Obama, Political Hack

During the campaign for the Democratic nomination last year, President Obama rejected Hillary Clinton's call for mandated health insurance. He claimed it wasn't needed, that if health insurance were more affordable, people would buy it. During the presidential camapagn against John McCain, President Obama called McCain's call for removing the tax advantage of employer provided health insurance a tax hike.

Now President Obama has embraced both ideas in the space of two days (via the NYT):

One day after signaling a fresh willingness to consider taxing employer-sponsored health insurance, President Obama indicated yesterday a new openness toward a nationwide requirement that every American have health coverage.

I think the basic premise of Democratic plans to reform health care is false. They claim that we can cover everyone and reduce the cost, but that claim makes one wonder whether anyone on the left side of the aisle passed Econ 101. Quite simply, you cannot increase the demand for a product or service without a corresponding increase the supply of the product/service and expect to see a reduction in cost. All of the plans to talked about to date will increase the demand for healthcare and do nothing to expand the supply. It seems to me, based on my understanding of supply/demand theory, that this has to cause an increase in price.

Until someone devises a plan to address the supply side of the equation, all claims of cost reductions are either fantasy or an implicit call for price controls (which would exacerbate the supply situation). The only other option is to reduce demand through rationing of some sort. I don't think that's what most people who voted for Obama had in mind.

President Obama ran as a different kind of politician. He's not. He's just like every other career politician of either party. He said what he needed to say to get elected and now he's backtracking. I'm not surprised, but I wonder how all those independents and quasi Republicans who voted for him feel.

A Charter School That Works

When it comes to education, President Obama has said that he wants to look at what works and then replicate it. He should take a look at American Indian Public Charters in Oakland, CA:

Reporting from Oakland -- Not many schools in California recruit teachers with language like this: "We are looking for hard working people who believe in free market capitalism. . . . Multicultural specialists, ultra liberal zealots and college-tainted oppression liberators need not apply."

That, it turns out, is just the beginning of the ways in which American Indian Public Charter and its two sibling schools spit in the eye of mainstream education. These small, no-frills, independent public schools in the hardscrabble flats of Oakland sometimes seem like creations of television's "Colbert Report." They mock liberal orthodoxy with such zeal that it can seem like a parody.

School administrators take pride in their record of frequently firing teachers they consider to be underperforming. Unions are embraced with the same warmth accorded "self-esteem experts, panhandlers, drug dealers and those snapping turtles who refuse to put forth their best effort," to quote the school's website.

It isn't politically correct, but it works:

It would be easy to dismiss American Indian as one of the nuttier offshoots of the fast-growing charter school movement, which allows schools to receive public funding but operate outside of day-to-day district oversight. But the schools command attention for one very simple reason: By standard measures, they are among the very best in California.

The Academic Performance Index, the central measuring tool for California schools, rates schools on a scale from zero to 1,000, based on standardized test scores. The state target is an API of 800. The statewide average for middle and high schools is below 750. For schools with mostly low-income students, it is around 650.

The oldest of the American Indian schools, the middle school known simply as American Indian Public Charter School, has an API of 967. Its two siblings -- American Indian Public Charter School II (also a middle school) and American Indian Public High School -- are not far behind.

Among the thousands of public schools in California, only four middle schools and three high schools score higher. None of them serves mostly underprivileged children.

At American Indian, the largest ethnic group is Asian, followed by Latinos and African Americans. Some of the schools' critics contend that high-scoring Asian Americans are driving the test scores, but blacks and Latinos do roughly as well -- in fact, better on some tests.

That makes American Indian a rarity in American education, defying the axiom that poor black and Latino children will lag behind others in school.

Read the whole story. Very inspiring. Chances of President Obama endorsing the approach? Zero...