Curmudgeon's Corner

Germantown has recently completed its voting in the primary election where the sole race was that for the new Supreme Court Justice to fill a soon-to-be-vacant seat.  That election saw very low turn-out which is not uncommon…but which reminds us that voting is our right, and a right we should not so easily relinquish. 

Two people will be on the spring ballot for this seat.  This is a critically important election for several reasons.  Once a judge takes his or her seat, they are almost never “unelected” in subsequent races.  That means that this election is likely to determine the make-up of the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the next decade. 

Our court today is comprised of 7 justices; 4 typically favor the socially liberal view and three the socially conservative side in the issues before the court.  The coming election gives us voters a very clear choice between the liberal and conservative perspectives. 

The retiring justice is a social conservative.  If we elect a liberal justice for this seat, the court tilts to a 5 to 2 liberal court.  If we elect a conservative justice, the court stays at the 4 to 3 configuration which is still liberal but not so lopsided that one couldn’t hope for the occasional “miracle” decision. 

The two people in the race are Washington County Circuit Judge Annette Zeigler (the conservative) and Madison attorney Linda Clifford (the liberal).  Judge Zeigler has a record of decisions that tell us she does not believe in an “activist” court.  Attorney Clifford has no such court decision record but is a Madison liberal who has been in private practice for three decades, has represented the ACLU side of various issues, and has spoken out against the so called “gay marriage ban” calling it unconstitutional and stating that it violates U.S. Supreme Court holdings. 

In my opinion, we should be able to see which way each candidate likely would view critical constitutional issues.  A 5 to 2 socially liberal court could easily become a liberal activist court legislating from the bench and making decisions that affect us for the rest of our lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren.  Its liberal leanings would not be restricted solely to social issues.  It almost certainly would be an anti-business court, as well.  That combination does not bode well for our state. 

While Judge Zeigler won some 57% of the vote in the primary, do not let that lull you into thinking that she has already won the seat.  Zeigler spent more money than did Clifford [who actually had and has more money in her campaign war chest than Ziegler]. The third candidate, also a Dane County attorney, siphoned some of the Clifford support away since he was also appealing to socially liberal voters. 

Remember that Dane County votes 90% + liberal and that the liberal machine turns out the vote.  Remember too that Wisconsin re-elected Governor Doyle, and gave the State Senate to

Wow!  In the span of an hour or so, Governor Doyle gored so many oxen it is likely the rest sought cover in the really deep weeds! 

I wrote earlier of the impending certainty of tax increases when we’d elected our Governor for a second term.  There were constituencies needing rewards for getting out the vote, making significant campaign contributions, frightening away enemies in the other camp, etc. 

In my wildest imagination…make that nightmare…I couldn’t have begun to find so many oxen asking to be gored!  Congratulations Governor Doyle.  Certainly, this must be a record.  $1.7 Billion in new fees and taxes that we know about and some fund raiding thrown in for good measure.

First, there was a promise by the Governor to not raise our property taxes.  When will we learn that such promises, from any politician, need be viewed with skepticism?  When will we learn that, if we’re not capable of parsing words with the best of them, we probably are jumping to wrong conclusions? 

Second, how does this affect Germantown?  Let me count the ways.  

He may not raise our property taxes by signing his name to such a bill, but he most certainly will have raised them by virtue of opening the flood gates and letting our local governments, school districts and unelected commissions have their way with us lowly taxpayers. 

The Governor has requested that our legislature raise the cap on municipal expenditures to 4%, or more if local growth has been greater than 4%.  We predicted that. 

The Governor has begun the mantra of repealing the law that capped pay and benefit cost increases for our teachers at 3.7%, even though several school districts have found themselves exceeding that cap over the recent past based on their own initiative.  We predicted the demise of QEOs (qualified economic offers). 

The list of “fees” he requested be increased covers the gamut.  Those are not taxes, technically, but the funding for those fees comes from the same pockets that fork over the taxes, namely ours! 

“Big tobacco” got its chops whacked.  Hundreds of millions of dollars are going to come from the pockets of cigarette and cigar smokers, and other equally bad people.  Days later, a Federal push to bring tobacco under Federal Drug Administration jurisdiction was announced.  What might that do to this apple cart? 

“Big oil” came in for a licking, too.  Except that price tag will find its way to the pumps in spite of the Governor’s statement to the contrary.  “Big hospital” got kicked, too.  Except that the

The group of uninsured people in the U.S. is dynamic, as mentioned in my earlier blog; Wisconsin has an estimated 546,870 people, or about 9.9% of our population, who are uninsured at any one point in time.  These numbers rely upon the use of Census information, analysis by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.

We established the four major groups of uninsured:

*people who are eligible for existing government programs but who have failed to enroll

*middle class people who earn $50,000 or more per year and who cannot afford or choose not to buy insurance

*people who are classified as the short-term uninsured [up to two years uninsured, recent college graduates, seasonal workers and those who feel no need for insurance [or “the invincible” as I intimated in my last blog]

*the long-term uninsured who simply have fallen through the cracks and remain uninsured for a time span beyond two years 

What is the number of Wisconsin citizens that fall into each category?

First, the group that already qualifies for government programs but has failed to enroll represents an estimated 204,529 people.

Second, the group classified as middle class who either feel they cannot afford to or have chosen not to buy insurance is estimated at 174,998 people.

