You hear or read the number all the time. The New York Times breathlessly reports there are 46 million uninsured Americans and President Barack Obama routinely asserts the same number. The Census Bureau estimates, however, do not tell the entire story. The uninsured are a diverse and dynamic population, and the higher frequency of coverage loss is not only a function of the recession, but of the flaws inherent in the health insurance markets, namely the inability of individuals and families to secure and maintain personal and portable coverage. Data released by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) enables taxpayers to drill deeper into the problem.

• According to AHRQ’s  The Uninsured in American, 1996-2008: Estimates for the U.S. Civilian Nonstitutionalized Population under Age 65 (Statistical Brief #259) the number of non-elderly individuals for the full year in 2007 was 39.9 million.
• That 39.9 million includes 5.9 million children (see Statistical Brief #259) who are either in families wealthy enough to afford health insurance or are already eligible for Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
• That 34 million uninsured number includes 12 million illegal aliens s who the proponents of H.R. 3200 swear up and down will not receive a single dime of taxpayer assistance through the legislation.
• Most of those who are uninsured become insured. As most health policy analysts know, the insurance market is unstable; it is constantly churning with people going in and out of coverage. According to the CDC’s Summary Health Statistics for the U.S. Population National Health Interview Survey (CDC, Table 25), nearly one quarter of currently uninsured individuals was due to change in employment. And according to AHRQ’s The Long-Term Uninsured in America, 2004-2007: Estimates for the U. S. Civilian Nonstitutionalized Population under Age 65 (Statistical Brief #258) 55% of individuals ages 18-24 were uninsured for at least 1 month in the period 2006-07, but only 18 percent were uninsured over a two year period and only 11 percent were uninsured over the entire four year period.

The AHRQ data reaffirms there are gaps in coverage. There is nothing new here; it is the problem that conservative health policy analysts have been trying to address for the last two decades. It is a structural problem in the insurance markets. While the millions who lose and gain coverage- the source of middle class anxiety- is not much different now than it was in the last ten years or more, it is well to remember that the number of Americans who are poor, sick, and uninsured for a lengthy period is a relatively small number, about 4 million individuals. This is problem is not hard to resolve.

What Congress should focus on, then, is how to make health insurance personal and portable; something moderates and conservatives in Congress, based on their own legislative proposals, know exactly how to do. Instead what we are getting is just an acceleration of the already fast tracked government control of health care.

Take the SCHIP data from AHRQ. There were 5.9 million uninsured children in 1999. In 2007, there were still 5.9 million uninsured children (Statistical Brief #259). Public coverage went up, and private coverage went down; but overall, coverage remained the same. Consider that the cumulative cost of SCHIP and increased Medicaid enrollment of children has exceeded $100 billion. The data suggests that much of this spending has simply substituted taxpayer dollars for private dollars. It’s called crowd out, and it is profoundly irresponsible public policy. For every two dollars of spending, you get a $1 worth of coverage. This is likely to be repeated if Congress enacts the same, tired, old formula: expansion of public programs. Neither the Administration nor Congress has yet to explain how much of the $1.2 trillion in new spending under the House legislation will go to simply replacing private spending with taxpayer dollars.

Given the apparent political motivations behind so many of the recent decisions at the Department of Justice (DOJ) — from the dismissal of the voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party to the re-investigation of CIA interrogators after DOJ prosecutors had already reviewed the matter and decided there was no reason for further criminal prosecution — the latest news about the dropping of the investigation against New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, Obama’s former nominee to be commerce secretary, raises a lot of questions. The Associated Press report cites a DOJ source saying that the investigation of pay-to-play allegations involving one of the governor’s largest political donors “was killed in Washington” by top DOJ officials.

For anyone familiar with internal Justice Department procedures, this is particularly suspicious. The DOJ has a manual called “Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses” (I helped edit the latest edition when I was at Justice) that sets out the rules and procedures for U.S. attorneys when they are investigating these types of public-corruption cases. It is the U.S. attorney in New Mexico who would normally make the final call on a local public-corruption case, not “top Justice Department officials” in Washington.

The DOJ manual sets out the consultation rules for U.S. attorneys, who are required to “consult” with the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division in Washington. But only consultation is required; the Public Integrity Section does not make the final decision on whether an investigation should go forward. (Attorney General Eric Holder should not have forgotten this, since Public Integrity was the first place he worked at Justice.) So if the AP is correct in reporting that “top” officials in Washington killed the investigation, then political appointees within the department did not follow normal DOJ procedures.

