Category Archives: Democrats

The Miracle Of Free Markets

Ann Coulter, Capitalism, Democrats, Free Markets, Government, Healthcare, Uncategorized

Ann Coulter: “There are roughly 1 million examples of the free market doing a better job and the government doing a worse job. In fact, there is only one essential service the government does better: Keeping Dennis Kucinich off the streets.

So, naturally, liberals aren’t sure. In Democratic circles, the jury’s still out on free-market economics. It’s not settled science like global warming or Darwinian evolution. But in the meantime, they’d like to spend trillions of dollars to remake our entire health-care system on a European socialist model.

Sometimes the evidence for the superiority of the free market is hidden in liberals’ own obtuse reporting.

In the past few years, the New York Times has indignantly reported that doctors’ appointments for Botox can be obtained much faster than appointments to check on possibly cancerous moles. The paper’s entire editorial staff was enraged by this preferential treatment for Botox patients, with the exception of a strangely silent Maureen Dowd.

As the Times reported: ‘In some dermatologists’ offices, freer-spending cosmetic patients are given appointments more quickly than medical patients for whom health insurance pays fixed reimbursement fees.’

As the kids say: Duh.

This is the problem with all third-party payor systems – which is already the main problem with health care in America and will become inescapable under universal health care.

Not only do the free-market segments of medicine produce faster appointments and shorter waiting lines, but they also produce more innovation and price drops. Blindly pursuing profits, other companies are working overtime to produce cheaper, better alternatives to Botox. The war on wrinkles is proceeding faster than the war on cancer, declared by President Nixon in 1971.

In 1960, 50 percent of all health-care spending was paid out of pocket directly by the consumer. By 1999, only 15 percent of health-care spending was paid for by the consumer. The government’s share had gone from 24 percent to 46 percent. At the same time, IRS regulations made it a nightmare to obtain private health insurance.

The reason you can’t buy health insurance as easily and cheaply as you can buy car insurance – or a million other products and services available on the free market – is that during World War II, FDR imposed wage and price controls. Employers couldn’t bid for employees
with higher wages, so they bid for them by adding health insurance to the overall compensation package.”

More.

Updated: ‘Fannie Med’ On The March

Democrats, Fascism, Healthcare, Regulation, Socialism, Uncategorized

Cato’s Michael F. Cannon on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s latest bright idea: “President Obama and his congressional allies want to create yet another government-run health insurance program (call it Fannie Med) to cover yet another segment of the American public (the non-elderly non-poor).

The whole idea that Fannie Med would be an ‘option’ is a ruse.

Like the three ‘public options’ we’ve already got – Medicare, Medicaid, and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program – Fannie Med would drag down the quality of care for publicly and privately insured patients alike. Yet despite offering an inferior product, Fannie Med would still drive private insurers out of business because it would exploit implicit and explicit government subsidies. Pretty soon, Fannie Med will be the only game in town – just ask its architect, Jacob Hacker.

Now the question before us is, ‘Should we allow states to opt out of Fannie Med?’ It seems a good idea: if Fannie Med turns out to be a nightmare, states could avoid it.

But the state opt-out proposal is a ruse within a ruse.

Taxpayers in every state will have to subsidize Fannie Med, either implicitly or explicitly. What state official will say, ‘I don’t care if my constituents are subsidizing Fannie Med, I’m not going to let my constituents get their money back’? State officials are obsessed with maximizing their share of federal dollars. Voters will crucify officials who opt out. Fannie Med supporters know that. They’re counting on it.

A state opt-out provision does not make Fannie Med any more moderate. It is not a concession. It is merely the latest entreaty from the Spider to the Fly.” [End excerpt]

And this from Tom DiLorenzo:

“The only sensible approach to healthcare ‘reform’ would be massive privatization of America’s socialized hospitals, combined with deregulation of the medical professions to introduce more competition, and deregulation of the health-insurance industry. Free-market competition would produce medical ‘miracles’ the likes of which have never been seen, while dramatically lowering the cost of healthcare, just as it has done in every other industry where it is allowed to exist to any large degree.

This is not likely to happen in the United States, which at the moment seems hell-bent on descending into the abyss of socialism. Once some states begin seceding from the new American fascialistic state, however, there will be opportunities to restore healthcare freedom within them.”

Update (Oct. 28): To the erroneous comment below from “Moonbat”: The market NOW in its knee-capped state still delivering abundance and plenty. The consumer/citizen is obvious to what comes as a seemingly effortless result of the Invisible Hand. So good ideas do not win out; ditto liberty.

Milton Friedman spoke about mankind’s oblivion to the abundance of the market with great clarity.

“The aggregated wisdom of men acting freely in the market place accounts for the cornucopia Americans take for granted. This abundance does not preclude affordable health insurance. For six dollars a day, the baying Boobus can purchase pretty comprehensive coverage, no deductibles or screening for pre-existing conditions. The average immoral dolt, however, prefers to spend the meager sum on a six-pack and hope that others will be coerced into covering his care.”

Updated: 'Fannie Med' On The March

Democrats, Fascism, Healthcare, Regulation, Socialism, Uncategorized

Cato’s Michael F. Cannon on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s latest bright idea: “President Obama and his congressional allies want to create yet another government-run health insurance program (call it Fannie Med) to cover yet another segment of the American public (the non-elderly non-poor).

