OK, “rock” is a bit of an exaggeration, but members of free market think tanks have had a positive impact on recent meetings of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s health care task force. In case you’re not familiar with ALEC, it’s the “Jeffersonian limited government” alternative to the National Council of State(ist) Legislatures, which is a huge and venerable organization whose purpose is to ensure that every statist, government-growing idea introduced in any legislature is quickly reproduced in all of them.

I’ve had the opportunity to participate in two meetings of the human services and health policy task force, and can say that, to the extent ALEC matters – and it does somewhat, depending on the current makeup of a given legislature – having free market idealists involved appears to have made a difference.

Serving with me on the health care group are John Graham from PRI in California, Joe Coletti from John Locke in North Carolina and Kalese Hammonds of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Thanks to our active and vocal opposition, at the last two meetings efforts were torpedoed to put the ALEC seal of approval on a rent-seeking licensure proposal (for home health care aide management companies) and a highly intrusive “government solve the obesity ‘crisis’” package.

On the constructive side, we introduced the concept of negotiable liability as a potential solution to lawsuit abuse, with the first steps taken to craft a model bill. I may have more to say about that idea in a future post.