Paul Mero

To solve the health care fiasco in the United States, we have to understand actual health care markets and spending; we need to establish foundational principles from which to build health care policies; and, we need to strip health care debates of politics.

Short of paying cash or trading chickens for service, the private health care insurance market has served its customers relatively well. Insurance providers offer medical plans and consumers choose from those plans or not at all. As with all insurance, medical coverage is based on risk. If you live a healthy lifestyle and do not seem to suffer from a history of illness, you would pay lower premiums for your coverage. The opposite is true if you have chosen unhealthy behaviors and activities or if you have a history of some illness. This is the way insurance works and it will not work any other way. read more

In a recent Salt Lake Tribune commentary, I wrote about the problems of extremism in Utah politics. As a conservative, I focused on how many members of the Utah Republican Party had become radicalized. By radicalized, I mean many Utah Republicans have separated their personal values from their political principles. Historically, we have witnessed the horrors perpetrated by a society in which personal values were abandoned when so-called principles were idolized. For instance, it is hard to imagine, still to this day, how a German husband and father in the 1940s could gas Jews during the day and joyfully bounce a new child on his knee at night. read more

Donald Trump wants the voter registration records for Utah and every other state. Surely nothing could go wrong with that request, could it? If Barack Obama had requested the same information from the states, surely nobody would be suspect, would they?

Trump wants all voter registration information to confirm his prediction that upwards of five million people voted illegally in the 2016 election. Surely, Trump must have won the popular vote. Surely, only voter fraud prevented him from winning the popular vote. And, surely, those conniving illegal immigrants and their Democratic Party enablers teamed up to undermine U.S. elections – not Russia, just illegals and Democrats. read more

Commenting on the Senate health care bill currently being debated, conservative pundit Marc Thiessen writes, “Here is the summary of the bill that Democrats will take to the American people in 2018: Republicans voted to cut $701 billion in taxes for corporations and the wealthy, and pay for it with $772 billion taken from Medicaid for the poor — all while pushing 22 million Americans off health care. And Senate Republicans are writing the script for them. Have they lost their minds?” He concludes, “Paying for a massive tax cut for the wealthy with cuts to health care for the most vulnerable Americans is morally reprehensible.” read more

Okay, let me sound like the conservative heretic I am often accused of being: Conservatives should let the Our Schools Now initiative run its course. Don’t oppose it. To publicly and vociferously oppose the Our Schools Now initiative, Utah conservatives will look stupid, sound stupid and most certainly act stupid. The reason is simple: Utah conservatives, by and large, don’t understand the playing field in Utah education. They emphasize what doesn’t matter at the expense of what really does. read more

In response to the series of Senate Intelligence Committee hearings over the past couple of weeks, Utah Senator Mike Lee recommends that his colleagues and all of America just “move on.” He believes there is nothing to see so far coming from any of the four testimonies by Comey, Coats, Rogers and Sessions. Senator Lee has concluded that there is not a scintilla of evidence remotely indicating that Donald Trump is obstructing justice in the Russia investigation.

All I can say is really? Senator Lee is a smart man, probably the smartest legal mind in the Senate and certainly one of the most well read conservatives anywhere. I respect him deeply and, for the record, my wife works for him. I appreciate his usual candor as well as his characteristic caution. He’s not the kind of leader to jump to conclusions or accept the merit of a case on its face. He wants to know everything and, typically, in great detail. read more

Do you live in a bubble? Probably not, but it did get me thinking more seriously about the whole “bubble” concept. I remember a Saturday Night Live skit about progressives living in the Bubble now that Trump is president. It begins with a hippie looking guy saying, “What if there was a place where the unthinkable didn’t happen and life could continue for progressive Americans as before?” The skit goes on to describe this new Bubble as a “planned community of like-minded free thinkers…and no one else. If you’re an open-minded person, come here and close yourself in.” In the Bubble, “it’s like the election never happened.” Bernie Sanders’ face is on the Bubble’s one-dollar bill. They stream their high-speed Internet “with only the good sites” like Huffington Post, Daily Kos and “Netflix documentaries about sushi rice.” And “unlike the rest of America, anybody is welcome to join us…one-bedroom apartments start at only $1.9 million.” The only things the progressive Bubble community lack are police and fire departments because “they can’t find any who would agree to live there.” It’s great satire and deadly. But you get the idea of the bubble. read more

With a part-time Legislature, Utah is prone to difficulties with ethics in at least two ways. First, there always is the possibility that legislators will legislate matters pertaining to their own business interests. Second, and the more serious concern, legislators may create business interests because of their political power.

More often than not, the public debate over government ethics reforms center on systemic issues. Time is the biggest one. It is both a blessing and a curse. When the Legislature is not in session it cannot do any harm. The more time the Legislature is in session, the expectation will be to do something. Why meet if not to do something? So Utah’s 45-day legislative calendar is a blessing. It’s also a curse. read more