Thinking Objectively

Obama to End Recession in December -- by Holding "Jobs Summit" by Robert Bidinotto

2009-11-12T18:35:00.002-05:00

On another website I visit, somebody was complaining about news that Barack Obama was planning to hold a "jobs summit" in December to solve, once and for all, the dire problem of soaring unemployment. How could another meeting at the White House possibly end our recession? this Doubting Thomas demanded to know.

His angry outburst struck me as the woefully short-sighted rant of a Tea Party Nazi. It certainly demonstrated a fundamentally feeble grasp of the nuances and subtleties of modern economic theory, which are clearly understood by our president.

Of course Mr. Obama's "Jobs Summit" will create jobs! Let me count the ways:

First, think of all the boosted employment we will witness in the "Useless Summit" industry: conference organizers, badge-makers, PowerPoint experts, flower-arrangers, coffee-pourers, table-cloth folders -- I mean, the list just goes on and on.

But that's merely AT the conference. What about all the preparations for travel TO the conference?

Think of how many attendee business suits will go to dry cleaners. Think of the airline tickets purchased. The cab rides. The airports. Ponder the army of accountants who will have to go over all the expense reports from this crucial event. Consider all the wear and tear on the transportation vehicles involved -- jets, cabs, limos -- putting them just that much closer to being replaced by new purchases, which in turn will stimulate the auto and airline industries. Consider the White House electric bill alone, and what it will mean for the local power company. Think, too, of all the fuel that will be used up coming and going to the Summit, stimulating the oil and gasoline industries.

And regarding that fuel: Reflect for a moment, if you will, on all the CO2 that attendee jets and limos will emit en route to the Summit. This ginormous release of carbon into our atmosphere would not have occurred, except for the Summit. Yes, Barack Obama would be the first to acknowledge that it creates an environmental crisis; but, as Rahm Emmanuel would say, there is always opportunity to be found in a good crisis.

For example, the CO2 emissions no doubt will be carefully monitored by atmospheric scientists and climate-modelers, leading to scores of "jobs created or saved" in this vital field. Consider also the longer-term ramifications. Emergency remediation efforts for the increased CO2 emitted by the conferees will stimulate entire new cottage industries of new jobs. A "Keynesian multiplier effect" will occur: Each dollar spent by atmospheric scientists and conference attendees on issuing dire reports and forecasts will, in turn, generate $3.26 spending in the printer-paper industry, $1.82 in the lumber industry, $4.37 for Kinko's, $1.85 for the ink industry, $5.50 for overnight deliveries by Federal Express, $7,223.44 in overtime for postal workers -- plus 378,498 downstream jobs created or saved in federal and international regulatory bureaucracies.

These calculations, of course, do not even begin to include the boost to peripheral service industries, such as Washington-area restaurants, hotels, bars, tourist traps, and hookers.

In short, this single event alone could generate enough economic activity to pull us out of the recession! Why, it would be treasonously irresponsible if Barack Obama did NOT hold this summit!

So, enough of the criticism, already. We should be gladdened and relieved that, at last, we have a firm and steady hand on the tiller of our economy. And I, for one, just can't wait for the next stimulative product of his ever-fertile brain.

Day for ObamaCare

2009-11-06T13:46:00.001-05:00

The first part of this post comes from an e-mail by Robert Bidinotto. It is followed by an e-mail I've sent to my representatives. It uses Robert's words with some of my own added to the end.

Dear Friends,

If you haven’t yet contacted your congressman (or even if you have) to oppose ObamaCare, TODAY is perhaps the last day that wavering representatives will be making up their minds.

By all reports, the House vote this weekend will be very close. Just one or two congressmen could tip the balance for or against this horrible piece of legislation. We need to show immediate, overwhelming opposition to this monstrosity.

PLEASE do what millions of other patriotic Americans have done. Call or email your congressman or congresswoman NOW.

To obtain his or her contact information, click on the link below, or copy it into your web browser:

http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW_by_State.shtml

And if you run a website or blog, please post that contact information and urge your readers to weigh in.

Thanks so much for your consideration.

Robert

I shamelessly borrowed the wording Robert used in writing his representatives to contact mine in Massachusetts. I added a final paragraph of my own. The text is provided below.

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It’s now clear: Both the House's and Senate's pending health-insurance bills betray the promises and contradict the claims of their architects.

“ObamaCare,” in either version, will not provide “universal, affordable insurance,” increase “choice and competition,” or remain “deficit-neutral.” Instead, it will create a gargantuan, unaffordable, trillion-dollar entitlement monstrosity. It will explode our soaring deficits and impose huge new tax burdens on our struggling economy -- and on millions of people like me.

It also will create perverse incentives: Subsidies will inflate demand for medical services, while taxes and regulations will discourage doctors, hospitals, and inventors from providing them. That inevitably will lead to shortages, waiting lists, and rationing.

It will deprive us of choices and competition: “Mandates” will force employers to offer costly policies and force individuals (like me) to buy them. Meanwhile, private insurers will drown in seas of red ink.

The repeatedly stated goal of ObamaCare’s proponents, including the President and many congressmen, is to push us all gradually into “single-payer,” government-run health care. These bills are meant to do exactly that. They will bankrupt private insurers, wipe out our existing policies, and undermine the quality and affordability of health care.

This legislative initiative is destructive in principle: The entire coercive, bureaucratic approach is dead wrong. These bills therefore cannot be amended, fixed, or salvaged; they must be scrapped entirely.

Yes, we need health-insurance reform; but true reform must be based on the principles of free-market competition:

• allowing individuals to purchase insurance from competing companies across state lines, with the same tax-deductibility employers enjoy;

• letting individuals buy low-cost, catastrophic coverage by freeing insurers from legal requirements to offer only high-priced, comprehensive policies;

• enacting tort reforms to eliminate the costly practice of “defensive medicine.”

These steps would expand coverage to millions, while reducing costs to employers, policy-holders, and taxpayers.

I know my opinion won’t necessarily change your position. I hope that it’s clear that there also is a moral premise behind my opposition to this effort to foist an unwelcome change on the vast majority of us voters who want the freedom to chose on such an important, literally life changing issue. I’d rather create some kind of welfare program that buys insurance for those who can’t afford it than making wholesale changes in our semi-free market system that will reduce the quality and quantity of health care for everyone.

Respectfully,

Henry Scuoteguazza

The Truth About Health-Insurance Industry Profits by Robert Bidinotto

2009-10-26T15:36:00.003-04:00

In a rare, refreshing example of real journalism in the mainstream media,Associated Press actually fact-checked Democrat claims that insurance companies are making obscene profits, while they let sick people die. According to this narrative, we need a "public option" in health-care reform to compete with these rapacious companies, to drive down their outrageously high premiums, and to "keep them honest."

But, what are the facts? A.P. checked and discovered its all a pack of lies:

Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a point or two. That's anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries, even some beleaguered ones.
Profits barely exceeded 2 percent of revenues in the latest annual measure. This partly explains why the credit ratings of some of the largest insurers were downgraded to negative from stable heading into this year, as investors were warned of a stagnant if not shrinking market for private plans.
Insurers are an expedient target for leaders who want a government-run plan in the marketplace. Such a public option would force private insurers to trim profits and restrain premiums to compete, the argument goes. This would "keep insurance companies honest," says President Barack Obama. . . .
But in pillorying insurers over profits, the critics are on shaky ground. A look at some claims, and the numbers:
THE CLAIMS
_"I'm very pleased that (Democratic leaders) will be talking, too, about the immoral profits being made by the insurance industry and how those profits have increased in the Bush years." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who also welcomed the attention being drawn to insurers'"obscene profits."
_"Keeping the status quo may be what the insurance industry wants their premiums have more than doubled in the last decade and their profits have skyrocketed." Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, member of the Democratic leadership.
_"Health insurance companies are willing to let the bodies pile up as long as their profits are safe." A MoveOn.org ad.
THE NUMBERS:
Health insurers posted a 2.2 percent profit margin last year, placing them 35th on the Fortune 500 list of top industries. As is typical, other health sectors did much better - drugs and medical products and services were both in the top 10.
The railroads brought in a 12.6 percent profit margin. Leading the list: network and other communications equipment, at 20.4 percent.
HealthSpring, the best performer in the health insurance industry, posted 5.4 percent. That's a less profitable margin than was achieved by the makers of Tupperware, Clorox bleach and Molson and Coors beers.
The star among the health insurance companies did, however, nose out Jack in the Box restaurants, which only achieved a 4 percent margin.
UnitedHealth Group, reporting third quarter results last week, saw fortunes improve. It managed a 5 percent profit margin on an 8 percent growth in revenue.

