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Health Care, Welfare & Entitlements Archive

Monday

17

August 2009

0

COMMENTS

Current Approach To Health Care Is Still Fundamentally Flawed

Written by , Posted in Free Markets, Government Meddling, Health Care, Welfare & Entitlements

The argument for a public option never really made sense.  If there’s an insurance model that could perform better than current models, there’s no reason it can’t be adopted in the private sector, perhaps financed by liberal billionaires like George Soros and Steve Bing, without government legislation.  If it’s really a better choice for consumers, and thus profitable, someone would step forward to do it. On the other hand, there are many obvious disadvantages to administering government insurance (the same disadvantages that plague all government activities), while the only real advantage is the availability of taxpayer money.

If the government is to use taxpayer dollars to run an insurance model at a loss, which is basically a redistribution from taxpayers to insurance consumers (two overlapping but not identical groups), then the same thing could be more easily accomplished without undermining existing insurance providers (food stamps, for instance, don’t undermine grocery stores).  In other words, the public option was always completely unnecessary no matter which side you looked at it from, and the White House may or may not be ceding ground on this issue, depending on who you listen to.   But while dropping the public option from the discussion would be a welcome development, the nature of the health care argument advanced by the White House is still fundamentally flawed. (more…)

Monday

17

August 2009

1

COMMENTS

Radley Balko Versus Whole Foods Boycotters

Written by , Posted in Health Care, Welfare & Entitlements

Radley Balko has decimated the “open-minded” leftists who were so offended by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey’s views on health care.

12) Mackey didn’t deliberately offend his customers, as some have suggested.  He didn’t spit in your face, or, as one commenter so delicately put it, he didn’t “squeeze a turd in [your] punch bowl.” He just overestimated you.

You see, he shared his ideas on health care reform, thinking that you, being so famously open-minded and all, might take to a few of them, or that it at least might start a conversation. I guess he felt he’d built up some cache with you, and wanted to introduce you to some new ideas. His mistake wasn’t in intentionally offending his customers. He’s a businessman who has built a huge company up from the ground. I’m sure he knows you don’t deliberately offend your customers. His mistake was assuming you all were open-minded enough consider these ideas without taking offense—that you wouldn’t throw a tantrum merely because he suggested some reforms that didn’t fall in direct line with those endorsed by your exalted Democratic leaders in Washington. In retrospect? Yeah, it was a bad move. Turns out that many of you weren’t nearly mature enough to handle it.

Hey, the guy isn’t perfect!

Read the whole thing.

Sunday

16

August 2009

0

COMMENTS

Canadian Medical Association Calls For More Competition

Written by , Posted in Health Care, Welfare & Entitlements

Barack Obama recently defended Canada’s health care system while acknowledging that it would not work in the U.S.  It turns out that it doesn’t work in Canada either:

The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says this country’s health-care system is sick and doctors need to develop a plan to cure it.

Dr. Anne Doig says patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country – who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting – recognize that changes must be made.

“We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize,” Doing said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

…

His thoughts on the issue are already clear. Ouellet has been saying since his return that “a health-care revolution has passed us by,” that it’s possible to make wait lists disappear while maintaining universal coverage and “that competition should be welcomed, not feared.”

In other words, Ouellet believes there could be a role for private health-care delivery within the public system.

Hat-tip: NewsBusters

Sunday

16

August 2009

0

COMMENTS

The Power Of Analogy

Written by , Posted in Health Care, Welfare & Entitlements

Steve Chapman captures the cause of the anxiety surrounding the current health care reform proposals:

A hammer is a marvelous tool, but only for the right job. If you took an expensive watch to a repairman and he pulled out a hammer, you would be extremely nervous, if not aghast. Maybe he could find a way to do some good with that implement, but you would be more focused on the damage he could cause.

A similar scenario is playing out in the public anxiety over health care reform. Plenty of people think the existing system is in need of repair. But when they hear about expensive plans that require a more powerful and intrusive federal government, they fear that what is best in our approach to medicine may get smashed in the process.

Read the rest here.

