The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) has had an amazingly productive third quarter. Through our integrated marketing program, we were very successful in reaching our target audiences — policymakers, the media and the general public — with innovative ideas on tax and retirement, health care reform and the environment and energy.

Health care is shaping up to be the number one domestic policy issue in America. It is also becoming the number one issue in the upcoming presidential election. In this area, our NCPA team of experts and staff were very prolific.  For example:

• We produced the State Health Care Reform Handbook—a “how to” book that is chock full of reform ideas. With a forward by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the book is designed to help policymakers, think tanks, policy groups and state leaders make informed decisions. The Handbook also looks at the good, the bad and the ugly in state health care plans and makes commonsense recommendations. It is available online at www.ncpa.org.
• In September, I conducted a seminar on the Handbook for state think tank leaders at the State Policy Network meeting in Portland, Maine.
• We also presented key concepts in the Handbook at an NCPA Capitol Hill briefing in July. There were presentations by NCPA Senior Fellow Michael Bond (who put together the Medicaid reform plans for Gov. Jeb Bush in Florida and Gov.  Mark Sanford in South Carolina); Mitch Roob (who put together the reform plan for Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels); Peter Harbage (a key player in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan for California); and Tim Murphy (the key behind Mitt Romney’s health reform in Massachusetts).
• We launched a new section of our health Web site—sicko.ncpa.org—to respond to the errors, omissions and fallacies in Michael Moore’s movie, SiCKO. Our site uses blog entries, expert publications, movie reviews and user testimonials to tell the rest of the story.
• We also helped John Stossel with a one-hour ABC News 20/20 special on health care — responding to Michael Moore and pointing the way to consumer driven health care. To a remarkable extent, Stossel’s documentary reflects the NCPA’s unique approach to health care.
• The John Goodman Health Blog continues to draw more and more viewers. In fact, traffic is growing at a rate of about 15 percent per month.
• The NCPA also played an active role in the Congressional debate over the reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). In Senate speeches, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) used two of my Wall Street Journal editorials and inserted them in the Congressional Record.

We also tackled another important, but often overlooked, social insurance problem. The number of workers receiving disability benefits in the U.S. is growing so rapidly that these benefits are now the fastest rising component of Social Security spending. They are growing at nearly twice the rate of retirement benefits.  However, a new NCPA study shows that Chile's privatized disability system costs less than half of the U.S. system - 1.8% of payroll in the U.S. versus 0.7% of payroll in Chile - and provides more generous benefits.  

NCPA Distinguished Fellow Robert McTeer, a frequent NCPA voice on tax and retirement reform, has kept these issues before the public on his blog (http://www.bob-mcteer-blog.com) and in his increasingly frequent appearances on television news programs. McTeer testified in favor of reforming the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) before the House Ways and Means Committee in September. Instead of abolishing the AMT, McTeer says Congress should use it as a vehicle for instituting a flat tax.  David Henderson of the Hoover Institution made the same point in another NCPA Brief Analysis.

In three separate editorials for The Wall Street Journal, McTeer discussed the impact of interest rates on saving, the difference between money and wealth and why it makes a difference how savings accumulate.

Our environmental and energy experts put together a first-of-its-kind Global Warming Primer. The Primer relies on easy-to-understand graphics to show the big picture: where we are now, what we can reasonably say about the impact of climate change, and what economists advise about preparations for the future. We hosted a Capitol Hill briefing on the Primer, and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) plans to distribute it to his other Senate colleagues. Plans are underway to translate the Primer into Spanish for distribution throughout Latin America and Czech for distribution in the Czech Republic.

We also released the NCPA study Bad for Species, Bad for People: What’s Wrong with the Endangered Species Act and How to Fix It. The study shows how perverse incentives in the Endangered Species Act lead people to destroy or alter habitats to avoid attracting endangered species.

NCPA Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett participated in the White House Meeting of Major Economies on Energy Security and Climate Change in September. Other participants included Condoleezza Rice and representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and select think tanks and policy organizations.

In September, we held our Chairman’s Council Policy Forum in Washington, D.C., where Karen Hughes and U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao gave the administration’s view of foreign and domestic policies; Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), Rep. Jon Shadegg (R-AZ) and Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) gave the view from the Hill; and Bob McTeer and Newt Gingrich gave an outsider’s critique.

The NCPA Web sites are continuing to host more than 1 million visits a month and our traffic is nearly 60 percent greater than during the same quarter last year. Our media coverage was also considerable. If we had purchased the same amount of coverage as advertising, the cost would have been $13.2 million during the third quarter and more than $32 million for the year to date.

The following report provides a more detailed account of NCPA third quarter activities. Thanks so much for your valued support, which makes all our activities possible.

Warm regards,

John C. Goodman

President

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