“Growing up, I remember politicians hopping on TV to talk about how they would save the cities from the ‘menace’ of drug traffickers. It was the age of the ‘super predator’ and we were all supposed to be grateful for leaders who prioritized law and order. But I didn’t know any super predators.”

— Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism: Notes From The Women That A Movement Forgot

Before Nixon and Reagan’s war on drugs from the telly was Harry J. Anslinger’s announcement on the radio, telling Americans that they should “beware!” of marijuana, and telling parents that the youth are increasingly “…continuing addiction until they deteriorate mentally… and turn to violent crime and murder.” Anslinger was the “drug czar” of his time, and was appointed first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) in 1930 by President Herbert Hoover, which was the precursor of the DEA. His efforts to incite panic in the American population about the effects of drugs and to shut down medical experts made him the father of American drug policy.

His impact never left the country’s policies. On June 17th, 1971, Richard Nixon first introduced to the Washington Press Corps the urgent need for a war on drugs, making “this statement, which I think needs to be made to the Nation: America’s public enemy number one … is drug abuse. … It is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.” This was primarily supplemented by the creation of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Eleven years later, on October 14th, 1982, President Ronald Reagan, in an address to the nation from the Great Hall at the Department of Justice, declared there to be an “emergence of a new privileged class in America, a class ofrepeat offenders and career criminals … the result of misplaced government priorities and a misguided social philosophy. … This philosophy suggests in short that there is crime or wrongdoing, and that society, not the individual, is to blame.”

This declaration was backed by his eight-point-plan, which included unleashing 12 task forces to suppress organized involvement in drug abuse, “including the FBI, the DEA, the IRS, the ATF, Immigration and Naturalization Service, United States Marshals Services, the U.S. Customs Service, and the Coast Guard,” as well as the creation of a center for training local law enforcement in combating drug smuggling and other syndicated crime, and the allotment of millions of dollars to prisons and jails for their expansion.

The War on Drugs is the usage of greater punishment and legal enforcement against drug use in the United States. The greater rise of the War came in tandem with the rise of President Reagan’s Neoliberal policies (“Reaganomics”) that pushed off from New Deal Liberalism, which included tax cuts, diminishing market regulation, and allowing for free trade, as well as low social welfare spending. Such policies fall under one principal theme: minimal government accountability for the benefit of American communities. Instead of Reagan himself, the visibility of the War shifted to TV programs and sensationalistic news stories. The Reagan era (1981-1989) War on Drugs shattered communities using ‘attack’ policies and media propaganda to create a cultural frenzy of fear of drugs and drug users. What could have been an attack on addiction was instead a war on people; war, in any form, of course, does nothing but cast a long-lasting, haunting specter over a country.

Harry Anslinger’s Marijuana Fairytales

Harry Anslinger’s descriptions of Communist Chinese men luring white women into their ‘opium dens’ led to official raids on Chinese communities. Newspaper tales of the special potential violence of black Americans on cocaine— while Anslinger stressed that black Americans already made up ‘60 percent of the addicts’— had Southern police increasing the caliber of their guns. The violence enacted against people of color was not a side effect– the point of the aggression was about putting them in their place, lest they, to Anslinger’s imagination, got too excited on dope and cocaine and infiltrated or violated white society. George White, Anslinger’s favorite agent from the FBN, complained about Billie Holiday’s “fancy coats and fancy automobiles and her jewelry and her gown,” before seemingly planting a heroin kit and opium in her hotel room in San Francisco. Holiday got charged with possession, but upon interrogation from journalists about the unlikely location of the stash (a wastepaper basket), White could only stammer.

Anslinger did not come across such egregious falsehoods about narcotics and marijuana from unintentional ignorance. He did not believe marijuana to be a major issue until he began to envision Mexican Americans and African Americans, gorged on drugs, laying hands on naive white girls. He then inquired about the effects of marijuana to thirty scientific experts. All thirty wrote back. Only one called to ban it, which was the only confirmation he needed. He continued to proclaim to the public stories of marijuana turning normal citizens into crazed killers. Doctors came to him with evidence that, perhaps, marijuana made one sleepy at most, or that it was not an inherently evil substance in general, and in return, Anslinger refused to ever fund independent scientific research.

When Edward Huntington Williams, a doctor who was a leading expert on opioids, and an extremely highly regarded expert in medicine, opened a free clinic to prescribe drugs to addicts, he was only following tradition before the reign of Anslinger. Local pharmacists, at low prices, sold remedies with morphine and heroin as casually as those today might sell sugary cough syrups. Regular users would carry on working and raising their families, even among the ones who got hooked. Once the crackdown on narcotics administered by doctors began, he saw “tens of thousands of people, in every walk of life, frantically craving drugs that they could in no legal way secure… must have known that their Edict, if enforced, was the clear equivalent of an order to create an illicit drug industry.” But he would soon be destroyed by Anslinger’s second poison, if the first one was media weaponization, and the second was unleashing his zealous agents onto civilian territory. A decoy addict stumbled into his clinic, and Williams, having no reason to fear a consequence, wrote him a prescription of heroin to get him back to normal. He would become one of twenty thousand doctors busted by police, and his life work became obsolete. These ‘poisons’ would remain the main two weapons decades in the future.

This was the basis of the Drug War— Anslinger’s fear isolated every drug user from their supply, artificially creating a drug problem as people no longer had a way to get a safe supply. What were the long term implications? Just as the prohibition-era Mafia sold alcohol because of the market placed directly in their hands, drug peddlers and cartels now had something that people wanted badly.

Reagan’s Imagination and the American Culture Dish

Ronald Reagan, even during his time only as a Hollywood actor, expressed, in a 1957 speech at his alma mater, Eureka College, dismay over Americans, under New Deal regulated Liberalism, being crushed “into a mold of standardized mediocrity,” as there was a seemingly economic minimum and maximum a person could be a part of. In Reagan’s mind was the vague, glamorous and heroic age of capitalism, where “American pioneers” risked their own souls in the market and could either fall into poverty, or be launched into prosperity, based all on their hard work.

