Should government force you to pay more for medical insurance so others can pay less?  Dr. Laura Rosenthal thinks so, calling it “compassion and kindness.” It’s more like charity at gunpoint.

In a recent Camera article, Rosenthal advocated making it “illegal for health insurance companies to discriminate on the basis of pre-existing conditions.” That is, insurers must sell policies to everyone at the same price.

These mandates have dire consequences, including more people without insurance. “Individual insurance markets deteriorated,” concludes a Milliman actuarial study. “Insurance companies chose to stop selling individual insurance,” “premium rates tended to increase, sometimes dramatically.”

This legislation encourages insurers to design products that sick people don’t want, as insurers lose money by insuring the sick because it’s illegal to charge higher premiums.  Such policies lack features higher-risk customers want, like comprehensive coverage and minimal bureaucratic obstacles to doctor-recommended treatments.

These political controls cause a “death spiral”: premiums increase, so the healthiest stop buying insurance, the remaining risk pool is less healthy, and premiums rise again. Repeat. To prevent this, politicians want mandatory insurance, which Massachusetts imposed in 2006. Since then Massachusetts insurance premium costs have skyrocketed, affordable policies become illegal, and patients have poor access to care.

Preexisting conditions are a problem because the tax code favors non-portable employer-based insurance. This prevents people from buying guaranteed renewable policies before contracting a chronic condition. A free-market in insurance would also offer innovative products such as health status insurance, which would pay for premium increases should you get sick.

Thanks to Ari Armstrong for pushing me to use a strong lead.

This coming Saturday (Nov. 7) Front Range Objectivism is hosting the program’s annual fund-raising dinner in Arvada:

“Free Books to Colorado Teachers” Fundraising Dinner!
The evening will include two talks by local Objectivist philosophers,

a joint question and answer period, and then a fundraising auction.

For more details on the talks and auction, see:

http://bit.ly/q1RuA

* When: Saturday, November 7, 2009, 5:30 pm social hour (cash bar);
6:30 pm dinner; 7:30 pm talks and Q&A; 9:00 pm auction

* Where: West Woods Golf Club, 6655 Quaker Street in Arvada, Colorado

* Cost: $40 per individual, plus $25 suggested donation to the FRO
Free Books to Colorado Teachers Campaign. $25 for students.

RSVP by November 1 to Anders Ingemarson via e-mail to
anders@frontrangeobjectivism.com
or by phone at 303-751-3111. Space is limited!  Visit the event web

page for payment details: http://bit.ly/q1RuA

For more details on the FRO’s “Free Books to Colorado Teachers”
Project, visit:

http://www.frontrangeobjectivism.com/cbp.html

Some Boulder residents are crying foul over bundles of checks being offered to some City Council candidates by supporters of a controversial development …  in the weeks before a final vote on the property’s area plan.

The Camera printed my comments in the October 25 edition:

Voters often want government to provide the impossible: benefits with no trade-offs. For instance, expanded government programs, lower tax rates, and a balanced budget — all at the same time. This is another example. If you approve of politicians dictating how developers may use their property, do not be shocked or outraged when developers “invest” in politicians for permission to develop as they please. As P.J. O’Rourke observes: “When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.”

User fees — I call them a good start. Government should not force people to fund open space if they do not use it. User fees reflect this principle. Currently local sales taxes support open space. Some pay the sales tax but hardly use the trails, while others use trails extensively but shop elsewhere.

This is wrong. The City should not force one group of people subsidize the recreation of others. Why not lower the local sales tax rate and extend the fee to all trail users?  Everyone would be treated everyone equally, so no one would feel like an outsider.

Some may argue that the open space and trails are a “common good,” like clean air. Not quite.  Common goods are not “excludable.” For example, it’s difficult to exclude people from the benefits of clean air. However, efficiently collectible user fees are feasible for open space trails.

Others may argue that even those who do not use trails benefit, and hence should fund it.  But just because you benefit from something does not mean others can force you to pay for it.