Saturday

15

August 2009

0

COMMENTS

Opposition To ObamaCare Ought Not Be A Defense Of Insurance Companies

Written by , Posted in Free Markets, Health Care, Welfare & Entitlements, Liberty & Limited Government

Free market advocates shouldn’t get too excited defending insurance companies. Yes, the statist tactic of scapegoating private actors in order to justify an expansion of government power is deplorable.  Defenders of free markets have a right to object to those efforts.

But we must also be careful not to forget that these very same private actors are not principled believers of free markets, but rather self-interested entities more than willing to advocate for government meddling when it suits their own agenda.  I made this very argument regarding Wal-Mart’s embrace of government health care mandates, and Tim Carney makes it now regarding the insurance companies themselves:

Dear conservatives: Health insurance companies are not your friends. Keep opposing a new government-run insurer, a single-payer plan, and new regulations on the HMOs. But grant that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is correct on this: Insurance companies are villains.

Insurance companies lobby for big-government regulations, subsidies, mandates, and tax-code distortions that funnel them money, keep out competition, and stultify innovation. These policies preserve the employer-based health-care system that mocks the idea of free-market competition. Then they cry “unfair competition” when government threatens to encroach on their government-protected monopolies.

But they’re not just lobbying against a government option. Today, health insurers are lobbying to force you and me to buy their product or face a tax hike (the individual mandate).

…

Big government advanced on behalf of special interests is just as deplorable as that advanced by power hungry liberals.

Update: John Stossel also tackled this issue.

Wednesday

12

August 2009

0

COMMENTS

Government Meddling Decimates Canadian Sperm Donation

Written by , Posted in Free Markets, Government Meddling, Health Care, Welfare & Entitlements

Moralistic, do-gooder economic policy has consequences:

Why is it that Canada, a country of 12 million adult men, has only 33 sperm donors to supply its thousands of infertile couples? That’s the question being asked by some fertility doctors as many couples look elsewhere for help growing their families.

Canada once had about two dozen sperm banks. But in 2004, the federal government passed the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, which outlawed payment to sperm or egg donors. The only money that has been allowed to change hands is for expenses incurred in the donation process, such as the costs of traveling to the clinic.

Five years later, there are very few Canadian sperm donors willing to donate for free, says Dr. Tom Hannam of the Hannam Fertility Centre in Toronto. That’s left many couples, especially those among visible minorities, without many choices.

Applying the same lesson to other types of medical donations the question becomes: how many more people would we be able to save if compensation was allowed for organs?

Tuesday

11

August 2009

0

COMMENTS

Helping Claire McCaskill Understand The "Rudeness"

Written by , Posted in Health Care, Welfare & Entitlements

Claire McCaskill doesn’t understand the “rudeness” from her most recent town hall.  She was also flabbergasted to learn that, for some strange reason, people weren’t inclined to trust their great Senator.

 Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) expressed dismay at the behavior of her town hall audience today, stopping at one point to criticize what she called “rudeness.”

“I don’t understand this rudeness,” she said when an attendee interrupted her. “What is this? I don’t get it. I honestly don’t get it. Do you all think that you’re persuading people when you shout out like that?”

“I beg your pardon? You don’t trust me?” McCaskill asked when the attendee responded. The crowd erupted with a loud “No!”

“I don’t know what else I can do,” McCaskill said.

Allow me to help you understand, Senator. Your party has rammed through multiple pieces of major legislation with little opportunity to even read the bills, much less digest and debate their impact on America.

This government has no credibility left to claim that it is interested in serious discussion of the issues.  If Obama and Pelosi had their way, the health care bill would have been passed before anyone had any say at all.

People are just tired of it. They are fed up and they are waking up. That’s why they are rude, and why they don’t trust anyone in congress.  It’s not necessarily personal to you – as you are one of the few Democrats who has genuinely tried to listen to your constituents without deliberately belittling, condescending or otherwise insulting them – but since you made your bed with Pelosi, you can expect to see the consequences.

