Dear NYT: Yes, Health Care Coverage Should Differ

"Should someone in Idaho or Nevada have significantly different health care coverage from someone in Massachusetts? That, essentially, is one of the biggest questions Congress will be wrestling with as it tries to meld House and Senate bills into a single law to revamp the nation's health care system," the New York Times reports.

Yes. And so should my neighbors, my friends, and my coworkers. Our health insurance coverage (or lack thereof) practices ought to be individual decisions consistent with our particular values and preferences.

There's no good reason for politicians, bureaucrats, or, for that matter, employers to make these decisions: none of them can adequately cater to individual wants and needs. The market isn't perfect either, but it's far better and keeps improving.

The Light at the End Nears

My final class of grad school--Constitutional Economics--is this term, so I'll walk in May.

Why this one? Utility maximizer that I am, it's simply my best available option. Of the evening classes offered this spring, this one seemed the most interesting and thought-provoking. I might have opted for Law & Economics if it were offered (depending on the syllabus), since I'm more policy oriented than philosophical.

The only thing between me and graduation is some assignments, a final, and a paper. Oh, and this gargantuan reading list. And yes, the 21 italicized items are books (and one of those is in three volumes). Apologies if you don't hear much from me for a while.

• James M. Buchanan, “Economics as a Public Science”
• Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests
• Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, book 5
• Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism
• Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom
• Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose
• F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
• F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty
• F.A. Hayek, Law Legislation and Liberty (3 vols.)
• James M. Buchanan, The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty (vol. 1 of Collected Works)
• James M. Buchanan & Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent
• James M. Buchanan, The Limits of Liberty
• James M. Buchanan & Geoffrey Brennan, The Reason of Rules
• Vincent Ostrom, The Meaning of Democracy and the Vulnerabilities of Democracies
• Elinor Ostrom, Understanding Institutional Diversity
• Paul Aligica and Peter Boettke, Challenging Institutional Analysis and Development
• Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and
Democracy
• Mancur Olson, “Dictatorship, Democracy and Development,” APSR, 1993
• Douglass North, John Wallis and Barry Weingast, Violence and Social Order
• Edward Stringham (ed.), Anarchy and the Law

Television

I've started to really dislike television. The whole concept, not just the programming. There are definitely shows I enjoy watching, and that's the problem.

It's just too easy to get sucked into episode after episode of "My Name is Earl" or "The Office" instead of doing more productive things, such as spending quality time with Liz and Beatrice, writing, working out, being involved with my community, or being in touch with family and friends.

After working all day and commuting back and forth from Fairfax to the District, I want the few hours that I have at home to count for something. When I look back on my week, I don't want to have to realize that I burned precious hours being a passive consumer of mass media.

There's just so much more to life.

Interior to Restrict Mountaintop Coal Mining

Late last week the Department of the Interior announced that it was going to conduct stricter oversight of mountaintop coal mining, a process by which coal seams under mountaintops are exposed to mining equipment by dumping the rock and soil above it into lower-elevation areas nearby. This practice is common in the Appalachian Mountains.

I suspected something was underway a few months ago when I discovered that the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement scrubbed post-reclamation photos of such sites. It turns out that the flat land created by this practice is actually often welcomed by locals as something with economic benefits.

It's true that disrupting that much rock and earth has environmental consequences. When rock is newly exposed to rainwater, soluble minerals including heavy metals will leach out until they've been depleted. Mountaintop mining can be disruptive to seasonal and minor streams and can diminish the water quality of larger streams and rivers.

But water pollution is primarily a local issue. Yes, water flows, but only in one direction. It's not clear why states, alone or acting jointly, couldn't deal with these issues in most cases.

Mountaintop mining is, however, a big deal for environmentalists for at least two reasons. First, they dislike the local effects--disruption of natural landscapes, water pollution, et cetera.

Perhaps more importantly, however, coal is the declared enemy of environmentalists. Burning it is carbon intensive and can produce unpleasant pollution (carbon dioxide is not a pollutant).

But coal-produced electricity is cheap, and electricity runs the modern world. For most people, it's a tradeoff worth making. For the most radical of environmentalists, those who pine for a world unsullied by man, it's not.

Fortunately for the rest of us, there aren't that many of them. Unfortunately for us, they currently have friends in high places.

A Lesson in Marginal Utility

We're finally replacing our current basic cable with Verizon FIOS (with DVR) on Tuesday! The channel lineup is outstanding and diverse, so kudos to Verizon for catering to its customers.

Having studied in Germany (Trier) back in 2003, I was happy to see that FIOS offers two German language channels: Deutsche Welle and ProSiebenSat 1 Welt. It would be good to refresh those language skills after six years of disuse.

