Ask the professionals in the middle of federal health care reform their opinions about the future impacts and the answers are downright scary. In a new survey, doctors fear both short-term and long-term declines in the quality of care, while costs will only continue to increase. The National Center for Policy Analysis concludes:

America’s doctors have conducted a full examination of the president’s health reform law, assessing it in a number of variables, and have concluded that it will fail to live up to many expectations and will aggregately hurt consumers in the short and long runs.  Few people know more about the health care system than doctors working on the frontlines.

Policymakers should pay heed to their indictment of the Affordable Care Act and revisit the disastrous law, says Sally Pipes, president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute.

• Nearly two-thirds of doctors expect the quality of care in this country to decline, according to a new survey from Deloitte.
• Nearly seven of every 10 doctors believe that medicine is no longer attractive to America’s "best and brightest."
• Seventy percent of doctors believe that long wait times will plague emergency rooms.
• Further, 83 percent of physicians foresee increased wait times for primary care appointments.

And doctors did not stop at criticizing the quality of care that health reform will deliver — they also addressed its likely impacts on the cost of health care.

• While Obama pledged $2,500 in health insurance savings for the typical American family, 90 percent of doctors believe that insurers will raise premiums for employers and individuals.
• This argument is supported by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which estimates that premiums will actually rise for families in the non-group market by about $2,100.
• Richard Foster, the Chief Actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, concluded that American spending on health care through 2019 will be $311 billion higher than if the law had never passed.

Many of these results stem from two large impacts of the law: shutting down health care facilities and sharply increasing demand as it extends coverage to millions of people.  Doctors respond to this latter "benefit" by pointing out that coverage counts for little if patients are unable to see doctors due to increased demand.

A few Chamber staffers joined hundreds in attendance at today’s Economic Club of Indiana luncheon featuring Arthur B. Laffer, an economist, author and former member of President Reagan’s Economic Advisory Policy Board (though he also asserted that Bill Clinton was "a great president"). When asked about right-to-work legislation, he lauded Indiana’s efforts to become the 23rd right-to-work state. Back in May, he co-wrote an editorial on the issue in the The Wall Street Journal. An excerpt:

The Obama administration’s National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint last month against Boeing to block production of the company’s 787 Dreamliner at a new assembly plant in South Carolina—a "right to-work" state with a law against compulsory union membership. If the NLRB has its way, Dreamliner assembly will return to Washington, a union-shop state, along with more than 1,000 jobs.

The NLRB’s action, which Boeing will challenge at a hearing next month, is a big deal. It’s the first time a federal agency has intervened to tell an American company where it can and cannot operate a plant within the U.S. It lays the foundation of a regulatory wall with one express purpose: to prevent the direct competition of right-to-work states with union-shop states. Why, as South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley recently asked on these pages, should Washington have any more right to these jobs than South Carolina?

A recent New York Times editorial justified the NLRB decision by arguing that unions are suffering from "the flight of companies to ‘Right-to-Work’ states where workers cannot be required to join a union." That’s for sure, and quite an admission. We’ve been observing that migration pattern for years, but liberals have denied it’s actually happening—until now.

Every year we rank the states on their economic competitiveness in a report called "Rich States, Poor States" for the American Legislative Exchange Council. This ranking uses 15 fiscal, tax and regulatory variables to determine which states have policies that are most conducive to prosperity. Two of these 15 policies have consistently stood out as the most important in predicting where jobs will be created and incomes will rise. First, states with no income tax generally outperform high income tax states. Second, states that have right-to-work laws grow faster than states with forced unionism.

As of today there are 22 right-to-work states and 28 union-shop states. Over the past decade (2000-09) the right-to-work states grew faster in nearly every respect than their union-shop counterparts: 54.6% versus 41.1% in gross state product, 53.3% versus 40.6% in personal income, 11.9% versus 6.1% in population, and 4.1% versus -0.6% in payrolls.

For years, unions argued that right-to-work laws were bad for workers and for the states that passed them. But with the NLRB complaint, they’ve essentially thrown in the towel. If forced unionism is better for the economy of a state, why would the NLRB need to intervene to keep Boeing from leaving Washington? Why aren’t businesses and workers moving operations to heavily unionized places like Michigan, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania and fleeing states like Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina and Texas?

In reality, the stampede of businesses from forced-union states like Washington has accelerated in recent years. A 2010 study in the Cato Journal by economist Richard Vedder of Ohio University found that between 2000 and 2008 4.8 million Americans moved from forced-union states to right-to-work states. That’s one person every minute of every day.

Right-to-work states are also getting richer over time. Prof. Vedder found a 23% higher per capita income growth rate in right-to-work states than in forced-union states, which over the period 1977-2007 amounted to a $2,760 larger increase in per-person income in those states. That’s a giant differential.

So now the unions concede that this migration is indeed happening, but they say that it is unhealthy and undesirable because workers in right-to-work states are paid less and get worse benefits than the workers in union states. Actually, when adjusting for the cost of living in each state and the fact that right-to-work states were poorer to begin with, a 2003 study in the Journal of Labor Research by University of Oklahoma economist Robert Reed found that wages rose faster in states that don’t require union membership.

