to do and force them to do it. They also believe that, if necessary, people who do not comply should be punished… for their own good.

Originally published on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/article/the-anti-choice-democratic-party-1?cid=db_articles

Democrats must love the poor, they make so many of them

As American voters move steadily toward the presidential election, the fundamental question that they must answer is whether Barack Obama deserves a second term as president. To answer this question, voters must look at the state of the nation as well as their own lives.

One of the most obvious statistics to examine is the unemployment rate. Although nationwide unemployment is down from its October 2009 high of ten percent, Politifact acknowledged earlier this month that under President Obama the unemployment rate has remained above eight percent for 43 consecutive months. This is the longest sustained period of high unemployment since the Great Depression.

The numbers behind the unemployment rate are even worse. The economy is creating jobs, but not enough to keep pace with the growing labor pool and population. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of Americans employed has fallen from 65.7 percent in January 2009 to 63.5 percent in August 2012. This means that in spite of President Obama’s claims that he has created jobs, the actual number of Americans working has decreased sharply since he took office.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. population in August 2012 was 314 million. In January 2009 when President Obama took office the population was 305 million, an increase of more than 8 million people. According to the BLS figures, this means that 206 million people were working in 2009. There are currently only 194 million Americans working. In spite of an increase in the population of more than 8 million people during President Obama’s tenure, there are 12 million fewer Americans working.

The situation is not good for Americans who have not lost their jobs either. According to the Financial Times, the U.S. median income has fallen to 1995 levels. The decline started with the onset of the recession in 2008, but has continued to decline throughout Obama’s presidency, long after the recession officially ended and the recovery began.

The problems of unemployment and income have led to an increase in poverty. A year ago the New York Times reported that the U.S. poverty rate was at its highest level since 1993. In raw numbers, more Americans are living in poverty that at any time in the more than half century that the U.S. Census Bureau has been publishing figures on poverty.

The increase in poverty means that the government is spending more money on social safety net programs. Bloomberg notes that food stamp use is at an all time high. Spending on food stamps has more than doubled during Obama’s tenure with more than 46 million Americans now receiving the entitlement.

The increase in safety net spending is straining popular programs such as Medicare and Social Security. According to the Medicare Trustees report, Medicare’s hospital fund has been spending more than it takes in since the onset of the recession. The trust fund will be depleted by 2024. The situation is similar for Social Security. According to the trustees report, Social Security is also spending more than it takes in, a problem made worse by President Obama’s payroll tax holiday. The Social Security trust fund is estimated to run out in 2035. The insolvency of both programs has been accelerated by the recession and slow recovery.

The result of Obama’s spending binge is that the United States has run deficits of more than a trillion dollars in each year of his administration. These deficits have increased the federal debt by 40 percent according to the New York Times. The massive federal debt and the prospect of tax increases to pay for it have contributed to the slow recovery.

Perhaps what is most disturbing about these statistics is that even though President Obama often cites the economic difficulties that he inherited as an excuse for his administration’s difficulties, the Great Recession officially ended in June 2009, less than six months into President Obama’s term. Even though he has annually proclaimed “summers of recovery” since then most Americans are not feeling that the economic situation is improving. The Obama recovery has been in full swing for three years. It doesn’t get any better under the current policies.

The Democrats claim to love the poor and it must be so. Their policies have created millions more poor people. The choice that voters have this fall is between more of these policies that provide the poor with subsistence but little else or pro-growth policies that will revive the economy through freer markets and trimming government.

Originally published on Examiner.com

Obamacare facts: Death panels and rationing

The phrase “death panel” is a politically charged term that originated with Sarah Palin in 2009. Palin coined the term in reference to the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that Medicare pay for end-of-life counseling sessions. Her original Facebook post on the subject read, “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care.” Factcheck.org called “death panels” one of 2009’s “whopper[s] of the year.”

The ACA does not contain the phrase “death panel” and the end-of-life counseling cited by Palin was not mandatory. This does mean that Palin was totally off the mark however.

