With L.A. school officials constantly complaining about funding shortfalls, the State of California seemingly in perpetual financial crisis, and federal lawmakers assuming that school districts have poor facilities due to lack of funds, this little number really makes you think: Does any district really need a $232 million art-school building equipped with, among other things, “floor-to-ceiling windows with motorized blackout shades.…an outdoor atrium for firing Japanese raku pottery” and “a conical library whose dazzling interior swirls upward to an off-center skylight”? Probably not, and it really makes it hard to keep tolerating the incessant public-schooling complaints about woeful underfunding. Neither the broad data (see Indicator B1), nor such anecdotal evidence as the far-too-mundanely named Central High School No. 9, support the claim.

According to the Wash​ing​ton​Watch​.com blog, the current tariff on Christmas lights is “on the wrong side of Santa Claus.”

Not a good place to be if you want that new bike to be under the tree.

Getting named New York’s junior senator apparently requires pandering to those who support Israel’s right wing.

From Nick Confessore’s written interview with Caroline Kennedy (and her staff) in the New York Times:

Q. Do you believe that an undivided Jerusalem must be the national capital of the State of Israel?
A. Yes, Caroline believes that an undivided Jerusalem must be the national capital of the State of Israel.

The Church of Universal Coverage is telling us that national health insurance will stimulate economic growth.

• Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D‑MT) says universal health insurance coverage is the key to a healthy economy.
• MIT economist Jonathan Gruber says “health care reform is good for our economy.”
• Business Week columnist Chris Farrell writes, “Universal coverage would stimulate the economy [and] boost the financial security of ordinary Americans.”

That seems to contradict their usual spiel — which happens to be correct — that America’s health care sector is wasteful and inefficient. Americans spend twice the amount that other advanced nations spend on medical care, yet we’re not noticeably healthier. Researchers estimate that one third of U.S. medical spending produces nothing at all — that’s about $700 billion wasted per year. How is pumping more money into such an inefficient economic sector supposed to stimulate growth?

It also doesn’t seem to square with the facts. If anything, the economy appears to grow faster when Congress rejects universal coverage.

• After Congress defeated President Harry Truman’s proposal for national health insurance in 1949, the nation enjoyed four years of robust economic growth.
• The defeat of the Clinton Health Security Act in 1994 was followed by six years of robust economic growth.
• The largest step Congress has taken toward universal coverage was when it launched Medicare and Medicaid in 1966. Real economic growth averaged 5.7 percent in the four years prior to 1966, but only 2.7 percent in the four years that followed.

If history is any guide, politicians who want to stimulate the economy should be trying to defeat universal coverage.

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis

The right kind of health care reform will reap economic dividends. Letting consumers control their health care dollars and choose their own health plan will make us healthier and wealthier by encouraging innovation, eliminating wasteful spending, and making health care more affordable. Nationalizing health insurance, on the other hand, will suppress innovation and encourage wasteful spending, as evidenced by Medicare, Medicaid, etc.

My favorite New Yorker cartoon shows a bar patron telling his compatriot, “I figure if I don’t have that third Martini, then the terrorists win.” People will seize on a crisis to justify, well … anything.

Today’s The USA Today tells the story of “Phyllis Smith, a 60-year-old uninsured seamstress in Yantis, Texas, [who] goes without medications for high blood pressure and diabetes because she can’t afford a visit to her doctor to get her prescriptions refilled.” The article quotes Smith:

With the condition this world is in right now, [Barack Obama] has his hands full.… Whether I get my high-blood-pressure medicine is not going to be high on his priority list.

Sort of argues against giving some distant ruler that much control over your life, doesn’t it?

And who knows? Were those distant rulers not doing so much to make health insurance more expensive, perhaps Smith wouldn’t be uninsured.

Were they not doing so much to make routine care so expensive, perhaps Smith could afford that doctor’s visit, or have a nurse practitioner adjust her prescription.

Were they not doing so much to make prescription drugs more expensive, perhaps Smith could better afford her medications too.

After so many PG-13 stories about health care reform and a new administration that everybody’s really hoping makes it happen, the press is starting to write rated‑R stories about the actual chances for comprehensive reform. Today, I was quoted in a couple of the R‑rated stories.

Investor’s Business Daily reports on two Congressional Budget Office reports released yesterday. Both were launched and largely completed under the tenure of then-CBO director Peter Orszag, who has since been tapped to direct President-elect Barack Obama’s Office of Management and Budget.

Before becoming Barack Obama’s budget chief, Peter Orszag gave his future boss an indirect warning Thursday that health care reform will be neither cheap nor easy.

“(The first report) shows that many of the things that Obama and Congressional Democrats think will save costs, such as preventive care and information technology, won’t really save much money,” said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. “It also shows that covering the uninsured will cost a lot of money.”

Better preventive care and health IT would save Medicare $850 million and $22 billion, respectively, over 10 years. Over that time, Medicare is expected to cost $6.7 trillion.…

“If you read between the lines, he’s saying that health care reform will be a blood bath, not quick and easy,” said Cannon.

The USA Today reports:

[F]or significant change to occur, health care must stay a priority for his administration and for Congress. Special interest groups whose conflicts helped derail change in 1994 must come together.

There are signs that may happen. A coalition of conservative business groups, including the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), has teamed with a major labor union, the Service Employees International Union, and a left-leaning advocacy group, Families USA, to push for action in the first 100 days. Key groups, including hospitals, doctors and consumer advocates, are meeting with congressional staffers for leaders such as Sen. Edward Kennedy, D‑Mass., a longtime champion of overhauling health care.

The health insurance industry — whose “Harry and Louise” ads helped turn public opinion against the last attempted overhaul — says it wants change.…

“In the 26 years I’ve been involved with health care, I’ve never seen such interest and cooperation in trying to get to yes” on change, says Ron Pollack, head of Families USA, which supports expanding government programs to cover all Americans.…

Others aren’t sure that will be enough. Health policy consultant Robert Laszewski, a former insurance industry executive, [says,] “There is no consensus in Congress or the country on what a comprehensive health care bill would look like.… Plus we don’t have the money.”

…

“They all want to be at the table because they don’t want to be on the menu,” Cannon says of the interest groups. “Sooner or later, someone is going to be on the menu. You can’t do comprehensive reform without goring someone’s ox.”

The latest issue of The Economist praises president elect Obama’s pick of Arne Duncan to lead the department of education. In particular, it predicts that “Mr Duncan may restore the spirit of co-operation that helped pass NCLB in 2001.”

But bi-partisanship is not intrinsically desirable. It is only good when it results in good policies. NCLB has not proven itself a good policy. There are four nationally representative sources of information on academic outcomes over the last 6 to 10 years: America’s own National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and the international testing programs: PISA, PIRLS, and TIMSS. NAEP shows some gains since NCLB was passed, but they are, for the most part, smaller than those that occurred in the years immediately preceding the law. TIMSS shows gains in math over the past decade, but stagnation in science, and much of the math gain seems to have preceded NCLB — and we’re still just in the middle of the pack among the top 30 rich countries despite being the second highest spender among them. Both PISA and PIRLS show stagnation or decline across subjects and grades.

These lackluster results have come at an additional cost of perhaps $100 billion over our already world-leading per-pupil spending. I don’t understand why an “economist” would think more of this kind of bipartisanship desirable.