Now, I will be the first to tell you that I think the attorney general should have the final authority on all actions taken by the Justice Department. But that is not the rule set out for public-corruption cases being investigated by U.S. attorneys. So did top political officials in Washington make the final decision to dismiss this case against a Democratic officeholder? Have they changed the rules in the prosecution manual that only require consultation? I seriously doubt that Eric Holder will provide any answers to these questions, or that the lack of a response by the Justice Department (or the validity of the response if it makes one) will be investigated by Congress. By comparison, the Bush administration was castigated for supposedly firing U.S. attorneys for not pursuing such investigations vigorously enough, and its officials were the subject of endless congressional investigations and subpoenas. Yet the Obama administration has ended such an investigation and received nary a word of criticism. There will certainly be no congressional investigation of its actions. This double standard is depressingly familiar, but its rank hypocrisy still amazes me at times.

Cross-posted at The Corner.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announced today that the Deposit Insurance Fund has dipped to a low of $10.4 billion at the end of June — that’s a decrease of 77 percent from a year ago when the fund, which covers deposits in a bank failure, had $45.2 billion.

The FDIC report also found that one in four financial institutions are currently unprofitable.

Subsidyscope.com, a joint project between the Sunlight Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts, has been keeping track of failed banks as as well as its effect on the deposit insurance fund.

Source: FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile

The fund is dangerously close to being depleted — it’s reserve ratio, a measurement of the fund against insured deposits, was .22 percent at the end of June. By law, the fund is supposed to remain within 1.15 percent and 1.5 percent of all insured deposits. If the ratio falls below the lower limit, the FDIC must raise assessment rates on covered financial institutions.

In May, Congress approved an increase in a line of credit at the Department of Treasury to the FDIC, should the fund be depleted. The line of credit was increased to $100 billion with temporary borrowing authority of $500 billion. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said today that they do not expect to tap that line of credit “at this point in time.”

The only time that the fund was depleted was during the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s, when the FDIC borrowed $15 billion from the Treasury Department.

Political Math, the guy that puts together some really neat videos explaining economics, is taking on a recent column by Paul Krugman.

Krugman is carrying the water for the Obama Administration over news that budget projections were off by $2 trillion. Of course, the CBO predicted this months ago. Krugman compares the current budget to the economy during World War II.

On this, Political Math writes:

First of all, the national debt in WWII was initiated by an existential threat to the very continuation of our country. Mr. Krugman does not make even attempt to make the case that we have a similar crisis that justifies this kind of debt.

Second, implicit in his observation is the concept that since we did fine after WWII, we’ll do fine now. But the years after WWII saw drastic reductions in the inflation-adjusted debt driven by drastic reductions in spending. Mr. Krugman points to no similar possibility in the post-Obama world.

Third, we have something now that we didn’t have in the 1940’s. Back in the 1945, at the height of the spending that saw our national debt rise so dramatically, entitlement spending and interest on the national debt made up a meager 5% of our total budget.

By the end of President Obama’s term (if he runs two terms) we’ll be looking at a federal budget that is 70% mandatory spending. (I assume for the purposes of consistency that mandatory spending includes interest on the national debt because we don’t really have a choice in not paying it.)

[…]

My problem with Mr. Krugman’s “How big is $9 trillion?” is that he is aware of all the problems I pointed out. He didn’t explain how much $9 trillion is; he obfuscated it. By comparing the debt load in the heart of a world-shaking war to a debt load that was accumulated in (relative) peacetime, he has misled his readers to the real significance of the data.

By the way, the Washington Post called for President Obama and Congress to scrap the current health insurance overhaul and start-over because of the new deficit projections.

According to the Polish daily, Gazeta Wyborcza, sources in the United States have confirmed that the Obama administration has made the decision to abandon our anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Unfortunately this news is not surprising at all. In March of this year it was revealed that President Obama “secretly” offered Moscow a grand bargain whereby it would sacrifice missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic in exchange for Moscow’s help discouraging Iran’s nuclear program. Then in his July summit with Moscow, Obama reinforced his message that missile defense remains a bargaining chip that can exchanged for his college dream of a nuclear free world.

This is a grave mistake for several reasons:

• The decision to abandon the “third site” deployment of 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic violates President Obama’s pledge to support missile defense that is “pragmatic and cost-effective.” Ground based missile defense is effective, affordable, and available now.
• According to the Congressional Budget Office, alternatives to the third site do not provide a comparable level of defense. The CBO concluded that the estimated $9-14 billion 20-year cost of the third site was half of the estimated costs of a sea-based alternative.
• Reneging on our promise to Poland and the Czech Republic sends a terrible signal to our allies in the region.

Abandoning our best missile defense option in Europe only encourages Iran to speed up their ballistic missile program so that they can get their threat in place before a European missile defense system is available. We are in a depserate race to beat the clock on Iran’s nuclear program. Why on earth are we stopping now to let the Iranians catch up?