During his presidency, he pointedly avoided enacting policies which could have built off of 1960s-era domestic policies (such as Medicaid and Affirmative Action) by not addressing poor housing conditions, failing education systems, and unemployment. Instead, under the Reagan administration, half a million families were stricken from the welfare eligibility, one million people from food stamps, over two-and-a-half million children from school lunch programs; he introduced nine block grants in 1982, reducing the money the federal government could allot to the states and, in general, central government accountability — inflation increased, for the government turned a blind eye, and Americans got poorer.

Famously, in the years leading up to his presidency, before losing his presidential nomination to Gerald Ford, Reagan painted the picture of the morally corrupt Linda Taylor, who would come to use “eighty names, thirty addresses, fifteen telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four non-existent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare,” opening the floodgates to a barrage of media coverage on welfare and Medicaid cheats, as Reagan himself bemoaned the apparently fraud-ridden system. “Only our deep moral values and strong institutions can … restrain the darker impulses of human nature,” Reagan told the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 1981. In early January of 1967, in his Inaugural Address as Governor of California, he called welfare money an inhuman destruction of “self-reliance, dignity, and self-respect,” and the maker of continued poverty. He quoted Benjamin Disraeli, a mid-19th century Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, with “[m]an is not a creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men.” This statement would be followed by his formerly noted lack of ‘circumstance’ shifting for poverty, only attacking the symptom of poverty, which is, of course, the welfare system.

The anti-welfare panic among Americans (84 percent of Illinois voters considered welfare a prominent concern in 1978) neatly set up the culture that would lead to another kind of moral outrage.

The Television and Cop Love Affair

Children in school in the U.S. would learn to become familiar with the state mandated, seemingly benign, and all important message to “Just Say No!” to drugs, with First Lady Nancy Reagan’s face at the forefront of it all in talk shows and television news programs. This was one key strategy of the Reagan administration’s crackdown: with the assertion blazing across TV programs (notably Diff’rent Strokes (1978) and Punky Brewster (1984)), covers of arcade games, and other widespread educational programs to say no to drug use, Americans were sure to get the message that the drug issue was the issue caused by the irresponsible and the demoralized; that is, because too few people were saying ‘no.’

In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander notes that in August of 1986, Time magazine called crack the “issue of the year,” and the thousands of crack stories that featured black faces represented these crack users in various headlines and stories. With Linda Taylor already the face of the corrupt and lazy ‘welfare queen,’ the crack sensation only solidified placing black communities and people as the target of the war. Politicians from both parties were pushed to be ‘tough on crime’ in policy. It became the universal, unquestioned stance. Who would be against preventing American children from getting drugged up by the dregs of society?

The media and the police were becoming increasingly intertwined. Cracked Coverage by Jimmie Lynn Reeves brought forth the imagery of TV cameras doggedly following cops as they bust into houses for their drug raids. Geraldo Rivera, an American political commentator, had a 1986 program called “American Vice: The Doping of a Nation” which included clips of real police drug raids. A Time article commented that “antics of Rivera’s show highlighted concerns about the increasingly common practice of letting TV crews tag along on drug raids.” The citizen exploitation by broadcasting images of their wrongdoing and downfall was an important aspect to how the War invaded the American psyche. Rivera’s show echoed Miami Vice, a popular adventure cop show of the time, by name, attaching an embarrassment of drama to what should have been a dull crime. The program was controversial, but the sensationalism it indulged in was not new in the journalism world. In the 1991 study “Negotiating Control: A Study of News Sources” by Richard Ericson, Patricia Baranek, and Janet Chan, the extent to which the media became not just a puppet of the militarization of the War, but working right alongside the police was commented on:

The police have come to appreciate that the news media are part of the policing apparatus of society, and can be controlled and put to good use in this respect. The news media are incorporated into the architecture of new police buildings (they are given newsroom facilities there), they are taken into account in police organizational charts, they are subject to the regulations in police operation manuals, and they are part of everyday practice at all levels of the police hierarchy.

What made the Reagan era of the War unique was this, then; the transition from the image of a mere public crime crisis in certain (urban) areas to being a scandalous specter— white powder that could coat even the neighborhoods of suburban middle America. Had the issue remained the first, it would have been ignorable to many, a problem that merely plagued the unfortunate peoples in impoverished parts of the city.

It was not just crack stories hitting the news seemingly each day that defined the uniquely severe push of the Reagan Era’s War, but of course, Nancy’s Just Say No campaign that allowed her to transform into an American figure of benevolence. Drugs were a product of a kind of unnatural urban hell that could ‘infiltrate’ neighborhoods through malevolent or ignorant outsiders, and suburban American neighborhoods self-fortifying against this threat, creating self-contained communities which emphasized nuclear family values, became another key Reaganist idea. The “community mobilization” of these neighborhoods took the form of a “society of informers.” Christina J. Johns, in “Power, Ideology, and the War on Drugs: Nothing Succeeds Like Failure,” notes the “relish” in which society began turning in those within their communities: “In a poll conducted by the Washington Post/ABC News in 1989, 83 percent of the respondents favored encouraging people to phone the police to report drug users even if it meant turning in ‘a family member who uses drugs.’” This extended into schools. The Drug Awareness Resistance Education (DARE) program, as administered by the LAPD, and founded in 1984, planted uniformed police officers in classrooms to tell children to “Just say no,” and additionally to tell on their peers who might be saying ‘yes.’ ‘DARE Boxes’ were installed in some classrooms where the students could act on DARE’s Three R’s— “Recognize, Resist, and Report”— and put in the name of a suspected drug-using peer. This, alongside the police hotlines placed everywhere, boosted by local news organizations, created an environment of total fear and lack of trust. What were the effects on children from uniformed men knocking down doors on screen as national heroes dragging out the undesirables of society, and those same men coming to their schools to teach them that some of their own peers and even parents could be one of them if they were not careful enough?

