Healthcare Initiative

The high cost of healthcare is one of the most daunting challenges facing people across the country. We need to take meaningful steps to ease that burden without imposing socialized medicine on the nation. During his sixth State of the Union Address on Tuesday night, President Bush outlined a plan to offer relief to the 100 million people with private heath insurance and encourage states to design innovative ways of further expanding the availability of affordable private insurance to those currently lacking it. For those people with private health insurance, the president proposed creating a standard tax deduction for health insurance that will be like the standard tax deduction for dependents. Under this change, families with health insurance would pay no income or payroll taxes on $15,000 of their income, while single Americans with health insurance would pay no income or payroll taxes on $7,500 of their income. The tax savings for a family of four making $60,000 a year would be $4,500. This relief will enable many of those who are now uninsured to afford medical insurance.

In order to keep the United States at the forefront of medical innovation and quality healthcare, it is absolutely essential that we preserve our system of private healthcare. This proposal will accomplish that objective while significantly reducing the medical costs for 100 million Americans. I also agree with the president’s call to expand health savings accounts, help small businesses through Association Health Plans, and reduce costs and medical errors with improved information technology. These reforms are essential to enabling the people of this country to access the care they need.

“Fairness” Farce

Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and self-avowed socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have introduced legislation that would revive the so-called Fairness Doctrine that once applied to broadcast media. Beginning in 1949, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) required broadcasters to “afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of public importance.” Common interpretation of this requirement led television and radio station owners to offer equal time to opposing voices. In practice, many stations simply steered clear of airing controversial perspectives altogether. The effect was to limit the robustness of public discourse. Fortunately, the FCC finally ended the policy in 1987 after losing several court decisions – admitting that the rule actually hindered free speech.

One byproduct of eliminating this government-imposed “fairness” was a noticeable change in the predominant programming format of talk radio. Much to the chagrin of many political liberals, conservative voices quickly dominated the airwaves – not because of artificial regulation but rather the personal choice of listeners. As the failed Air America venture has recently shown, in the free marketplace of ideas over the radio airwaves, radical leftist talk formats simply do not win over listeners. That is why the Left now wants the government to restrict consumer choices of radio content as it has in past generations. William Ruder, assistant secretary of Commerce under President John F. Kennedy, confessed that, “We had a massive strategy to use the ‘fairness doctrine’ to challenge and harass the right-wing broadcasters and hoped the challenge would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decided it was too expensive to continue.” (Washington Times, September 5, 1993). They have done it before. I will oppose any effort to limit free speech again.

Quote of the Week

“Data from the Department of Labor show that most minimum wage-earners are young, part-time workers and that relatively few live below the poverty line. Their average family income is over $50,000 a year. A minimum wage hike, then, is a raise for suburban teenagers, not the working poor.” – James Sherk and Rea S. Hederman, Jr. in response to the minimum wage hike bill recently passed by the House, www.heritage.org, January 23, 2007.