MyHeritage.org: Putting One-Fifth of America on Welfare‏

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November 17, 2009 | By Nathaniel Ward

Putting one-fifth of America on welfare

The Left's health care "reform" plan will dramatically expand eligibility for Medicaid, a poorly-functioning program created in the 1960s to help low-income families.
Heritage Foundation expert Conn Carroll explains:

The Health care "reform" bills advancing in the House and Senate would expand Medicaid by making this government-run health plan available to all adults with incomes at or below 150% of the poverty line. The change would dramatically multiply eligible recipients, with 46 states seeing increases of at least 20%, including 16 posting jumps of 50% or more. Almost 21% of the entire U.S. population would be eligible for Medicaid and seven states and the District of Columbia would have eligibility rates of at least 25%.

Meanwhile, Heritage Vice President Stuart Butler debunks liberal myths about the proposed "trigger," which would create a government-run health care "public option" if other reforms fail to work. This mechanism, he explains, provides few incentives to experiment with new approaches and its criteria would be hard to measure.
The Senate version of the health care bill, which has been written in secret, will probably be revealed this week, Heritage's Brian Darling explains. The House narrowly passed its bloated big-government bill earlier this month.

Rove names Feulner a top conservative

Writing on Forbes.com, former presidential adviser Karl Rove named Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner the sixth most powerful conservative.
Feulner is helping build the conservative movement at a critical time, Rove argues:

For more than 30 years, the president of the Heritage Foundation has been overseeing the conservative movement's premier think tank. Now he's injected new energy into the institution, and in a sign of confidence, is encouraging other center-right policy groups, like the American Enterprise Institute, to bring fresh conservative perspectives to policy battles.

Other Heritage work of note

• Under current law, the death tax is set to be completely eliminated in 2010—but if Congress fails to act it will shoot back up to 55 percent in January 2011. Heritage economist Bill Beach outlines seven reasons why Congress should permanently repeal the death tax instead of enacting short-term fixes. Some charities actually think the death tax is good for them, and are urging Congress to prevent the death tax from zeroing out. But as Heritage economist Bill Beach explains, a death tax rate of zero would benefit non-profits more by encouraging economic growth and creating disposable income.

• A new federal transportation bill, Heritage's Ron Utt explains, would "mark a dramatic, harmful change in federal transportation policy" by increasing taxes and the size of government, embarking on social engineering efforts and discouraging private investment. Conservatives, Utt argues, should work instead to abolish the federal highway program altogether and return transportation tax and spending decisions to the states.

In other news

• In Japan this weekend, President Obama bowed to the Japanese emperor--though Heritage's Lee Edwards argues it was more of a kowtow.

• More than 440 nonexistent Congressional districts received more than $6.4 billion in "stimulus" funds, according to Recovery.gov, the official website tallying the spending program's progress. Find out more about these dubious figures on the Foundry.

• A federal panel has recommended that women be screened for breast cancer less often. If the federal government gets more involved in health care, such guidelines may be used as the basis for regulations that ration care.

• "A new study finds university students in coed housing are 2.5 times more likely to binge drink every week," according to LiveScience.com. "And no surprise, they're also likely to have more sexual partners, the study found. Also, pornography use was higher among students in coed dorms."

• Labor unions want the federal government to spend taxpayer money on loans to business.

Coming up at Heritage

To attend these or any other events at Heritage please RSVP at Heritage's website. Or you can view these events live online. All times are Eastern.

• On Wednesday, November 18 at noon, Professor Brian Domitrovic joins a panel of experts to discuss his new book on the benefits of supply-side economics.