Barry Asmus Ph.D. – NCPA - National Center for Policy Analysis

NCPA - National Center for Policy Analysis

Barry is a Senior Economist with the National Center for Policy Analysis, one of the most influential think tanks in America today.

The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization, established in 1983. The NCPA's goal is to develop and promote private alternatives to government regulation and control, solving problems by relying on the strength of the competitive, entrepreneurial private sector. Topics include reforms in health care, taxes, Social Security, welfare, criminal justice, education and environmental regulation.

NCPA Motto - Making Ideas Change the World - reflects the belief that ideas have enormous power to change the course of human events. The NCPA seeks to unleash the power of ideas for positive change by identifying, encouraging, and aggressively marketing the best scholarly research.

NCPA | Daily Policy Digest

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Daily Policy Digest

LONG WAITS FOR HEALTH CARE ARE COSTING CANADIANS BILLIONS

15 May 2008 08:18:58 CDT -

Excessive waits for health care services endured by Canadian patients have imposed huge costs on the nation's citizens according to a study from the Centre for Spatial Economics.

Other major findings:

The study of medical wait times in all 10 of Canada's provinces found excessive delays for four key procedures--total joint replacement surgery, cataract surgery, coronary artery bypass graft surgery, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans--cost the nation an estimated $14.8 billion in 2007.
This in turn lowered federal and provincial government revenues by a total of $4.4 billion, the report noted.

However, it is individuals who bear these costs. When the government controls all of health care, it looks for ways to save money, and the easiest way to save is to deny care or ration care through long waits, says Charles M. Arlinghaus, president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy.

Rationing care by using waiting lists puts a heavy strain on an economy by incurring high costs through reduced worker productivity, says Devon Herrick, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis. Canadian Medicare uses rationing by waiting because the cost of lost productivity is borne by the individual and employer, whereas the cost of actually providing needed care falls on the public system.

For example:

Excessive waiting for total joint replacement surgery was the most expensive byproduct of Canada's health care rationing, at nearly $26,400 per patient.
That was followed closely by MRIs ($20,000), coronary artery bypass graft surgery ($19,400), and cataract surgery ($2,900).

Herrick disagrees with the study's policy prescription, saying private care options would be more effective than increased government investment in the system.

"Canadians should be allowed to pay for care privately if they so choose. It is unconscionable to forbid patients from paying for care the public system cannot provide them in a timely manner," he says.

Source: Sanjit Bagchi, "Long Waits for Health Care Are Costing Canadians Billions of Dollars," Health Care News, June 1, 2008.

For text:

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=23229

For study:

http://www.c4se.com/

For more on Health Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=16

WHO STOLE THE AMERICAN SPIRIT?

15 May 2008 08:18:57 CDT -

A cultural rut of pessimism is draining our collective energy, blinding us to possibilities and eroding our position in the world, says Zachary Karabell, president of River Twice Research.

There is no denying that the current financial morass is deep and painful. But, looking back over the past century, it would be a stretch to rank the current problems as especially notable or dramatic:

Right now we have an unemployment rate of 5 percent and headline inflation topping 4 percent.
We have economic growth of 0.6 percent, extremely low consumer confidence and weakening consumer spending, small business optimism at a 28-year low, and a housing market that is showing declines in excess of 20 percent.

These are hardly statistics to celebrate, but they are a far cry from the crises of the 20th century, says Karabell:

The unemployment rate in 1933 was 24.9 percent; seven years later, after the intensive efforts of the New Deal, it stood at 14.6 percent.
The unemployment rate went from 4.9 percent in 1973 to 8.5 percent in 1977, and then nearly broke 10 percent in 1982.
While the recent collapse of Bear Stearns shocked Wall Street, in 1933 alone 4,000 banks failed, and millions not only lost their homes but were rendered homeless.

The path to a more balanced view of ourselves is impossible to chart, but the first step is surely to have better perspective on where we are and where we have been. The alternative to grime-encrusted lenses isn't rose-tinted glasses, but more equanimity about our weaknesses and our strengths would surely help us navigate.

Unfortunately, the problem with downward spirals is, well, that they spiral downward. There is little evidence just now that we are about to break this cycle, and until we do, we will watch in awe, envy and fear as peoples throughout the world do what we used to do so well, says Karabell.

Source: Zachary Karabell, "Who Stole the American Spirit?" Wall Street Journal, May 14, 2008.

For text:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121072001228989941.html

For more on Economic Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=17

THE MISGUIDED WAR AGAINST MEDICINES

15 May 2008 08:18:56 CDT -

Unsustainable growth in the Canadian government's spending on health is a result of the flawed design of government health and drug insurance programs, not the price of medical treatment or the introduction of new medical technologies like patented drugs, concludes a new study by the Fraser Institute.

