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• The rights and wrongs

• Aloha at the pump

• Article was misleading

The rights and wrongs

of Mr. Rice

My reading of Tom Rice’s opinion piece on July 15 left me confused. It was an odd mix of truth, errors and a huge post hoc fallacy.

Mr. Rice points out what most agree: We have a problem in funding healthcare costs in this country. His estimate that roughly 12 percent of our gross domestic product is spent on healthcare is what most sources report. Europeans spend 6 percent to 10 percent for a similar level of care. My experience in the U.K. is that single payer plans work OK and would be fine if they had the same 12 percent of GDP level of funding.

However, much of his analysis seems to try to lay the blame for our problem at the feet of Sen. Hillary Clinton and “Hillarycare.” First, the Clinton plan did not call for a single payer system (Canadian or European style health care). It required employers to provide their employees membership in private HMOs. Some on the left resisted the Clinton plan because they wanted a European-style single payer system. The right, and especially small businesses, wanted status quo fearing high costs and “big government.” Big business was neutral to mildly positive on the plan. The Wikipedia.com article titled “Clinton Health Care Plan” has a great overview on the matter. I would urge people to read it for themselves as there is no way to cram an overview into a letter to the editor.

Mr. Rice correctly points out that prior to 1990, most insured folks had cost plus healthcare provided by their employer. What he infers is that “Hillarycare” changed that after 1992. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The “Hillarycare” plan was completely shot down. No laws were passed, and no changes were instituted by the federal government. This was a major issue for the 1994 election that gave us our Republican Congressional majority that year. Newt Gingrich’s Contract for (on?) America included squashing the plan and succeeded. The system we have today the result of the “market approach” where people and businesses tried to solve the problem independently from governmental action. Business continued to force employees into HMOs and other managed care plans to cut costs. Or they just dropped healthcare altogether.

Our current system provides well for the wealthy like Mr. Rice and myself while an ever growing group at the bottom have little to no care beyond the emergency room. This might be “the best health care in the world” for Mr. Rice and myself, but it is lousy for those on the bottom of the pile.

Regardless of that, trying to link the growing problem to a nonevent is a post hoc fallacy obviously rooted in fear of Sen. Clinton’s probable run for President in 2008 (she’s not my first choice either).

The most amusing part of Mr. Rice’s piece was his solution for handling the revenue shortfall at Wilcox. He proposes the State of Hawai‘i use tax dollars to close that gap. Just how does that differ from a single payer (government) system when you get right down to it?

Our solution is obvious. If we want more and more health care we are going to have to pay for it. How we pay and who gets coverage without fully paying their actual cost is where it gets difficult. A single payer system reduces overhead costs. Medicare, for example, spends very little on overhead compared to traditional insurance. Government programs already pay on the order of 40 percent of all healthcare costs. However, as long as the two-thirds of us that have good coverage fear a reduction to the average, we will be stuck with our current system. When enough people lose coverage or fear losing coverage, we will move to a single payer system, with private insurance overlays for those that can afford it, like Europe.

  • Dave Camp
    Anahola

Aloha at the pump

The Aloha Spirit is alive and well on the North Shore. When I went to the Kilauea Post Office recently, I received a letter addressed to George and Donna Schulz, 43333 Kilauea Road, Kilauea, HI 96754 with no return address. Inside was a hand written note “Aloha, Please accept a very small gift — you both give so much to our community.” No signature. Enclosed in the envelope were two $100 Shell cards for gasoline.

Some thoughtful generous person did this for us. We are most grateful and appreciative.

We volunteer on Kaua‘i when we are asked because we are grateful to live on Kaua‘i. Volunteering is the one way we can show our Mahalo.

There are thousands of great volunteers on Kaua‘i who give many hours to help others.

  • Donna and George Schulz
    Kilauea

Article was misleading

The Garden Island article on July 2, “A day at the races: the seats, the players, the issues” discussing the initiation of the year 2006 election campaign states that councilmembers Jay Furfaro and Darryl Kaneshiro “successfully pushed through property tax relief measures for homeowners.” Presumably referring to these efforts the article reports that an ordinance was passed “that gives the same property tax relief (as) under the Ohana Kauai measure.”

The article’s report was inaccurate and misleading. The permanent home use ordinance adopted offers only a modest portion of the taxpayer relief provided by the Ohana Kauai Charter amendment that was approved by the voters in the 2004 General Election.

The Ohana amendment specified that for resident homeowners occupying their property since 1998, property taxes would be restored to the amount for that year, and then after adoption of the measure the annual limit on tax increases would be 2 percent. For occupancies beginning after 1998, the tax restoration would be to the year occupancy began.

In contrast, the permanent home use ordinance initially adopted in 2004 limited property tax annual increases to 6 percent of the then tax. Later the limit percentage was reduced to 2 percent.

The differences are striking. The ordinance never provides a tax reduction as the Ohana measure did. To illustrate, assume a resident taxpayer having a $500 property tax in 1998 and a $1000 tax in 2004. Similar increases occurred for many incidents to the sharp escalation in property values in that period. For that taxpayer in 2006, the tax would be $510 under the Ohana amendment and $1,020 under the ordinance. Try telling that taxpayer the relief is the “same” with both measures.

Another important difference is that the Ohana amendment being adopted by the voters can only be changed by the voters. The ordinance can be repealed at any time the County Council wishes.

Taxpayers deserve to be accurately informed. Your paper is the source most have for this data.

  • Walter Lewis
    Princeville