Fewer Hurricanes, Union Lobbying and the Individual Mandate
Financial losses from natural catastrophes decline significantly from 2008.
Labor unions continue to lobby for the mis-named Employee Free Choice Act.
Health care legislation may require all Americans not already covered by a group plan to purchase individual heath insurance.
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1. ENVIRONMENT
Financial losses from natural catastrophes decline significantly from 2008.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Analyst Michael Fumento on why global warming is not causing an epidemic of hurricanes:
“True, both greenhouse gas emissions and levels in the atmosphere are at their highest, but this year had the fewest hurricanes since 1997, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. For the first time since 2006 no hurricanes even made landfall in the U.S.; indeed hurricane activity is at a 30-year low. None of which is really all that remarkable. What’s remarkable is that the hurricane hysteria essentially reflects a ‘trend line’ comprising a grand total of two data points in one year, 2005. Those data points were named Katrina and Rita.”
2. BUSINESS
Labor unions continue to lobby for the mis-named Employee Free Choice Act.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Editorial Director Ivan Osorio on why Congress should say no to EFCA in 2010:
“No EFCA supporters have even entertained the possibility of shedding the bill’s binding arbitration provision, which would impose contracts on newly unionized companies. It would do so by enjoining a federally appointed arbitrator to impose a contract if the company’s management and the union have been unable to reach an agreement after 120 days. This would encourage the union to press for maximal demands, in the knowledge that they are very likely to get nothing worse than management’s final offer.”
3. LEGAL
Health care legislation may require all Americans not already covered by a group plan to purchase individual heath insurance.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Attorney Hans Bader on the drawbacks of the “individual mandate”:
“The individual mandate is certainly not essential to any regulation of the health care industry. Universal health insurance could be achieved without any mandate at all through expansion of Medicaid or Medicare, or a single-payer system. Requiring young people to buy health insurance does little to prevent free-rider problems, since they do not use many health care services, and most of them will be forced to pay much more for health insurance under Obamacare than they would incur in medical bills without such insurance (if insurers were allowed to discriminate based on age, an actuarially-sound practice restricted by Obamacare, they could offer cheaper health insurance to young people). They are simply being exploited through such a mandate.”
Listen to LibertyWeek, the CEI podcast, here.