Issues with Hillary-care

As election season heats up, we're hearing a lot about why we 100% of Americans should be given mandatory health insurance, rather than the 85-90% who have insurance today. Well, former Clinton advisor, Dick Morris, asks an important question to Hillary:

You base your healthcare proposal on the need to cover 47 million "uninsured Americans." Since about a third of them are illegal immigrants and another third are eligible for Medicaid right now and just don't apply for it, aren't you overstating the problem?

Greg Mankiw, Harvard econ professor takes issue for similar reasons. He says you need to take out illegal immigrants, current medicaid recipients, those who are offered healthcare insurance but decline it, and lastly those healthy individuals making $50,000/year but decide against buying insurance. Makes sense to me.

The point is: the percentage of Americans with access to healthcare is probably a healthy 95% of the population. Yea - it'd be great if 100% of Americans had access, but it would also be great if 100% of people had jobs, instead of the current 95%. Isn't 5% unemployment still considered "full employment," by every economist? Shouldn't 5% healthcare uninsured also be considered pretty full?

Healthcare is an political hot potato, but no where near as big a deal as dems want people to believe.

Bring on the Taxes

With democrats now "in charge," we all knew that we should expect to see a higher proportion of our money going to the government. As we move into 2008, this will be a continuing theme. As Americans, we should hold democrats accountable for these tax increases.

This tax will be on vacation homes and is expected to take $2 billion out of Americans' pockets (who paid for their home) and it is expected to be given to Americans who have refused or been unable to pay for their mortgages.

My sense is that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Expect lots of exciting new taxes in the next year.