Reaganist Policies

Before the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which codified criminal penalties for possession of a controlled substance, increased penalties for minors in a drug business, and the expansion of mandatory minimum penalties, there was the 1984 Comprehensive Crime control Act of 1984, which established those mandatory minimum sentences. That same year, the DEA launched Operation Pipeline, based on drug traffickers’ usage of U.S. highways to move their wares around. This is a federal program that mainly trains officers specifically to use pretextual and ‘consent’ searches on the road for mass seizure of drugs and arresting of those possessing drugs in their vehicles. Of course, those most really affected by the “war” were never large scale distributors or kingpins. Four out of five drug arrests were for mere possession, and the other fifth were for selling.

During Reagan’s second term, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 was launched. It doubled the level of money already given to domestic crime and drug restraint initiatives during his first term, and tripled drug enforcement funds. While Reagan’s speech on it seemed to emphasize drug treatment and education, “the $900 million allocated by Congress for drug abuse programs … went mostly for the purchase of helicopters, airplanes, and intelligence-gathering facilities.”

It is true that some attention was given to schools, however, as the Drug Policy Board facilitated drug testing sites in workplaces and rescinded federal student loans if the student was convicted of a drug offense (which included simple drug use).

The aim of the game under Reagan’s rule was less government accountability, which was achieved by the false utopian racial ideal America had convinced itself of embodying: color-blindness. Reagan himself commemorated Martin Luther King Jr.’s judge-not-by-color-of-skin line, and then commemorated his upholding of the ideal, citing record amounts of black Americans holding jobs in 1984. Of course, claiming colorblindness in a society and individualizing the drug issue, as the Reagan Administration did, erased the need to address impoverished conditions that might lead to crime to increase the possibilities of literal survival, and also erased the need to examine possible racial profiling and otherwise unfairly motivated officers (such as by property and money seizures and federal funding that came from each drug user caught).

Conclusion

What was left in the United States was a culture of baseless individualization and the gross entanglement of the media and police organizations. The isolation of drug users and sensationalized cocaine and weed use continued and perpetuated a legacy from the 1930s, and was exacerbated by bringing cops into people’s homes and schools, creating a state of fear and discord within American communities: the War on Drugs being a war in this way doomed its goal of a better America from the start. What’s the alternative? Anyone today can see that the ideas fabricated during the 1930’s, 1970’s, and 1980’s are still often considered ‘common sense.’ People know about the big cartels, imagining waterfalls of pills pouring into the country, and into the hands of middle-market sellers. They know that they land in the hands of drug retailers haunting the shadows of the neighborhoods they know to drive quicker through. They shall advise children to ‘just say no,’ of course.

They are not wrong. But it is a shallow perspective, one that is still unchallenged in our higher offices, by politicians who know it is generally advisable to declare toughness on crime and ‘clean the streets.’ The philosophy— if one could call it that— from decades ago is as strong as ever. Those who wish to reject the common pessimism will talk about improving living conditions: wages, access to food, home life, even. While the quality of life is nearly without exception a major consideration to make when analyzing any shade of societal ‘bad behavior,’ it would be shrewder to remember how life was before any of this ever began: back in the early nineteenth century, when drug use was nowhere near as pathological, and therefore almost never life-ruining. Instead of rehabilitation centers running on the attitude of tough love at best, which remove any source of comfort in an effort to bring addicts back to reality, cities should consider opening drug clinics for those who cannot function in their life properly any longer, and let them receive doses as they wish, so they a) do not have to act destructively to themselves or people around them in order to obtain the drugs and b) can self regulate to low doses once more. People do not have to be alone and rejected from their communities, indeed, the thing most important for a human being to be a part of.

Bibliography

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About the author

Celine Guay

Celine is a senior at the San Francisco University High School. She has a deep passion for history and hopes to study political science in college to make the world a better place than when she found it – but besides that, she likes to read, act in shows, and hang out with her cat, Cheerio.

The post Snow Ghosts and Marijuana Fairytales: How Reagan’s Americans Embraced the War on Drugs appeared first on Exploratio Journal.

Abstract

This paper analyzes how government spending on healthcare has been related to changes in healthcare service costs in the United States. Data for producer price indexes of healthcare services, including outpatient and inpatient services, home health costs, and other major categories of healthcare expenditure were collected from the Federal Reserve of Economic Data. Government spending on healthcare for Medicare and Medicaid was also collected and regressed on the price indexes of healthcare services. The statistical analysis determined there was no significant relationship between any form of government healthcare spending and the inflation of healthcare service prices. There are numerous implications of this result for both government policy and healthcare economics. This confirms the significance of many factors in healthcare inflation, not just government spending. Market competition, innovation, and pharmaceutical research costs may be important alternative areas to look for as causes of healthcare service inflation. All in all, this result shows the multitude of factors of healthcare service inflation that policymakers can use to determine how to tackle the rising costs of healthcare in the United States.

Introduction

This paper investigates the relationship between US government healthcare spending and the inflation of healthcare service prices, which has become increasingly relevant given the fluctuations in healthcare spending due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Government spending has long been looked at as a source of inflation in the US economy but the specific relationship between government healthcare spending and healthcare service inflation remains underexplored. Dupor claims in a study that government spending has little to no determination on inflation (Dupor, 2016), while Cutsinger claims that government spending drives inflation by increasing the supply of money and reducing the growth rate of money demand (Cutsinger, 2022). However, these ideas for the general economy are more complex for specific sectors, especially healthcare. Healthcare holds a more nuanced relationship between government spending and inflation than what is traditionally accepted. The many components of government spending on healthcare give it an interesting relationship with the inflation of both healthcare services and prescription drug costs.

The COVID-19 pandemic presented serious changes in both the amount of money the government spent on healthcare and the areas they spent it. Traditional Medicare spending was around $31 billion per month from 2019 through the beginning of 2020, but during the initial lockdown, it plummeted to as little as $22 billion per month in April 2020. Spending on Medicare was 7% lower in 2020 due to a number of factors, including the reduction of elective surgeries and co-morbidities. Mortality due to COVID-19 significantly reduced the number of Medicare beneficiaries, which in turn, had meaningful effects on reducing the overall costs of the program.