The ACA does establish an unelected board of bureaucrats who will be tasked with cutting Medicare spending. According to a description of the Independent Payments Advisory Board (IPAB) in the New England Journal of Medicine, the board will consist of 18 appointed members (including three from the Department of Health and Human Services) and will be required to submit proposals to reduce per capita Medicare spending in years in which spending is projected to exceed target rates.

The NEJM notes that the IPAB is prohibited from rationing care, increasing copayments, restricting benefits or modifying eligibility criteria. One of its few options is the ability to cut payments to doctors and, after 2020, specific providers such as hospitals and hospices. Overriding the IPAB’s recommended payment cuts would require a three-fifths vote of the senate. This means that stopping the IPAB’s cuts would be very difficult and most likely require a bipartisan effort.

The NEJM also points out that currently the IPAB’s recommendations for payment cuts for transactions through private health insurance are not binding. These price controls on private medical transactions would have to be approved by Congress, which, the NEJM says, “may not be able to cap Medicare expenditures without addressing private expenditures as well.” This points to price controls for private medical costs as a means of controlling Medicare’s runaway costs.

A consequence of price controls is fewer available doctors. If providers cannot charge a market price, the supply of providers will decrease. This is already happening in Medicaid. The Wall Street Journal reports that 31 percent of doctors already do not accept new Medicaid patients because the entitlement pays them at a lower rate than private health insurance companies.

Price controls are effectively a form of health care rationing. As price controls cause shortages, allotting the available care will fall increasingly fall upon government bureaucrats.

Rationing is the inevitable outcome of price controls and shortages. Donald Berwick, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in an Associated Press interview, “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care. The decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly.” President Obama appointed Berwick during a senate recess to avoid confirmation hearings.

Other countries with government administered health care have followed the price control and rationing model. Canada’s universal health care system has led to long wait times “for practically any procedure or diagnostic test or specialist consultation in the public system” according to the Wall Street Journal. In Canada, only half of ER patients are treated “in a timely manner by national and international standards.” Perhaps this is why the premier of the Canadian province of Newfoundland came to the United States in 2010 when he had to have heart surgery instead of going to a Canadian hospital. In fact, many emergency patients in border areas are sent to U.S. hospitals for treatment.

In England, the Daily Mail reported in 2008 that a government edict to treat patients within four hours of check-in had led hospitals to keep patients in ambulances for up to five hours before being allowed access to the emergency room. The four hour wait as measured by the government did not begin until the patients left the ambulance and entered the hospital. Over 45,000 patients waited more than one hour for access to the emergency room. Leaving patients in ambulances also means that the ambulances are not available for new calls.

In 2011, the Independent reported that budget cuts were forcing the British National Health Service to overtly ration health care. Two-thirds of the national health trusts in the U.K. are rationing treatments for “non-urgent” procedures. Examples of rationing include only allowing hip and knee replacements for patients in severe pain, delaying cataract surgery until the patient’s sight is substantially affected, requiring seven cases of tonsillitis within a year before allowing children to have a tonsillectomy, and mandating “exceptional circumstances” and six months of monitoring before inserting “grommets” in a child’s ears to improve hearing.

These economic laws hold true even in the United States. In Massachusetts, which has been cited as the prototype for Obamacare, the Boston Globe reported in November 2011 that tiered health plans with limited networks that force consumers to endure long wait times or pay more out-of-pocket to be treated sooner are becoming more common in the state. An analysis by the Cato Institute found that since Massachusetts enacted health care reform wait times have increased. Wait times for a doctor’s appointment in Boston, already longer than other metropolitan areas before the reform, have increased while they have improved in other cities. Health care costs in Massachusetts have increased faster than the national average and adverse selection, the sickest people choosing the best insurance plans, has led some insurers and employers to stop offering the most comprehensive plans.

