Election system flaws lead to policy problems
WASHINGTON — A year from now, it isn’t going to matter who President Barack
H. Obama picked to be the Democratic nominee for governor of New York, be it Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Caroline Kennedy or Eliot Spitzer.
It won’t matter 10 years from now. Under Democratic power, New York State will still ride the top of the lists of the highest tax jurisdictions and most dysfunctional governments in the western world, not counting Cuba.
Thursday’s report from the non-partisan Commonwealth Fund shows that the obsession of New Yorkers with lavishing tax money on a social program doesn’t produce superior results for health care any more than it does for schools.
The Commonwealth Fund has just rated the health care systems, public and private, for the 50
states and the District of Columbia. Although New York by far spent the most money per person, it only ranked 21st in overall performance for patients young and old.
Safer states to get sick in are Vermont, Hawaii, Iowa, Minnesota and Maine. We ranked 33rd for hospitalized patients who actually got recommended treatment for heart issues or pneumonia, and ranked 36th among states where families felt they had a “medical home” if their children became ill.
Where New York is a clear leader is in cost, of course, and in the study’s only yardstick for waste and abuse, and who knows, a touch of fraud. The average federal government reimbursement for Medicare patients in New York State was $9,564. Tops in the nation.
The lowest price is $5,311, in Hawaii, which incidentally has the third best performance overall.
At the same time, New York ranked second worst in what the study called “potentially avoidable use of hospitals and cost of care.” I choose to call this waste and abuse of the tax money you pay in taxes for Medicare, Medicaid, and your sky-high insurance premiums.
The root of all this, and the mayhem in urban schools, and now the collapse of state government is certainly not the beleaguered Gov. David
A. Paterson, whom Nobel Laureate Obama threw under the bus.
Paterson did not create the suffocating network of union power, and the powerful hospital lobbies, including the prestigious Manhattan research and university hospitals, that dictates how health care is performed and money is spent.
Paterson did not create the voter cynicism so obvious in last month’s Democratic mayoralty primary in Buffalo, where 63 percent of eligible Democratic voters stayed home. There were plenty of issues between incumbent Mayor Byron W. Brown and challenger Michael Kearns that should have prompted more than 41,671 registered Democrats to spend a few minutes to perform a fundamental civic duty.
No matter which Democrat is elected, the apathy, the wretched political system and the laws that make the system possible will be there for the next Democratic governor to exploit or suffer from on Jan. 1, 2011.
Two key parts of the Election Law will not be changed under any Democrat. One provides for the closed primary. In Virginia, which investors view as the most desirable state to do business, any voter may take part in any party’s primary election. In New York, which investors see as the least desirable state for four years running, only registered Democrats may vote in the party’s primary.
This makes it difficult for people to react to late-breaking civic news in one-party towns like Buffalo. Another part of the Election Law makes it absolutely impossible. That’s the provision that requires a voter to affiliate with a party in order to vote in the primary at least 25 days prior to the last general election.
So if you want to affiliate Democrat to vote in a gubernatorial or any other primary next year, you are already too late. This garbage can only be scrubbed from the law by a Constitutional Convention.
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