By Rob Willington, Executive Director, REBUILD the Party

This is a great video showing the difference between the marketing of the two parties. Being right on the issues is not enough, the steak/potato analogy showed this perfectly. Many of my fellow conservatives understand Milton Friedman, Russel Kirk, and the Austrian school of economics very well. However, this video shows us that being right is only half the battle, we must also know how to sell and market our ideas.

If you disagree with this, you’re an idealist not living in reality.

RebuildTheParty is working to help our campaign staffers and activists become better at selling our campaigns. If you are interested in graphics and imagery, you can check out our KTF group: http://rebuildtheparty.ning.com/group/keepthatfaith

If your background is in tech and you have done programming/coding, or are just interested in tech- you can join CodeRed http://rebuildtheparty.ning.com/group/codered

There are plenty of other groups for you to join to fit your interests. Join a group and begin to add value - share what you know, and learn from others about what they are doing.

While the philosophical debate continues (as it should) within our movement, there is no doubt that we can always improve our tactics and the way we campaign (right now).

Real Times Investigations’ Luke Roziak uses the Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker to expose an Israeli spy with “one of the richest contracts to lobby for a foreign client.” Anything that involves $6.5 million and bizarre land deals in Zimbabwe is worth reading.

The Washington Post profiled super-lobbyist Heather Podesta a couple of days ago. A big focus in the story is the jet-setting life a top lobbyist must lead to get to the big fundraising parties. Dancing with the Ways & Means Chair one night (”Doesn’t get any better than that … A kiss from the chairman.”) and tasting wines at Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s vineyard a few days later. This is “the Summer of the Lobbyist.”

Tim O’Reilly asks, “What does Gov 2.0 mean to you?”

Even though we haven’t discussed the disclosure of detainee abuse photos or memos, I found this post by Marc Ambinder illuminating as to how a commitment to transparency can have unintended consequences.

In his original budget proposal, President Obama envisioned a cap-and-trade program that would raise hundreds of billions of dollars by selling emissions credits to businesses. He then proposed spending $504 billion of these revenues on a making-work-pay tax credit, and $120 billion on new energy research spending. However, the House has since passed a cap-and-trade bill that would give away most if not all of the emissions credits, leaving no more than $165 billion for other spending (most of which the bill allocates to low-income energy rebates).

It is also worth noting that these giveaways to utilities, manufacturers and others were necessary for the bill to pass (by a narrow margin) the House. Even more will likely have to be promised for this measure to garner a filibuster proof majority in the Senate.

Yet despite Congress’ signal that these excess revenues will not materialize, the President’s mid-session budget update has once again proposed to spend over $620 billion on the make-work pay credit and new energy spending. The White House has not clarified whether these expensive policies are contingent on these enormous cap-and-trade revenues somehow materializing, or whether the President is willing to simply add $620 billion to the budget deficit for these proposals.

If these proposals are not contingent on cap-and-trade revenues, then they represent yet another attempt to expand government at budget deficits even beyond the staggering $9 trillion in new debt that the White House has forecast over the next decade. Washington will spend a peacetime-record 26 percent of GDP this year, and President Obama has proposed a budget that would permanently spend between $5,000 and $8,000 per household more than under President Bush. By refusing to set priorities and streamline spending, President Obama is setting the stage for historic tax increases that would devastate families, businesses and the economy. At the same time, the cap-and-trade bill would add significantly to energy costs, whether or not the emissions credits are given away or sold.

Brian Riedl contributed to this post

WASHINGTON, AUG. 26, 2009—Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner today issued the following statement on the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy:

Even in Washington, it’s possible to disagree without being disagreeable. We should keep that in mind as America mourns the passing of Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Sen. Kennedy’s career was marked by the passion he brought to his work, his dedication to serving this great country, his respect for the institution of the Senate and his pursuit of bipartisan compromise. Washington will certainly be less vibrant without him.

This is a time to celebrate Kennedy’s lifetime of public service and to pray that his family can find comfort in their time of loss.

I disagreed with Sen. Kennedy on virtually every major issue, but this sad occasion is not a time to try to score political points. Unfortunately, many are already using his passing to promote a political agenda, insisting that the United States must honor him by pushing universal health care. It is wrong, and tactless, to use Sen. Kennedy’s death — or anyone’s — simply to advance a particular policy agenda. This is a time for genuine tribute, not crass politics.

Joe Lieberman is calling for a moratorium on “health care reform.” While Lieberman is likely motivated by a desire to pander to the hardly principled GOP, he is a prominent figure in the establishment nonetheless. I’m happy to have his help on a very important issue. It’s crucial that we preserve all capitalist institutions in this country from state takeovers.

(Thanks to LewRockwell.com for the link)