In short, private health-insurers are already squeezed to marginal profitability. Knowing this, what do you suppose is the motive of Democrats -- whose leadership, from the White House down, is dominated by advocates of "single-payer" government-run health insurance -- in wanting to further squeeze private insurers? When they say they want "Medicare for all Americans," what do you suppose they wish to happen to private insurers?

Duh.

This debate is not about controlling health-care costs. It is about controlling your health care -- period. Share the facts with your congressman and senators, and let them know that their political futures depend on their strangling the ObamaCare monster in its crib.

The Nobel quest for mediocrity from The American Thinker

2009-10-11T20:10:00.003-04:00

The Nobel quest for mediocrity

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Key quotes:

It is no secret that influences and finances from outside the United States helped create the Obama presidency; one example being George Soros. It is also no secret that President Obama intends to reshape the United States into the image of Europe. However, Europe has been economically stagnant for decades. Only by the weakening of the United States' economic system can Europe's socialistic and economic stagnation be reduced. The strengthening of Europe's socialistic and economic system can only take place by the weakening of the American system.

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee is an extension of the Norwegian Parliament, which is a foreign government. Last week the politically-controlled Nobel Peace Prize Committee awarded President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize not for his mediocre achievements, but as President Obama acknowledged, for his "call to action". It was an award for decisions yet to be made, otherwise known as a bribe. The more President Obama is "called to action" by outside influences, the strengthening of the European Union will continue at the cost of the United States.

Megan McArdle's Controlling Healthcare Costs The American Way: Not Doing It

2009-10-10T07:25:00.003-04:00

Megan McArdle posts an excellent analysis why we should not believe the mantra we're hearing that the proposed health care bill will save money or at worst be revenue neutral. As she points out,

we've got a single payer system, called Medicare. It negotiates huge cost discounts with providers. It has low administrative costs. It has a gigantic apparatus to evaluate reimbursements for various treatments. It has . . . a faster rate of per-capita cost growth than the rest of the health care system, according toa CBO report issued by one Peter Orszag.

After showing how health care rate of increase in costs in Massachusetts have accelerated she asks a good question:

so I'll turn it around on reformers: why do you think that we can control costs, given that we couldn't at the state level? Massachusetts is a very liberal state, a very rich state, and it started out with a relatively low proportion of its citizenry uninsured. Proponents of reform often say it has to be done at a national level because states can't borrow money in downturns, but this doesn't explain why the spending side is headed through the roof.

The Baucus Bill: Nationalized Stealthcare by Robert Bidinotto

2009-10-08T15:57:00.002-04:00

In the wake of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) "scoring" of the so-called Baucus plan -- the Senate Finance Committee version of ObamaCare -- the mainstream media and the Democrats are gleefully trumpeting it as a financially responsible and "deficit neutral" approach to nationalized health insurance. But what is the truth?

For those of you who want to read the CBO report, rather than rely on MSM "spin" about it, here is the actual letter sent to Congress by the CBO chief.

Several preliminary observations:

1. Please note page 12 – the assumptions underlying the "projected savings" in the plan. The CBO notes that Congress or administrators, under various political pressures, "frequently" change the reimbursement rules in later years so that the "projected savings" never materialize. Think this bill will be any different? Do you believe in the Tooth Fairy?

2. Please keep the bigger picture in mind: This is a whopping new entitlement program, projecting massive government spending increases. The "deficit neutrality" claimed by the CBO for the Baucus version, which will spend nearly a trillion dollars, comes only by increasing taxes and insurance premiums, while slashing payments for medical services. You can certainly cover any deficit by raising taxes or by cutting government services -- and that's exactly what the Baucus bill proposes. It plans $200+ billion in tax increases on "high-premium insurance policies" (see p. 2), plus additional billions in revenue from various penalties to be imposed on individuals and businesses (p. 5), plus a whopping $404 billion in cuts to current Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements to medical-care providers (p. 6). This latter will pressure doctors, hospitals, medical-device manufacturers, etc., to reduce treatments, or even to leave the business.

3. Simultaneously, the plan will subsidize coverage and care for millions of lower-income people, plus millions of the previously uninsured (p. 10). This will dramatically increase demand for health-care services, while the slashed reimbursements to medical providers will discourage their participation, thus cutting the supply of health-care services. Follow the logic: Soaring demand against shrinking supply will necessitate medical-care shortages -- and shortages will lead to governmental rationing of medicine and medical treatments. We will thus follow the dark path of other socialized-medicine nations all over the world.

4. The legislation will establish government-funded nonprofit co-ops to compete with private insurers (p. 4). Ask yourself how for-profit companies can possibly compete with government-assisted nonprofit co-ops -- especially when the government will be writing the rules for the former, such as those listed in the next point.

5. Insurers would be mandated to accept all comers, could not deny people with pre-existing conditions, and could not vary premiums on the basis of people's health (p. 4). This means obliterating the entire actuarial basis of insurance as such, which adjusts premiums according to risk; risk considerations are now banished, by law. In short, insurance is replaced by anentitlement to health-care coverage.

6. All individuals will be required by law to buy insurance, whether they want it or not, or have to pay a hefty fine to the IRS if they don't (p.1).

The Baucus plan will be "deficit neutral" only if it goes through Congress without further amendments that will jack up its costs (please!), or if future Congresses and bureaucrats don't fudge with the reimbursement rates (ha!) -- and, in any case, only by virtue of massive new taxes, which will be passed along to all of us in the form of higher charges and premiums.

Like all the other competing congressional bills, this is not an insurance plan at all; it's an enormous new government health-care entitlement program. Though the Baucus version doesn't include an explicit "public option," it won't require one in order to undermine our private-insurance, private-health-care industry. The provisions of the Baucus plan will effectively socialize medical care in the United States, transforming insurance companies into public utilities and conscripting all Americans into the role of involuntary customers of the insurance utilities -- under penalty of fines or jail.

Who are the victims of this plan?

Doctors and other medical-care providers will find their incomes slashed in two ways: first, by huge cuts in reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid, and second (if House funding provisions are included) by massive tax increases on "the wealthy" (which means: doctors). This will discourage them from participating in the plan, or even staying in business. Meanwhile, businesses will be subject to a host of new regulations and potential penalties and costs under the various "mandates" in the plan.

Who else will suffer under the Baucus bill?

If you are young and healthy, your health-insurance premiums will skyrocket to subsidize those older and less healthy.

If you have freely chosen not to buy health insurance in the past, you'll be forced to do so now, spending a lot of money on something you didn't want and may not need.

If you are old and sick, your range of treatments will be slashed as government cuts reimbursements to health-care specialists like cardiologists and oncologists.

Finally, remember: The Baucus bill now will have to be merged with another even-more-leftist bill from another Senate committee -- then subjected to special-interest amendments on the Senate floor –then further reconciled, in a closed-door House-Senate conference committee, with the even more ultra-left House version of the legislation. All this before a final vote and passage. In short, horrible as it is now, it will only get worse as it moves through Congress.

