November 20, 2000

Chirac Turns Up the Heat On Global Warming
Clinton to Decide Your Medical Privacy
HUD Reforms, But Still Exists

Chirac Turns Up the Heat On Global Warming

French President Jacques Chirac raised the political temperature at crucial climate change talks today, urging the United States to take a lead in reducing greenhouse gases implicated in global warming, according to Reuters.

Political leaders arrived at U.N. talks to give impetus to a drive for agreement on how best to tackle the threat of global warming, which some scientists warn could have catastrophic consequences on global weather patterns. Some 180 nations failed during an initial round of negotiations last week to break an impasse between the world's wealthier countries over who should pay to cut pollution.

While the European Union has urged the industrialized world to take tough action by cutting emissions of carbon dioxide, the United States and others prefer market-based measures such as buying the right to pollute elsewhere.

In a Cato Institute book, "The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air About Global Warming," Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling Jr. explain why global warming is vastly overrated as an environmental threat. The book marshals an array of scientific data, studies and analyses to argue that initial forecasts of rapid global warming were simply wrong. Perhaps more important, the book points out that attempts to "fix" the forecast by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are even more misguided than the original projections. The first and fifth chapters of the book can be read online.

In "Kyoto's Chilling Effects," Michaels writes that the protocol has poor chances of being ratified by the United States as "both Democrats and Republicans can agree that Kyoto will wreck our economy, according to just about every credible study that uses realistic policy assumptions." Director of Natural Resource Studies Jerry Taylor agrees in "Hot Air in Kyoto," stating that "impoverishing society today to avoid a very uncertain problem tomorrow would harm, not help, future generations."

Clinton to Decide Your Medical Privacy

The Clinton administration will soon issue sweeping new rules concerning the privacy of medical records, according to The New York Times. Chris Jennings, the health policy coordinator at the White House, said President Clinton would issue the final rules, with the force of law, in the next few weeks.

As President Jimmy Carter did 20 years ago, Mr. Clinton is leaving office with a burst of regulatory activity that he hopes will leave an imprint on the nation long after his term ends. Last Monday, the government issued rules intended to protect millions of workers against repetitive stress injuries.

The privacy rules, the first comprehensive federal standards to protect the confidentiality of medical data, will affect virtually everyone who receives or provides health care in the United States. Under the new rules, consumers will for the first time have a federal right to inspect and copy information in their medical records. They will also have the right to request correction of information that they consider inaccurate or incomplete.

The standards will limit the use and disclosure of data by insurance companies, health maintenance organizations and other health care providers, including doctors, nurses, hospitals, nursing homes, pharmacies and medical laboratories.

In "Can Your Trust the Ministry of Privacy?" Solveig Singleton wrote that although many Americans have legitimate concerns about the privacy of their medical records, the primary threat to that privacy is the growing interference by government with medical markets. In the Regulation magazine article "Whose Life is it Anyway?" Sue Blevins explains the dangers of having DNA information in government hands.

HUD Reforms, But Still Exists

A consultant's follow-up assessment of the HUD 2020 management reform plan highly praised the Department of Housing and Urban Development's progress, according to The Washington Post.

The agency, once a symbol of welfare state run amok, with a reputation for wasteful programs and bad management, launched the massive reorganization and management reform effort in 1997. Today, an consulting group invited to review the agency reported, "The pace and breadth of the HUD reform effort has been astonishing. Essentially every part of the organization has been significantly and positively impacted in some way."

GAO said last year that HUD has made "credible progress since 1997 in laying the framework for improving its management." But the congressional watchdog agency said that "the integrity and accountability of HUD's programs remain at high risk." GAO said two months ago that it plans to "update HUD's high-risk status" in January.

In "Do We Still Need HUD?" Howard Husock explains that Section 8 housing subsidies send the wrong message: that need, rather than achievement, is the way to move up the ladder in America. In "The Inherent Flaws of HUD," Husock writes that "subsidized housing has proven difficult to maintain and has created perverse incentives that undermine the formation of healthy neighborhoods."

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