Nonetheless, the reduction in Medicare spending due to increased mortality during this period was substantially offset by increased government healthcare expenditures in other areas. Following the declaration of a public health emergency by the World Health Organization in 2020, Medicaid implemented a ‘continuous enrollment’ policy. This meant that once an individual became eligible for Medicaid — a scenario that became increasingly common during the economic downturn — their income was not subject to revaluation. This led to an unprecedented surge in Medicaid enrollees and, consequently, a significant financial burden on the government. Moreover, at the onset of the pandemic, the US government ramped up its investment in public health initiatives and vaccine research. This additional expenditure on COVID-19-related programs contributed to a 36% surge in healthcare-related government spending in 2020.

Although analysis of the different spending areas for the government on healthcare is important, the differences between the government spending on healthcare versus other sectors of the economy are also key factors in analyzing the relationship with inflation. It is important to consider that the majority of government healthcare spending is put on Medicare or Medicaid, the government’s own version of health insurance. The health insurance industry sets its prices for the coming year around November of the previous one. For example, an individual’s deductible, premium, and copay percentages for the year 2024 would normally be determined in November of 2023. For government-sponsored programs, this is no different, so in theory, the costs are priced-in. This fixed-price contracting prevents surprises in spending from factoring into price changes over the year. From June 2022 to June 2023, medical prices rose by around 0.1%, while prices for the rest of the economy rose nearly 3% (Rakshit, Wager, Hughes-Cromwick, Cox, & Amin, 2023). This is different from historical trends since 2000, wherein medical inflation rates have been higher than those for the rest of the economy.

Despite the fact that government spending holds an ever-increasing share of GDP, there remains a lack of research regarding its effect on healthcare inflation. The COVID-19 pandemic significantly altered both the amount of money spent on healthcare and the areas it was spent in, so the changes in spending patterns make it an opportune time period to study its effect on prices. Thus, this study aims to fill this gap in research by empirically analyzing the relationship between government healthcare spending and healthcare price inflation. Time-series data on government healthcare expenditures and healthcare service costs were collected, and linear regression models were used to analyze the relationship. The coming section will present a literature review of inflation theories and healthcare inflation, while Section 3 describes the methodology of the study. Section 4 shares the results of the study followed by Section 5, which discusses the implications of the results. Finally, Section 6 concludes the paper, and Section 7 shows the references to this paper and Section 8 finishes with an extended appendix of the study results.

Literature Review

The subject of government spending’s relationship with the economy has long been an intriguing one, and many studies hold various perspectives on the topic. Many studies have explored the idea that government spending has a direct relationship with inflation rates. A common reason for this has been the idea that government spending increases the supply of money and demand for services. This is shown in a study by Cutsinger, which asserts that a rise in inflation can be caused by government spending because it reduces the growth rate of money demand (Cutsinger, 2022). Benson shares a similar base theory, showing that the stimulus packages have increased inflation by boosting household income which was also accompanied by tax increases (Benson, 2021).

However, these views are contradicted by other studies, e.g. that of Dupor (2016). After performing statistical analysis, Dupor claims that there is little statistical significance in the relationship between government spending and economic inflation. The analysis further concludes that a 10% increase in government spending has led to an 8-point basis decline in inflation (ibid). Despite their contradictory viewpoints, however, all three authors relied heavily on empirical data to back up their research claims.

Many studies regarding inflation theories use statistical analysis to lead their research. This is shown in Cutsinger’s article when he says that, “90% of money is held in bank deposits,” (Cutsinger, 2022). However, this analysis also uses qualitative methods and focuses on an explanation of an occurrence. This contradicts the studies done by Benson and Dupor, who both rely heavily on empirical data they collected to show their claims. Like Cutsinger, Benson uses data from the Federal Reserve of Economic Data in St. Louis and statistics for inflation rates to illustrate the claim that government spending and inflation are related. Dupor also relies heavily on data and analyzes the effects of different government spending levels on inflation rates to conclude the lack of a relationship between the two.

Other studies explore the relationship between federal policies and inflation. One study by Hodge discusses the actions of the Federal Reserve to combat inflation. This analysis uses data collected from the International Monetary Fund to claim that the Federal Reserve’s actions will cause a short-term price hike in goods, but will ultimately lead to a more stable economy and lower unemployment rate (Hodge, 2022). However, Miran says that the partisan gridlock of the federal government will ultimately prevent fiscal measures to combat inflation (Miran, 2023). These studies both analyze how the federal government will react to increased inflation rates. The focus of this study is to extend this to healthcare research. There is significant research on the reactions of the government to healthcare inflation, i.e. causality in the opposite direction as studied here (c.f. Morgan et. al, 2023).

There is limited research, however, on how government policy could be the cause of healthcare inflation, which presents a stark contrast to studies on the rest of the economy. For example, many studies analyze how government spending on Medicare and Medicaid, its two biggest categories, changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. One primary example of this is a study done on Medicare funds by Berdine (2023). This study analyzed the changes in Medicare spending during the lockdown and recession of 2020 to prove that money from the Affordable Care Act would last an extra two years for Medicare Part D (ibid). The Commonwealth Fund also performed a study that showed that Medicare spending dropped dramatically in 2020, going from around $31 billion per month in January 2020 all the way down to $23 billion in April 2020 (Shah, et al., 2021). There is also significant research into how the changes in Medicaid enrollment caused spending increases during the COVID-19 pandemic. A study by Khorrami and Sommers (2021) compiled Medicaid enrollment data to show how the record-setting Medicaid expenses were the result of increases in Medicaid enrollment.

Like this study, most others analyze government spending and healthcare inflation separately. One other example is a study done by Rakshit et al. (2023) looked at the historical trends of medical inflation compared to that of the rest of the economy. These authors concluded that traditionally the inflation of healthcare services occurred at a higher rate than that of the rest of the economy, but this was flipped during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the study fails to discuss possible reasons for that flip, raising even more questions as to how government spending could be a driver of healthcare sector inflation.

