This also true for clean energy and climate change, which has been my field for 50 years. During the 1980s, states invented Integrated Resource Planning to force utilities to consider energy efficiency and renewables. In the 90s, they made utilities spend billions on efficiency programs. When deregulation took the wind out of those efforts, they created renewable and efficiency standards requiring utilities to acquire clean resources. In the last 20 years, some half of the states have enacted climate action plans. These latest federal rollbacks, which happened also under Reagan and Bush II, are just the latest impetus for states (and also local governments) to step up.
I respect that you’ve spent half a century in the energy field, and no question state-level experimentation has often led the way on new approaches. But we also have to be clear-eyed about what many of these mandates have produced, and what they haven’t.
Yes, states created Integrated Resource Planning in the 80s to push efficiency and renewables. And yes, they set standards forcing utilities to buy clean energy or spend billions on programs that often ended up padded with administrative costs and dubious savings. But these policies also brought unintended consequences that hit working families right where it hurts: in their electric bills.
Take California, often hailed as the climate model. It has some of the highest electricity rates in the country, regularly more than 60 percent above the national average. Meanwhile, blackouts and reliability scares are now a feature, not a bug. Why? Because the push for mandated renewable quotas often sidelined investments in dispatchable power the stuff that actually keeps lights on when the sun sets and the wind calms.
Germany went down a similar road with its Energiewende. Billions in subsidies, soaring household energy costs, heavy dependence on Russian gas, and when it counted most coal plants fired back up to avoid freezing in winter. All in the name of aggressive green targets. It turns out engineering reliable, affordable energy is more complex than legislative targets on a whiteboard.
You’re right about one big thing though: states and local communities often have to step up where federal policies swing wildly. I’d just caution that stepping up doesn’t mean doubling down on rigid mandates that ignore market signals and technological readiness. The best climate and energy strategies still come from encouraging innovation, fostering competition, cutting red tape for next-gen nuclear and clean gas, and letting local utilities build balanced portfolios without political meddling in every procurement decision.
Because at the end of the day, if the power goes out, it’s not the climate czars in Washington who catch the heat. It’s the families staring at dead thermostats, wondering why promises of a green future didn’t keep them warm in the present.
It’s simply acknowledging that we need cleaner energy but we also need it reliable, affordable, and built on honest math, not political hype.
Our social safety net is already thin and full of holes. Now, it seems, they're tearing it apart and content to watch the free-fall of the "little people."
I am 73 and semi-retired. I have an ideal sort of livelihood for this: freelance editing (books, mainly). Husband (age 76) is fully retired. We rely on Social Security (I held off until age 70 to max out my benefit) and Medicare (Medigap G -- avoiding Advantage!). Last fall, I lackadaisically didn't shop for Part D, because our premiums for an HD plan are $3.30/month, and how much could that reasonably increase? Try over 1,000%! To $35.90. Which means we're paying $861.60/year in premiums with just one prescription between us. (You have to have Part D, or later you'll be sorr-ee.) Come 2026, we will drop Aetna like the burning lump of greed it is.
For some reason I have faith in Social Security, as I'm already receiving benefits, and am confident we'd pass a reasonable means test should it come to that. I have faith we'll be gone before benefits are slashed for current, aged beneficiaries. It's the younger folks I'd worry for.
But Medicaid is what we'd have to rely on for long-term care (LTC insurance premiums are outrageous, the insurance companies unreliable) if it ever comes to that. We don't have children to move in with. Would they really just throw us onto the street? Or let us spend down our retirement savings and then lose our home when no nursing home accepts Medicaid patients?
James, you write this with the conviction of someone who’s seen the hard edges of life, and I respect that. But the solution you push expanding government-managed healthcare at the state level to fill every perceived gap rests on some assumptions that just don’t hold up.
First, you argue this is all about protecting the vulnerable from being “priced out.” But let’s be honest about how healthcare costs got so distorted in the first place. They’re not high because markets failed. They’re high because healthcare is one of the most regulated, subsidy-tangled, third-party-payer systems on earth. Between Medicare price controls, employer tax exclusions, state mandates, and thousands of pages of federal compliance rules, we’ve strangled price transparency and real competition. Patients rarely know what anything costs — so why would providers compete on price?
Then you turn to Medicaid expansions and state-managed options. The problem is Medicaid itself is already financially shaky, often paying doctors so little that many won’t accept patients. That means more people technically “covered,” but fewer actually treated. Just look at Illinois or California, where Medicaid budgets are exploding while wait times grow and specialists vanish from the rolls.