Earlier this month, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed a health care price control bill into law. The New York Times reports that the new law will cap both public and private health care spending “so that it will grow no faster than the state economy.” The law sets up a commission to monitor increases in spending. The commission can demand an explanation from providers or insurers whose costs exceed the target rate. It can also fine organizations up to $500,000 if it finds that they did not make a good faith effort to reduce costs.

A 2009 Rasmussen poll indicated that only 32 percent believed that Massachusetts health care reform was a success. A more recent WBUR poll found that 78 percent still consider health care costs a significant problem for Massachusetts. Sixty-three percent say that costs have gotten worse over the past five years since the reform was enacted.

The discussion of quality adjusted life years brings the discussion of rationing full circle back to Palin’s original quote. Quality adjusted life years (QALYs) is a calculation that measures “the benefits gained from a variety of medical procedures in terms of quality and life and survival for the patient” according to Oxford University’s Bandolier Journal.

While the ACA currently forbids the use of QALYs “to determine coverage, reimbursement, or incentive programs,” an article in the New England Journal of Medicine is openly critical about the law’s prohibition, saying that the “notion that the country can avoid the difficult trade-offs that cost-utility analysis helps to illuminate” is “magical thinking.” If the law were amended to allow the use of QALYs, it might mean that older patients would be unable to receive certain surgeries because the procedure offered more benefit to younger people. It might also mean that babies like Trig Palin would be passed over for people in a more productive stage of life.

As the demand for health care increases due to more people being covered with health insurance, there are certain to be shortages since the supply of doctors and hospitals is not increasing. Rationing and shortages in such situations commonly take the form of long wait times for treatment and price controls. This has occurred in a multitude of other countries where government-controlled health care has been tried. Given the shoddy, backroom manner in which the ACA was written, it is unlikely to contain any new and different approaches that will work where previous government health care bureaucracies failed.

President Obama and the Democrats may have been able to pass the Affordable Care Act and get it past the Supreme Court. As yet, they have been unable to repeal the laws of economics.

Read the rest of this article on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/article/obamacare-facts-death-panels-and-rationing

Health care reform after Obamacare

The Supreme Court’s ruling that upheld Obamacare does not mean that the law’s days are not numbered. It is likely that Republicans will sweep this year’s elections and repeal the law before it goes into effect. If the law does go into effect, the Court’s decision that Congress cannot force the states to participate in the Medicare expansion contained in the law means that the complex law is even more unworkable. Gov. Nathan Deal told Georgia Health News that the state had not made a decision on whether to participate in the Medicare expansion. Without major reform, Obamacare will collapse under its own weight, wreaking havoc on the American health care system and the federal deficit as it does so.

The question is what comes after repeal. The status quo of the health industry is also untenable. Reform is badly needed, but it should focus on lowering health care costs through free markets and competition. Obamacare does nothing to lower costs. To the contrary, it increases them and then mandates that people buy the more expensive insurance.

Successful healthcare reform will have several aspects that Obamacare did not. First, successful reform will be bipartisan. The Affordable Care Act was one party’s vision of how the health insurance industry would work. It was crafted in secret behind closed doors and passed by a party line vote that required the procedural trick of using a budget reconciliation to avoid a Republican filibuster. Democrats did not seek Republican input and failed to win a single Republican vote in either house.

Second, successful health care reform must reduce the costs of health care and insurance. If insurance is made more affordable through market reforms, more people will want insurance. The Affordable Care Act essentially ignored competition and the marketplace in exchange for top-down mandates, price controls, and government collusion with the pharmaceutical industry. The result was an immediate increase in the price of health insurance. Many insurers also stopped writing unprofitable policies, resulting in shortages in some markets.