There are very extensive studies about inflation in the general economy as well as the changes in government spending during the COVID-19 pandemic. (c.f. American Medical Association, 2023) These studies analyze changes in every aspect, as well as the underlying reasons such as changes in enrollment to Medicaid due to the continuous enrollment policy.(c.f. Khorrami & Sommers, 2021) Many studies even analyze healthcare inflation by itself.(c.f. Rakshit et. al 2023) While there is a large body of research on both government healthcare spending and healthcare inflation separately, this research paper aims to fill the gap by analyzing connections between government spending and healthcare service inflation.

Methodology

All of the data taken into the statistical analysis was used from the Federal Reserve of Economic Data. The Producer Price Index data for healthcare services, notably outpatient, inpatient, home health, and physician care were taken in monthly time series. The government spending on areas like Medicare and Medicaid was also taken at monthly intervals. When comparing government spending categories versus the PPIs of healthcare services, they were broken up into a pre-COVID pandemic time period and a post-COVID pandemic time period. The ‘pre-COVID’ time was a monthly series from as far back as the time series was recorded through February 2020. However, the series began at varying time points. The ‘post-COVID’ time was included in the data series of March 2020 through June 2023. There were also lags added to the data. These lags accounted for the idea of a cause and effect within the spending and inflation, making sure that a correlation could also be seen if it occurred months later than the government spending.

Results

This section includes the results of the time-series linear regressions, which examine the relationships between healthcare spending and healthcare inflation. Specifically, they examine the relationship between government spending on Medicare and Medicaid (and their respective lags) and various PPI indexes of healthcare service costs. The common finding across the regression models is that the relationship between government healthcare expenditure and healthcare service relationships is not statistically significant. The key results from the models are summarized below.

The above table shows a summarized view of the results of the linear regression. It shows the R squared and F Significance values when comparing the PPI indexes of various healthcare services against current and lagged government spending on Medicare and Medicaid. As seen in the table, the numbers of both correlation and causation show no statistical significance in any category, which shows that changes in Medicare and Medicaid spending do not have a statistically significant effect on healthcare price inflation. Further specified tables can be found in the Appendix.

Across the board, the analysis shows no statistical significance between government spending on Medicare and Medicaid, as well as some other spending categories and healthcare price inflation, which was measured by the PPI indexes for the costs of various healthcare services. This result holds across different model specifications and stays consistent across changes in the lag length and other methods of healthcare price inflation measurement.

Discussion

There are many interesting pieces that can be taken out of the result that there is no significant correlation between government spending on healthcare and healthcare service inflation. This study is one of the first to empirically investigate the relationship between government healthcare spending and healthcare service price inflation, and due to its limited attention in existing literature, the conclusions that can be drawn are significant in both the real world and within other literature on the topic.

From a perspective of further research, it is clear that a deeper dive into the root causes of healthcare inflation is necessary, as while overall government spending may not cause an increase, basic components of it or other factors such as innovation, pharmaceutical costs, and supply chain or market dynamics may be drivers of inflation of the industry. This could once again be a result of the fact that – unlike a stimulus check – the government’s spending on healthcare does not often put money into the hands of a consumer. Future research into spending on healthcare services that directly give money to consumers could reveal new information. While there may not be a correlation from the initial analysis, refined measurements may show smaller direct relationships between components of government healthcare spending and healthcare service inflation. This study has reached a conclusion similar to Dupor, who asserted that there was no significant correlation between government spending and inflation. However, this study answered something that was not previously explored; government spending causing healthcare inflation, not vice-versa. Additionally, the results here are significant for policymakers and for people to make decisions for their health. As this analysis confirms that government spending has not been a driver of inflation, the federal government can look to spend more directly on healthcare or turn to other areas with the goal of reducing inflation in mind.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this study collected data on areas of government spending related to healthcare and the inflation of healthcare services during the same time period. It sheds light on a topic extremely relevant to America today, as increasingly important debates regarding the future of healthcare structure and policy occur across the nation. As a whole, this underscores the healthcare system’s complexity, showing the depth of factors that can contribute to service costs. This has far-reaching implications in both future research as well as for policymakers and the healthcare community, as by ruling out government spending as a catalyst of inflation it is now apparent that there are other factors driving it.

For policymakers, the results could allow them to increase spending to improve the structure of Medicare and Medicaid even more because it does not seem to be a driver of healthcare inflation. They now have the confidence to invest in healthcare initiatives without amplifying the inflation of healthcare service prices. This could lead to better infrastructure in government-sponsored healthcare systems for better quality of care for Americans. Future research is undoubtedly needed to discover the real factors driving healthcare inflation.

Although there is no correlation between government spending and healthcare service inflation, numerous other areas of spending on healthcare remain unexplored. Some that could be explored are the investment and costs of pharmaceuticals, the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the production of goods and supply chain dynamics, and the administrative expenses of running primary care practices and hospitals. Also, private sector spending is yet to be investigated, and increases in those costs could be a driver of healthcare service cost inflation. In terms of the healthcare community, the findings underscore the multifaceted nature of the US healthcare system. Because price inflation for this sector is not tied to just government spending, it is implicit that the drivers come from many different areas. This is critical insight for healthcare providers, insurance companies, and patient advocacy groups.

References

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Ball, L., Leigh, D., & Mishra, P. (2022, October). UNDERSTANDING U.S. INFLATION DURING THE COVID ERA. Retrieved from NBER Working Paper Series: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30613/w30613.pdf

Benson, J. (2021, October 6). The Economics of Inflation and the Risks of Ballooning Government Spending. Retrieved from United States Congress Joint Economic Committee: https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2021/10/the-economics-of-infla tion-and-the-risks-of-ballooning-government-spending#:~:text=If%20Congress%20conti nues%20to%20enact,business%20investment%20in%20American%20workers.

