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The GOP has a field of candidates who want to run for President. When the race began, the front runner was Mitt Romney but, when Rick Perry joined in, he surged into a lead. Whether he can maintain that lead is something only time can tell. The first signs are that the enthusiasm of the evangelicals and tea-partiers may not be shared by the rest of the country. Governor Perry has some interestingly partisan ideas and a Texan style of delivering them. But, if Perry is not likely to be electable, where does that leave Mitt Romney. He’s more the thinking-person’s candidate and, of course, he’s controversial” because of his health care reforms in Massachusetts.

Let’s deal with the good news. More than 90% of people living in Massachusetts are now covered by some form of health care insurance plan. That makes Romney’s state the best-performing US state in making health care accessible. The less good news is the cost. The state has struggled to control the bills coming in from the health care providers and the suppliers of medication. This leaves people paying above the national average for their insurance.

Embarrassingly for the GOP, Mitt Romney’s success has come from imposing a mandate on his citizens. Whereas the GOP Governors have lined up to allege the federal mandate imposed by law is unconstitutional, there’s been no similar claim made in litigation against the state of Massachusetts. Indeed, you probably remember President Obama deliberately picked the Massachusetts law as his model when crafting the federal bill. So let’s take a moment to consider what Mitt Romney has said about his own law and its relationship to Obamacare. Should he become President in the next election, this could give us clues about how the GOP might attempts to change the current law. In this, we can assume simply repealing Obamacare and refusing to put anything in its place is unacceptable.

Mitt Romney is a great believer in the sovereignty of the states. He thinks it’s open to all states to experiment. Each state’s government knows the local problems and is best placed to find solutions. This is also better for democracy because local law-makers are more directly accountable to the electorate if the voters disapprove of the laws. Indeed, it would make a nonsense of the constitution if the states’ legislatures could be easily trampled by Washington on all issues. It would make the idea of sovereignty meaningless. (more…)

These are the days of political correctness where, on issues of gender, race, religion and other divisive issues, we are expected to remain civil and avoid anything that might stir up trouble. This actually makes life quite difficult because, if real change is going to be made, there must be an honest debate about the issues. So, for example, should men and women receive the same pay for the same work? This should not be controversial. If the employer benefits equally from the work done by both sexes, there’s no reason to reward one more than the other. Except there’s no transparency. Only a tiny percentage of employers make pay grades public, so it’s almost impossible to discover whether any group of individuals is being paid less than the average for that type of work. Now let’s turn the question around. Would you expect a man to be asked to pay more just because he’s a man?

It’s a statistical fact that women live longer than men, so let’s say a man and a woman of the same age ask for quotes to buy a life insurance policy with the same guaranteed death benefits. If the insurance companies base the quotes on the math, the man pays more because he will live for fewer years. There are two reasons for this. First, the man may not work for as long before ill-health forces retirement, i.e. the payments will stop. Second, as women live longer, there are more years for the investment of the payments to build up in value. So women can expect to pay less than men for the same product. Except this would be a positive discrimination on the basis of sex. Presumably that’s illegal.

Moving on to insuring drivers, it’s a statistical fact that women are safer drivers than men. They are more likely to obey the law and generally drive less recklessly. So even if they are involved in accidents, they are traveling more slowly and so there’s less injury to passengers and less damage to the vehicles. Because premium rates are based on the risk an insured will claim, women should pay less than men. Except, unless the insurance company offers a women-only policy, men and women are grouped together so there’s no problem in giving to same rates to individuals with the same safety records. The averages will simply show that women pay less than men. (more…)