BuckeyeBlog

In a conference call with religious leaders, President Obama said there was a lot of misinformation in the health care debate. That’s true. Of course, much of that misinformation is coming from him. As Michael Tanner points out in the Orange County Register, the claim that people will be able to keep their insurance if they like it just isn’t true:

…under Section 59(B)(a) of HR3200, the bill making its way through the House, and Section 151 of the bill that passed out of a Senate committee, every American would be required to buy health insurance.

And not just any insurance: to qualify, a plan would have to meet certain government-defined standards. For example, under Section 122(b) of the House bill, all plans must cover hospitalization; outpatient hospital and clinic services; services by physicians and other health professionals, as well as supplies and equipment incidental to their services; prescription drugs, rehabilitation services, mental health and substance-abuse treatment; preventive services (to be determined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the United States Preventive Services Task Force); and maternity, well-baby, and well-child care, as well as dental, vision, and hearing services for children under age 21….

If your current health insurance doesn’t meet all those requirements, you won’t be immediately forced to drop your current insurance for a government-specified plan. But you would be required to switch if you lose your current insurance or “if significant changes are made to the existing health insurance plan.”…

Seniors, too, could lose their current coverage, at least the 10.2 million seniors currently participating in the Medicare advantage program. That program offers many seniors benefits not included in traditional Medicare, including preventive-care services, coordinated care for chronic conditions, routine physical examinations, additional hospitalization, skilled nursing facility stays, routine eye and hearing examinations, and glasses and hearing aids But the House bill cuts payments to the Medicare Advantage program by roughly $156.3 billion over 10 years.

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This month’s Atlantic has an excellent article about the problems facing our health care system. The author’s suggestions on how to fix our system are far better than anything currently being discussed in DC or at town halls. If you read this article and truly understand it, you’ll be better informed on health care than probably 95% of your fellow Americans.

Some excerpts:

I’m a Democrat, and have long been concerned about America’s lack of a health safety net. But based on my own work experience, I also believe that unless we fix the problems at the foundation of our health system—largely problems of incentives—our reforms won’t do much good, and may do harm. To achieve maximum coverage at acceptable cost with acceptable quality, health care will need to become subject to the same forces that have boosted efficiency and value throughout the economy. We will need to reduce, rather than expand, the role of insurance; focus the government’s role exclusively on things that only government can do (protect the poor, cover us against true catastrophe, enforce safety standards, and ensure provider competition); overcome our addiction to Ponzi-scheme financing, hidden subsidies, manipulated prices, and undisclosed results; and rely more on ourselves, the consumers, as the ultimate guarantors of good service, reasonable prices, and sensible trade-offs between health-care spending and spending on all the other good things money can buy.

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Gongwer News Service($) reports that Ohio’s passenger rail plans are already costing more than anticipated. In a split vote, the Controlling Board approved a $200,000 increase in the amount being paid to a California consulting firm to analyze the feasibility of passenger rail service. The Controlling Board  approved $450,000 in March to pay for this contract.

The amount approved for this contract is the first in many expenditures by the state on passenger rail service. It’s a pretty bad sign for taxpayers when this first expenditure has to be increased by 44% in only five months. It is a good example of exactly how this passenger rail push will work, though. As various parts of the plan unfold, the government will say each costs a certain amount and then that amount will be revised upwards later. It’s pretty clear this project will require far more from state taxpayers than the current estimates of $10 million in yearly subsidies.

Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser has a series of posts on the New York Times Economix blog taking apart the case for high-speed rail. This series should be required reading for all Ohio policymakers, especially those like Governor Strickland who are so enamored with high-speed rail.

What were Glaeser’s conclusions? Costs are high and benefits are minimal. That is, high-speed rail costs a lot to construct and operate and it offers little in the way of environmental benefits nor will it do much to help “sprawl” (if you think that’s a problem).

Crunch the numbers any way you want, but it’s hard to make a case that the benefits of high-speed rail are worth the costs.

Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson has some wise words on high-speed rail:

President Obama’s network may never be built. It’s doubtful private investors will advance the money, and once government officials acknowledge the full costs, they’ll retreat. In a recent report, the Government Accountability Office cited a range of construction costs, from $22 million a mile to $132 million a mile. Harvard economist Edward Glaeser figures $50 million a mile might be a plausible average. A 250-mile system would cost $12.5 billion and 10 systems, $125 billion….

What works in Europe and Asia won’t in the United States. Even abroad, passenger trains are subsidized. But the subsidies are more justifiable because geography and energy policies differ.

Densities are much higher, and high densities favor rail with direct connections between heavily populated city centers and business districts. In Japan, density is 880 people per square mile; it’s 653 in Britain, 611 in Germany and 259 in France. By contrast, plentiful land in the United States has led to suburbanized homes, offices and factories. Density is 86 people per square mile. Trains can’t pick up most people where they live and work and take them to where they want to go. Cars can.