In sum, the Baucus plan is not any sort of "moderate" alternative to the more overt socialism in the House bills. It's merely socialized medicine by stealth -- a plan that will, in time, destroy the tattered remnants of private medical care in America.

Do you want to stop this monstrosity and save your freedom? Then it's time to get off your rear end and join an organized Angry Mob. Time to send out letters of protest to newspapers and to your representatives. Time to shut down congressional email and phone lines with irate messages

Today.

NOW.

Don't make excuses. Our nation's Founders endured far greater perils and inconveniences to stand against a far less intrusive threat to liberty. Can our commitment be any less?

ObamaCare: Big Business vs. Capitalism by Robert Bidinotto

2009-09-26T13:47:00.002-04:00

When many people rail against "capitalism," they are attacking the economic status quo in America today, which they mistakenly believe is "capitalism."

But capitalism is actually a free market system, where government is not involved in business, or vice-versa -- where companies must compete openly and freely, without the government playing favorites or helping some industries at the expense of others.

By that definition, what we have today is emphatically not capitalism. It is "corporatism," the soft label for the economic system pioneered in Mussolini's Italy. No, it is not socialism, where government formally owns all significant businesses. Rather, it is fascism, an economic system in which nominal "ownership" of business is left in private hands, but real control of all aspects of business is held in government hands.

That is the system we are headed for in America, manifested clearly in the current effort to pass ObamaCare.

Consider this article from the Sept. 25, 2009 Wall Street Journal, which shows exactly what I mean. It demonstrates how many businesses, especially larger corporations, are lining up behind ObamaCare, because it will give them access to millions of new customers, while shielding them from the rigors of a competitive marketplace. The idea of a government-dominated health-care system doesn't bother them in the least -- as long as the government is using the force of law to benefit them.

Specifically, many major insurance companies and the big pharmaceutical manufacturers are enthusiastically backing ObamaCare. Why? Because the "individual mandate" will force tens of millions of people who are currently uninsured to become their paying customers. They are salivating at the prospect of the federal government conscripting customers for them. The billions of dollars this will bring them in an ongoing windfall will, they believe, more than offset the downsides of their loss of independence -- of becoming, in essence, high-paid civil servants, working in companies that have become transformed into the medical equivalent of public utilities.

For the same reason, you do not see anyone -- least of all the insurance lobby -- signing on to GOP proposals to open up nationwide competition among insurers in various states. Right now, many state laws allow insurance companies within the states to be protected from outside competitors, limiting the number of insurers that consumers can choose among within a given state. This allows those insurers to operate as an oligopoly, keeping their insurance prices artificially high -- almost as if they were operating behind walls of protective tariffs.

What excuses do big businesses offer for this transparently anti-capitalist behavior? The time-tested "morality" of self-sacrifice, for one thing. Observe at the end of the linked article the quotation from a lobbyist for "Big Pharma": "If health-care reform is going to be successful, it will require a shared sacrifice. . ." Advocates of coercion always rhapsodize about the glories of "sacrifice" -- but only when they are on the receiving end of the sacrifices of others.

This past week, I received a mailing from my "Blue Dog" Democrat congressman, extolling his efforts to expand, under ObamaCare, the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit, which passed five years ago under the Bush administration. The mailing is meant to seduce seniors, the group most opposed to ObamaCare; it promises "to improve Medicare without making seniors pay more." Well, if seniors don't pay the increased costs, who will? The taxpayers, of course.

The propaganda piece carries this attribution: "Paid for by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America."

Reactionary Liberalism and the Peanut Narcissist - Ralph Alter, American Thinker

2009-09-20T21:50:00.003-04:00

Reactionary Liberalism and the Peanut Narcissist

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The refusal to accept objective criticism is just one of many traits shared by Carter and Obama. Both Democrats share an unfounded faith in one’s own moral superiority based on intellectual vanity and narcissism as well.

My own theory about this centers on the affect of postmodernism which I believe underlies the narcissism Alter identifies. Below is information from Stephen Hicks of Rockford College, from his book titled Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. He has a web page dedicated to postmodernism which includes a PDF of his book’s first chapter.

http://www.stephenhicks.org/explaining-postmodernism/

http://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/hicks-ep-ch1.pdf

Postmodernism rejects the Enlightenment project in the most fundamental way possible—by attacking its essential philosophical themes. Postmodernism rejects the reason and the individualism that the entire Enlightenment world depends upon. And so it ends up attacking all of the consequences of the Enlightenment philosophy, from capitalism and liberal forms of government to science and technology.

Postmodernism’s essentials are the opposite of modernism’s. Instead of natural reality—anti-realism. Instead of experience and reason—linguistic social subjectivism. Instead of individual identity and autonomy—various race, sex, and class group-isms. Instead of human interests as fundamentally harmonious and tending toward mutually-beneficial interaction—conflict and oppression. Instead of valuing individualism in values, markets, and politics—calls for communalism, solidarity, and egalitarian restraints. Instead of prizing the achievements of science and technology—suspicion tending toward outright hostility.

Combining Alter’s observation of the narcissism of Obama and Carter with Hicks’ discussion of the postmodern rejection of objectivity leaves us with a possible explanation. With ties to objective facts, to the external work, severed, postmoderns are free to turn inward and promote their feelings, their narcissism, as superior to facts.

ObamaCare's Moral Inversion by Robert Bidinotto

2009-09-13T20:01:00.002-04:00

A special thanks to Robert Bidinotto who gave permission to share his post to Robert's Facebook friends. An excellent analysis, as always.

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Underlying the many practical and technical arguments about ObamaCare areclashing moral principles -- a fact made unusually clear in this Newsweek essay. The author, T.R. Reid, was speaking with a Canadian who was gloating over his country's nationalized health system, and this exchange ensued:

I agreed that Canada does an admirable job of providing free and prompt care to anybody with an acute medical condition. But for nonemergency cases, the system often provides nothing but a long wait. Last summer I tried to get an appointment with an orthopedist in Canada to treat my aching right shoulder; the waiting time, just for an initial consultation, was 10 months. How could you be proud of that?

"You're right," Davies said frankly. "We keep people waiting, to limit costs. But you have to understand something basic about Canadians.Canadians don't mind waiting for elective care all that much, so long as the rich Canadian and the poor Canadian have to wait about the same amount of time" (emphasis added).

This, then, is the ugly essence of socialized medicine: It is the envy-eaten morality of egalitarianism.

Egalitarianism does not advocate that we earn benefits (or liabilities) according to our individual actions. Unlike capitalism, it does not say, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his productivity." Instead, it advocates, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." "Need" trumps any other moral consideration -- including simple justice -- and entitles one to goods and services he has not produced, but which were produced by others.

Worse: It doesn't even aim to benefit the needy; rather, it aims to humiliate the better-off. As long as nobody is permitted to exceed anyone else in economic status or outcomes, socialists are quite willing to put up with anything, even including horrific medical treatment.

That is the ethic of socialism in a nutshell: It is envy, elevated to the dignity of a political system.

The author of the Newsweek article, clearly a socialist sympathizer himself, then goes on to point out that, in one form or degree, all nations on the planet accept this ugly premise -- except the United States. Rooted instead in the moral premises of individualism and individual rights, America is truly "exceptional," because it ties the rewards of life to one's individual efforts. This is the antithesis of the "entitlement" mentality, by which one is "entitled" to goods and services by "right," simply as the result of having been born.

The claim that "health care is a right" is a moral inversion, and in practice, it can lead only to economic disaster.

First of all, let's define our terms. "Health care" means: goods and services produced by doctors, nurses, hospitals, medical equipment manufacturers, medicine R&D companies, pharmacies, nursing homes, etc. To declare that one has "a right to health care" means: One has a moral-political entitlement to all these goods and services regardless of whether one pays for them. Translated, this can only mean: One has a "right" to enslave the producers of such goods and services. The latter, you see, have a boundless duty to provide all these things to the "rightful" claimants, regardless of compensation -- or at compensation terms set unilaterally by the claimants (or by the government, acting in their name), without any corresponding right of the providers to say "No!" The "right to health care," in other words, denies the rights of all those who are supposed to fulfill it.