Finally, successful health care reform will simplify and streamline regulations for the industry. The Affordable Care Act, at 2,409 pages, was neither simple, streamlined, nor efficient. It included at least 18 new tax increases, $19 billion in spending through 2013, and created 159 new federal agencies and programs. The bill was so complex that Nancy Pelosi, at the time the Speaker of the House, famously said in a Fox News clip, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

Successful health care reform would re-introduce competition into the health care marketplace. There are several ways of doing this. One is to stop the favorable treatment of employer health plans. Currently, premiums for employer-provided health plans are not taxed, but, if a worker wants to buy an individual policy instead of the one at work, premiums are not tax-deductible unless their medical expenses exceed 7.5 percent of their Adjusted Gross Income. If premiums for all health insurance were deductible, it would provide an incentive for people to shop around for the insurance that best suits their own needs.

Another common theme in competition is encouraging states to allow their residents to buy and sell insurance across state lines. The effect here would be two-fold. First, it would provide a larger market for the state’s insurance companies. If the state’s companies offer quality insurance at competitive prices, their sales and profits should increase. Economies of scale would drive down prices.

Second, states that do not have competitive health insurance laws would see their business go to other states. Each state sets it own standards and regulations for health insurance. States that mandate more benefits typically have higher costs for insurance. By allowing interstate insurance sales, citizens of states where insurance is expensive could buy more basic policies in other states. If the insurance companies and state governments see a sufficient loss of sales in highly regulated states, it would encourage reforms to allow them to compete. Otherwise, the insurance companies would go out of business and the state would lose tax revenue.

A third idea is to open more low-cost clinics. In many cases, patients at a doctor’s office never see a doctor for a routine visit. Instead they are treated by a nurse practitioner. In recent years, pharmacies and retail stores such as Wal-mart and Target have opened small health clinics. These clinics are a boon to the working poor because they often do not require appointments, they provide a fast resolution for routine medical problems, and they are much less expensive than an emergency room or traditional doctor’s office. Additionally, these clinics often have extended hours and are open on weekends. For more complex problems, the clinics refer patients to local primary care physicians or hospitals. The Journal of the American Medical Association sees retail clinics as a way to deal with the current shortage of physicians and as a way for every American to have medical care within a few miles.

Partnerships with private companies provide a great resource for helping to lower health care costs that was totally ignored by the authors of the Affordable Care Act. The possibilities can be seen in Wal-mart’s $4 generic prescription plan. The plan, introduced in 2006, was quickly matched by other retail pharmacies. Today, customers of Publix can even get prescription antibiotics at no cost. The downward pressure on prescription prices started by Wal-mart arguably did more to help consumers than the federal government’s prescription drug entitlement and it was accomplished without government mandates and at no cost to taxpayers.

If the goal of health care reform is to cover as many Americans with health insurance as possible, then it is only logical that reform should reduce the price of health insurance as much as possible. Basic economic law states that as price decreases, demand for a product increases. As health insurance premiums go down, more people will buy policies.

One answer to the high price of health insurance is to allow and encourage companies to write no-frills major medical policies. Every time government mandates that health insurance offer a new benefit, the price goes up. Major medical policies don’t cover everything from mental health to Viagra, but they do protect people against the cost of a catastrophic illness. This is all many people want or need. Consumers should be able to choose high deductibles and be allowed to opt out of coverages like pregnancy, preventive medicine, and contraception in exchange for lower premiums. When regulators try to make a policy all things for all people, the result is expensive and prices many people out of the market.

Additionally, health care pricing should be made more transparent. Few people know how much a visit to the doctor’s office actually costs because most people with insurance pay only a predetermined copay, $20 for example. The only way to find out the actual cost of the visit is to look at insurance documents long after the visit. Such a system makes it impossible to compare prices of competing physicians and hospitals and encourages increased consumption. These factors drive up the cost of health care by limiting the exposure of consumers to the true costs.

Similarly, participants in government programs such as Medicaid and Medicare consume health care at prices that are below market rates according to the Washington Post. The deficit from these government price controls is then passed along to private consumers, further increasing health care costs for everyone else. True health care reform must take steps to control the costs of Medicare and Medicaid, while preserving these programs as safety nets for the truly needy. The Republican “Path to Prosperity” budget plan includes provisions to reform Medicare according to Kaiser Health.