Berdine, G. (2023, April 25). Medicare: An Unexpected Beneficiary of COVID. Retrieved from The Southwest Respiratory and Critical Care Chronicles: https://pulmonarychronicles.com/index.php/pulmonarychronicles/article/view/1161/2555

Buettgens, M., & Green, A. (2022, March 9). What Will Happen to Medicaid Enrollees’. Retrieved from Urban Institute: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/2022-03/what-will-happen-to-medicaid-enrollee s-health-coverage-after-the-public-health-emergency_1_1.pdf

Cutsinger, B. (2022, December 22). Does Government Spending Lead to Inflation? Retrieved from American Institute for Economic Research: https://www.aier.org/article/does-government-spending-lead-to-inflation/

Donohue, J., Cole, E., & James, C. (2022, September 20). The US Medicaid Program Coverage, Financing, Reforms, and Implications for Health Equity. Retrieved from JAMA Open Network: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2796374

Dupor, B. (2016, May 10). How Does Government Spending Affect Inflation. Retrieved from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2016/may/how-does-government-spending-a ffect-inflation

Hodge, A. (2022, July 12). The US Economy’s Inflation Challenge. Retrieved from International Monetary Fund: https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2022/07/11/CF-US-Economy-Inflation-Challenge

Khorrami, P., & Sommers, B. D. (2021, May 5). Changes in US Medicaid Enrollment During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Retrieved from JAMA Network Open: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2779458

Miran, S. (2023, May 8). Reckless spending is undermining the Fed’s efforts to get inflation under control. Retrieved from City Journal: https://www.city-journal.org/article/high-government-spending-undermines-feds-inflation -measures

Morgan, D., Mueller, M., Guanais, F., Colombo, F., Scarpetta, S., & Pearson, M. (2023, January). Health care financing in times of high inflation. Retrieved from OECD: https://www.oecd.org/health/Health-care-financing-in-times-of-high-inflation.pdf

Rakshit, S., Wager, E., Hughes-Cromwick, P., Cox, C., & Amin, K. (2023, July 26). How Does Medical Inflation Compare to Inflation in the Rest of the Economy. Retrieved from Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/how-does-medical-inflation-compare-to-inflation-in-the-rest-of-the-economy/

Shah, A., Cicchiello, A., Cao, S. Y., Grace, S., Jacobson, G., & Schneider, E. C. (2021, April 12). How Has Medicare Spending Changed During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Retrieved from The Commonwealth Fund: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2021/how-has-medicare-spending-changed-dur ing-covid-19-pandemic

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. (2023, September 10). Personal current transfer receipts: Government social benefits to persons: Medicaid [W729RC1]. Retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W729RC1

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. (2023, September 10). Personal current transfer receipts: Government social benefits to persons: Medicare [W824RC1]. Retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W824RC1

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U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2023, September 10). Producer Price Index by Commodity: Health Care Services: Physician Care [WPS511101]. Retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPS511101

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2023, September 10). Producer Price Index by Commodity: Health Care Services: Private Insurance Patients: Home Health and Hospice Care [WPU51110301021]. Retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPU51110301021

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2023, September 10). Producer Price Index by Commodity: Health Care Services: Private Insurance Patients: Physician Care [WPU51110104]. Retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPU51110104

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2023, September 10). Producer Price Index by Industry: Home Health Care Services: Medicaid Patients [PCU62161062161032]. Retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCU62161062161032

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2023, September 10). Producer Price Index by Industry: Home Health Care Services: Medicare Patients [PCU62161062161031]. Retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCU62161062161031

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2023, September 10). Producer Price Index by Industry: Home Health Care Services: Private Insurance Patients [PCU62161062161041]. Retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCU62161062161041

Appendix

The Relation of Govt. Spending and Health Prices 21

About the author

Mihir Gupta

Mihir is currently a senior at the Vandegrift High School. He is interested in healthcare and is looking forward to pursuing a career in population health, starting with studying business at the undergraduate level. Mihir also enjoys marching band and has been a section leader on the drumline for the past 2 years. He loves to play percussion, specifically the marimba, as well as reading and running.

For his career goals, Mihir hopes to analyze social determinants such as economic instability that limit access to high-quality healthcare to strive towards a society with reduced health inequity.

The post An Empirical Analysis of the Relationship Between Government Spending and Healthcare Service Prices appeared first on Exploratio Journal.

Abstract

In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, broad and extensive efforts have been and are occurring, primarily in Republican-controlled state legislatures, to enact changes to the laws affecting the voting process. According to the Brennan Center’s July 2021Voting Rights Round Up, at least “49 states” have enacted more than “400 bills” that can be characterized as restrictive of voting rights (Wilder). This very high level of legislative activity was sparked by former President Trump’s persistent claims that he had won reelection and that President Biden’s victory was due to widespread voting fraud. This has led both to criticism of Republican-backed initiatives in the state legislatures as amounting to voter suppression; and for the need for greater ballot security by those defending such initiatives.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to furnish answers to the questions that have arisen in the debate over these election law changes, including whether they have been motivated by the goal of suppressing non-white voting rights, as the Justice Department has alleged with respect to the new voting law in Georgia; or, alternatively, whether the Republican-controlled legislatures are instead aiming to make it more somewhat more difficult for Democrats to vote—regardless of their race—in order to give Republican candidates and the voters who support them a partisan advantage. This paper will seek to answer these and related questions by a close examination of the newly enacted election law in Texas which is illustrative of many voting law changes in other states.

In addition, the paper will also address the efforts in Congress to respond to what the state legislatures have done and the legal challenges that have arisen in connection with the new voting laws in Georgia and Arizona. The new Arizona law has already been reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, which in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, decided July 1, 2021, upheld the two provisions of Arizona’s new election that were the subject of that litigation. Justice Alito’s opinion for the 6-3 majority spoke approvingly of the “effort” and “compliance with rules” entailed by voting and the “burdens of voting” that are tolerated by the law. This decision can be expected to be relied upon in defense of other state’s election law changes if they face legal challenges.

In sum, while it is not possible to make confident predictions about what the future holds for election law and voting rights, this paper will take stock of the current developments set forth above and make at least some tentative conclusions on the status of voting, election law, and relevant legal standards, with a particular focus on the provisions of the new election in Texas. The question hanging in the balance is whether these changes reflect hardball political partisanship or, as President Biden has described, a new “Jim Crow Era” (Wall Street Journal Editorial Board). 

