Cato Daily Dispatch for October 20, 2005
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Global Warming Link UnlikelySelling Harriet Miers
Competition is the Cure for Health Care
Global Warming Link Unlikely
"Even though they'd been expecting the Atlantic basin's 21st tropical storm of the season to rev up for several days, the pace and scope of Hurricane Wilma's intensification to the strongest storm on record stunned forecasters Wednesday," Scripps Howard News Service reports.
In an op-ed published in today's Atlantic Journal-Constitution, Cato senior fellow Pat Michaels writes: "Hurricane Wilma is setting the all-time record low in the Atlantic Basin for barometric pressure, besting 1988's Hurricane Gilbert. Wilma is also the 21st tropical cyclone this season, tying the 1933 record for number of storms. To climatologists, that 1933 record was like Babe Ruth's 714 home runs -- something that would never be broken. But 2005 has come along, just as Hank Aaron did. Neither Aaron nor Ruth was juiced. But has the performance of 2005 hurricanes been enhanced by global warming?
"Rather than use a computer model, I checked the actual relationship between sea temperatures and hurricane intensity in recent decades -- a period of global warming. In reality (as opposed to the virtual reality of the computer), only 10 percent of storm-to-storm variation in intensity is related to sea surface temperatures. Ninety percent is due to other factors, such as El Niño, (a warm current of water). Some of these factors are actually less favorable to hurricanes in a warmer world."
Selling Harriet Miers
"The Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers suffered another setback on Wednesday when the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee asked her to resubmit parts of her judicial questionnaire, saying various members had found her responses 'inadequate,' 'insufficient' and 'insulting,'" according to The New York Times.
The article continues: "The do-over of the questionnaire is the latest in a series of problems for Ms. Miers's nomination. Conservative intellectuals have said she is unqualified and have called for her withdrawal. Social conservatives have withheld their support because she lacks a clear record. And this week liberal groups set off alarms over her past opposition to abortion rights."
In "Cronyism," Cato senior fellow Randy Barnett writes: "To be qualified, a Supreme Court justice must have more than credentials; [Miers] must have a well-considered 'judicial philosophy,' by which is meant an internalized view of the Constitution and the role of a justice that will guide her through the constitutional minefield that the Supreme Court must navigate. Nothing in Harriet Miers' professional background called upon her to develop considered views on the extent of congressional powers, the separation of powers, the role of judicial precedent, the importance of states in the federal system, or the need for judges to protect both the enumerated and unenumerated rights retained by the people. It is not enough simply to have private opinions on these complex matters; a prospective justice needs to have wrestled with them in all their complexity before attaining the sort of judgment that decision-making at the Supreme Court level requires, especially in the face of executive or congressional disagreement."
Competition is the Cure for Health Care
"The Bush administration approved a sweeping Medicaid plan for Florida on Wednesday that limits spending for many of the 2.2 million beneficiaries there and gives private health plans new freedom to limit benefits," reports The New York Times.
"The Florida program, likely to be a model for many other states, shifts from the traditional Medicaid 'defined benefit' plan to a 'defined contribution' plan, under which the state sets a ceiling on spending for each recipient."
In "Health Care Needs a Dose of Competition," Michael F. Cannon, Cato's director of health policy studies, writes: "In many sectors of the economy, market competition consistently improves quality while reducing costs. Health care is an exception, but not because competition cannot work. In fact, the recent rise in cash-paying patients traveling abroad for medical care shows that market competition makes even urgent, high-cost acute care more affordable.
"Rather, health care is an exception because market competition is not allowed to work. Market competition requires three key elements: (1) a large pool of actual and potential producers with new ideas; (2) consumers who are free to choose different products; and (3) consumers who weigh the costs and benefits of those products. At every turn, government tax, spending, and regulatory policies thwart these necessary conditions of a free market."
Holiday Dmitri, editor, hdmitri@cato.org
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