One popular provision of the Affordable Care Act is the requirement that insurance companies cover people with pre-existing conditions at below-market rates. The problem is that the rule gives people an incentive to not purchase insurance until they are sick. A better solution to the problem of pre-existing conditions would be to create assigned risk pools at the state level.

In an assigned risk pool, states require insurance companies to accept otherwise uninsurable customers in proportion to the amount of business that they do in the state. Because these policies are high in risk to the insurance company, their premiums and deductibles are higher. This encourages people not to wait until they are sick to purchase insurance. Georgia has long had assigned risk pools for auto and home insurance. Such a proven concept would make sense for health insurance as well.

A final path to lowering health care costs is tort reform. Tort reform involves limiting the ability of patients to sue for medical malpractice. Malpractice lawsuits, sometimes with outrageously large punitive damage awards, have caused premiums for malpractice insurance policies to increase. This higher cost is then passed along to consumers by doctors and hospitals. Tort reform does not prohibit lawsuits or collecting legitimate damages, but it does discourage frivolous lawsuits and excessive punitive damage awards. Understandably, lawyers oppose tort reform and, because lawyers are a Democratic constituency, Obamacare did not address the issue.

Texas passed a tort reform law in 2003. My San Antonio says that before the reform one in four doctors was sued each year. Eighty-five percent of the suits never went to trial, but still cost an average of $50,000 to defend. Cases that went to trial cost $1.4 million each. These costs led to increased insurance costs for doctors and, ultimately, higher costs for consumers.

According to American Medical News, malpractice insurance premiums have decreased by 30 percent since the law was enacted. The state also saw medical license applications increase by 83 percent when compared with before the reform. A spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry said, “Comprehensive medical liability reform has improved access to medical care, particularly in underserved areas….”

Mississippi’s experience was similar. Tort reform was enacted there in 2004. In the following years, malpractice insurance rates fell sharply, lawsuits decreased by 90 percent, and doctors stopped fleeing the state according to a 2008 Wall Street Journal article cited on the blog Captain Kudzu.

There is no single answer for how best to reform the health care industry. Solutions should consider economic realities as well as the needs and desires of the American people. Instead of federal mandates, states should be encouraged to experiment with their own solutions. Obamacare, which became law over the overwhelming opposition of the people, does none of that and is destined to fail.

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Taxation without representation: Why Roberts was wrong

Chief Justice John Roberts was wrong in his ruling on Obamacare. The ruling, which left the majority of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in place, was based on Robert’s view that the much maligned individual mandate was a tax. His reasoning regarding the mandate is assailed by the conservative wing of the Court, but, even if he were correct on this issue, the entire law still should have been ruled unconstitutional.

If the mandate is actually a tax, then the Anti-Injunction Act should apply. This 1793 law provides that no one has standing to sue over a tax until they have actually paid the tax. Yet Chief Justice Roberts’ ruling holds that the Act does not apply because “Congress did not intend the payment to be treated as a ‘tax….’”

Roberts explicitly states that Congress did not intend for the individual mandate to be a tax, yet he found that it was constitutional because it was a tax. If Congress had passed a tax law, it would have been constitutional, but this is not what Congress did. Chief Justice Roberts had to rewrite the law, transforming a “penalty” into a “tax,” to find it constitutional. The ruling is an example of judicial activism.

Roberts explains his ruling by saying that the mandate does provide revenue for the government. He then explains that while Congress’ choice of wording, “penalty” vs. “tax,” controls the applicability of the Anti-Injunction Act, it does not affect the constitutional question of whether Congress may mandate the payment. In Roberts’ view, because the only consequence of failing to buy health insurance is a payment to the IRS, the payment is a tax regardless of how Congress labeled it.

Roberts did better on other points of the ruling. Liberals had pointed to Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce as authority to regulate inactivity that affects commerce as well. The majority rejected this view: “The language of the Constitution reflects the natu­ral understanding that the power to regulate assumes there is already something to be regulated.”