Part 1: The 2020 Election and Voting in Texas During a Pandemic

In 2020, encouraging voters to cast ballots safely was a national challenge. This was a particular issue in Texas where a spike in cases of Covid-19 occurred as the election was about to take place. In November 2020, Texas had a positivity rate of ten percent (Astudillo). This placed pressure on election officials to devise procedures to protect the health and safety of voters.  Harris County was a leader in adapting the voting process to take account of the virus outbreak. Houston, the county seat and most populous city in Texas, is a Democratic stronghold. In the 2020 election, nearly 60% of voters in Harris County voted for candidates of the Democratic Party.⁹ Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo and County Clerk Chris Collins led the effort to develop procedural changes to the voting process due to the pandemic (Harper). 

One such change aimed to expand the number of voters casting mail-in ballots. This would reduce the number of voters needing to vote in-person where social distancing is more difficult. According to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, to request a mail-in ballot you must either be older than “65, be sick or disabled, be out of the county on election day [including during early voting], or be in jail but otherwise eligible” (Texas Secretary of State). These Texas state law requirements raised the question in how voting by mail could be applied more widely.

The County’s first attempt to expand mail-in voting was to treat the risks associated with contracting COVID-19 as an acceptable basis for voting by mail. Harris County was joined by other Democratic counties, such as Travis County, which took the position that the “disability” provision of the Texas election law could apply due to the pandemic. This would essentially allow all voters in those counties to request mail-in ballots. 

Because over 71% of Travis County voters cast ballots for Democratic Party candidates in 2020, Republicans perceived the expansion of mail-in voting as more about getting Democratic voters to cast ballots for its candidates than it was about the pandemic. When challenged, the Texas Supreme Court decided against this attempted expansion of mail-in voting, holding that providing mail-in ballots upon request was inconsistent with state law and that “COVID-19 is not” a disability preventing a voter from casting a ballot in person (Abbot v. Anti-Defamation League et al.) 

Next, there was a proposal to allow voters to cast ballots without leaving their cars—which would allow for maximum social distancing. This was implemented by setting up drive-through polling places in the parking garage of the Toyota Center, a large arena in Houston where the NBA Rockets play. This was not an entirely new procedure. Disabled voters in Harris County have long been entitled to curbside voting at any polling location. However, the expansion of drive-through voting was challenged by Republicans who sought to throw out every vote that was cast at a drive-through location (McCullough). 

Harris County also planned to send out 2.4 million mail-in ballot applications to all voters  eligible to vote by mail—whether or not they had requested a mail-in ballot. With respect to voting in person, the county also created six polling locations that would be open 24-hours a day. The Texas Attorney General filed suit to block Harris County from implementing these new procedures. The Texas Courts agreed with the challenge to these new procedures.

Part 2: Senate Bill 1 & The Legislative Changes to Texas Voting Law

Republican opposition to what occurred in Harris County and elsewhere in Texas to expand voting in 2020 culminated in the recently enacted Senate Bill 1, titled The Election Protection Integrity Act of 2021, which Governor Abbott signed into law on September 7, 2021. It clearly demonstrates a legislative goal to prevent the innovations in voting employed in Harris County. For instance, Senate Bill 1 prohibits 24-hour voting, drive-through voting, and makes it unlawful for counties to send out mail-in ballot applications en masse (Smith).  

Specifically, the principal elements of Senate Bill 1 are as follows. The bill bans drive through voting and 24- hour voting; revises the hours for early voting polling places; expands early voting from counties with  populations of 100,000  to counties with populations between 50,000 and 100,000; imposes new ID requirements for persons applying for mail-in ballots; adds new paperwork for people who assist another person in voting; enlarges the role for poll watchers; and creates new criminal penalties for sending out unrequested mail-in ballots and for limiting poll watchers ability to observe polls (Texas S.B. 1). 

Although the primary goal of Senate Bill 1 was to eliminate the pandemic related voting measures and create new restrictive voting measures, the bill also increased the hours polling places could remain open and applied early voting smaller counties. The principal provisions of Senate Bill 1 are discussed and analyzed in the following paragraphs.

Part 3: A Closer Look

It is an understatement to describe Senate Bill 1 is a major change in election law. Its legislative purpose of banning the pandemic related voting changes is clear—especially the initiatives developed in Harris County. It is no surprise that the Republican-controlled state legislature chose Harris County as its target. A reliably Democratic county, Harris County voted for President Biden over former President Trump by about 13 percentage points. The legislative aim of reducing mail-in voting is best understood from the fact that absentee voters preferred Biden over Trump by 20 percent while election day in-person voters preferred Trump over Biden by 5 percent (Harris County). Additionally, Harris County is 69 percent non-white— providing a reason why it has been targeted by Republicans who believe non-white voters are, in general, more likely to favor candidates of the Democratic Party.

Turning to drive-through voting, this option was extremely popular with voters who preferred waiting in their own car to vote as compared with doing so queued up in a voting line, which could have proven unsafe during 2020. This new method of voting drew an unusual degree of attention in Senate Bill 1—especially because the method was still in its early stages of implementation and no reports of fraud emerged that would justify its banning (Texas Senate Bill 1).  

However, drive-through voting was not the only pandemic related election law change affected by the bill. Early voting hours and 24-hour voting centers were also subject to change (Smith). Opening a handful of polling places in Harris County for 24 hours a day provided more options for voters with challenging schedules and promised shorter lines for voters worried about social distancing. While these centers were only open in one county on one day of the year, the Texas legislature banned this method of voting in its entirety. 

Perhaps the best argument in support of the elimination of drive-through and 24-hour polling places is that these procedures arose out of COVID-19 concerns. If the risks associated with the pandemic are not likely to be permanent, then such innovations need not become a permanent feature of voting in Texas despite their popularity among voters (Bludau).

While generally restrictive to voting, Senate Bill 1 includes some provisions expansive of voting. For instance, the prior law allowed only counties with populations of more than 100,000 to hold early voting periods. The new law applies early voting to counties with populations of 50,000, meaning more counties are required to have early voting periods While this makes voting easier in more counties, it could also be viewed as having a partisan political motive in that smaller and rural counties are likely to have more Republican voters than Democratic voters. In addition, the new law has reasonably generous provisions for how long polling places are open and includes early voting on weekends.

