Tag: health care

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free trade & free markets ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies too much government

What Gets Lost in Washington

The current battle over “health care reform” is a great example of why representative government frustrates. 

It’s not just that the vast majority of Americans who oppose the Democrats’ bill didn’t get their way. It’s that the proponents of socialized medicine (and that’s the real goal, here: The eventual complete government takeover of medicine) are playing a sort of obstacle-​course race … as I argued yesterday.

Meanwhile, how the anti-​Obamacare message hits Washington vexes, too. 

Some partisan pundits and pollsters go so far as to say that the Democrats’ reform legislation suffers because it lacks a good name. “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” is not a catchy moniker. “Obamacare,” used primarily by its opponents, is super-​catchy. And the Republicans repeal effort is pretty clever: “Repealing the Job-​Killing Health Care Law Act.”

Though “job-​killing” may reference a hot, current topic, it is far from the most salient thing one might say against the Democrats’ rushed-​through plan.

Standard politics: Even when politicians do the right thing, they push it for the wrong reason.

Media folk are now beginning to spin the popular opposition to Obamacare. Carefully worded polls “prove” that Americans aren’t overwhelmingly against the plan.

Which misses the real point: Incredulity. Democrats ballyhooed the notion that further government intervention into medicine would reduce costs. Nonsense, of course. And Americans know it. 

That common-​sense skepticism is precisely what gets lost in all the politics.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly free trade & free markets too much government

The Alternative to the Public Option

The congressional “progressive” caucus still wants to impose a public health insurance option, allegedly to “reduce the deficit.”

According to caucus kingpin Raul Grijalva, deficit hawks are “hypocrites” for predicting that government spending would balloon were a public option imposed. Their “excuse … that it was going to be too expensive is phony,” according to Congressman Grijalva.

The progressives’ notion seems to be that accelerating the pell-​mell government takeover of the medical delivery industry is the very best thing one could do to reduce the deficit.

If that’s the case, then why not also “reduce the deficit” with respect to other sectors of the economy in which government spends any money at all — that is, in any economic sector — by launching a government takeover that eventually swamps private markets altogether? 

By “progressive” logic, communizing the whole economy must be the best way to foster fiscal sobriety in DC. 

Absurd, I know.

Perhaps Grijalva’s deceived by his franking privilege. The public option for postal delivery works so well. For him. For the rest of us, we have to pay the billions the USPS loses every year.

The solution to the USPS’s constant, persistent failure is not to regulate and nationalize Fed-​Ex and UPS and every other alternative. 

Real progress requires the opposite of Grijalva’s “progressivism”: Pry government out of both health care and postal delivery. This is not a radical idea. It is only … well …

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

The Canadian Treatment

While President Obama flew to foreign lands to lobby for Chicago’s Olympic bid, a group of Americans trekked to Canada to find out about government-​run health care.

Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute in Colorado, visited Vancouver, British Columbia, to host a conference that explored Canada’s medical system. Caldara’s foray north was written about in the Washington Times, and the Los Angeles Times interviewed some of the same Canadians.

Caldara’s interest in the subject is personal as well as civic-​minded. He has a 5‑year-​old son who has undergone eight operations, including heart surgery. From what Caldara can tell, his son would have received little or none of this treatment in Canada. There, instead, he would have been put on waiting lists.

Caldara heard stories from Canadians who had been shuffled from one specialist to another, each requiring long waits before even being seen. Actual treatment? More waiting.

Outside the system, entrepreneurs have sprung up to broker deals with private physicians to the south, in the U.S., and even with growing quasi-​illegal clinics in Canada.

Meanwhile, in our little haven for sick Canadians, American politicians still talk about reforms that would ruin it for the Canadians — as well as for us. Some even prefer the Canadian system to what we have now.

Jon Caldara doesn’t think this makes sense. Neither do I.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability national politics & policies too much government

Drop Out of the Bucket

Does $40.3 million seem like a lot of money to you? It does to me.

But to the Social Security Administration? It’s a drop in the bucket.

Or, a drop out of the bucket.

You see, while the federal government is scheduled to soon reinstate the estate tax on the wealth of deceased people, we now learn that it has also been giving money to the dearly departed.

Yes, an internal audit of the Social Security Administration revealed that it paid out more than $40 million to over six thousand dead people.

These benefits were given out weeks, months, years after receiving death certificates. The bureaucracy had been duly notified. And yet it went blithely on, continuing to send monthly checks.

Bureaucratic error. Hey, we all make mistakes. But it’s worth noting that this was an internal audit. Who knows what we’d catch if it were an external audit, with teeth?

Lately, the federal government has been talking over car companies and banks. Now the president and Congress plan to take control of the medical sector of our economy. They tell us they’ll cut medical costs by cutting waste. Yeah, right.

On a cheerier note, we needn’t fear the institution of those so-​called “death panels” to cut costs. The way the feds work, there’d be no savings — they’d still be paying for care long after the patients were dead and gone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies

They Lie!

Honor amongst thieves. It’s a great literary concept, explored in The Glass Key and Miller’s Crossing. In real life, actual thieves, when organized, can’t go to the police for adjudication. So the old, tribal concept of “honor” often serves.

It sure serves Congress. Mark Twain quipped that “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” Very funny — but you don’t need statistics. All you need is the Constitution and the latest issue of the Congressional Record.

Still, Congress has its honor. Even the lies of any particular politician are not supposed to be called out by another politician. Fellow pols are supposed to say “The Honorable So-​and-​So surely errs” — not “lies.”

And legislators are certainly not supposed to interrupt a president’s speech before Congress to shout “You lie!” Hear that, Mr. Wilson? How indecent of you! How … dishonorable.

But never once in mainstream reporting on Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” challenge did I hear anyone actually address the alleged fact of the challenge: did the president lie? 

Well, I don’t like to use that word, but he was talking about health care reform. You could almost blindfold yourself and throw a dart at reform rhetoric and still hit a whopper with each throw. 

That people were more disturbed by the outburst than the likelihood of lying says a whole lot about politics today.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Medical Insurance to the Max

Get everybody into a medical insurance plan, fast! But how?

Lots of “universal coverage” talk assumes that most uninsured folks are “too poor.” But look, most young people don’t buy insurance because they are healthy. And I know oldsters who have gone through life without medical insurance. When they’ve needed a shot, or a few stitches, they’ve visited the doctor and paid the bill.

Becky Akers, writing in The Christian Science Monitor, wants to know why everyone wants to force her to buy something she thinks makes no financial sense.

Ms. Akers admits that, though she is healthy and without insurance, she could get run over by a bus. But she bets she can cover most medical needs out of her savings and income. 

Supporters of government managed medicine judge this irresponsible. 

And yet, many of these critics are the same folks who insist that catastrophic medical insurance — the kind that is inexpensive because of huge deductibles — cover everybody, regardless of pre-​existing conditions. But this turns insurance into a transfer program, workable only with high prices. Add full coverage rather than catastrophic, and medical insurance skyrockets beyond most people’s pay grade.

Yet if politicians would just stop tinkering with insurance, medical prices would come down for everyone, as Akers suggests … including, even the uninsurable, who would still require aid other than insurance.

If you are already sick, it’s too late to insure against sickness.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.