Roberts continues, “The individual mandate, however, does not regulate existing commercial activity. It instead compels individ­uals to become active in commerce by purchasing a product, on the ground that their failure to do so affects interstate commerce. Construing the Commerce Clause to permit Con­gress to regulate individuals precisely because they are doing nothing would open a new and potentially vast do­main to congressional authority.”

Similarly, the Necessary and Proper Clause did not justify the mandate because it was not “consistent with the letter and spirit of the Constitution.” Congress must use means that are within its enumerated powers.

Finally, the majority also put the brakes on Congress’ use of federal money to coerce the states. The ruling notes that, “The Constitution simply does not give Congress the authority to require the States to regulate.” Congress must give the states a real choice without threatening to cut off other funding. Congress can attach conditions to funds, but not threaten to suspend other payments to states as a “means of pressuring the States to accept policy changes.” Roberts specifically states, “What Congress is not free to do is to penalize States that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding.”

Roberts took flack from both wings of the Court over his opinion. Justice Ginsburg’s dissenting concurrence is strongly worded. Her opinion boils down to one line: “Whatever one thinks of the policy decision Congress made, it was Congress’ prerogative to make it.” Unsurprisingly, Ginsburg (as well as the other three liberals on the Court) would have affirmed the law under the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clauses. She writes, “We presume the statute under review is constitutional and may strike it down only on a ‘plain showing’ that Congress acted irrationally.” This view sets a very low standard by looking at not whether the law is allowed by the Constitution, she presumes it is, but whether Congress’ actions were reasonable in her eyes.

Ginsburg is particularly vehement in her rebuttal to the majority opinion that Congress may not regulate inactivity as a form of commerce. She explicitly states her support for “[t]he proposition that Congress may dictate the conduct of an individual today because of prophesied future activity” and that “Nothing in this language [the Commerce Clause] implies that Congress’ commerce power is limited to regulating those actively engaged in commercial transactions.” To Ginsburg and the liberals, the Commerce Clause is a blank check for Congress.

The four conservative justices, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Antonin Scalia , jointly dissented against Roberts’ ruling. The four agreed that Congress could not mandate the creation of commerce in order to regulate it under the Commerce Clause. They also agreed that “the scope of the Necessary and Proper Clause is exceeded not only when the congressional action directly violates the sovereignty of the States but also when it violates the background principle of enumerated (and hence limited) federal power.” They agreed that the Medicare mandate was unconstitutionally coercive as well.

On the tax argument, however, the four disagree with Roberts, stating, “In all our cases the two [taxes and penalties] are mutually exclusive. The provi­sion challenged under the Constitution is either a penalty or else a tax.” The dissent continues, “We know of no case, and the Government cites none, in which the imposition was, for constitutional purposes, both.” According to the dissent, case law defines both terms: “A tax is an enforced contribution to provide for the support of government; a penalty . . . is an exaction imposed by statute as punishment for an unlawful act.”

Taking a strident tone, the dissent says, “We have never held—never—that a penalty imposed for violation of the law was so trivial as to be in effect a tax. We have never held that any exaction imposed for violation of the law is an exercise of Congress’ taxing power—even when the statute calls it a tax, much less when (as here) the statute repeatedly calls it a penalty.” The most damning piece of evidence that the dissenters present, “the nail in the coffin,” is that the “mandate and pen­alty are located in Title I of the Act, its operative core, rather than where a tax would be found—in Title IX, containing the Act’s ‘Revenue Provisions.’”

