Minnesota Free Market Institute

Federal, state and local governments already spend roughly half of all health care dollars in this country, and they have a large say over how the other half is spent. As a result of the last election, it's likely that government will have an even more significant influence—if not control—over how all health care dollars are spent.

So what can we expect? Nothing good, as far as I can see.

Sally Pipes has seen some of the future in her native Canada (she's a naturalized U.S. citizen now) and she talks about Canada, and more, in her recent book "The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care."

Pipes, president of the San Francisco-based Pacific  Research Institute, was a member of GOP California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's transition team, and she advised Rudy Giulianai's presidential campaign on health care policies. She has served as president of the Canadian Association for Business Economics, and her commentaries have appeared in New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today and other leading newspapers.

At 150 pages before notes, Pipes' book is short; it's also written in an easy-to-read style. These are what she calls the Top 10 myths about government-provided health care.

This past weekend, the progressive think tank Growth & Justice, in conjunction with Twin Cities Public Television, aired a special entitled “Minnesota’s Progressive Republican Tradition.” The program was a rerun of the symposium by the same name sponsored by Growth & Justice during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. At the time, I wrote a review of the event for MinnPost.com.With its permission, my take on the Growth and Justice symposium, the Ron Paul “Rally for the Republic,” and “conservatism” in the Republican Party is reprinted below.

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I spent all day and into the evening Tuesday at Ron Paul's Rally for the Republic listening to speakers extolling the virtues of individual freedom and limited government. Wednesday morning I attended the progressive think tank Growth & Justice symposium heralding the contributions to the common good of Minnesota's Progressive Republican Tradition. That's like running out of a sauna and leaping into a lake through a hole in the ice — it can be exhilarating if it doesn't kill you.

At first blush, Ron Paul's libertarian-leaning brand of Republican conservatism seems to have little in common with progressive, left-leaning RINO (Republican in Name Only) Republicanism. Remarkably, however, beyond a shared aversion to what passes for "conservatism" in today's Republican Party, Paul supporters and progressive Republicans share a common objective: expanding prosperity and opportunity to an ever increasing number of Americans. But don't break out in a chorus of “Kumbaya” too fast; that common objective is not nearly enough to overcome the fundamental divide in the way the two camps view the world.

Advocates of placing more and more of our incomes and lives under the control of government sometimes say that those of us who favor cutting down the size and burden of government are selfish. By contrast, proposing a significant role for government is a sign of altruism and charity.

In this Christmas season, it's important to remember just what "charity" is.

Charity is when you see somebody in need--let's call him Doug--and you, on your own volition, give him cash, groceries, a trip to the doctor's office, a shoveled-out driveway, or what have you.

That's charity. Now let's move to the world of politics.