The use of governmental imposition to force social justice on its people is a path that leads to more government, less freedom, and deeper division. The true path forward can be found in a return to the principles of biblical justice—impartiality, righteousness, and individual responsibility.
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The Alabama Policy Institute (API) has unveiled its 2025 BluePrint for Alabama, a comprehensive 30-point agenda designed to promote free markets, limited government, and strong families in the state in the upcoming 2025 state legislative session.
The annual roadmap serves as API’s cornerstone for advocating good governance and impactful public policy reforms.
API’s annual agenda for good government in Alabama includes ideas and legislation based upon three pillars: Free Markets, Limited Government, and Strong Families. Free Market highlights include the elimination of the overtime tax, promotion of home-based businesses, and occupational licensing reform.
Limited Government ideas that made the list are Right to Try 2.0, state budget reform, and requiring transparency in federal funding and grants.
The Strong Families portion rounds out the agenda and includes increasing the age of majority for medical decisions, allowing homeschoolers to participate in extracurriculars and technical training, and prohibiting sexually explicit materials and performances in public.
Combined with the recently launched ALDOGE initiative, the Alabama Policy Institute BluePrint for Alabama is sure to have a positive impact for the people of Alabama in 2025.
In addition to carrying forward 15 key proposals from the 2024 BluePrint, such as Certificate of Need reform and measures to protect minors, the new agenda introduces new proposals, including criminal justice reforms, strengthened transparency in regulatory processes, protecting women and girls, and Right to Try 2.0, an initiative designed to give patients with limited healthcare options access to innovative treatments.
For more details on the 2025 BluePrint for Alabama and how these policies could transform the state, visit the Alabama Policy Institute’s official website.
Birmingham, AL – December 17, 2024 – For 35 years, the Alabama Policy Institute (API) has served as Alabama’s unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), advocating for limited government, free markets, and greater accountability from state leadership. Today, API is proud to announce the launch of the Alabama Department of Government Efficiency, or ALDOGE, an initiative inspired by the principles of the national DOGE program led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
ALDOGE is designed to address long-standing issues within Alabama state government, including regulatory overreach, lack of transparency, and inefficiency in government expenditures. The need for such an initiative is evident when we consider the numbers. Combined ETF/GF spending has grown by 52.3% over the last decade and by 26.5% in just the past five years.
Every year since 2016, Alabama has collected and spent more taxpayer dollars than ever every year. In total, combined revenues have grown by over $6.3 billion in the past decade. With these surging revenues, inefficiencies persist. The combined budgets have run surpluses every year since 2016, peaking at $2.84 billion in 2022 and reaching nearly $2.4 billion in 2024. Yet, taxpayers often see little improvement in the efficiency or responsiveness of government services.
At a recent meeting with members of Congress in Washington, DC, Elon Musk emphasized the importance of government efficiency, stating, “We need to make sure we’re spending public money well.” U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson echoed Musk’s sentiments, saying, “The taxpayers deserve better. They deserve a more responsive government, a more efficient government.”
ALDOGE will focus on more than just cost savings. It will tackle issues like regulatory overreach and misuse of taxpayer funds. For example, over the last decade with stagnant growth, public school support staff positions have increased by 3,332 and state government vehicle registrations grew by 801 from 2014 to 2023. Such trends highlight the need for more accountability in how taxpayer dollars are allocated.
ALDOGE’s ultimate goal is to streamline bureaucracy, cut red tape, reduce inefficiencies, and ensure Alabama taxpayers receive the best return on their dollar. ALDOGE also seeks to restore self-governance, a sentiment shared by Vivek Ramaswamy, who stated, “DOGE’s full success will be measured not just in cost savings, but in restoring self-governance in America.”
The initiative will be driven by API’s policy experts and the citizens of Alabama. Public input will play a critical role in identifying waste, fraud, and abuse in state government spending. ALDOGE hopes to create practical solutions that deliver real results.
“Regulatory overreach and lack of accountability aren’t just federal problems,” API President, Stephanie Smith stated. “There are significant challenges at the state level too. ALDOGE will address these issues head-on, ensuring that Alabama taxpayers have a government that is efficient, transparent, and accountable.”
API invites state employees, lawmakers, and Alabamians from all walks of life to participate in the ALDOGE efforts. Together, this initiative aims to create a more effective state government and reinforce the principles of self-governance.
The Alabama Policy Institute’s 2025 BluePrint for Alabama, a 30-point conservative policy plan, will be revealed this month.
The Blueprint is divided into categories based on API’s three pillars: free markets, limited government, and strong families. The 2024 BluePrint was a huge success with the leadership of many of the most conservative legislators in Alabama. Of the 30 proposals in 2024, 25 were considered by at least one chamber and 17 of API’s priorities were successful, including stopping the expansion of gambling and passing universal school choice.
API has identified 15 proposals from the 2024 BluePrint that we plan to advance in 2025. These include issues such as Certificate of Need reform, tax and budget reforms, expanding health freedom, and protecting minors from exposure to inappropriate materials, both in public and online.