But not so good that I'd pay $14.99 per month. I'd probably be willing to pay about a third of that. Especially since I can get a lot of content online through Netflix and otherwise.

On Health Bill, Lone GOP Supporter Got Played

One of the most surprising aspects of last night's House vote on the Democrats' plan to deepen the distortions in the health care sector was the lone Republican vote for it.



That vote came from none other than first-term Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao (R-LA-02). He got played. The Democrats--including personal entreaties by the President--secured his vote by promising him lots of goodies to take home to his constituents.



He doubtless hopes it'll get him reelected. Remember, the first priority for the vast majority of elected officials is...to get reelected. And keeping the people who vote for you happy is the best way to do that.



But Louisiana's 2nd district has a Cook Partisan Voter Index Rating of D+25. That's a "safe seat" for Democrats. The only reason Cao won last year is that he was running against a deeply corrupt incumbent. He's a one-termer, plain and simple.



So why do I say he got played? Because his vote makes it marginally more likely for Democrats to be successful in the Senate without really affecting his likely defeat next year. One of the moderate Senate Democrats is Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, whose reelection victory margin last year was underwhelming in the Year of Obama.



Now, Landrieu is only one of several moderate Democrat holdouts in the Senate who may ultimately prevent comprehensive healthcare legislation this year--despite their supposed filibuster-proof majority--but the bipartisan patina Democrats will now be able to claim can only make their efforts easier.



Despite having been played, Cao is no fool. Rather, his vote last night is symptomatic of the corrosive power-at-any-cost mentality that plagues political life. Instead of gracefully accepting his brief stint in Congress, he has abandoned principle in the vain hope of prolonging his tenure.

Ramming a Climate Bill Through Senate Committee is Politically Risky

This morning the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee reported the Kerry-Boxer climate bill (S. 1733: "Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act) in a rather unusual fashion. Committee Republicans were insisting on further economic analysis of the legislation--a courtesy they extended to Democrats several years ago during the ultimately unsuccessful Clean Skies debate--before moving to mark up the bill. Chairman Boxer refused to wait and forced the bill through the committee despite a GOP boycott of the markup.

The 12 committee Democrats voted 10-1-1 to report the bill: Baucus (D-MT) voted against it, and Carper (D-DE) didn't make it to the vote.
The following committee Democrats voted for it: Barbara Boxer (CA), Frank Lautenberg (NJ), Benjamin Cardin (MD), Bernie Sanders (VT), Amy Klobuchar (MN), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Tom Udall (NM), Jeff Merkley (OR), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), and Arlen Specter (PA).

Without getting into the minimal benefits and large costs of the legislation, this vote appears to carry significant political risk for several committee members.

Baucus, Lautenberg, Merkley, and Udall aren't up for reelection until 2014, so this vote is unlikely to have much significance by then. The same is probably true for the 2012 class--Cardin, Klobuchar, Sanders, and Whitehouse--except in the (hopefully) unlikely event that the economy fails to recover by then.

For those up in 2010, however, facing the very real possibility that recovery will be slow and unemployment remain high for the next year, this vote is a bit of a gamble: whether the base energizing effects on turnout will outweigh the loss of swing voters, most of whom quite reasonably are more concerned about employment at the moment.

And then there's the inconvenient truth that global surface temperatures have been stable for the last decade and this year has been rather cold in the United States. Note that I'm making no claim regarding the future of global temperatures, simply laying out the factors that will affect voter perceptions at the polls next fall.

CQ Politics Race Ratings for 2010 Senate Races considers Boxer's California seat to be "safe", Gillbrand's New York seat as "Likely Democrat", and Specter's in Pennsylvania as "Leans Democrat." Yet polling on Real Clear Politics has Specter slightly behind fmr. Rep. Pat Toomey, and that's before his primary with Rep. Joe Sestak (and a former admiral), which is likely to force Specter further to the left.

In New York, Gillibrand could plausibly be defeated by either former Governor George Pataki or former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani. Neither has officially entered the race.

Boxer seems to be in the best shape of the three, although her advantage over presumed GOP challenger and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina has narrowed significantly in recent months.

Of couse, a year in politics is a very long time, and a lot could happen between now and then. Nonetheless, when reelection or early retirement can depend on a few points, a vote on a bill that many voters rightly perceive to damage American competitiveness and productivity is highly unlikely to improve these senators' prospects.

And to have the vote within 48 hours of major Republican victories in New Jersey and Virginia seems bizarre. Then again, maybe the writing on the wall says if they don't get it done now, they never will.