Your article praises states for imposing more insurance mandates. But that’s exactly what drives premiums up. Requiring policies to cover everything under the sun whether or not patients want or need it — forces healthy people to subsidize broader risk pools they never chose. That isn’t inherently just; it’s simply hidden redistribution that often makes coverage unaffordable for the working class who don’t qualify for state aid.
And let’s not pretend socialized medicine overseas has solved these problems. In the UK’s NHS, nearly eight million people are now waiting for treatment. Cancer patients there often wait months just to start therapy time they simply don’t have. In Canada, citizens sometimes travel to the U.S. for surgeries they’d wait a year to get at home. Even Germany, held up as a model, is grappling with doctor shortages, hospital closings, and rationing that means fewer high-end treatments for the sickest patients. These systems contain costs by controlling access. That’s not compassion. That’s bureaucracy picking winners and losers based on budgets.
Yes, there’s a place for safety nets. No decent society would leave the truly poor or catastrophically ill to fend entirely on their own. But the notion that health is a “right” to be enforced by ever-growing government budgets is what keeps driving us toward debt cliffs at every level federal, state, and local. A right enforced by taxing others without limit isn’t compassion. It’s compulsion.
Meanwhile, you skip what actually works: encouraging personal ownership through health savings accounts, transparent pricing, local charity clinics, and yes, competition. Markets drive innovation. They gave us drugs and surgeries that were miracles just a generation ago. Even the countries with nationalized health care still depend on America’s free market engine to develop new treatments. Without it, the entire world’s pipeline of cures dries up.
I appreciate your passion for helping people. I truly do. But if we want care that’s compassionate and sustainable, we need to harness personal responsibility, community support, and a system that encourages efficiency and breakthroughs not punish them.
It’s simply recognizing that bureaucracies don’t cure disease. People do. And a government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.
I live in Texas, which, at the state level, is even more reactionary than the federal government. Unfortunately, people will not be able to pick up and relocate in response to the loss of health care, so they will suffer the consequences of this legislation. Like Dante, we have begun our journey into the Inferno and must do our best to survive this leg of the tour.
Well said.
This also true for clean energy and climate change, which has been my field for 50 years. During the 1980s, states invented Integrated Resource Planning to force utilities to consider energy efficiency and renewables. In the 90s, they made utilities spend billions on efficiency programs. When deregulation took the wind out of those efforts, they created renewable and efficiency standards requiring utilities to acquire clean resources. In the last 20 years, some half of the states have enacted climate action plans. These latest federal rollbacks, which happened also under Reagan and Bush II, are just the latest impetus for states (and also local governments) to step up.
That’s right. And under this administration the local efforts are crucial.
I respect that you’ve spent half a century in the energy field, and no question state-level experimentation has often led the way on new approaches. But we also have to be clear-eyed about what many of these mandates have produced, and what they haven’t.
Yes, states created Integrated Resource Planning in the 80s to push efficiency and renewables. And yes, they set standards forcing utilities to buy clean energy or spend billions on programs that often ended up padded with administrative costs and dubious savings. But these policies also brought unintended consequences that hit working families right where it hurts: in their electric bills.
Take California, often hailed as the climate model. It has some of the highest electricity rates in the country, regularly more than 60 percent above the national average. Meanwhile, blackouts and reliability scares are now a feature, not a bug. Why? Because the push for mandated renewable quotas often sidelined investments in dispatchable power the stuff that actually keeps lights on when the sun sets and the wind calms.
Germany went down a similar road with its Energiewende. Billions in subsidies, soaring household energy costs, heavy dependence on Russian gas, and when it counted most coal plants fired back up to avoid freezing in winter. All in the name of aggressive green targets. It turns out engineering reliable, affordable energy is more complex than legislative targets on a whiteboard.
You’re right about one big thing though: states and local communities often have to step up where federal policies swing wildly. I’d just caution that stepping up doesn’t mean doubling down on rigid mandates that ignore market signals and technological readiness. The best climate and energy strategies still come from encouraging innovation, fostering competition, cutting red tape for next-gen nuclear and clean gas, and letting local utilities build balanced portfolios without political meddling in every procurement decision.
Because at the end of the day, if the power goes out, it’s not the climate czars in Washington who catch the heat. It’s the families staring at dead thermostats, wondering why promises of a green future didn’t keep them warm in the present.
It’s simply acknowledging that we need cleaner energy but we also need it reliable, affordable, and built on honest math, not political hype.
Always remember: The truth is not hate speech.