Quoting more case law, the dissenters say, “’Although this Court will often strain to construe legislation so as to save it against constitutional attack, it must not and will not carry this to the point of perverting the purpose of a statute . . .’ or judicially rewriting it.” Yet the dissenters note that this is exactly what the Court does in the majority opinion:

The Court today decides to save a statute Congress did not write. It rules that what the statute declares to be a requirement with a penalty is instead an option subject to a tax. And it changes the intentionally coercive sanc­tion of a total cut-off of Medicaid funds to a supposedly noncoercive cut-off of only the incremental funds that the Act makes available. The Court regards its strained statutory interpretation as judicial modesty. It is not. It amounts instead to a vast judicial overreaching. It creates a debilitated, inoperable version of health-care regulation that Congress did not enact and the public does not expect. It makes enactment of sensible health-care regulation more difficult, since Congress cannot start afresh but must take as its point of departure a jumble of now senseless provisions….

In the view of the four dissenters, since Congress did not write a severability clause into the law, the correct ruling would have been to strike down the entire law. This would be true even if the majority had only agreed that the coercive nature of the Medicare mandate to the states was unconstitutional. Severability clauses are usually inserted into legislation to stipulate that if one part of the law is found unconstitutional, the rest should remain in force.

Essentially Chief Justice Roberts has turned back the clock to 1765 and the Stamp Act. Our forefathers rejected this tax with the cry of “No taxation without representation!” Ironically, in 2012 we are again faced with taxation without representation. Chief Justice John Roberts, an appointed judge, has created a new tax that contravenes the will of Congress and the people. He also sets the disturbing precedent that under the taxing power of Congress almost anything, including inactivity, is subject to coercive taxes.

The Wall Street Journal quotes Justice Benjamin Cardozo who once said of judicial rulings that, “What is good in it endures. What is erroneous is pretty sure to perish.” In this week’s ruling, the new limits on federal power deserve to endure. The opinion of Justices Roberts and Ginsburg that Congress has the power to coerce its citizens through taxing practically anything, including inactivity, should perish. So should Obamacare.

 

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Obama and Romney are not the same

(Malwack/Wikimedia)

A common theme heard in the wake of Mitt Romney’s primary victories is that the former Massachusetts governor’s platform is almost indistinguishable from President Obama.  Even a cursory examination of the two men shows that the charge is manifestly untrue. 

Perhaps the most obvious area of apparent similarity is health care reform.  While governor of Massachusetts, Romney presided over the enactment of an individual mandate to purchase health insurance that President Obama has claimed as the inspiration for his own landmark legislation. 

There are important key differences between the Romney and Obama laws.  Not the least of these is the fact that Massachusetts did not face the same limits that the federal government faces under the Constitution.  The federal government is granted certain powers under the Constitution.  The rest are reserved to the states and the people.  The federal government does not have the right to force people to engage in commerce, but the state of Massachusetts may have that power under its state constitution.

The Constitution notwithstanding, many Americans believe that the states should not have the right to mandate the purchase of health insurance or other products.  In Massachusetts however, the reform plan was popular when it passed and remains so.  A poll last year reported by Reuters found that 84 percent of Massachusetts residents are satisfied with the state’s health care reform.  Nevertheless, Romney has repeatedly pledged to repeal Obamacare if elected and block its implementation with an executive order on his first day in office.  Of course, President Obama would block any attempts to repeal his signature achievement and would try to pass a new version if it is struck down by the Supreme Court.

Another obvious difference is in the types of judges that President Romney would appoint.  Because judges serve for life, the impact of judicial appointments will last far beyond the four-year presidential term.  Under Barack Obama’s judicial philosophy, judges should have “empathy” for the poor and be “sensitive to issues of social justice” says the New York Times.  In contrast, GOPprimary2012.com reports that Romney has said that he has a “strict constructionist judicial philosophy.”  As governor of Massachusetts, he appointed lower court judges that were tough on crime.  He reformed the judicial nominating process to make it easier for conservatives to be appointed and named a conservative to the chair of the Judicial Nominating Commission. 

Judge Robert Bork, quoted by GOPprimary2012.com, said in 2008, “No other candidate will do more to advance the conservative judicial movement than Governor Mitt Romney…  [He] is committed to nominating judges who take their oath of office seriously and respect the rule of law in our nation.”