Moreover, why can't the same argument be made about all other necessities? Humans all need food, clothing, housing, transportation, exercise, education, artistic stimulation, loving relationships, a social life, jobs, etc., etc. Do we therefore have a "right" to be provided all of these things, regardless of our "ability (or willingness) to pay"? Does this mean that we also have a moral claim on the energy, talents, time, and productivity of, respectively: farmers, grocers, construction firms (and their workers), home-finance offices and banks, auto manufacturers and dealers, teachers, owners of gyms and sports facilities, musicians, painters, sculptors, dancers, museums, concert halls, dating services, private clubs, and employers?

Where does the "right to necessities" end? And, as modern life becomes more complicated, what is not a "necessity"?

This brings us to the other term in the claim: "a right." In the American Enlightenment tradition, a "right" is a moral entitlement to freedom of action -- not to goods and services. A right is a moral entitlement to act on one's own behalf, without interference, to obtain life's necessities -- a freedom limited only by the similar freedom of every other person. It is a moral entitlement to pursuehappiness, and to gain, keep, and enjoy the fruits of one's labors; it is not a moral entitlement to happiness itself, or to the fruits of the labors of anyone else.

But the latter is what the advocates of the "right to health care" really mean. They aim to sever any relationship between work and reward. Ultimately, they are claiming an entitlement to a guaranteed existence -- to a life without want, privation, or injury of any kind, regardless of one's own actions or inactions. In their socialist system, no matter how productive or lazy, how rich or poor, one is "entitled" by "right" to "equal" benefits -- or privations. As an individual, you are no longer allowed to independently earn your way to buying, say, prompt or exceptional medical treatment; instead, you must endure your injury or ailment indefinitely, "so long as the rich Canadian and the poor Canadian have to wait about the same amount of time." And you'll get no better treatment than anyone else.

Of course, this moral inversion can't work in practice, and it never has. Once you destroy any link between effort and reward, fewer and fewer are willing to exert exceptional productive efforts. Why should they bother, if they gain no special benefits and rewards? Indeed, why should they bother if they are even taxed more heavily for their extraordinary abilities and output? Why not simply do what everyone else does: cut back on one's efforts and line up for unearned benefits produced by others?

But before you can "equalize distribution," you first must produce something to distribute. When discouraged producers stop producing as much, what happens to the general availability of goods and services in society? That's the practical fallacy in socialism: It encourages unlimited demand, while discouraging supply.

The reason there are long waits for medical care in Canada and other socialized states is that there are shortages of medical-care providers. Sick and tired of endless, unrewarded claims upon their productive energies and incomes, they have decided to stop being so shamefully exploited and financially cannibalized.

"The right to health care" is morality stood on its head. It proclaims a moral entitlement to live as a parasite and to make unending claims upon the medical system's productive hosts. But there is nothing in such a system for the hosts. Ultimately -- and ironically -- there is nothing in it for the parasites, either. As fewer and fewer medical-care providers are willing to produce and offers goods and services that patients require, the only equality will be equality in misery.

The alleged virtue of equality is cold comfort when nobody can find a doctor when he needs one -- or when there is no longer a single non-socialistic medical system anywhere on earth, where desperate socialists in foreign nations can go for the treatments that their egalitarian systems no longer provide them.

That is the grim, immoral future that ObamaCare will bring us in America, too -- if we allow it.

Political Malpractice | CEI

2009-09-13T08:36:00.001-04:00

Here is an analysis from a free market perspective that challenges the often heard claim that the market isn't working in health care. That's right but for a different reason than is alleged: the current market for health care is far from free. Be sure to read the entire PDF document that accompanies this story. Below is some of the text from the landing page.

Political Malpractice | CEI

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Most Americans agree that our health care system is broken and must be fixed. But it is increasingly clear that what ails health care is not too little, but too much government intervention. Federal and state tax preferences for employer-sponsored health insurance distort the market in a way that limits choices for individuals, reduces competition among insurers, and artificially inflates costs for health care services. For most working Americans, switching jobs often entails switching health plans and doctors or losing coverage altogether, while many others find non-employer-sponsored insurance unaffordable or difficult to obtain.

Efforts by federal and state governments over the past few decades to solve these problems have generated additional burdens and distortions, leading to increasingly bigger problems. To ensure affordable coverage for those in poor health or with potentially expensive medical conditions, governments have implemented guaranteed renewability, guaranteed issue, and community rating laws that force healthy individuals to subsidize those with higher health care costs. Many states require insurance policies to pay for niche specialists, including acupuncturists, pastoral counselors, and massage therapists, or to cover alcoholism and substance abuse treatment, smoking cessation, and in vitro fertilization. But these regulations further raise the price of insurance coverage, leading many healthy individuals to forgo insurance altogether.

Similarly, numerous state and federal restrictions on who may provide medical services and how they must be delivered have hindered the development of innovative ways for medical professionals to offer more convenient and lower-cost health services to consumers. A combination of government and medical professional lobbying has restricted the supply of new doctors, creating an artificial scarcity and contributing to rising prices. And medical products regulation substantially raises the cost of producing new drugs and medical devices, often without increasing their safety.

Instead of reducing these burdens, Democratic health reform proposals would impose more regulations on insurers, place mandates on individuals and employers to purchase health insurance, provide subsidies for individuals to pay for health care coverage, expand Medicaid, and create a new government-run âexchangeâ through which individuals and businesses could purchase strictly defined coverage from private insurers. But more government intervention will only add cost and complexity to the health care system; without solving the underlying problems.

The Free Market Is Not Another Form of Rationing

2009-09-07T08:07:00.008-04:00

This article challenges the liberal claim that the free market is just another form of rationing and is therefore the same as government rationing.

The Free Market Is Not Another Form of Rationing

Here is a key quote:

Whenever government attempts to guarantee an alleged "right" to health care, it must also control it. Bureaucrats and politicians must ultimately decide who gets what health care and when, not doctors and patients -- if only to control costs. This is true rationing, and it necessarily violates the actual rights of the practitioners forced to provide care on the government's terms (rather than their own) and the taxpayers forced to pay for it.

The free market is therefore the antithesis of rationing. It respects individual rights, whereas rationing unjustly violates individual rights -- a crucial moral distinction.

If liberals are genuinely concerned about making health care more affordable, they should support free market reforms. Although the current American system is not a free market (but rather a mixed system), it is the least-regulated sectors of medicine (such as LASIK eye surgery) that follow the typical free-market pattern of falling prices and rising quality that we take for granted with computers and cell phones. This can and should be the norm in all of health care.

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Practical Philosophy, Again - Megan McArdle

2009-09-06T08:59:00.001-04:00

And, one final McArdle post (for today anyway) on health care.

Practical Philosophy, Again - Megan McArdle

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Asymmetrical information - Megan McArdle

2009-09-06T08:57:00.001-04:00

Here is a post regarding McArdle's comments on whether anyone on both sides of the debate actually knows what is in the proposed health care bill. Food for thought.

Asymmetrical information - Megan McArdle

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Is Pfizer Too Big to Fail? - Megan McArdle

2009-09-06T08:54:00.001-04:00

Here is an interesting thought from Megan McArdle who, as usual, has thought provoking posts.

Is Pfizer Too Big to Fail? - Megan McArdle

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Health care smorgasbord

2009-08-19T21:11:00.001-04:00

The indefatigable Robert Bidinotto constantly unearthes new articles on the health care debate and shares them on Facebook. I’ve provided some of them below with selected quotes. The first item is one I found, coming from Investor’s Business Daily. It provides some interesting information comparing our health care system with Canada and England.