Regardless of user fees, how about soliciting donations for trail creation, management, and maintenance? The Continental Divide Trail Alliance does this. Its website lists both individual and corporate donors.  Outdoor gear companies REI and Coleman each donated more than $15,000 in 2007.  Saloman and W.L. Gore also donated thousands of dollars. Like the “Adopt-a-Highway” program, signs at trailheads could recognize those whose donations support the trail’s maintenance.

Thanks to Ari Armstrong for suggesting trail sponsorship.

While millions of Americans spoke up during the summer against a government takeover of health care, Congress has retreated to its bubble and ignored your concerns. We need to remind them we still oppose a trillion dollar health care bill that will take away resources for senior citizens and devastate small businesses.
…
Can you spare one minute to prevent a government takeover of our health care? Patients First’s Facebook application makes calling Congress easier than ever. In one step you can identify your Congressman and his or her phone number. Call your Congressman at your own convenience (or even leave a voicemail after business hours). It’s never been easier to make your voice heard in Washington.

The Boulder City Council on Tuesday night agreed on the details of new house-size regulations in Boulder, and are likely to approve the ordinance at a special meeting Thursday night. This week, they eased some of the earlier suggestions – for instance, they will allow a single-family home to cover up to 35 percent of a lot, up from 30 percent – but some opponents and two former mayors are still against the measure.

My response in the Daily Camera, September 18, 2009:

The City has no right to restrict the size of a home on a property owner’s land.  The land does not belong to the city. If the City Council, or anyone for that matter, wants to prevent construction on part of a home lot, they should go about it peacefully, without threatening people with political force.

Here’s an idea: buy the land with your own resources.  It’s called an easement. To quote a dictionary definition, an easement is “a right held by one property owner to make use of the land of another for a limited purpose.”  If you want to prevent construction on someone else’s lot, then offer to buy an easement on part of the lot.  If cost is an issue, you can pool money from like-minded neighbors and entice the lot owner with a generous offer. To learn more, do a web search for “how to buy an easement.”

Other alternatives to government prohibitions on land use include Homeowners Associations and, to use a legal term, “covenants running with the land.” You can look this up, too.  If Boulder laws stand in the way of HOAs, easements, or covenants, then perhaps they need revising.

To generalize my point I’ll adapt JFK’s words: Ask not what your government can force other people to do for you.  Ask what you can do for yourself, and how you can cooperate with others on a voluntary basis to achieve your values.

Campaign finance laws should be abolished. They violate each individual’s right to express political opinions, as recognized by the First Amendment. The argument that such censorship is needed for a functioning democracy inverts the proper relationship between citizens and government. Government should enforce laws that respect individual rights. Citizens should not sacrifice their rights on the altar of a “healthy democracy.” People do not exist for the sake of the State.

If you do not mind empowering government to censor certain political speech, where does it stop? If government can censor televised issue ads, then why not prohibit the same ads broadcast on YouTube? After all, it takes money to make a well-produced video. Or how about the same message published in a newspaper, or as a pamphlet or book?

Institute for Justice Senior Attorney Steve Simpson sums up the issue well: “It’s not the government’s job to protect us from ideas, even those backed by people and groups with great resources, good ideas or other tools of persuasion. People either agree with speech or they do not, but they are able to make up their own minds. The Court should open the floodgates to speech and let the people decide.”

The president isn’t a benevolent father-protector, charged with the welfare of all creatures great and small — and educators do kids a great disservice if they help promote such a childish notion. Still less was he supposed to be the educator in chief, presiding over a centralized education bureaucracy, handing out Title X grants (with strings attached) and falsely promising that no child will be left behind. The framers thought of the president as a mere constitutional officer, whose main job is taking care that the laws are faithfully executed. Students — and presidents — could stand to learn a lot more about how far we’ve drifted from that ideal.

Read his whole op-ed, Hey, Mr. President, Leave Those Kids Alone, and check out more criticism side-by-side with Obama’s speech to kids in school.