Many letters by regular liberal and DFL writers have tried to cast the inaction by the Governor to call a Special Session as some sort of conspiracy.  What it really shows is common sense!  All to often Legislators and Leaders make decisions based on emotions and spur of the moment knee jerk reactions just to realize that they have made the problem worse or spent a whole lot of money and the problems still exist.

A recent letter by Roxanne Mindeman, prolific letter writer in the This Week Newspapers stated the Governor was trying to stifle progress by not calling a special session and questioning why the Governor thought he had such a right.  I was more than happy to point out in a letter in reply this week that,

“What he is attempting to do is get an agreement up-front on the issues covered and how long so when legislative leaders don’t do what they say, taxpayers and voters can hold them accountable. Only the governor can call a special session, but he loses all control once it is called.”

Somehow we forget Civics lessons when it is to the benefit of the letter writer.  See Article 4,  Section 12 of Minnesota Constitution.

DFL legislative leaders said Tuesday they're ready to abandon a more comprehensive special session to focus on last month's Interstate 35W bridge collapse and the massive floods in southeastern Minnesota. They also suggested a willingness to drop advocacy of a gas-tax increase.

Hmmm..... where have we heard promises before?  How about before the last elections, the beginning of last session, during session, after session.  The DFL have repeatedly told the people of Minnesota one thing and then done their own thing.  Wht is any different now?  Do you think Larry Pogemiller gives a rip if he goes back on his word like a thousand times before?  Speaker Anderson-Kelliher?

The session would deal only with providing funds to reconstruct the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis and aid to southeastern Minnesota flood victims. Democrats proposed paying for those projects with up to $370 million cash from the state’s budget surplus.

Now the DFL is agreeing to the plan that conservatives have been begging Pawlenty all along?  Surely this is a ploy, an opportunity for them to go back on their word - "for the good of Minnesota?"

 “It is time to stop the word games,” they said. “It is unfortunate that you are unable to act decisively and comprehensively to the transportation challenge, either due to philosophy or politics.

Give Governor Pawlenty no credit here, I think he handled this whole situation terribly. He and the other Republican leaders should have been all over the place saying that there is enough money already, there’s no need to raise taxes, we have a spending problem…… where is Reagan when we need him?  Obviously not in this Governor!!!!

Republican leaders have once again given the DFL the opportunity to hammer Republicans, and claiming the rhetorical high ground. Instead of focusing on instilling priorities, at looking at why with record budgets and massive spending increases we can not handle priorities we instead give nod to sound bites and crawl in our own little selfish hole.  We need leadership - I have been stating that for years now and the Republican leaders in Minnesota are short on this important quality.

So what now - should the Governor beleive the tax hungry liberals?  I don't think so!

A letter writer to the Star Tribune is quick to quip, “The latest government figures are out: 47 million Americans without health insurance, nearly one-sixth of the country.” 

The writer was referring to the August 28, 2007 Census Report which reported 47.0 million were uninsured in America.

Ever since the U.S. Census Bureau released its August 26, 2004 report on the nation's uninsured population, politicians have used the data to make health insurance policy decisions, and single-payer activists have used the data to lobby for government-mandated or -administered national health insurance. By the Bureau's own admission, however, the data they reported was incorrect: The number of uninsured was greatly overstated.
 

So while, Census Bureau officials have acknowledged the uninsured number is inflated because the Bureau reports as "uninsured" those adults and children who are eligible for Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) but are not enrolled. Individuals such as the letter writer use this once again inaccurate data to get a gut reaction.
 

A lot of times, being uninsured in Minnesota or America is often a matter of choice. Most uninsured people either can afford health insurance or qualify for government-sponsored health care programs; they just choose not to enroll.

According to the 2006 Census report there are 8.5 million uninsured people who make between $50,000 and $74,999 per year and 9.3 million who make more than $75,000 a year. That’s roughly 17.8 million people who ought to be able to “afford” health insurance because they make substantially more than the median household income of $46,326.  Another 10 million people were reported who did not work at all.

A closer look reveals the Census data included more than 10.231 million people who are “not a citizen.”

Thus when you subtract non-citizens and those who can afford their own insurance (28 million) but choose not to purchase it, about 19 million people are left – less than 7 percent of the population.  But there are reasons to believe that number is incorrect as well.

While the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported Medicaid enrollment at 51 million in 2002, the Census tabulated only 33 million, a difference of 18 million people. This same kind of undercount happened again in 2003: The CMS reported 2 million people became eligible for Medicaid, but the Census Bureau recorded only a 350,000 increase in Medicaid enrollment.
 

This is no minor statistical snag, as the Census Bureau reports there are more than 15 million "uninsured" individuals in households with less than $25,000 of income. Many of these individuals meet the income test for Medicaid or SCHIP eligibility, but they are not technically enrolled and are therefore considered by the Census Bureau to be uninsured.
 

However, as soon as a person, who is eligible for Medicaid, but not enrolled, enters the health care system through a hospital or clinic, he or she is automatically enrolled into the Medicaid plan. Therefore, counting this population as "uninsured" distorts the data significantly, since these individuals can enroll at any time and have their medical expenses paid whenever they require health care.
 

The social policy implications of this over count are important because the inflated numbers send the wrong message to politicians. Given that no one who is eligible for Medicaid can be correctly described as uninsured, spending millions of dollars to enroll these people would do no one any good at all. These folks are not uninsured.

Data from three federally sponsored national surveys--the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), and the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS)--also seek to make an accurate count of the nation's uninsured population.
 

All three surveys conclude that at any given time during a year, being uninsured is a much smaller problem than we are led to believe by the Census data alone. For example, only about 30 percent of the non-elderly population who become uninsured in a given year remain uninsured for more than 12 months. Nearly 50 percent regain health insurance within four months.
 

Writing in response to the 2004 Census data report, Dr. Kirk A. Johnson, senior policy analyst for the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, highlighted the problem of taking the statistics at face value. The Bureau's numbers may make for eye-popping headlines, he noted, but, "When it comes to health insurance, the Census Bureau's own statisticians argue that SIPP [Survey of Income and Program Participation] provides a better measure of health insurance coverage than CPS [Current Population Survey]. In a recent research report on the differences between CPS and SIPP in this regard, Census Bureau statistician Shailesh Bhandari wrote, 'Since the SIPP collects monthly information and allows us to see changes from month to month, SIPP may be closer to the truth.'"
 

"In short," wrote Johnson, "the CPS data provide an incomplete picture on poverty and health insurance in America. Policymakers would be well advised to look to other data, such as SIPP, to gauge what actually happens to people who fall into poverty or lose their health insurance. Only then will public policy be fully informed, and America can truly have an intelligent debate on how to better address these problems."

The fact is that the Census has repeatedly over the years “underreported” the number of people covered by health insurance – meaning that more people have insurance than the report suggests. The Census also underreported the number of people covered by Medicare and Medicaid.

The Census Bureau's own admission that the CPS "is not designed primarily to collect health insurance data" speaks directly to the issue that the methodology used to collect this important information is not up to the task.

Moore, Clinton and Obama have used the lie about 40-some million uninsured Americans to promote universal health insurance plans. Moore asserted in his film that providing health insurance to everyone is a moral and even religious obligation.

The issue of uninsured American is simply too important for its public face to come from an indifferent and inaccurate survey and be swallowed whole by politicians who don’t take the time to stop and evaluate implications of their policy decisions that are driven by rhetoric and incomplete facts and not by sound policy based on a factual review and analysis.

Source: http://www.census.gov/prod/2007pubs/p60-233.pdf

Governor Pawlenty 1-800-657-3717

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