Two of the most pressing issues faced by our country today are the skyrocketing federal debt and the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon.  With respect to Iran and its rush to obtain a nuclear weapon, Obama has dragged his feet since his election.  He failed to support the Iranian uprising in 2009 and continued to make diplomatic overtures to the Iranian government.  The president resisted tightening sanctions until pressed by Congress.  President Obama did, however, call an Iranian nuclear weapon “unacceptable” in an interview with The Atlantic and said that a “military component” would be the last option.

In a Republican presidential debate last January, excerpted on 2012.republican-candidates.org, Romney said, “…  If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon.  And if we elect Mitt Romney, if you elect me as the next president, they will not have a nuclear weapon....”  He continued, “I will make sure that the sanctions, diplomatic pressure, economic pressure and support of insurgents within the country help them become dissuaded to get away from their nuclear ambition.”

 

Under President Obama, the federal debt has risen sharply, both in real dollars and as a percentage of GDP.  The president has resisted almost all spending cuts.  His proposed budget for 2013 was a $3.8 trillion package that did not get a single vote, Republican or Democrat, in the House of Representatives. 

Mitt Romney has promised to immediately cut non-defense discretionary spending by five percent across the board.  He supports Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan that would reform Medicare while preserving benefits for current retirees, create a simplified income tax system, and reduce non-defense discretionary spending below 2008 levels.  Romney’s goal would be to reduce federal spending below 20 percent of GDP. His campaign website provides a roadmap of cuts to achieve that goal.

Closely related to the issues of spending and debt are taxes and regulation.  President Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal regulation and has made no secret of his desire to raise taxes.  A report by the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee cited by the Washington Examiner states that the Obama Administration has “imposed 75 new major regulations costing more than $380 billion over ten years” and another 219 regulations that will cost $100 million or more. 

 

According to MSNBC, Romney told supporters that he would consolidate or eliminate some departments and agencies of the federal government.  Specifically, he said that he would “either consolidate [the Department of Education] with another agency, or perhaps make it a heck of a lot smaller,” but that he would not eliminate it entirely.  He also hinted that “things like Housing and Urban Development…  might not be around later.”  Romney said that he would “send a lot of what happens in Washington back to the states."

 

Romney also proposes regulatory reform.  His proposal would work to repeal regulations that “unduly burden the economy or job creation.”  He would also require the cost of new regulations to be offset by reducing the regulatory burden elsewhere.  Romney would also propose a law that would require major rules to be approved by both houses of Congress, not delegated to federal bureaucrats via the administrative rulemaking process.

 

Even on social issues there are vast differences between President Obama and Mitt Romney.  Barack Obama has unquestionably been a pro-abortion president and has worked to expand federal funding for abortion.  In contrast, Mitt Romney, who admittedly favored abortion earlier in his career, has converted to the pro-life viewpoint.  NARAL Pro-Choice America notes that Romney supports a constitutional amendment defining that life begins at conception and would defund Planned Parenthood.  Romney also opposes Obama’s contraception and abortifacient mandate.  Romney is endorsed by pro-life groups like the National Right to Life Committee and the Susan B. Anthony List.

 

Similarly, Barack Obama is a strong supporter of same-sex marriage and in 2011 announced his decision not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court on the grounds that he believed it to be unconstitutional.  Vice President Biden’s recent comments about same-sex marriage may signal that repealing the DOMA will be a priority in Obama’s second term. In contrast, Mitt Romney has made clear that he supports traditional marriage.  He opposed the 2003 decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court while he was governor and supported a constitutional amendment to preserve traditional marriage there.  In a November 2011 interview linked on 2012.republican-candidates.org, Romney says that he believes that “the Defense of Marriage Act was well constructed and should be maintained.”

Mitt Romney may not be the first choice of many conservatives, but even a cursory example of his platform reveals that his plans for the country are not the same as President Obama’s.  In many policy areas, the two men could not be more different.  For the 62 percent of Americans who believe the country is on the wrong track (according to Rasmussen), the choice should be clear.

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