Health Care, Alcohol Regulation and Flu Stats
VIDEO: 20TH Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall
The House of Representatives narrowly passes Democratic-sponsored health care legislation.
Bob McDonnell wins election to be the 71st Governor of Virginia.
Locations around the world report cases of the H1N1 strain of flu.
Listen to LibertyWeek, the CEI podcast, here.
VIDEO: 20TH Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall
1. CONGRESS
The House of Representatives narrowly passes Democratic-sponsored health care legislation.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Gregory Conko on free market options for health care reform:
“Most Americans agree that our health care system is broken and must be fixed. But it is increasingly clear that what ails health care is not too little, but too much government intervention. Federal and state tax preferences for employer-sponsored health insurance distort the market in a way that limits choices for individuals, reduces competition among insurers, and artificially inflates costs for health care services. For most working Americans, switching jobs often entails switching health plans and doctors or losing coverage altogether, while many others find non-employer-sponsored insurance unaffordable or difficult to obtain.”
2. CONSUMER
Bob McDonnell wins election to be the 71st Governor of Virginia.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Editorial Director Ivan Osorio on one of the Governor-elect’s first initiatives:
“In a time when the federal government’s involvement in the economy appears to only grow, it’s encouraging to see at least one industry where the trend may soon move in the opposite direction, even if at the state level. Virginia Governor-elect Bob McDonnell has proposed privatizing the state’s liquor stores — known as ABC stores, for Alcoholic Beverage Control. As Garrett Peck, author of The Prohibition Hangover, notes, this is long overdue. The ABC system, which several states adopted after the end of Prohibition in 1934, is today an anachronism that doesn’t even work very well.”
3. HEALTH
Locations around the world report cases of the H1N1 strain of flu.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Analyst Michael Fumento on the latest flu statistics:
“Well, what swine flu isn’t doing this week is apparently less than what it wasn’t doing last week. In other words, it appears to have peaked. How do we know? Here we see it’s going down the right side of the bell curve both in terms of deaths and hospitalizations. And there’s both a massive decline in samples submitted to CDC surveillance labs and a small decline in those testing positive.”
Listen to LibertyWeek, the CEI podcast, here.