Healthcare Costs: Invasion of the Budget Snatchers

Public and private employers that provide traditional insurance plans for their employees have been experiencing 15% annual costs increases for a couple of years now. Last year in 2006, Milton's citizens faced the impact of such an increase as it swept through the budgets of every department. It stands to reason that a large cost item growing at 6 times the revenue limit imposed by Prop 2 1/2 creates a recurring and unsustainable budget buster. Our town administrators, employees represented by their unions and citizens are all smart folks who can see that new approaches must be explored, experimented and implemented or we face an annual cycle of debates on Overrides versus Layoffs, which benefit no one.

Our national approach of employers providing subsidized health insurance to employees is an echo of wage and price controls imposed during World War II. Employers were restricted from raising employee wages and responded by providing non-wage benefits, like health insurance, to entice and retain employees. 65 years later, we have institutionalized an approach that insulates the health care consumer and provider from the market benefits that have reduced the cost of living so drastically over those same 65 years. Perhaps this realization is penetrating our collective thinking at last. Even the leadership of our Democratic dominated Commonwealth have recognized (in the case of auto insurance) that insulating consumers from market forces induces behavior that costs us all collectively more than we should have to bear.

Over the coming weeks and months, the members of the Milton Republican Town Committee will highlight on this page alternatives that are being explored in the private sector that could bring behavioral and cost changes that break this upward spiraling budget problem which will inevitably lead to drastic measures. Stay tuned. Here's to your (and our town budget's) health!

School Choice (part 1)

Metco Programs have, for a long time, given a legal opportunity for students to enter publicly funded school settings outside of their residential district. In each instance, the host community is paid an agreed amount for tuition based upon the rate of cost per student in the host school district. Why then, if a non resident student chooses to attend a Milton school as a non resident and the Milton school committee deems that there is available space and the candidate has an acceptable reason for wanting to do so, can’t this school committee make a similar tuition arrangement. The student would then be legal and the town would save much time, money and effort ferreting out illegal students. Further, it would be a bargain for the city of Boston. The rate per student in Boston is about $12,872 and the cost to attend a school in Milton is about $8,378 per student. Currently, each student attending a Milton school illegally is costing the Milton taxpayer $8,378 to say little of the labor cost in handling these situations...

There is an old adage that says, If you can’t (won’t) beat ‘em, join ‘em.

BLOG - Basic Logic Of Gop

Many internet surfers believe that the term "blog" derives from the truncated version of "weblog." We beg to differ. Or perhaps, we blog to differ. At the Milton Republican Town Committee, we believe blog is an acronym for Basic Logic Of the Gop. And so, let the word go forth, from this time and place, that we will dedicate this space to the proposition that all blogs are not created equal. That this blog will be of the people of Milton, by the people of Milton and for the people of Milton. So help me GOP. In other words, we are going to use this blog to address the national issues of the day and ground them in the events of our town. We have laid out a series of topics of interest to us and hopefully, to you, the citizens of Milton. We will present those topics and our opinions of them to you each week in the hope that we will peak your interest, generate discussion via comments, establish this site as the place you go for local political information and possibly, hopefully, win you over to our views. We will identify our writers in the same way that we would introduce ourselves on the street corner so that you know who is speaking. We will be polite in our presentation and request that your responses are submitted in the same manner. We will post any return comment that is presented with civility, regardless of its conformity with the views of the original author. With that long winded introduction filled with the mixed quotations of famous Presidents, we present our first submission. Enjoy!