Our old friends at Families USA are at it again -- beating the drum for more government regulation of health insurance and more government spending on health care. They are going state-to-state with a report that purports to detail how rising health care spending is burdening families, regardless of these families' insurance status.

Yesterday the traveling road show hit Ohio and received the usual uncritical press welcome. The Ohio report is an interesting read. It mainly discusses national data but also includes Ohio-specific numbers. Claiming that 1 in 5 non-elderly Ohioans will spend more than 10% of their pre-tax money on health care costs, the report leaves the impression that more government intervention in health care is necessary. For instance, in discussing the rising cost of health insurance premiums, the report makes this blatantly false claim: "the near-monopoly power of insurance companies, coupled with little or no regulation of insurers, is a prescription for rising premiums" and then it states "without appropriate consumer protections and rules to govern the influence and growth of large insurers, premiums are likely to continue their rapid ascent." Any health care analysis that claims health insurance companies face "little or no regulation" and then promotes regulation as a way to lower prices cannot be taken seriously.

It is certainly true that many in Ohio and around the nation do pay a lot for health care. But it is superficial analysis to merely look at some numbers and concluding that paying 10% or more of your income for health care is a bad thing. A better question would be, what does that money buy? If I spend 10% of my income on health care that, say, prevents me from dying of cancer, I think that's a good deal. But if I'm spending 10% of my income on health insurance I don't need or health care costs artificially increased by state regulation, then we have a different issue. But Families USA doesn't want to get into that discussion.

Perhaps the most interesting part of their report is the chart detailing a "typical family budget." In that chart, Families USA concludes that the typical family only has about 5% of its income to spend on health care expenses, so if this typical family is forced to spend 10% of its income on health care expenses, it is in dire trouble. Families USA does not remark on the fact that in their chart the typical family is spending almost 19% of its income in taxes. I guess they fail to see that the type of expanded government health care supported by Families USA will certainly mean that this typical family will spend more than 19% of its income for taxes. To me it seems that if families need more income to pay for health care, the easiest thing government can do to help them is to lower their taxes. If Families USA thinks this, too, I must have missed that in their report.