Governor Mitch Daniels, here's a radical idea from such radicals like Adam Smith and Milton Friedman, return market forces to health insurance. Then, maybe insurance will be affordable to the middle class (rather than the very rich, well-connected, or the very poor who get some meager second class government benefits).
But then again, you're a member of the Republican faction of the Big Government Party, so that idea isn't socialistic enough. So we will continue to see government Ponzi schemes such as raising cigarette taxes to fund inferior government health care for the poor (what are you going to do when you lose all that revenue to "outside the law" black market cigarette sales and you don't raise the tax money? And how are you going to pay for all those police to go after the cigarette gangs and the investigators to find the perpetrators of gangland murders over cigarette turf wars?)
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Funny that Republican supporters wanted to beat on me on WXNT last week for Libertarians 'taking votes from' Republicans. Daniels shows the absurdity of that thinking. Daniels is proving himself a socialist yet again. Daniels' only real competition for votes is the other socialist brand, the Democrats.
So many votes from free marketeers wasted on Republicans.
First, the silver lining: We get free health insurance.
Now for the cloud.
Imagine the prospect of having a colonoscopy managed by the folks that oversee the Department of Motor Vehicles. And imagine the possibilities if the newly formed state insurance agency ever decides to upgrade its computer system. The difference between colonoscopy and colonectomy may seem trivial on paper, but once in the operating room...
Make that rain cloud.
• $24 million of the new cigarette tax revenue will go to anti-smoking programs. If successful the program will destroy the revenue stream that funds Doctor Daniel's insurance plan. If not successful, then it's a waste of $24 million.
• The plan covers those earning up to 200 percent of the poverty level. (Does anyone know what that level is? What it will be five years from now?) Once covered, Hoosiers will be careful not to escape that arbitrary threshold. To earn 201 percent is to lose one's insurance. Such programs serve to create a class of people permanently dependent upon poverty for survival.
• The estimated $480 million price tag is $250 million more than the cost of Daniel’s all-day kindergarten plan. That’s wholly unrelated to the topic at hand. But it speaks to the illusion that Republicans are “fiscal conservatives.” They are not.
• One has to wonder: Will Daniel's plan get the support of legislators who signed no new tax pledges during the 2006 campaign season? Will anyone care when the 2008 campaign season rolls around?
• It will be a challenge to keep legislators from tinkering with the program. How long will it be before physicians are handed a fixed rate schedule -- similar to medicaid -- in which they must charge pennies on the dollar?
• When the cigarette tax is no longer sufficient to cover Daniel’s medical welfare, how will the program be funded? More new taxes? Grab your check book.
In the end analysis, the Republicans just handed Hoosiers another bureaucratic program that – like Social Security – will burden future taxpayers, lock in a poverty class and have no exit strategy
I am 57 years old. I started voting when i was 21 and never have voted anything but republican. The nex election will be my first time.
It is not only the cigerette tax but daylite saving time. Mitch is not my man any more.
Those of us who smoke won't stand together. we need someone to lobby our cause.
Daniels already has a track record that should be examined - remember his cost analysis on the War with Iraq?
"White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels told The New York Times in an interview published Tuesday that such a conflict could cost $50 billion to $60 billion -- the price tag of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. (CNN.com 1/2/03)
Daniels should serve as the poster child for why Indiana needs to give citizens the right for recall elections. Two more years is way too much time for these kind of RINO jokers to continue to inflict serious damage on Indiana small businesses. Let's just hope a few state legislators got a little sense knocked into them a couple of weeks ago.
I am as hardcore of a republican as they come. I am voting democrat in the next election, and if there was a way to eliminate him from office immedietly, I would sign the papers necessary to do so. There is a difference between government and business, and it's a shame that such a seemingly intelligent man doesn't know what it is. Government isn't about making money... it's about checks and balances. It's about leftover profit coming back to the citizens that paid into it. Where's my profit, Mitch? More Family Caseworkers, for the crack mothers and deadbeat dads and abusive parents? Yay for me. I want my state back.
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