Nanny Nerd ( The Michigan View 09.15.11)

Posted by hpayne on September 15, 2011

Once upon a January, back before recall-crazed Democrats tarred Rick Snyder as the Great Satan, the nanny state tendencies of Snyder-Calley raised conservative eyebrows. Those concerns came roaring back to life this week as Nanny Nerd unleashed an avalanche of Big Government on Michigan in the guise of “health.”

By the time the governor jumped the shark by – we’re not making this up – banning smoking on beaches, Republicans had to wonder whether Jennifer Granholm had snuck back into the governor’s mansion.

The beach ban is not only a caricature of Big Brother run amok, it is also unenforceable. Second-hand smoke is a hazard on the wide-open vistas of Lake Michigan? Really? What’s next, a ban on beach campfires?

So let’s focus on the more serious nannyisms.

First, Snyder followed through on his long-forgotten State of the State promise for a government registry of kids’ weight. Then, incredibly, he resurrected Lt. Guv Calley’s failed, backdoor, lame duck insurance mandate forcing autism coverage.

When the guv first called for a government system to “encourage a healthier, active lifestyle in our state” at his State of the State address in January, his Republican base went deathly silent and the small, Democratic section of the statehouse chamber erupted in cheers.

What is it with businessmen-turned-public officials telling us what to eat?

New York Mayor Bloomberg has become a Health Nazi poster child by forcing salt off New York tables and mandating calorie counts at ice cream shops. Now Snyder wants Big Brothermonitoring kids’ Body Mass Index.

Doesn’t Lansing have enough on its plate monitoring its own BMI?

In an interview, Snyder told The Detroit News editorial board that his mandate that doctors report your child’s weight to the government is merely an extension of “the childhood registry that’s been focused on immunization. The idea is to add one more field.”

But that non-sequitor is a huge expansion of the government’s charge. Vaccinations are required for communicable diseases to protect public health in schools. Policing children’s’ weight is a personal intrusion that would make the Obama Administration proud.

“What we’re going to be doing is urging (doctors to report children’s weight), because it’s a step in a very important direction” said Snyder spokeswoman Michelle Obama – er, Sara Wurfel.

Democrats – those alleged champions of “privacy” – applaud this kind of nosiness as pro-public health. Would they feel the same if Snyder mandates urine tests for drug use? But Snyder’s BMI obsession will get a chilly reception from Republicans (House Speaker Jase Bolger panned the ida on Frank Beckmann’s Show this AM) who will wonder what happened to the small gov. guv they’ve been fighting alongside all year.

More serious, however, was Snyder’s resurrection of his Lt. Governor’s autism mandate – an edict that is straight out of Obamacare.

Last December, Calley teamed with then Democrat Majority Leader Kathy Angerer to sneak the autism mandate through a lame duck session of the Legislature – an audacious move given Republicans like Calley and his boss had just been elected to shut down such anti-business regulations. The mandate died in the Senate.

What makes Snyder-Calley think it will survive now in an even more Republican Lansing?

Indeed, the edict enraged a chief Snyder ally, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, obviously wondering who had kidnapped their business-friendly governor and installed this imposter. “We are very disappointed and strongly opposed to the call for costly new health care mandates,” said a stunned Chamber CEO Rich Studley in a press release.

Calley (whose daughter is autistic) claims that by denying certain treatments, insurance companies are discriminatory. No one doubts the pain of the disease and its toll on families. But in fact, the mandate would discriminate against thousands of Michigan children by driving up costs and leaving families priced out of the market. In mandate-crazed New Jersey, for example, such edicts have made insurance so unaffordable that 10 percent of NJ kids lack insurance coverage – compared to just six percent of Michigan kids.

Snyder shrugs off the expense, saying that it would add “only one percent or less in insurance costs.”

Never mind that the Council for Affordable Health Insurance estimates the mandate would drive up health insurance costs by one-three percent – a Lewin Group study found that for every one-percent increase in insurance premiums, an estimated 300,000 fewer people get employer coverage. That’s a lotta hurt.

What happened to the anti-regulation, pro-business Snyder? His power grab even made headlines on the Drudge Report – “State to begin tracking children’s weight” – the kind of headline normally associated with lefty California.

Suddenly, Snyder’s reinvention looks a lot like a Granholm reprise.

 

 

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