Third, the short-term uninsured group is estimated to contain 68,359 people.

Based on these estimates, then, the long-term uninsured group is comprised of an estimated 98,984 people or about 1.8% of Wisconsin’s population.  With this breakdown, we begin to see a different picture than that which is being portrayed in the media. 

The breakdown for Wisconsin is very similar state-by-state across the country.

Does this mean we still have a serious problem as far as the number of uninsured in Wisconsin and the country?  Absolutely we do.  Does it mean that we have to turn the present system on its head and move to “universal health care” (the euphemism for Single-Payer coverage)?  Absolutely not.

It does mean that we need to bring all those who do not have insurance into the insurance system.  It means that costs incurred by health care providers who are not paid for services rendered are being shifted to the third party reimbursement system.  That simply magnifies the increases in health care costs and, thus, insurance premiums year over year.

It also points up the truth that many do not want to accept: our problem is a health care cost problem and not a health insurance cost problem.  Health insurance increases mirror the increased costs of health care, not the other way around.

Part of virtually every discussion concerning the state of health care in the U.S. is a reference to the uninsured.  Given that, we assume that the group of uninsured must be a very important part of the problem.  We need to better understand just what is meant by the ubiquitous “uninsured”.  We’ll likely all agree that it is a very serious part of the problem confronting us as a nation. 

We hear of the ever-increasing number of uninsured.  The former top number for the United States was 46 million…until it became 47 million.  That seemed to occur overnight.  I don’t know who is responsible for keeping track of that number, but they sure seem on top of their game!  If only our census were as accurate as the press and “special interest groups” [remember the earlier blog about special interest groups?] would have us believe is the estimate of uninsured. 

Let’s take a look at what comprises the “uninsured”.  First…this is not a static group of people; instead, the number of “uninsured” is an estimate…a snapshot…of the number of folks thought to be without health insurance on any given day of the year. 

Please also note that I used the phrase, “without health insurance”.  That is a much different phrase than had I said “without access to health care”.  Every person in the United States has access to health care…by virtue of Federal law.  It is true however that much of that health care is received in Emergency Rooms, and that is a significant part of our nation’s problem.  The care is received too late in the wrong setting to be of lasting value to the individual.  The care is also delivered in the most expensive possible setting and much of that cost is unreimbursed and therefore is “shifted” to the insurance premiums paid by individuals and employers. 

The current number de jour for the uninsured in Wisconsin is 546,870.  That number has increased each year but has remained fairly constant so far as it’s comparison to the total population of the state.  Using the most recent census numbers for Wisconsin, coupled with an analysis by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and the Congressional Budget Office estimates of the make-up of the group called “uninsured”, we see an emerging picture made up of these parts:

*people who are eligible for existing government programs but who have failed to enroll

*middle class people who earn more than $50,000 per year and who cannot afford or choose not to buy insurance

*people who are classified as the short-term uninsured [up to two years without insurance, recent college graduates, seasonal workers and those who are invincible]

*the long-term uninsured who simply have fallen between the cracks and remain uninsured for a long time

We have heard discussions of the Canadian health care system as contrasted to the U.S. health care system for more than a decade.  What would our system look like if we were to adopt Canada's approach?  Information gathered from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) statistics for 2005, and The Fraser Institute's Waiting Times Survey for 2006 give us a glimpse of the changes we'd experience.

If U.S. citizens were to be provided with the equivalent of the Canadian citizens' health care access, the United States would need to:
* scrap most technological equipment including 330 Lithotripters, 6,000 MRI units and 23,750 CAT scanners
* stop covering prescriptions outside hospitals
* make half the drugs approved by the FDA in the past five years illegal
* collect 10% more of each citizen's gross income each year
* cut national Research and Development by 25%, or $77 Billion annually
* stop covering mental health care entirely
* prevent patients from ever again being allowed to visit a specialist or get even a single test without first having a visit with and a referral from a family doctor
* place 7,730,000 people on waiting lists for everything - doctor visits, tests, surgeries and so on

Beyond this stark look at the new reality, we would each face a wait time of 17.7 weeks from the time we saw the doctor and received a referral to the time required surgery would occur (Fraser Institute Survey 2006).  That is up from a wait time of 9.3 weeks in 1993 by the way; obviously not going in the right direction from our point of view.

How can anyone suggest that the Canadian Single-Payer system surpasses our own health care system?

A recent USA Today/Kaiser Family Foundation/ABC News Poll (October 2006) produced these results:
* 76% of Americans surveyed opposed a single-payer system if treatments covered today would no longer be paid for
* 68% opposed a single-payer system if it would limit their choice of doctors
* 60% opposed a single-payer system if it meant higher taxes or increased health insurance premiums

How can anyone tell us the Canadian Single-Payer system surpasses our own when we know the real answer to all three questions posed above?  Incidentally, nothing of these three questions was ever reported in the mainstream media, to my knowledge.  Could that have been due to the fact these answers didn't support the bias with which the Polling was conducted?

The Canadian Single-Payer system is not the right solution for the problems we face today in our country.  Our health care system is the best in the world and we want to keep it that way.

We need to provide access for those who have little or no health care insurance coverage to protect the financial stability of our system.  We need to keep the private sector squarely in the mix.  We'll discuss other aspects of this problem in weeks to come.