Health Care Here And Over There by Investor's Business Daily

[D]ata from the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development, hardly a right-wing organization, show that the U.K.'s heart-attack fatality rate is almost 20% higher than America's, and that angioplasties in Britain are only 21.3% as common as they are here.

Or it's easy to forget that in March, the U.K.'s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) ruled against the use of two drugs, Lapatinib and Sutent, that prolong the life of those with certain forms of breast and stomach cancer.

So it's no surprise to discover that while breast cancer in America has a 25% mortality rate, in Britain it's almost double at 46%. Prostate cancer is fatal to 19% of American men who get it; in Britain it kills 57% of those it strikes. We are not making this up.

…

According to Scott Atlas of the Hoover Institution, British patients wait about twice as long as Americans — sometimes more than a year — to see a specialist, have elective surgery such as hip replacement or get radiation treatment for cancer. In Britain, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.

The U.S. has 34 CT scanners per million citizens compared with eight in Britain. The U.S. has almost 27 MRI machines per million compared with about six per million in Britain. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40% higher than in America.

David Gratzer, a physician and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, says the difference is that in the U.S., internists recommend that men 50 and older get screened for colon cancer. In the National Health Service in the U.K., screening begins at 75.

Avastin, a drug for advanced colon cancer, is prescribed more often in the U.S. than in the U.K., by some estimates as much as 10 times more.

As mentioned, British patients wait longer to see specialists. Gratzer notes that a clinical oncology study of British lung cancer treatment found that 20% "of potentially curable patients became incurable on the waiting list."

Firms with Obama ties profit from health push by Sharon Theimer, Associated Press Writer

President Barack Obama's push for a national health care overhaul is providing a financial windfall in the election offseason to Democraticconsulting firms that are closely connected to the president and two top advisers.

Coalitions of interest groups running at least $24 million in pro-overhaul ads hired GMMB, which worked for Obama's 2008 campaign and whose partners include a top Obama campaign strategist. They also hired AKPD Message and Media, which was founded by David Axelrod, a top adviser to Obama's campaign and now to the White House. AKPD did work for Obama's campaign, and Axelrod's son Michael and Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe work there.

How Free Health Care Got So Expensive By Steven Malanga

State government mandates and favorable tax treatment in Washington have so distorted the market for health insurance that a generation of Americans now look on medical coverage as something very different from other kinds of insurance that we buy. While we will pay several hundred bucks out of our own pockets to have a plumber come repair a leaky pipe, we'll balk at deductibles and a $50 co-pay for a doctor's visit. We've been schooled in this attitude by politicians who have mandated that health insurance do things that we'd never expect from other kinds of insurance, and by consumer advocates who will demand our legislators do something about a health insurance company that doesn't cover some optional procedure that has nothing to do with life and death.

ObamaCare Is All About Rationing By MARTIN FELDSTEIN

One reason the Obama administration is prepared to use rationing to limit health care is to rein in the government's exploding health-care budget. Government now pays for nearly half of all health care in the U.S., primarily through the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The White House predicts that the aging of the population and the current trend in health-care spending per beneficiary would cause government outlays for Medicare and Medicaid to rise to 15% of GDP by 2040 from 6% now. Paying those bills without raising taxes would require cutting other existing social spending programs and shelving the administration's plans for new government transfers and spending programs.

The Ugly Truth of Obamacare by John Stossel

[T]here is good reason to worry about Obama's nationalization scheme.

The reason can be found in Econ 101. Medical care doesn't grow on trees. It must be produced by human and physical capital, and those resources are limited. Therefore, if demand for health care services increases -- which is Obama's point in extending health insurance -- prices must go up. But somehow Obama also promises, "I won't sign a bill that doesn't reduce health care inflation".

This is magical thinking. Obama, talented as he is, can't repeal the laws of supply and demand. Costs are real. If they are incurred, someone has to pay them. But as economist Thomas Sowell points out, politicians cancontrol costs -- by refusing to pay for the services.

It's called rationing.

Advocates of nationalization hate that word because it forces them to face an ugly truth. If government pays for more people's health care and wants to control costs, it must limit what we buy.

So much for Obama's promise not to interfere with our freedom of choice.

ObamaCare: Extensive Links Compiled by Robert Bidinotto

2009-08-15T12:59:00.003-04:00

Although Robert Bidinotto is not actively blogging (unfortunately) he is still posting great stuff on his Facebook account. Robert has complied an extensive listing of sites related to the debate over the pending health care bill. Below is his posting.

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To friends who oppose ObamaCare:

You will find this information useful in the coming weeks. Please forward it to others.

THE PENDING BILLS:

Text of HR 3200, the main House bill: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.3200 (Note that each section listed is a link to the text in that section)

Text of the initial Senate bill: http://help.senate.gov/BAI09A84_xml.pdf

COSTS OF OBAMACARE:

Here is Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) June 15 letter to Sen. Ted Kennedy analyzing his Senate committee version of the healthcare legislation, which proposes “health insurance exchanges.” It concludes that this would add one trillion dollars to existing federal deficits over a decade, with a net decrease in the number of uninsured of only 16 million out of the 47 million currently claimed to be uninsured:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/103xx/doc10310/06-15-HealthChoicesAct.pdf

Here is the CBO’s more recent letter, demolishing the argument that “preventive medicine” and “wellness” options will lower the overall costs of Obamacare. In fact, says the CBO, these measures will raise costs:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/104xx/doc10492/08-07-Prevention.pdf

Here is the CBO’s July 17 assessment of H.R. 3200, one of the House bills, projecting a net deficit increase of $239 billion over ten years, with far greater costs after 2019. This analysis, of course, is limited solely to financial cost considerations; it says nothing of the other onerous, coercive provisions of the bill, including skyrocketing taxes on “the rich,” and “employer mandates” on small businesses. Nor does it discuss the inevitable negative impact of the legislation on the supply of healthcare (e.g., doctors, hospitals, etc.):

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/104xx/doc10464/hr3200.pdf

Here is the CBO’s June 16 letter to two senators, which outlines more generally the budget impact of an expanding federal role in healthcare, after factoring in increased subsidies and universal coverage. Pages 2-3 of the supporting document say this would lead to a “permanent increase of roughly 10 percent in the federal budgetary commitment to healthcare,” and actually “cause national spending on healthcare to increase.” The CBO then assesses an array of potential cost-saving mechanisms. However, some of the most fruitful of these—i.e., changing the tax-exempt status of employer-provided health insurance, and tort reform—have already been taken off the table by congressional Democrats. Nor will the current rush to pass legislation give Congress enough time to properly weigh and assess these options and determine their likely unintended consequences. The potential for real long-term savings is thus bleak, and the CBO projections of budget-busting long-term cost increases remain:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/103xx/doc10311/06-16-HealthReformAndFederalBudget.pdf

OTHER CONCERNS ABOUT OBAMACARE:

A section-by-section analysis and critique of major provisions in House bill 3200:

http://www.classicalideals.com/HR3200.htm

“Five Freedoms You’d Lose Under ObamaCare,” from Fortune magazine http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/24/news/economy/health_care_reform_obama.fortune/index.htm

A concise presentation, in Time magazine, of basic internal contradictions in ObamaCare claims:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1914973-1,00.html

A systematic refutation of numerous claims made by President Obama during his New Hampshire “town meeting” on healthcare:

http://keithhennessey.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/hennessey-memo-debating-portsmouth.pdf

An article explaining that what Democrats are advocating is not insurance, but the elimination of the basic principles of insurance, as such -- and the substitution of a new governmental welfare entitlement for insurance:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/08/05/obamas_war_on_health_insurance_97767.html

