Tobacco Tax Follies
Amendment 35 imposes a 320 percent increase in state taxes on a pack of cigarettes. In what should be a clear warning to anyone who cares about good government, it simultaneously zaps TABOR restrictions and prohibits the legislature from overseeing how the money is spent.
Amendment 35 Taxing Tobacco Users to Fund Special Interests
Proponents of the Tobacco Tax initiative claim that increasing taxes on tobacco products will improve health care for children, help smokers by making them quit, and help taxpayers by making smokers pay for the extra health care that their habit makes them consume. These claims are grossly misleading. At bottom, Amendment 35 is a reverse Robin Hood, an attempt to take money from the relatively poor for the benefit of the relatively rich who populate a handful of special interest groups. The Amendment frees spending by these groups from both TABOR and normal legislative oversight, requires that spending levels increase in a fashion reminiscent of Amendment 23, and gives them eternal control of the new tax revenues.
What Have They Been Smoking? Tax Supporters versus the Truth
Amendment 35 would raise the state tax on cigarettes and tobacco products. The money would be redirected to groups working to expand enrollment in Medicaid and CHP, to anti-tobacco programs, and to community health centers.
Compulsory Evidence-Based Medicine: An Unproven Idea That Shouldn't Be Law
I. What is evidence-based medicine (EBM)?
Proponents like EBM originator David Sackett say evidence-based medicine is simply a tool to further the “conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of the individual patient. It means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research.”
Evidence-Based Medicine Turns Patients into Pets
If evidence-based medicine becomes law in Colorado, your dog may have more influence on his medical treatment than you do on yours.
Under language floating around the statehouse, future Colorado law could appoint a small committee to use “evidence-based medicine” to “integrate” the clinical expertise of a “health care provider” with a “covered person’s choice of care” and “efficacious interventions to maximize the quality and quantity of life for individual covered persons.” At least those who decide on a dog’s fate usually know him and treat him as an individual.
Health Care Reform: Liberate Patients or Oppress Them?
Though you would never know it from the news reports, the brightest hope for health care reform lies in the consumer directed health care movement.
Pioneering physicians, like Heather Sowell and Jonathan Sheldon at the Sheldon Sowell Center for Health in Englewood, and Vern Cherewatenko of Washington State, have opened practices that protect patients and physicians from the excessive overhead costs imposed by governments and insurance companies. By requiring payment at time of service they can eliminate overhead, charge fees that are 30 to 50 percent lower, and make health care affordable for almost everyone.
Activists Promote Known Failures as Health Care Reform
In April, a Denver opinion columnist wrote a health care reform piece titled “Panthers spring at HMOs failure.”[1] Devoid of logic, it parroted the favorite sound bites of advocates for government health care. One hopes that this same writer will one day run another column, comparing those advocates claims to the known facts.
Single Payer Singularly Unsuccessful
Advocates of single payer health care want Colorado state government to pass legislation making government the sole provider of health care in the state. It can be done, but the real question is why anyone would want to be so inhumane.
After decades of experience with single payer health care systems we know that it makes health care harder to get, and increases costs. Even in the unlikely event that government promises to pay for everything, there is no guarantee that it will pay enough to motivate others to provide the expertise and equipment required to treat a particular patient. As the Oregon Health Services Commission snippily told Medicaid clients complaining about their inability to find a doctor, “Having coverage does not always guarantee access.”[1]
Anti-Smoking Guns Deliberate Ignorance
After sitting through the recent Cessation Subcommittee meeting of the Interagency Committee Meeting on Smoking and Health in Denver, one can only be delighted that the Bush administration plans to let the private sector take over commercial activities[i], like mowing federal lawns. Maybe this will free up federal resources and we can stop contracting large chunks of public health policy to wealthy private foundations with radical political agendas.
Public Schools: Spending Money in all the Wrong Places
In school reform, the chasm between establishment advice and what the data show keeps on growing. In exchange for a “Performance Promise,” voters approved a $20 million bond issue for Jefferson County Public Schools to be used on projects that, according to the Districts web site, “have been proven to increase student achievement smaller classes, classroom coaches, staff development, extended learning and individualized attention.”
Medicaid Drug Formularies
Medicaid spending is projected to exceed $276 billion in 2003. It will be larger than Medicare. Some experts predict that without significant reform it will bankrupt the states by 2020.
Do We Need Warning Labels For Lies In The Library?
In September 2000, publishing house Alfred A. Knopf handed professional librarians a knotty problem. It published Arming America, a book in which Emory University professor Michael Bellesiles outlined research supposedly showing that guns were rare in America from the Colonial period to the Civil War. The book was awarded Columbia Universitys Bancroft Prize in history in April 2001, and immediately appeared in library collections around the country.