The whole idea that Fannie Med would be an ‘option’ is a ruse.

Like the three ‘public options’ we’ve already got – Medicare, Medicaid, and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program – Fannie Med would drag down the quality of care for publicly and privately insured patients alike. Yet despite offering an inferior product, Fannie Med would still drive private insurers out of business because it would exploit implicit and explicit government subsidies. Pretty soon, Fannie Med will be the only game in town – just ask its architect, Jacob Hacker.

Now the question before us is, ‘Should we allow states to opt out of Fannie Med?’ It seems a good idea: if Fannie Med turns out to be a nightmare, states could avoid it.

But the state opt-out proposal is a ruse within a ruse.

Taxpayers in every state will have to subsidize Fannie Med, either implicitly or explicitly. What state official will say, ‘I don’t care if my constituents are subsidizing Fannie Med, I’m not going to let my constituents get their money back’? State officials are obsessed with maximizing their share of federal dollars. Voters will crucify officials who opt out. Fannie Med supporters know that. They’re counting on it.

A state opt-out provision does not make Fannie Med any more moderate. It is not a concession. It is merely the latest entreaty from the Spider to the Fly.” [End excerpt]

And this from Tom DiLorenzo:

“The only sensible approach to healthcare ‘reform’ would be massive privatization of America’s socialized hospitals, combined with deregulation of the medical professions to introduce more competition, and deregulation of the health-insurance industry. Free-market competition would produce medical ‘miracles’ the likes of which have never been seen, while dramatically lowering the cost of healthcare, just as it has done in every other industry where it is allowed to exist to any large degree.

This is not likely to happen in the United States, which at the moment seems hell-bent on descending into the abyss of socialism. Once some states begin seceding from the new American fascialistic state, however, there will be opportunities to restore healthcare freedom within them.”

Update (Oct. 28): To the erroneous comment below from “Moonbat”: The market NOW in its knee-capped state still delivering abundance and plenty. The consumer/citizen is obvious to what comes as a seemingly effortless result of the Invisible Hand. So good ideas do not win out; ditto liberty.

Milton Friedman spoke about mankind’s oblivion to the abundance of the market with great clarity.

“The aggregated wisdom of men acting freely in the market place accounts for the cornucopia Americans take for granted. This abundance does not preclude affordable health insurance. For six dollars a day, the baying Boobus can purchase pretty comprehensive coverage, no deductibles or screening for pre-existing conditions. The average immoral dolt, however, prefers to spend the meager sum on a six-pack and hope that others will be coerced into covering his care.”

Update II: War President (EIGHT MORE)

Barack Obama, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Republicans, War

When it comes to the wastrel wars the US is waging, there are few difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. If cleavages do exist, they are a matter of degree; John Kerry favors “a modest increase in U.S. troops”; The Other John is for a “huge surge.” You’d think that the always-opportunistic Republicans would see an opportunity to open up a lead by forging a new foreign policy. For as their economic fortunes have turned, so too have the American people turned against the wars in a big way.

But when Newt Gingrich and Sean Hannity speak of a strong national defense, they are down with the party that wants to linger in places where Americans are unwanted (sometimes called nation-building): The Democrats.

Yesterday, there was a “bloodbath in Baghdad”: “Two car bombs turned Baghdad into a killing field on Sunday October 25th, claiming the lives of at least 155 people and injuring hundreds more.”

Today, reports the AP, Kabul was the scene of a helicopter crash that killed 14 Americans — 11 troops and three Drug Enforcement Administration agents, “in the deadliest day for the U.S. mission in Afghanistan in more than four years.”

So far BO, the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, has sustained Bush’s efforts in both theaters, while giving a good deal of thought to accelerating them.

Update I (Oct. 27): AP: As OB dithers—but not in the way the colossal Dick Cheney meant it—“Eight [more] American troops were killed in two separate insurgent attacks Tuesday in southern Afghanistan”:

The military issued a statement saying the deaths occurred during “multiple, complex” bomb strikes. It said several troops were wounded and evacuated to a nearby medical facility, but gave no other details.

Capt. Adam Weece, a spokesman for American forces in the south, said both attacks occurred in Kandahar province. In Washington, a U.S. defense official said at least one was followed by an intense firefight with insurgents who attacked after an initial bomb went off. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to release the information.

The deaths bring to 55 the total number of American troops killed in October in Afghanistan.

Update II: Matthew Hoh, “a former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq,” writes the WaPo, has become “the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency.”

I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan,” he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department’s head of personnel. “I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end.

[SNIP]

Whereas a Republican administration would have opted to smear this principled fellow—as it did Scott Ritter, the 12-year Marine Corps and gulf-war veteran who opposed the rabid attack on Iraq—the Obama overlords have tried to co-opt him; bribe him with career inducements. U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry “offered him a job on his senior embassy staff.” Richard C. Holbrooke, “the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan, … asked Hoh to join his team in Washington.”

“Hoh accepted the argument and the job, but changed his mind a week later:

many Afghans, he wrote in his resignation letter, are fighting the United States largely because its troops are there — a growing military presence in villages and valleys where outsiders, including other Afghans, are not welcome and where the corrupt, U.S.-backed national government is rejected. … the United States is asking its troops to die in Afghanistan for what is essentially a far-off civil war.

Ritter rising.