A brief compilation of comparative medical care statistics from the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain, demolishing many myths about the alleged superiority of nationalized healthcare:

http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/49525427.html

Links to statements by leading Democrats and prominent Obamacare supporters, all acknowledging that various “public option” proposals, including the “co-op” and “insurance exchanges,” are mere stepping stones toward the eventual implementation of “single-payer” nationalized healthcare, and the elimination of private healthcare insurance:

Obama: http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/08/you_want_context_drudge_will_g.asp

Barney Frank:http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/07/30/barney_frank_admits_public_option_would_lead_to_single-payer_system.html

Obama, Frank, and Cong. Jan Shakowsky http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-bY92mcOdk

Writers in the liberal Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sheri-and-allan-rivlin/5-steps-to-major-health-c_b_249516.html

A senior editor of The New Republic http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=5cb3998e-3ee2-494a-ac7d-763a37a6643c

A Washington Post editorial staff member raises serious, non-exaggerated concerns about the “end-of-life counseling” provision in the House bill:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080703043.html

OBAMACARE vs. FREE-MARKET REFORMS AND PRIVATE ALTERNATIVES:

A Washington Post report quantifying the huge impact of “defensive medicine” in increasing healthcare costs, yet noting the refusal of Democrats and the lawyer lobby to any efforts at tort reform, which could dramatically reduce these unnecessary healthcare costs:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/30/AR2009073002816.html

Links to comprehensive information about the various government proposals, and also to a host of free-market alternative plans that Obamacare proponents refuse to consider:

http://healthcare.cato.org/obama-congressional-plans

http://www.heartland.org/suites/health%20care/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203609204574316172512242220.html?mod=djemEditorialPage (what to do about people with pre-existing conditions)

Obamacare's Fatal Flaw

2009-08-07T13:45:00.006-04:00

Obamacare\'s Fatal Flaw

It's a sure sign of trouble when a mainstream media outlet like Time magazine cast doubt on Obama's relentless push to socialize health care. (Hat tip to Robert Bidinotto for the reference.)

Here are some key quotes from this article.

Again and again, their effort has brought us into a land of paradoxes. Public skepticism is warranted when the President promises to cut costs while simultaneously providing coverage to nearly 50 million uninsured people. It is even more warranted when his congressional allies seek to raise taxes to pay for all the new spending that this cost-cutting entails. We aren't talking about short-term spending either; this isn't a trillion-dollar investment in a new system that will ultimately save money. The Congressional Budget Office says the leading health-care-reform proposals will increase health-care spending and make the budget harder to balance in the long run. Yet saving money is the President's principal stated rationale for reform.
Health-care reformers send out mixed messages on the uninsured as well. The moral imperative of improving their health care is what drives the passion of most liberal activists for reform. But when you read the liberal policy analysts, it quickly becomes clear that getting young and healthy people to pay more in premiums than they will spend on medical expenses is the point of forcing them to buy insurance. Which is it? In aggregate, are we trying to rescue the uninsured or bilk them? Is reform something we are doing for them or to them?
The reformers' speed belies their words as well. If health-care reform is so critically important, as they keep insisting, why not take the time to get it right? Hard as it is to believe, at one point Obama was urging the House and Senate to pass legislation by three weeks after they began debating it.

The Liberal Death Watch Begins by Robert Bidinotto

2009-08-04T12:56:00.004-04:00

Robert Bidinotto recently posted the essay below for his Facebook friends. He has graciously granted permission for me to post it here.

The Liberal Death Watch Begins

After just a half year of radical leftist governance, voters are turning against liberal Democrats in droves. Now, so-called Democrat "moderates" -- "Blue Dog" Democrats, first-term freshmen, and Dems elected in "swing" districts -- are becoming scared witless about the upcoming 2010 congressional elections, fearful that they will lose their seats in a voter rebellion against the left.

Even at the time of the last election, I anticipated Obama would face this quick collapse in public support. My assessment was that Obama, like most liberals -- and most Democratic presidential candidates going back to Adlai Stevenson -- is a man of boundless arrogance. His self-image is that he's oh-so-much-smarter, better educated, and more sophisticated than the crude rubes who populate Flyover America. In this, he's cut of the same psychological cloth as McGovern, Kerry, Gore, Carter, and Dukakis: "progressive" technocrats with intellectual pretensions, whose intellectual great-granddaddy was progressive icon Woodrow Wilson. All ooze sanctimonious, self-righteous superiority from their every condescending pore.

But such politicians face a formidable challenge: America is, at core, the nation of individualism. Knowing this, "progressives" must try to camouflage their true nature and values while running for office, in order to fool voters into thinking that they, too, are Regular Guys who share the values of ordinary Americans. Most of them have been awkward in their masquerading, however, which is why they never got elected.

Barack Obama, though, is much more politically slick and savvy than his leftist predecessors. Knowing a radical agenda would never sell in America, he laid the groundwork for his ascendancy in careful steps. He sanitized his background by writing self-serving autobiographies, creating a Horatio Alger "narrative" for public consumption. As state legislator, he avoided taking tough stands that might later come back to haunt him. During his presidential run, he threw his past radical associates under the campaign bus. For years, he's polished and perfected a subdued, reasonable, moderate style and public image, using measured, vacuously noncontroversial language. He also played gently upon America's past racial guilt: A vote for Obama became a vote of racial penance and expiation of sins.

Still, Obama shares with his less-successful liberal forerunners the same smug arrogance that is ever their Achilles' Heel. Liberals think that they know, better than all of us mere mortals, how to run our lives for us. If only we would live according to their all-wise edicts and values, the world would become perfect. So, once in power, they simply cannot resist the temptation to overreach -- to push a radical agenda far, far outside the voters' political comfort zones.

So, I knew that Obama would have to overreach. However, the man's sheer grandiosity and power-lust astonished even me. He aimed at nothing less than to nationalize everything in sight -- overnight. Think of it: the banking and financial sectors of the economy; the auto industry; the housing industry; the entire energy industry; now, the entire health-care industry. Make no mistake; this is deliberate. Obama is a well-read ideologue who cut his teeth on Marx and Alinsky. He knows what he is doing. He aimed to impose his agenda in a rush, before the rest of us realized what he was doing or could organize to stop it.

It hasn't quite worked out as planned, though, precisely because he overreached. The "tea party" rebellion was unexpected. So was the huge influence of conservative talk radio, which has hammered him relentlessly. So was the public's realization that the "stimulus" was a fraud. His hidden values are revealing themselves in countless ways: in his apologies for America on foreign soil; in unscripted racist accusations against police; in befriending foreign enemies and betraying friends. In short, he's living down to every public expectation of what a radical leftist is. And as a result, Obama's poll numbers are tanking; the majority now disapprove of him and his agenda.

Which is why I think we're at the beginning of the liberal death watch.

ObamaCare: The Wrong Prescription

2009-07-25T15:07:00.003-04:00

As the debate over the pending health care bill rages on with Obama and his minions trying to ram through a massive bill that would essentially transform our health care system from a semi-free market to a government managed oligopoly, I want to share some key thoughts from various commenters. But before we get into that here is a flow chart the Republicans have posted that shows the Byzantine mess this bill would create.

As Drs. Tom Stossel and David Gratzer (both of whom are senior fellows of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research) say in their Boston Globe article “Improving our tangled healthcare mess”:

We need to reform American healthcare as we have the other five-sixths of the economy, by emphasizing choice and competition. Today, the system is a jumbled mess of government interventions: tax preferences for employee-based insurance that cost the treasury one-quarter of a trillion dollars a year; payment intermediaries and government-set reimbursements; regulations governing everything from physician ownership of hospitals to requirements in some states that second opinions about surgery be covered by the most basic insurance. The result is a lack of price transparency, limited choices, and a dearth of competition. Rather than attempting to cure this disease with more of the same, Congress should empower citizens to manage their own healthcare.

Gratzer, who worked as a physician in Canada and the U.S. and therefore has seen the difference between the two health care systems, makes a critical distinction in his Investors.com article, “Public Option Is A 'Trojan Horse' For Slow-Motion Socialized Care”.

