The Sanchez Report

Real Healthcare Reform

It's no secret that I've been a staunch critic of President Obama's domestic policy agenda. His attempt to shove Obamacare down the throats of the American people tops my list of reasons to oppose him. I'm amazed that he and the Democrats have been successful in their attempts to fabricate a health care crisis. How can we have a crisis when most polls show that 85% of the American people are happy with their health care? There's no doubt that something should be done to control the cost of health care. The question is whether or not he should have made this his top priority when unemployment is at 9.7%.

The card has been dealt and so where do we go from here. I've often been asked why would the Democrats move forward in the face of strong public opposition to Obamacare? They see this as a once in a lifetime opportunity to move closer to the liberal utopia of universal, single payer health care. They have longed for the day when the federal government would take over health care and move it from the private sector to government control.

The Democrats have combined the need for reform with their desire to provide universal coverage. These are two separate issues. This debate started in during the 2008 campaign and we were led to believe that there were 46 million Americans uninsured. According to Blue Cross, approximately 14 million qualify for an existing government program such as Medicare and Medicaid but have chosen not to enroll. Another 13 million have incomes above $50,000 and could probably afford some type of coverage on their own. In addition, there are 6 million who are considered "short term uninsured" or people who are in between jobs. That leaves around 6-8 million people who are chronically uninsured. That's a far cry from 46 million. Nevertheless, the question we need to answer as a nation is whether we should blow up our entire health care system in order to insure those who fall into the chronically uninsured category? The President's allies have accused their critics as obstructionists with no real ideas or alternatives. Nothing could be further from the truth. I'm no expert in this public policy area, but even I have a plan that makes more sense.

Several of my friends have asked me to step up and give my vision of health care reform and so I’ve taken them up on the challenge.  Here you go:

1) Health insurance should be easy, flexible and accessible like purchasing your car insurance. There should be plenty of competition across state lines. Your employee should provide a credit that YOU can use to purchase your own plan online. We shouldn't be forced to choose from just a few plans through our HR department. You should be able to customize your own plan, just like car insurance based on your family's needs. This would drive efficiencies in the delivery supply chain, which would lower costs.

2) Tort Reform- We should reform the laws concerning frivolous lawsuits. One of the reasons costs are out of control is because of the cost of malpractice insurance. Your doctor pays tens of thousands of dollars each year for insurance. They need to make up the cost by charging inflated rates for some services. This reform would lead to the biggest reduction in costs.

3) Young people in their 20's, who are relatively healthy do not need a traditional managed care health plan. They should have access to cheap catastrophic plans that they can tap into in case of an emergency. This would immediately cover most of the 6 million short-term uninsured who are in school or between jobs.

4) We need to change the law as it pertains to pre-existing conditions. People should not be prevented from purchasing health insurance or have their policy canceled because of a change in their status. This would lead to higher premiums, but those are costs that I'm sure some families would pay if they were just given the opportunity.

5) You would be left with 3-5 million families that truly need the government to pay their way. If that's the case, it would be far cheaper for the govt to provide a debit card with $300-400 per month to temporarily pay for their plan. That would amount to no more than $25-30 billion per year. Much cheaper than what President Obama is trying to push through!

Unfortunately, it looks like the Democrats are hellbent on ramming through their plan. If they were to take a step back and truly seek compromise, they would find that it is much wiser to fix health care in incremental steps. We still have the best health care system in the world. Leave it in the hands of the private sector.

Obamanomics Is Moving Us In The Wrong Direction

The great Larry Kudlow once again articulates why the Obama economic plan is leading us down the road to economic demoralization.

From Townhall.com:

There’s no question that current government policies for taxes, spending, and regulation are causing the U.S. to lose competitiveness in the global race for capital, prosperity, and growth.

Of course, China has been moving in the direction of free-market capitalism for years. To some extent, this shows the positive benefits of America’s free-trade policies and its open-mindedness in helping nurture not only China growth, but also middle-class prosperity worldwide.

But what’s particularly galling about Obamanomics is that we may well be losing our competitive edge with Europe. While Europe is ever so slightly moving toward Reagan and Thatcher, the U.S. is shifting toward an overtaxed and overregulated model that smacks of François Mitterrand. That’s something no one should want to tolerate.

