USD College Republicans

Letter in the Sioux City Journal

There was an excellent letter to the editor today in the Sioux City Journal, if I may say so myself.
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-Matt Hittle

Posted at 08:49AM Dec 27, 2007 by College Republicans in Health Care  |  Comments[4]

Health insurance mandates

Good old Greg Mankiw has an excellent post regarding health insurance mandates.
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"The more I think about it, the more I come to the view that a lot of the rhetoric over insurance mandates is overblown. A mandate is only as effective as the penalty backing it up. No one, as far as I know, is ready to make failure to be insured a criminal act punishable by jail time. Instead, if a person fails to follow the mandate, he merely pays a penalty. So the mandate is really just a financial incentive to have insurance."
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He then offers two proposals- a $1000 fine for not having health insurance or a $1000 tax credit for those who have health insurance. This is essentially a financial inventive to get insurance.
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Of course, like Mankiw says, no one- and by this, I mean presidential candidate- who espouse universal health care has proposed that the lack of insurance be a criminal offense.
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-Matt Hittle

Posted at 10:31PM Dec 18, 2007 by College Republicans in Health Care  |  Comments[0]

Ignorance of the highest order

California is a step closer to enacting a state-wide universal health care plan.
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"Fundamentally, health care is a right and not a privilege, and it ought to be afforded to everybody," Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, a Democrat and the bill's author, told his colleagues before they voted. "Make no mistake about it; this is truly a historic effort."
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No, it's not. Health care is NOT a right. I direct you to this article by Leonard Peikoff for a deeper explanation.
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' "It is time for the people to stop living in fear of losing their medical coverage, of living in fear that they are literally one hospital stay away from having to file personal bankruptcy," Schwarzenegger said at a news conference after the Assembly vote, surrounded by Democratic lawmakers.'
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No, Arnold, it's time you started spending within your means. This is an abysmal idea. The California Democrats are seemingly careless with regard to spending.
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Remember what PJ O'Rourke said: "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free."
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-Matt Hittle

Posted at 03:13AM Dec 18, 2007 by College Republicans in Health Care  |  Comments[3]

Suderman on Krugman on health care

FreedomWorks' Peter Suderman wrote an excellent post recently about Paul Krugman's take on health care.
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"So let’s be completely clear: Even if you’re healthy, even if you don’t want or need health insurance — or only want to purchase inexpensive coverage against major financial catastrophes — Krugman and the rest of the liberal health care crowd don’t want to let you. They want to force you to pay for the health insurance of everyone else. This isn’t about charity or compassion or any of those liberal warm-n-fuzzies, it’s about taking your money and giving it away.
It doesn’t matter how much it costs you, or that you earned the money in the first place, or whether you’ll get health care benefits from it yourself. It’s about requiring you cough up, like it or not.

What a mindset: You earn, we spend.

And these are the same people trying to sell their programs based on freedom?"
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-Matt Hittle

Posted at 11:12PM Dec 04, 2007 by College Republicans in Health Care  |  Comments[1]

Mankiw: Universal health care a Trojan Horse for income redistribution

This is an excellent blog post by Harvard economist N. Gregory Mankiw discussing in further detail his aversion to universal health care:
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http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/11/heathcare-q.html#links
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"Observing dissatisfaction with the U.S. healthcare system, they [The Left's pundits] are using reform as a Trojan Horse to push for more redistribution of income. Almost all sweeping health reform proposals involve higher taxes on the rich to provide benefits for those farther down the economic ladder. The redistribution, rather than health reform, is sometimes the main objective."
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-Matt Hittle

Posted at 02:10PM Dec 01, 2007 by College Republicans in Health Care  |  Comments[0]

Mankiw > Krugman

Yes, Mankiw is greater than Krugman...in my humble opinion
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Harvard Economics Professor N. Gregory Mankiw, known by USD students as that guy who wrote your economics textbook, recently published an excellent article in the New York Times in which he discusses universal health care. Frankly, I'm surprised the NYT even published it. Either way, it's very good.
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"WITH the health care system at the center of the political debate, a lot of scary claims are being thrown around. The dangerous ones are not those that are false; watchdogs in the news media are quick to debunk them. Rather, the dangerous ones are those that are true but don’t mean what people think they mean."
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Mankiw explains three mischaracterizations (or, dare I say...LIES?), that the Left uses as justification for universal health care. They are:
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"STATEMENT 1 The United States has lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than Canada, which has national health insurance.
"STATEMENT 2 Some 47 million Americans do not have health insurance."
"STATEMENT 3 Health costs are eating up an ever increasing share of American incomes."
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Check out this link if you want to know how he debunks these claims:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/business/04view.html?ex=1351828800&en=7abf86ba1f3f353d&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
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-Matt Hittle

Posted at 09:02PM Nov 27, 2007 by College Republicans in Health Care  |  Comments[0]