But if there is a public plan, it will be a variation of Medicare, which single-payer advocates praise as an example of administrative efficiency. A dirty secret goes unmentioned in that tale: Medicare is a federal program, not an insurance plan. It's an apples-to-oranges comparison.

A public plan option can overwhelm even the best private insurers, partly thanks to the unfair advantage of federal status. How? Let me count the ways.

Private insurers must comply with state regulations, where Medicare coverage doesn't.

Medicare is a "pay as you go" entitlement, not an insurance plan.

Properly funded insurance plans must anticipate future costs; in contrast, a public plan option backed by the federal government can simply tax or borrow enough to cover costs from one year to the next to survive.

A Medicare-style plan will set prices with providers, not negotiate them, creating not simply a further competitive advantage, but burdening private plans with cost shifting (as Medicare presently does).

That's why entitlement programs around the world usually start with low fees and great benefits — and a public plan is almost certain to do exactly that — "to be competitive," of course.

Fast forward 10 years and the "affordable" public plan will have captured a huge market share. Obama will be in Illinois drafting his memoirs, but Congress will face stark choices as the plan's costs inevitably spike. The challenges will be eerily similar to the decisions made every day by legislators in countries with government-run health care systems.

When entitlement programs become too expensive, governments ration care, raise taxes, or both. Citizens seeking to leave the less attractive public system will face few alternatives, as private plans will have been blown out of the marketplace by Washington's taxpayer-financed, price-controlled head start.

At the Ludwig von Mises web site Why Obamacare Can't Work: The Calculation Argument, the author makes the following point.

Unfortunately, since Obama uses faulty logic to diagnose the problem, his solutions will only make matters worse faster. The correct framework within which to diagnose the problem is to admit that costs are out of control because they do not reflect prices created by the voluntary exchange between patients and providers, between customers and producers, like every well-functioning industry.
Instead, health costs reflect the distortions that government regulators have introduced through reimbursement mechanisms created by command-and-control bureaucracies at federal and state levels.
Simply put, Medicare, Medicaid, workers compensation, HMOs and even private health-insurance firms that follow Medicare rates, rely on cost reports submitted by providers. This cost data is then pushed through mathematical models and additional data generated by government, such as inflation and regional-labor-cost modifiers, to unilaterally (or in agreement with lobbyists and industry groups) determine what the prices for services should be.
But it is theoretically and practically impossible for a bureaucrat — no matter how accurate the cost data, how well intentioned and how sophisticated his computer program — to come up with the correct and just price. The just price of a health service can only be determined by the voluntary exchange of a patient with his hospital, physician, and pharmacist. The relationship between the patient and his private provider has been corrupted by the intrusion of government and its intermediaries (HMOs, for example) to such an extent that we can no longer speak of a relationship that can produce meaningful pricing information.
But it is theoretically and practically impossible for a bureaucrat — no matter how accurate the cost data, how well intentioned and how sophisticated his computer program — to come up with the correct and just price. The just price of a health service can only be determined by the voluntary exchange of a patient with his hospital, physician, and pharmacist. The relationship between the patient and his private provider has been corrupted by the intrusion of government and its intermediaries (HMOs, for example) to such an extent that we can no longer speak of a relationship that can produce meaningful pricing information.

As Yaron Brook says,

But by the time Medicare and Medicaid were enacted in 1965, this view of health care as an economic product--for which each individual must assume responsibility--had given way to a view of health care as a "right," an unearned "entitlement," to be provided at others' expense.
This entitlement mentality fueled the rise of our current third-party-payer system, a blend of government programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, together with government-controlled employer-based health insurance (itself spawned by perverse tax incentives during the wage and price controls of World War II).
Today, what we have is not a system grounded in American individualism, but a collectivist system that aims to relieve the individual of the "burden" of paying for his own health care by coercively imposing its costs on his neighbors. For every dollar's worth of hospital care a patient consumes, that patient pays only about 3 cents out-of-pocket; the rest is paid by third-party coverage. And for the health care system as a whole, patients pay only about 14%.

And here is the key point in response to the Democrat’s mantra about healthcare being a right.

The solution to this ongoing crisis is to recognize that the very idea of a "right" to health care is a perversion. There can be no such thing as a "right" to products or services created by the effort of others, and this most definitely includes medical products and services. Rights, as our founding fathers conceived them, are not claims to economic goods, but freedoms of action.

Finally, we get to the oft-repeated statistic about the millions of people without health insurance, the statistic that Democrats rely on to get us to buy into their plan. David Harsanyi addresses this in his Denver Post article.

It is true that the 46 million figure is based on unreliable Census Bureau data. But even the less unreliable Congressional Budget Office puts the number at around 31 million. And even that number, former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin claims, is an "incomplete and potentially misleading picture of the uninsured population."

For one reason, the uninsured figure counts every American (and illegal immigrant) who has been uninsured for any time frame during a year, even if they happen to be between jobs or changing insurance plans or on family visit to Guatemala.

According to the CBO, 45 percent of the uninsured are uninsured for four months or less, which seems like a pretty positive number to me.

Then, another portion of uninsured Americans already qualify for an existing government health insurance program — and government already controls 46 percent of spending on health care — for which they have not signed up.

The CBO estimates that as many as 15 percent of the chronically uninsured are already eligible for help. The Urban Institute (hardly advocates of free-market fundamentalism) found that 25 percent of the uninsured qualify for some program.

Surely, most citizens will concur that health care is too expensive (though most citizens would likely concur that everything is too expensive) and something should be done. So when Obama tells us that 46 million Americans are uninsured, he is implying that 46 million people can't afford health insurance. That, too, is absurd.

In a study for the National Bureau of Economic Research, "Is Health Insurance Affordable for the Uninsured?," Stanford economists say that "based on a plausible range of definitions and assumptions . . . health insurance is affordable for between one quarter and three quarters of adults who are not insured."

Turns out that 8.4 million uninsured Americans are making $50,000 to $74,999 and 9.1 million more are making more than $75,000. Health insurance is just incompatible with their lifestyles, I guess.

There are obviously inconveniences — children and mortgages, for instance — that can quickly make $50,000 seem like a pittance. Then again, 27 percent of all adults in their 20s (many, I presume, without offspring) choose not to have health insurance. Many of them surely have the means to purchase insurance, but after meticulously considering the tradeoffs (imbibing or insuring?) say no thanks.

So the bottom line is that, if passed, the bill would entirely revamp our health care system because 10% of the population doesn’t have health insurance. In other words the benefits enjoyed by the vast majority would be denied for the sake of a minority. You would think the geniuses behind all of this could come up with a less intrusive solution. Of course to me this relentless drive to socialize health care reveals a motivation that is driven more by a power grab to expand the government and encroach even more into what is left of our free market. I believe ultimately a visceral hatred of the self-interest inherent in the free market lurks behind the “noble” drive to shackle all of us to the same yoke of socialized medicine.

The Effects of a Gangster Government

2009-07-21T18:00:00.004-04:00

This YouTube link shows what happens when you turn the control of a private enterprise over to public "servants." They're serving all right, but whose interests? The customer's? I think not! This gives a whole new meaning to organized crime.

A Slobbering Love Affair: Book Review

2009-06-19T22:49:00.009-04:00

I have to admit the title accomplishes its goal: makes a book stand out from its competition, like a brightly designed cereal box on a grocery store shelf. (The full title is A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media".) To be totally honest I did not buy the book, figuring I already knew what it was going to say. A friend loaned me her copy and insisted I read it.

While I was right in that the book just confirmed what I had knew about the media's strong leftist bias I was appalled at how flagrantly and shamelessly the media campaigned for Obama. In many cases there were no attempts to even pretend reporting was unbiased. A former CBS reporter and ten-time Emmy winner, Goldberg shares comments his peers said to him when he pointed out some of their blatant favoritism. At one point one colleague who was guilty of such favoritism says, "It is what it is." (!)