James, I live in Florida and at age 72 am on SocSec and Medicare. If/when those are cut… it’s hopeless
Unfortunately, that is the political reality,
I can’t “like” this, but I see it. And it’s true.
Our social safety net is already thin and full of holes. Now, it seems, they're tearing it apart and content to watch the free-fall of the "little people."
I am 73 and semi-retired. I have an ideal sort of livelihood for this: freelance editing (books, mainly). Husband (age 76) is fully retired. We rely on Social Security (I held off until age 70 to max out my benefit) and Medicare (Medigap G -- avoiding Advantage!). Last fall, I lackadaisically didn't shop for Part D, because our premiums for an HD plan are $3.30/month, and how much could that reasonably increase? Try over 1,000%! To $35.90. Which means we're paying $861.60/year in premiums with just one prescription between us. (You have to have Part D, or later you'll be sorr-ee.) Come 2026, we will drop Aetna like the burning lump of greed it is.
For some reason I have faith in Social Security, as I'm already receiving benefits, and am confident we'd pass a reasonable means test should it come to that. I have faith we'll be gone before benefits are slashed for current, aged beneficiaries. It's the younger folks I'd worry for.
But Medicaid is what we'd have to rely on for long-term care (LTC insurance premiums are outrageous, the insurance companies unreliable) if it ever comes to that. We don't have children to move in with. Would they really just throw us onto the street? Or let us spend down our retirement savings and then lose our home when no nursing home accepts Medicaid patients?
James, you write this with the conviction of someone who’s seen the hard edges of life, and I respect that. But the solution you push expanding government-managed healthcare at the state level to fill every perceived gap rests on some assumptions that just don’t hold up.
First, you argue this is all about protecting the vulnerable from being “priced out.” But let’s be honest about how healthcare costs got so distorted in the first place. They’re not high because markets failed. They’re high because healthcare is one of the most regulated, subsidy-tangled, third-party-payer systems on earth. Between Medicare price controls, employer tax exclusions, state mandates, and thousands of pages of federal compliance rules, we’ve strangled price transparency and real competition. Patients rarely know what anything costs — so why would providers compete on price?
Then you turn to Medicaid expansions and state-managed options. The problem is Medicaid itself is already financially shaky, often paying doctors so little that many won’t accept patients. That means more people technically “covered,” but fewer actually treated. Just look at Illinois or California, where Medicaid budgets are exploding while wait times grow and specialists vanish from the rolls.
Your article praises states for imposing more insurance mandates. But that’s exactly what drives premiums up. Requiring policies to cover everything under the sun whether or not patients want or need it — forces healthy people to subsidize broader risk pools they never chose. That isn’t inherently just; it’s simply hidden redistribution that often makes coverage unaffordable for the working class who don’t qualify for state aid.
And let’s not pretend socialized medicine overseas has solved these problems. In the UK’s NHS, nearly eight million people are now waiting for treatment. Cancer patients there often wait months just to start therapy time they simply don’t have. In Canada, citizens sometimes travel to the U.S. for surgeries they’d wait a year to get at home. Even Germany, held up as a model, is grappling with doctor shortages, hospital closings, and rationing that means fewer high-end treatments for the sickest patients. These systems contain costs by controlling access. That’s not compassion. That’s bureaucracy picking winners and losers based on budgets.
Yes, there’s a place for safety nets. No decent society would leave the truly poor or catastrophically ill to fend entirely on their own. But the notion that health is a “right” to be enforced by ever-growing government budgets is what keeps driving us toward debt cliffs at every level federal, state, and local. A right enforced by taxing others without limit isn’t compassion. It’s compulsion.
Meanwhile, you skip what actually works: encouraging personal ownership through health savings accounts, transparent pricing, local charity clinics, and yes, competition. Markets drive innovation. They gave us drugs and surgeries that were miracles just a generation ago. Even the countries with nationalized health care still depend on America’s free market engine to develop new treatments. Without it, the entire world’s pipeline of cures dries up.
I appreciate your passion for helping people. I truly do. But if we want care that’s compassionate and sustainable, we need to harness personal responsibility, community support, and a system that encourages efficiency and breakthroughs not punish them.
It’s simply recognizing that bureaucracies don’t cure disease. People do. And a government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.
Always remember: The truth is not hate speech.
Thank you James.....am posting this in our Democratic group in NextDoor .....I'm in AZ too!!!!
I live in Texas, which, at the state level, is even more reactionary than the federal government. Unfortunately, people will not be able to pick up and relocate in response to the loss of health care, so they will suffer the consequences of this legislation. Like Dante, we have begun our journey into the Inferno and must do our best to survive this leg of the tour.
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