Employers that move away from forced-union states mainly do so not to scale back wages and salaries—although sometimes that happens—but to avoid having to deal with intrusive union rules, the threat of costly work stoppages, lawsuits, worker paychecks going to union fat cats, and so on.
 

In the last two issues of BizVoice magazine, we’ve touched on the fact that there are no nuclear power facilities operating in the state of Indiana. And that fact is true.

While we’ve stated that a nuclear plant in Michigan (the Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant just north of Bridgman, Michigan or 25 miles north of the Hoosier border) supplies Northwest Indiana with a small portion of nuclear power, we didn’t tell the whole story. The Indiana Michigan Power facility actually sends 80% of its 2,200 megawatts to Indiana.

That 80% of the 2,200 MW (about a third of the company’s total generation in Indiana) "assists with our coal, hydro and wind facilities in providing power to our roughly 500,000 customers in Northeast Indiana, East Central Indiana and the South Bend/Mishawaka areas in addition to selling to wholesale customers throughout the state."

Thus, the nuclear facts are now in order. And, who knows, nuclear may one day become a bigger part of the energy mix in Indiana and beyond.

Over the holidays, a video went viral showing complete negligence by a FedEx employee, just tossing a computer monitor over a fence rather than properly delivering the item. See that video below, as well as the company’s response, which has been viewed rather positively by communications critics.

What did you do Monday to honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King? With the holiday providing a day of respite from picketing the Statehouse, right-to-work opponents decided to focus in part on this blog and "influence" (we’re supposed to stay away from negative words) the poll question asking whether respondents support RTW.

Through Sunday, the "yes" votes were 65% with about 300 total votes cast. By 5 p.m. Monday, there were nearly 1,000 votes with 79% or so on the "no" side. Quite an amazing reversal of fortunes, huh?

Although the admittedly unscientific poll is supposed to be one vote per person, it’s no secret that one can work around that caveat without too much effort. Congratulations to union advocates for a strong social media campaign, driving large numbers of people to vote (early and often as they used to say in Chicago). Leading the way, however, was the person who either found an automated way to impact the results or had little else to do on a Monday afternoon, voting about 100 times himself or herself in a short period of time.

Ingenuity gets an A; democracy a failing grade. 

With the poll removed for obvious reasons, attention has turned to commenting on various blog posts that explain the good aspects of individuals having the choice of whether they wish to join a union, etc.

For those pushing that no business should have to pay dues to belong to the Indiana Chamber, about 5,000 companies each year voluntarily pay dues while many others throughout the state do not. All businesses benefit from many of our efforts. If we do our job well, many will retain their membership or become new supporters.

Thanks for contributing to the debate; let’s hope just that takes place at the Statehouse this week as lawmakers make the determination on whether Indiana should become the 23rd right-to-work state.

Tom Schuman of the Indiana Chamber and BizVoice magazine interviews Ted Miller of Brugge Brasserie and the Brewers of Indiana Guild about the state of craft brewing in Indiana. Furthermore, see my story in BizVoice, based on conversations with Miller, folks from Sun King Brewing and the Lafayette Brewing Co., and others.

It’s safe to say there is always room for improvement.

And while it’s possible that you’ve made (and already broken) a few goals or resolutions for personal development in 2012, (did someone say they were going to do 100 sit-ups every morning or cut back on caffeine?) you shouldn’t forget to focus on improving your job performance as well.

The job market is a tough one, so while valuable, hard-working employees remain on the payroll, employers also understand that there is a wealth of talent for them to choose from should their employees begin to fall short.

Instead of sitting by complacently, make 2012 the year you follow through on your boss’ suggestions from your performance evaluations and take the necessary measures to continue to improve professionally.

To help you get started, here are a few helpful tips, courtesy of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.:

• Find opportunities for more responsibility, which shows your employer that you are up to the challenge, thus increasing your value for the company
• Depending on the size of the company you work for, this one might already be accomplished – go out of your way to meet leaders at least two levels higher on the corporate ladder
• Become a joiner; and by that we mean join a committee – help plan the next company outing on the Fun Committee or join in with healthy workplace policies on a Wellness Committee. It can help you bond with co-workers you don’t normally interact with and shows your willingness to be involved
• Get a mentor or become one – the benefits are endless
• If your company offers any professional development courses or career-enhancing programs, take advantage of them
• Increase your efficiency while decreasing costs. Employers are looking for ways to tighten up the bottom line, so they’ll be happy to take your suggestions under consideration and make a mental note that you’re working on their behalf
• Learn everything you can about something and be the go-to person on the subject at your company; it will make you the most valuable player for that particular topic.

Decided 2012 is the year for a career change? Be proactive about it – increase your skill set, remain positive and do whatever is necessary to improve yourself both personally and professionally.

How do you plan to grow and evolve in the workplace this year?