With Democratic support coalescing around Sen. Max Baucus’s (D-Mt.) health care reform proposal, passage of a comprehensive overhaul now appears more likely than ever.  Opponents had their summer of protests.  But, Democrats have shown a renewed sense of energy since discrediting Sarah Palin’s “death panels” and Sen. Charles Grassley’s claim that ObamaCare would “pull the plug on grandma.” Still, while those charges may have been a little overwrought, there is plenty to be concerned about with the Democratic health reform…

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Rep. Diana DeGette is, without any apparent cognitive dissonance or trace of irony, proposing:

1) Require, by law, that people buy health insurance.

2) Remove health insurers’ antitrust exemption. But only after legally requiring everyone to buy their product.

You figure it out. Insurers are set to receive one of the largest coroporate welfare grants in history. No wonder so many firms are salivating over this year’s health care legislation. But they may pay an antitrust price for their legally mandated windfall.

Perhaps this…

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Detractors of capitalism decry that it caters to special interests. The opposite is actually true. Just look at what’s happened in the last year.

Most of Wall Street came to government asking for a bailout when the government-created housing bubble popped.

The Big Three automakers also went to Washington for largesse when their customers came to prefer Toyotas and Hondas.

Health insurance companies stand to make a killing if Obamacare passes.

T. Boone Pickens and Al Gore would make millions from environmental legislation.

Ludwig von…

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The National Journal had an interesting article this week describing the difficulty Democrats have been having getting young adults interested in the health care debate.  Two-thirds of voters 18 to 29 pulled the lever for Barack Obama last November, and over 40 percent of the uninsured are young adults age 18 to 34.  So, the Dems assumed they would be big proponents of the Obama agenda, including his hallmark proposal on health reform.  It turns out, though, that America’s youth were…

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Much of the hullabaloo over President Obama’s health care speech to Congress last week focused on his endorsement of a “public option” — that is, a government-run, not merely government regulated health insurance plan for the non-elderly middle class.  Throughout the August congressional recess, it appeared as though the White House was ready to abandon the public option, since that was a major source of contention among congressional Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats, and a sizeable portion of the American public.  In…

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Host Richard Morrison and co-host Jeremy Lott welcome special guests Lee Doren and Greg Conko to Episode 60 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We start with a recap of the 9/12 D.C. Tax Protest, look into union rules that hurt minority contractors and consider the alleged ethics violations of former California Assemblyman Mike Duvall. We then turn to Greg Conko for his thoughts on free market healthcare reform and finish with a tribute to The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived, Norman…

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Germany is a lot smaller than the U.S., but it has a lot more health insurers to choose from, and cheaper health-care costs. One reason might be more competition: in the U.S., you can’t buy individual health insurance from an out-of-state insurer, since an obsolete federal law lets states block purchases across state lines, taking away interstate-shopping rights that citizens would otherwise enjoy under the the Constitution’s Interstate Commerce Clause. That leaves patients with fewer choices, higher prices, and less competition…

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In one regulated area of the economy after another, it’s exasperating to hear journalists and pundits claim that, “The market has failed,” when in fact it hasn’t been allowed to function. That’s especially true in the case of insurance, which operates under a regime of state-level protectionism, as former CEI Brookes Fellow Tim Carney makes clear in his Washington Examiner column today:

Rep. John Shadegg, a conservative Republican from Arizona, has proposed a bill to allow interstate purchase of health insurance. Blue…

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