Distances also matter. America is big; trips are longer. Beyond 400 to 500 miles, fast trains can’t compete with planes. Finally, Europe and Japan tax car transportation more heavily, pushing people to trains. In August 2008, notes the GAO, gasoline in Japan was $6.50 a gallon. Americans regard $4 a gallon as an outrage. Proposals for stiff gasoline taxes (advocated by many, including me) go nowhere.

According to Gongwer($), the Ohio Rail Development Commission is excited that driving between Ohio’s cities will take less time than passenger rail. Yes, even though they admit that driving will save you a lot of time, the ORDC thinks that rail travel is competitive.

According to ORDC numbers, it would take three hours by rail to get from Cleveland to Columbus. Driving takes two-and-a-half hours. From Cincinnati to Columbus you’ll be on the train for three hours as opposed to two hours and twenty minutes in a car.

These estimates don’t include other factors which will make rail travel even longer. Unless your house is right next to the train station, you’re going to need to spend time getting to the train. Similarly, unless your destination is right next to the train station, you’re going to spend time getting from the station to where you are ultimately going. And you’re going to spend time buying tickets, waiting for the train, boarding the train, waiting for the train to leave, waiting to get off the train, etc. Factor in all of these things and it’s clear that, time-wise, driving is a far better option for inter-city travel.

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Sam Staley, a senior fellow at the Buckeye Institute, has an article in Reason magazine about why the job creation potential of high-speed rail is not as great as some politicians claim:

Ultimately, high-speed rail’s impacts on American travel patterns and employment productivity are going to be negligible, and the actual job creation potential for high speed rail is much more modest than proponents admit.

Take, for example, the Ohio Hub corridor linking Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, and Toledo to regional destinations such as Chicago and Toronto. Ohio is one of the nation’s largest state economies, employing 5.3 million people. As an old-line manufacturing state, Ohio has lost 300,000 jobs just in the past year. Needless to say, Ohioans will be attracted to the optimistic rhetoric of rail’s job creation potential. Moreover, preliminary estimates by independent consultants suggest the Ohio Hub may actually cover its annual operating costs (although supporters are counting on the federal government covering 80 percent of capital costs of the $3.7 billion project).

Yet, even with these federal subsidies the consultant reports suggest that a $2.3 billion investment in building the rail corridor would generate only 54,540 jobs over the projected nine-year construction phase. That works out to 2,635 jobs per year at a cost of $42,170 per job. Further analysis found 16,700 permanent jobs would be created by the system once the system was up and running, assuming optimistically that ridership reaches forecasted levels and fares are set to cover its operating costs. While that might seem like a lot of jobs, the effort will do little to stem the economic tide turning against Ohio and other states facing the headwinds of global competition and a rising services-based economy.

For transportation investments to have a meaningful economic impact, they will need to cost-effectively improve America’s ability to move goods, services, and people from one place to another. High-speed rail doesn’t do that. It is an extremely costly way to achieve limited portions of these goals, and it inevitably fails as a broad-based solution to the country’s transportation challenges.

On the Freakonomics blog, UCLA transportation scholar Eric Morris writes:

once [government officials] have started spending money on a project they find it very hard to stop, no matter how disastrously it may be proceeding or how dim the benefits are starting to look.

This is why we should consider the administration’s high-speed rail (HSR) network carefully before construction commences, as I advocated here. The $12 billion that has already been allocated may just be the tip of the iceberg; once the dirt begins to fly, the public may be irreversibly committed to the capital and operational support of this program in perpetuity, no matter how much construction costs may spiral out of control or how disappointing ridership might be.

He also links to the blog of Edward Glaeser, a Harvard economics professor, who is looking into the economics of high-speed rail. The work being done by these two, as well as the Cato Institute’s Randal O’Toole for us, illustrates why high-speed rail is unlikely to live up to the promises of backers such as President Obama and Governor Strickland.

Many pro-rail people love to dismiss Mr. O’Toole as being biased against high-speed rail and on the payroll of the anti-rail industry (I’ve had a few conversations with people like this, even if I’ve never been able to figure out which industry is really opposed to rail). Dismiss O’Toole if you want, but Glaeser and Morris essentially support his conclusions. High-speed rail won’t live up to the hype.

With the final decision on Issue One just a day away and as the battle between both sides heats up, I decided it was time to be front and center with a Columbus Police Officer. On Saturday, August 2, 2009, I accompanied a police officer who’s job may be on the line. I rode side-by-side with him during the second shift at the 19th Precinct on the west side of Columbus. This is a first-hand account of a night in the 19th Precinct.

It began like any other ride-a-long, (I have been on two others before, one in Athens, Ohio and the other in Baltimore, Maryland), strange looks, some smiles but mostly the officers just pretending like I am not there. After passing the warrant check and scanning my license I was cleared to go.

The officer I was riding with has been with the Columbus Police Department for four years, an average length it seemed compared to the other officers working that night. The officer explained what was in the car, mentioning his car is short on supplies because, “the city won’t pay for them.” Then it was time to head on the road. (more…)

Here is video with Maurice Thompson of the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law and Fox News Contributor, Judge Andrew Napolitano: