Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Virginia, New Jersey Races Showing Voters Changing Course
As the final votes were being counted, it was possible to draw some lessons from Republican Bob McDonnell's victory in Virginia and the close, three-way governor's race in New Jersey, never mind that White House press secretary Robert Gibbs has taken to saying that the elections don't mean much. The odd-year elections -- held in the first year of a presidency -- have been meaningful over the last two decades. In 1993, New Jersey voters rejected tax-raising Democratic Gov. James Florio, despite the best efforts of Bill Clinton's consultant James Carville -- a harbinger of the losses congressional Democrats suffered the next year after they raised taxes and supported, unavailingly, massive health care proposals.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Funding Health Care on the Backs of the Young
WASHINGTON -- As I was talking recently with the founder of a large American corporation, the conversation turned (inevitably) to health care reform. His employees in their 20s, on average, cost the company about $1,500 a year in health bills. Those in their 50s cost at least 10 times more. The effect of proposed health care reform -- which limits the ability of insurers to charge higher premiums for older adults -- would be, he said, a large shift of America's health care burden to the younger generation. This is not an unintended consequence of reform; it is the whole purpose. It is not a side effect; it is the main funding mechanism.