Prescription drugs in general and patented drugs in particular account for a small percentage of government health spending. The fact that government spending on all other areas of health care is growing at unsustainable rates, while accounting for more than 90 per cent of total government health spending, strongly suggests that targeting prescription drugs is misguided, says study author Brett Skinner.

For example:

Prescription drugs accounted for only 9.3 percent of total government spending on health in 2006, down from 9.6 per cent in 2005.
Patented prescription drugs accounted for only 6.3 per cent of total government health spending in 2006, down from 6.8 per cent in 2005.
After spending on drugs is subtracted, all other areas of health care accounted for 91.4 per cent to 90.7 per cent of total government health spending between 2002 and 2006.

Also:

These average annual growth rates are between 1.2 and 1.4 times higher than the average annual growth in consolidated provincial revenues over the same time period.
It is also between 1.2 and 1.3 times higher than the average annual growth in national gross domestic product (GDP) and 2.9 to 3.2 times higher than the average annual growth in general inflation.

This means that even if governments spent nothing on drugs, government spending on all other medical goods and services would still be rising at an unsustainable rate, says Skinner.

Source: Brett J. Skinner and Mark Rovere, "Costs of Prescription Drugs Not To Blame for Unsustainable Growth in Health Care Spending," Fraser Institute, April 2008.

For study:

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/COMMERCE.WEB/product_files/MisguidedWarAgainstMedicines2008.pdf

For more on Health Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=16

HARLEM CHARTER SCHOOLS

15 May 2008 08:18:55 CDT -

Some 5,000 people attended April 17th's Harlem Success Academy Charter School lottery, the largest ever held for charter schools in the history of New York State. About 3,600 applied for 600 available places, and 900 applied for the 11 open slots in the second grade. The desperation of these parents is hardly surprising, says the Economist.

For example:

In one Harlem school district, not one public elementary school has more than 55 percent of its pupils reading at the level expected for their grade.
And 75 percent of 14-year-olds are unable to read at their grade level.

So parents are beginning to leave the public school system in crowds, says the Economist:

Harlem now has the most charter schools per square mile in the United States, yet demand still exceeds supply.
Harlem Success is opening three new schools this summer.
About 40 percent of all eligible children in central Harlem applied for kindergarten at Harlem Success schools.

The reason is obvious:

At the beginning of the 2006-07 school year at Harlem Success only 11 percent of six-year-olds were at their grade level in mathematic, by the end of the year, 86 percent were.
This may have something to do with grouping children by ability rather than by age, and with involving parents, who have to read six books a week to their children.

Unfortunately, many local politicians oppose charter schools. They have tried to cap their numbers, or refused to let them share buildings with public schools. The legislature in Albany has mandated that if a charter school has more than 250 students before its third year of existence, the teachers must unionize. That spoils everything, says the Economist.

Source: "Six Books a Week," The Economist, May 8, 2008.

For text:

http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11332273

For more on Education Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=27

KIWI CLIMATOLOGY

15 May 2008 08:18:54 CDT -

Wellington is debating a cap-and-trade scheme to meet its Kyoto Protocol targets. Because New Zealand is already a low carbon-dioxide emitter, the bulk of its emissions come from agricultural sources, such as sheep. So the government is proposing to implement caps not only on carbon dioxide from industry but also on methane and nitrous oxide from farms.

As in smaller schemes in the United States and European Union, the government would cap the country's emissions at a level allowable under Kyoto, and then distribute tradable credits to businesses and farmers:

Low emitters could sell excess credits, while high emitters could buy credits to cover their "extra" emissions.
Under Kyoto, New Zealand committed to reduce its emissions to 1990 levels, in effect a 30 percent reduction from expected emissions in 2012.

Meeting those targets will be hard, says the Wall Street Journal:

New Zealand already uses a wide range of hydropower and renewable energy to cut carbon dioxide use.
For the agricultural gases, new kinds of fertilizers might help, but only to a point.
For the rest of the cuts, farmers will have to persuade cows and sheep to emit less -- or have fewer cows and sheep.

The cost, for farmers and industry alike, is likely to be prohibitive, says the Journal:

The government's plan would result in 22,000 job losses by 2012, or 1 percent of today's employment, according to the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research
That translates into NZ $4.6 billion (about U.S. $3.6 billion) annually in lost gross domestic product (GDP), or a NZ $3,000 (about U.S. $1,536) cut in each household's annual spending.

This analysis assumes that as greenhouse gas fees make Kiwi industry less competitive globally, businesses and jobs will move overseas. The government disputes this conclusion, mainly because its own analyses assume New Zealanders will be willing to take lower wages, says the Journal.

Source: Editorial, "Kiwi Climatology," Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2008.

For text:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121062809435686285.html

For more on Global Warming Economics:

http://eteam.ncpa.org/issues/?c=economics

For more on Global Warming:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=32