New proposals will include the strengthening of state unemployment requirements, bringing more scrutiny and transparency to the regulatory and budgeting processes, ensuring certain protections in public spaces, criminal justice reforms, and allowing medical patients with few remaining healthcare options to pursue innovative and potentially life-saving treatment, among others.
API‘s mission is to improve the lives of Alabamians through public policy and is poised to have a significant impact on the 2025 legislative process.
Read the article on Yellowhammer News here.
Stephanie Smith and Phil Williams talk about the expansion of gambling and the Alabama Senate Pro Tem race. Listen Here.
Stephanie Smith and Jeff Poor talk about policy and Alabama politics. Listen Here.
Access to high quality health care should be a top priority for Alabama’s state lawmakers. Over the past several decades, hospitals across the state have faced increased financial strain, with several notable closures and other healthcare providers facing serious financial issues, limiting the number of health care options available to Alabamians.
Rural Alabama has been hit the hardest by these closures, leaving residents with fewer local options and forcing them to make a choice between forgoing needed care or making long trips to receive it.
How can Alabama’s state government increase access to and make health care more affordable in rural Alabama?
Some would lead you to think that Medicaid expansion is the answer to all that ails Alabama’s rural health care system, arguing that the influx of federal dollars would put rural providers on more solid financial ground. However, there are numerous factors that must be considered.
First of all, while Medicaid expansion might provide increased coverage to residents of rural Alabama, it might do little to decrease the strain on health care providers in those areas. Yes, facilities could see an increase in payments, but Medicaid reimbursement rates “tend to be much lower” than Medicare and traditional insurance coverage provide. In other words, rural providers may have to increase staff sizes to keep up with increased demand created by Medicaid expansion, but it is unclear that Medicaid’s lower reimbursement rates would cover those increased costs.
Putting Medicaid expansion aside, there are demographic issues that make it more challenging to attract new healthcare providers to Alabama’s rural health care market as well as making it harder for existing providers to remain in operation. From 2010 to 2020 “Alabama’s rural counties lost up to 20% of their population”, creating major challenges for providers. Having more Alabamians covered by Medicaid won’t do anything to improve the bottom line of rural health care providers if the population in those areas continues to shrink.
Rather than expanding Medicaid, a better option to increase access to care and make that care more affordable is Certificate of Need (CON) reform. The state’s CON law requires certain healthcare providers to go through an application and approval process before new or expanded services can be offered. It also gives existing providers veto power to block new providers from entering the healthcare market. The CON approval process is often an expensive and time consuming process.
Alabama has one of the most restrictive CON requirements in the nation, with 47 individual requirements being regulated by the state Certificate of Need Review Board. State CON requirements stifle competition and healthcare innovation and can take a major toll on rural hospitals.
Evidence shows that CON regulations negatively impact rural communities the most. A study conducted by the Mercatus Center at George Washington University found that CON states have 30% fewer rural hospitals per 100,000 residents than non-CON regulated states and 14% fewer ambulatory surgical centers. CON states also spend more Medicaid dollars per patient in rural areas and have higher emergency room utilization levels.
Rural hospitals in CON states are also at a much greater risk of closure than in non-CON states. Data compiled by the University of North Carolina found that 191 rural hospitals have closed since 2005. None of those closures occurred in non-CON regulated states.
According to Mercatus, CON laws mean that “Americans living in rural areas find it harder to access care. They have to travel longer distances, wait longer for appointments, and pay more for care. Residents of rural states, on average, spend more and use more healthcare services in CON states compared to non-CON states.”
Beyond the costs and access to care, quality of care also suffers for Alabamians because of CON laws. A 2020 Alabama specific study found that if the state lifted its CON laws, post-surgery complications such as heart attacks, heart failure, and pneumonia would all decrease. Mortality rates and readmission rates would decrease as well.
During the 2024 regular session, there was an effort to reduce the burden of CON regulations that was specifically aimed at rural Alabama. Senate Bill 236 by Senator Larr Stutts would have eliminated the CON process for any new or expanded medical facility or health care service located in a rural area, which was defined as any area of the state located outside of a metropolitan statistical area. The bill received a public hearing in the Senate State Government Affairs Committee, but did not progress further.
While API feels that all state CON requirements should be repealed, Senate Bill 236 would have increased access to care and promoted health care innovation in areas of the state that need it the most. Lawmakers should continue to pursue this option as well as wider ranging CON reforms in 2025.
The key to improving healthcare outcomes in rural Alabama is unleashing competition and allowing a free-market healthcare system to prosper, not to become more dependent on the federal government through Medicaid expansion. Repealing Alabama’s CON laws would allow for increased health care modernization and grant providers the authority to offer cost-effective services that best meet the needs of citizens without compromising the quality of care.
It is possible that more federal intervention might provide financial stability to a limited number of rural hospitals in the short-term, but it is not a panacea to improve healthcare across the state, nor is it a long-term solution. Repealing the state’s CON requirements would go much further towards achieving that goal for all Alabamians.