Goldberg also stitches together a nice timeline of the election, showing how the media favored Obama over his Democrat primary rivals such as Hilary Clinton. He also explains how the media at first was friendly to John McCain during the Republican primaries because McCain was the most liberal of the Republican candidates but then turned negative when he became the hurdle for Obama's ascendancy to God-hood, I mean the Presidency.

He doesn't spare the Republicans of blame, pointing out their prolifigate spending during the Bush era (or error as I've seen on bumper stickers). Goldberg also has no kind words for Bush's role in the Republican debacle of the 2008 election.

Goldberg does a nice job detailing their sins but, like other conservative critics of media bias, struggles for an explanation why. They are filled with a mixture of rage and confusion while yearning to return to the good old days where the truth and objectivity meant something. As a result his prescription amounts to a taking a teaspoon of common sense. The problem is that a teaspoon of common sense is no match for the erosion and undermining of objectivity. Such common sense didn’t prevent the current situation.

I believe we're seeing the natural consequence of decades of relativism – the belief that there is no objective truth -- as applied to journalism. Thanks in part to the effects of postmodernism where any attempt to defend objectivity was dismissed by merely representing white European, outdated thinking, collective truth has replaced objective truth. By collective truth I mean if enough people believe something and their motive is to "help people" then no criticism is necessary or allowed. And when challenged one’s rebuttal consists of “It is what it is": a proclamation that there is no debate. It’s deuces wild. You can do, or say, what you want with impunity and without shame, as long as it’s for a “good (i.e., liberal) cause.”

If Republicans and conservatives want to combat the media’s bias they’re going to need to better understand the philosophical issues that underlie this bias. Meanwhile the love affair continues unabated as Obama aggressively expands the role of government into even more sectors of the economy.

From the same star: reflections on our common roots

2009-04-27T22:00:00.003-04:00

When I visited my mother recently she played an album, Vom selben Stern (From the same star), by a German group called Ich + Ich. While it has some catchy tunes, I especially like the title song for the thought behind it: that we’re all made from the same ashes of a former star, that we all share a common heritage going back much further than whether we evolved from apes. This idea has intrigued me for years. The chemicals that we are made of couldn’t have come from the cloud of gases that formed the Sun because the heavier elements like carbon, iron, oxygen, and etc. form only within stars that are much older. I’m sure I’m not doing this justice but stars go through cycles. Once they burn up most of their hydrogen the star collapses because the pressure exerted by the fusion reactions decreases, allowing the star’s gravity to temporarily win the battle. As the star collapses the pressure in the interior increases until it is high enough to start a self-sustaining fusion reaction of the heavier elements. This process continues until the star runs out of fuel. For smaller stars like ours it eventually turns into a cinder called a dwarf star. For a large star which generates larger gravitational pressure it can actually turn into a nova. The catastrophic increase in pressure tears the star asunder, spewing out the heavy elements that formed in its interior. Billions of years ago a star died, releasing it elements which were then captured by the Sun’s gravity to form the earth and the other planets. (See this entry on stellar evolution.)

This means we’re made of remnants of a star that died billions of years ago. In addition the earth is in a narrow band from the Sun in which the temperature is just right: much closer and the water would boil away, much further away and the water would freeze. (Some call this the Goldilocks Effect.)

I find this fascinating and amazing. Whether earth, life and consciousness are the result of design or of accidental clumping of chemicals the bottom line is the same: the staggering complexity of life and the formation of consciousness is a miracle.

I think if we kept this in mind we might look at life and our fellow humans a bit differently. I’m not saying that we’re a meaningless speck floating in the cosmos. On the contrary, we’re incredibly, marvelously complex creations with the capacity for self-reflection. I’m also not saying that we should accept people regardless of their beliefs and their actions. What I am saying is that we start with the premise that all of us are miracles and share this incredible history.

Global Warming Open Letter

2009-04-16T20:12:00.005-04:00

ICECAP has posted a link to this open letter to Representative Ed Markey and Joe Barton by The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. In a mere 40 pages Monckton rebuts the most common claims of global warming advocates. Check it out.

Watchmen: A Fine Mess (With spoilers)

2009-03-13T21:02:00.002-04:00

I’ll have to admit to being excited about the Watchmen release because the previews looked so promising. Having seen the movie this Wednesday I’d call it a fine mess. Why? The movie features distinctive characters, stunning visual effects, and an innovative narrative flow. And it was based on an interesting idea: what if Richard Nixon had been re-elected five times and still was President in 1985? In this alternate history line a group of heroes called the Watchmen help the government maintain order and even with its military activities. I haven’t read the graphic novel upon which the movie is based but I gather that the movie closely follows the novel.

Without going into the details of the plot my biggest problem with Watchmen is it's philosophical premise. Basically it's "sacrifice a few to save many." In other words, utilitarianism. In the movie two of the "heroes" are sacrificed. In addition several large US cities are blown up in order to scare the US and USSR into pursuing peace. (The movie was set in an alternate 1985 in which Nixon is still President.) So millions are sacrificed to save billions. I guess this is what passes for “deep” thinking these days: how many people will be sacrificed to preserve the peace, not what it takes to ensure the freedom of individuals.

This approach is typical for collectivists. They talk a lot about saving humanity but little about individual humans. It also inverts conceptual relationships. In the movie peace becomes and end in itself and trumps the freedom (and lives) of individuals. People are used as cannon fodder in search of a “greater good.” As a result people are freely sacrificed to achieve this end. A philosophy that centers on the individual instead will put peace second if achieving this peace means threatening the freedom of citizens.

In addition to using an alternate history to set up the plot it seems the writer buys the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) theory posed by former Secretary of the Defense Robert McNamara. The problem is that the Soviets never bought into MAD. They thought they could win and survive a nuclear war. And, their goal wasn't peace but to eradicate "evil" capitalism. This reveals another flaw in the premise behind MAD and the movie. Searching for a truly peaceful solution assumes both sides share common values. What common values did we share with the Soviet Union? Our system, for all its faults, is based on the premise that the function of government is to protect the interests of the individuals. Communism on the other hand forces individuals to serve the government or the “greater good.” (By the way, exactly who defines what this greater good consists of?) The record for collectivist governments in the 20^th century shows the futility of this approach: tens of millions of people died or were murdered yet the lives of the survivors were incredibly impoverished when compared to those living in freer countries.

This just goes to show that we all have to be “watchmen” against bad premises.

John Stossel's "20/20" special airing tonight, March 13, on "Bailouts and Bull"

2009-03-13T17:09:00.005-04:00

Just received this notice from Flowidealism.org regarding John Stossel special on the bailout. Here is an excerpt from Stossel's notice.

Hi,

Please forgive the impersonal email, but I want to let you know about my bailout special! With the help of Drew Carey and Reason TV, we look at Big Government's promise to "fix" the economy and other bull.

You can find the outlets in your area on http://abcnews.go.com/2020

Here's what ABC lets me say about it:

The Conceit of the Ruling Class

Politicians and pundits say government must do "something." It sound like a Viagra ad: "Does your economy have performance issues? If it's hard to achieve and maintain growth, 'stimulus' is right for you!" But shouldn't "stimulus" come with a warning label? "Side effects may include hyper-inflation, dollar devaluation, horrible debt, growth of welfare state, and unrealized expectations. Stimulus has not been proven successful, so it should not be used in the hopes of achieving actual growth ..."

While politicians claim that "all" or a "consensus" of economists agree that something "big" must be done, more than 300 economists say that the government's action do more harm than good. I interview some, calculate the amount the stimulus costs per taxpayer (about $16,000) and ask lawmakers: Where will you get the money? If too much debt was a problem, why is more debt now a solution?

I confront House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer about his claim that "all economists agree."