The Dirt on Restaurant Inspections: Health Department Gets Failing Grade0

• September 4, 2008

The El Paso County Health Department says it can’t perform all required inspections of retail food establishments, public pools, and tattoo parlors. There is a solution that doesn’t require increasing taxes or added bureaucracy.

Health care: Unions lie; choice dies.0

• July 19, 2008

Who would support a self-serving political agenda at the expense of your health, wealth, and job mobility? AFL-CIO president John Sweeney and Colorado executive director Mike Cerbo.

Legislative Business As Usual: Take Money from Roads to Increase Health Care Costs0

• May 8, 2008

Colorado legislators say they want to fix the roads and cut health care costs. What they actually do is divert money from roads to increase health care costs.

This strategy is good for government but bad for people. It allows government and its fellow travelers to create new programs and to campaign for more tax money to support them. Government officials like having more tax money to spend, but they do not like to spend it on invisible maintenance. It is far more fun to promise new programs and spend time with stakeholders who are grateful that you helped them get their hands on other people’s money.

For Better Health, Repeal Political Controls0

• April 30, 2008

My wife and I pay $132 per month total for high-deductible health insurance, hundreds of dollars less than we would pay for comprehensive insurance. Our goal is to never need to make an insurance claim. We pay for all of our routine medical care — doctor visits, eye glasses, dental work, prescriptions — out of pocket, and we like it that way.

Health Care Psychosis0

• April 11, 2008

Samuel Johnson called second marriages “the triumph of hope over experience.” The same might be said for the latest health care reform bill at the State Capitol.

For more than 20 years, crusading politicians have promised to deliver better health care to more people for less money simply by saying “make it so.” With rare exceptions, the resulting legislation exacerbates economic distortions, makes insurance impractically expensive, drives insurers out of the state, and creates worse problems than originally existed.

Colorado Health Care Reform: Reincarnating Failed Policies0

• March 25, 2008

It’s back to the drawing board for certain Colorado health care reform advocates. Cambridge Health Alliance, a major Boston areas safety-net health care provider has just reported that the Massachusetts health care reform plan is saddling it with large losses.

The Massachusetts plan requires everyone to buy health insurance. The reform plans from Colorado’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Health Care Reform and Club 20 copy key elements of it. If everyone is insured, advocates say, safety-net providers will need far less support. Needless to say, Colorado hospitals and health plans eager to get paid have no qualms about lobbying lawmakers to make their fellow citizens pay for coverage designed by a government committee and legislators are happy to believe that less safety-net care translates into reduced state payments.