Heavy government controls at home, along with an income-leveling social policy couched in economic-recovery terms, is no way to run a railroad. At the simple stroke of a computer key, world investment flows to its most hospitable destination. That includes a reliable currency. But in President Bush’s last year and President Obama’s first, the U.S. has become a less-hospitable destination for global capital. That should worry everybody.

Read entire post here

The 10 Most Liberal and Conservative Cities In California

The Sacramento Bee released a report that lists the ten most liberal and conservative cities in California. Their staff completed a data crunch using the latest voter registration numbers provided by the California Secretary of State. For you quants out there, you'll probably take this data and try to draw some correlations. If you come up with anything interesting, please let me know. The only surprise was that San Francisco ended up as the tenth most liberal city in the state. I thought it would place higher.

Conservative Places
10. Temecula (Riverside)
9. Palos Verdes Estates (Los Angeles)
8. Ridgecrest (Kern)
7. Coronado (San Diego)
6. Rancho Santa Margarita (Orange)
5. San Clemente (Orange)
4. Yorba Linda (Orange)
3. San Marino (Los Angeles)
2. Newport Beach (Orange)
1. Canyon Lake (Riverside)

Liberal Places
10. San Francisco
9. Compton (Los Angeles)
8. San Pablo (CoCo)
7. Fairfax (Marin)
6. Richmond (Contra Costa)
5. Albany (Alameda)
4. Inglewood (Los Angeles)
3. Emeryville (Alameda)
2. Oakland (Alameda)
1. Berkeley (Alameda)

College Republicans Stand Their Ground In San Francisco

Having grown up in the Bay Area, I have seen firsthand the so-called "tolerance" of the radical left. It amounts to hypocrisy of the tenth degree. The far left tolerates and respects all except those who think differently. Surprisingly, the San Francisco Chronicle  wrote a decent article about the College Republican Club of San Francisco State University. This club represents an island of 300 students in a sea of radical left-wing students and faculty. Kudos to these students who still believe that a college campus should be the place to debate ideas and not an institution of indoctrination.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

James Kincaid, president of the San Francisco State College Republicans, and three other club members were gathering signatures for a petition to stop the Fairness Doctrine when Jacob Barcena, a junior studying music, stopped by to ask a few questions.

"What do you do beyond ruffling feathers on campus?" he asked.

At San Francisco State, which has a long and storied history of activism and a diverse and liberal student body, the College Republicans stand out. While the scene at the table last month was tame, some of the group's past events have been anything but: A bake sale to support a wall at the Mexico border, an anti-terrorism rally that invited students to throw a shoe at a Hamas flag and a victory party for George W. Bush's re-election in 2004 all drew heated protests.

Read entire article here

The Vanishing Young Republicans

The GOP is in the midst of an identity crisis in the wake of the 2008 elections and the recent defection of Arlen Specter. There is no doubt the GOP is suffering from a perception and message problem. The perception is the GOP is a dying party, devoid of any new ideas and thriving only in the rural South among church going white conservatives and no one else. I disagree with that perception, but perception is reality in politics and the GOP needs to move quickly to recapture the hearts and minds of two distinct voting blocs, the youth and Hispanic vote. This excellent blog post by Kristen Soltis examines the youth vote in greater detail and uncovers some rays of hope for the GOP.

From The Next Right :

The 2008 shift is most concerning for the Republican Party in two ways. First, it shows the highest proportion of young voters identifying as Democrats since 1972. Second, it shows the largest gap between 18-29 year old party ID and overall party ID in that same time frame. Consider 1976, when the post-Watergate voters abandoned the GOP. In that year, Democrats enjoyed a 16 point advantage over Republicans overall. The gap among 18-29 year olds was 21 points - large to be sure, but not so different from voters overall. Yet in 2008, there was a more marked difference between young voters and the overall electorate. While Democrats held a 7 point advantage over Republicans in terms of party identification overall, that advantage jumps to 18 points among voters 18-29.

However, in terms of ideology, while young voters are quite different from voters overall, the major change did not occur this year or even this decade. In 2008, "Liberal" made a one point gain among young voters, "conservative" a one point loss. The change in young voters didn't look terribly different from the change (or lack thereof) overall, a surprising finding given the major shift in partisan identification.

 

Read the entire post here