Tuesday

11

August 2009

0

COMMENTS

Breaking News On MSNBC: Man Uses Multiple Constitutional Rights

Written by , Posted in Gun Rights, Health Care, Welfare & Entitlements, Media Bias

MSNBC is freaking out.  Apparently the exercise of not one, but two constitutional rights at the same time is too much for the liberal network to handle.  An American with a gun? The horror!

Outside the event where President Obama will conduct his town hall, there is an anti-Obama protestor with a gun — a pistol strapped to his lower leg.

The local police chief said it’s legal for the man to have a registered handgun — as long as it is not concealed. What’s more, he is on private property, a church yard, which has given him permission to be there.

*** UPDATE *** More on the man with the gun… William Kostric is a married man in his mid 30S who works in sales. He says he moved here to New Hampshire from Arizona about a year ago, because it’s a “live free or die” state — and he thought Arizona was becoming too restrictive with its gun laws.

…

The local police say he is within his rights to carry a handgun openly under state law. He was carrying a 9-mm Smith and Wesson strapped to his lower leg.

Police say he’s OK on a public sidewalk. Kostric says he has permission from a church just down the street from the high school to be on its private property.

Be warned: the ignorant, anti-freedom attitude continues in the article’s comments.

Update: Chris Mathews makes an ass of himself.  Kostric handles his hysterics well.

Friday

31

July 2009

0

COMMENTS

Obama's Health Care Rhetoric Versus Reality

Written by , Posted in Health Care, Welfare & Entitlements

The National Taxpayers Union compared Obama’s words in pushing government-run health care in a recent speech and town hall meeting with the language of the bill itself (overview here).  NTU also compared the positive (market and consumer oriented) language in the bill with the negative.  While Obama used words such as “rights” and “choice” much more frequently in his speech, the language of the bill is considerably more negative.  Here’s how the bill shacks out:

Language of a Busy Bureaucracy…
Term(s)
Frequency
Require/Required/Requirement(s) 494
Report(s)/Reporting/Reported 427
Limit/Limits/Limitation 167
Penalty/Penalties 156
Regulations 91
Tax(es) 72
Enforce/Enforcement 48
Must 47
Prohibit/Prohibiting/Prohibition 28
Sanction(s) 21
Obligation/Obligations 18
Restrict/Restrictive/Restriction 12
Fines 3
Total 1584

–

Limiting Freedom, Competition, & the Marketplace
Term(s)
Frequency
Benefit(s) 375
Choice 47
Options 38
Private 35
Rights 21
Privacy 17
Exempt/Exemption 16
Marketplace 3
Competition 3
Consumer-driven 0
Freedom 0
Liberty 0
Patient-driven 0
Total 555

Thursday

30

July 2009

0

COMMENTS

Will Florida Resist ObamaCare?

Written by , Posted in Health Care, Welfare & Entitlements

I’ll be very proud of my home state if this goes through:

In response to what some opponents see as a Congress that doesn’t represent their interests, State Legislators are looking to the nearly-forgotten American political tradition of nullification as a way to reject any potential national health care program that may be coming from Washington.

The most recent effort comes from Florida State Senator Carey Baker and State Representative Scott Plakon, who this week filed a proposed State Constitutional Amendment (HJR37) as a means to prevent Floridians from being affected by any Federal Health Care Legislation.  If approved by the legislature, Florida residents could be voting on it as early as 2010.

HJR37 would deny the ability of any new law to impose demands, restrictions or penalties on health care choices on Floridians. Versions of proposed federal health care reform legislation have included insurance coverage mandates, and certain penalties on employers who fail to provide employee health insurance.

Even if this does pass, however, the state of Florida itself still imposes demands, restrictions and penalties on health care choices of Floridians.  According to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, Florida currently places 52 mandates on insurance providers, including  benefits for drug abuse treatment, hair prothesis and occupational therapy.  These restrictions on consumer choice harm Floridians just as much as they would if they originated from the federal government.

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About Me

profileI serve as Vice President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a non-profit think tank dedicated to preserving tax competition and free markets. This site features my personal views, which are not reflective of CF&P.

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