Senate Bill 1 also creates new restrictions on mail-in ballots (Ura). Previously, a person applying for a mail-in ballot received one once the signature on the application was checked against the voters’ registration. Now any such applicant must supply their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their social security number and include the same information when submitting their mail-in ballot. Further, the new law imposes a criminal penalty on any election administrator or other official who violates the new provision.

One particularly notable part of Senate Bill 1 is the way it specifies an expanded role for poll-watchers—backed by a new criminal penalty for any person obstructing a poll-watchers opportunity to observe the counting of ballots. These provisions appear to reflect a mistrust of the persons who tabulate the vote count. 

Part 4: Conclusion

What conclusions can be drawn about voting in Texas now that it is governed by Senate Bill 1 which has already been challenged by a flurry of lawsuits alleging that the new law is racially discriminatory and suppresses voting rights. These cases are wending their way through the courts. Their outcome is not predictable but the Supreme Court’s Brnovich decision set a high bar for such challenges.

Any discussion of Senate Bill 1 would be incomplete without questioning its motive. Republican candidates did very well in 2020. Former President Trump carried Texas. Senator Cornyn, a Republican, was re-elected. The Texas state legislature maintained its Republican majority. Was this election so rife with fraud that new legislation was needed to protect against it? Notably, the supporters of Senate Bill 1 have never been able to cite to examples of voting fraud in Texas.

Whether to not this new election was has a racial purpose or effect, or is vulnerable to other legal claims, it is surely motivated by the changing composition of the population, and the electorate, in Texas. The prospect of the number of reliable Republican voters is shrinking may well be the most satisfactory reason to explain why the Republican-led state legislator sought principally to restrict, rather than expand, the ability of Texans to vote.

Works Cited 

ABBOTT v. THE ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE AUSTIN, SOUTHWEST, AND TEXOMA REGIONS; COMMON CAUSE TEXAS; AND ROBERT KNETSCH, RESPONDENTS (Supreme Court of Texas October 27, 2020). 

Astudillo, C., Cai, M., Essig, C., & Walters, E. (2020, November 25). Texas again sets record for new coronavirus infections as testing also sees sustained highs. The Texas Tribune. Retrieved December 19, 2021, from https://www.texastribune.org/2020/11/25/texas-coronavirus-infections-record/ 

Bludau, A. J. (2021, August 26). Drive-thru voting could soon be banned, but this study shows harris county voters really like it. khou.com. Retrieved December 19, 2021, from https://www.khou.com/article/news/politics/harris-county-voters-like-drive-thru-voting-study-shows/285-48f6e280-df1e-44c8-b796-9c403739142f 

Board, T. E. (2021, July 13). Opinion | Joe Biden, Jim Crow and Texas voting. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved December 19, 2021, from https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-jim-crow-and-texas-voting-11626215733 

Bradner, E. (2021, September 8). The new Texas Voting Law includes these 7 major changes. CNN. Retrieved December 19, 2021, from https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/07/politics/what-texas-voting-bill-does/index.html 

Harper, K. B., & Platoff, E. (2020, October 15). Harris County tried to make voting easier during the pandemic. Texas Republicans fought every step of the way. The Texas Tribune. Retrieved December 19, 2021, from https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/15/harris-county-texas-voting/ 

Harris County . (n.d.). Harris County Election Results. Retrieved from https://www.harrisvotes.com/HISTORY/20201103/Official%20Cumulative.pdf. 

Leighton, H. (n.d.). Not only is Houston getting more diverse, but residents’ households are, too. The Kinder Institute for Urban Research. Retrieved December 19, 2021, from https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2019/05/14/not-only-houston-getting-more-diverse-residents-households-are-too 

McCullough, J. (2020, November 2). Nearly 127,000 Harris County drive-thru votes appear safe after federal judge rejects GOP-led Texas lawsuit. The Texas Tribune. Retrieved December 19, 2021, from https://www.texastribune.org/2020/11/02/texas-drive-thru-votes-harris-county/ 

Smith, A. B. (2021, September 1). What’s in Senate Bill 1? khou.com. Retrieved December 19, 2021, from https://www.khou.com/article/news/politics/whats-in-senate-bill-1/285-2e22dcdc-fa2a-43a7-91aa-f341c43d075c 

Spectrum News Staff. (2020, October 29). Vote all night: Texas’ Harris County offers 24-hour locations. Texas’ Harris County Offers 24-Hour Voting. Retrieved December 19, 2021, from https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/dallas-fort-worth/news/2020/10/29/vote-all-night–texas–harris-county-offers-24-hour-locations- 

Texas Legislature , & Huges, Senate Bill 1 (2020). Austin , TX. 

Texas Secretary of State. (n.d.). Application for a Ballot by Mail. Application for a ballot by mail. Retrieved December 19, 2021, from https://www.sos.texas.gov/elections/voter/reqabbm.shtml 

Ura, A. (2021, August 30). The hard-fought Texas voting Bill is poised to become law. here’s what it does. The Texas Tribune. Retrieved December 19, 2021, from https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/30/texas-voting-restrictions-bill/ 

Wilder, W., Waldman, M., & Ayers, P. D. (2021, May 28). Voting laws roundup: July 2021. Brennan Center for Justice. Retrieved December 19, 2021, from https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-july-2021 

Wilder, W., Waldman, M., & Ayers, P. D. (2021, May 28). Voting laws roundup: July 2021. Brennan Center for Justice. Retrieved December 19, 2021, from https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-july-2021 

About the author

Piece George

Pierce is currently a Senior at the Cinco Ranch High School in Texas. In college, he intends to study Political Science as a pre-law and he hopes to attend law school after his undergraduate education. Piece is the president and captain of his school debate team and he has worked on multiple national and local campaigns in the last few years.

The post The Right to Vote: An In Depth Look at Senate Bill 1 appeared first on Exploratio Journal.