Category Archives: Individual Rights

Updated: Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Obamacare …

Constitution, Democrats, Free Markets, Healthcare, Individual Rights, Political Economy, Regulation, Socialism

“Adding an 800-pound governmental gorilla into the healthcare marketplace, under any name, is still a net, enormous loss of your healthcare freedom and choice—not a gain,” avers Robert Bidinotto. “We need to stop this fraud in its tracks.”

Bidinotto is talking about the “Co-ops,” of which I have written: they “will offer a good deal of co-optation and not many options. Those who’re smitten by B.O.’s Svengali-style hypnotism will welcome the news that he and the secretary of Health and Human Services will be running their cozy ‘co-op.”

Writes Robert:

The Sunday papers are announcing that the White House is going to “retreat” on the so-called “public option” — i.e., a government healthcare option to compete with the private insurers. Instead, they are getting bipartisan support for establishing a publicly funded healthcare “co-op.”

See here: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aRqy6w7DFAB0

But this is no “retreat.” The co-op arrangement is simply the public option by another name, and by a more circuitous, stealthy route — with the same ultimate objective: nationalized healthcare.

Understand that the “co-op” would be funded by the government (i.e., the taxpayers). More importantly, to get admission into the co-op, insurers would have to abide by the new governmental regulations regarding coverage, treatments, premiums, etc.

Ah, but this still would be “private,” right? Not according to Health and Human Services Sec. Nancy Sebelius. See this:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_health_care_overhaul

Here is her “money quote” from that article about the co-ops, which gives away the White House’s game:

“I think there will be a competitor to private insurers,” Sebelius said. “That’s really the essential part, is you don’t turn over the whole new marketplace to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing.”

Make no mistake, then: This is no liberal “retreat” from governmental healthcare. The new “co-op” is explicitly intended to be “a competitor to private insurers.” While ObamaCare would inject this new government entity into the healthcare marketplace, it simultaneously would

* impose onerous, costly new mandates on private insurers,

* mandate participation by unwilling individuals and small businesses, under penalty of whopping fines,

* outlaw any private insurers that refused to adopt the new government-imposed rules, and

* compel taxpayers to fund the arrangement.

Eventually, inevitably, the only private insurers that could survive this arrangement would have to operate like branch offices of the Medicare program — simply administering government “mandated” coverage, services, treatments, medicines, etc.

Rather than “single payer” socialized medicine, then, this would be more like fascist medicine: a merely nominal “private” system, in which a handful of big healthcare insurers and providers took their marching orders from the federal government.

Robert has compiled a comprehensive list of links on the healthcare Obamination:

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.go/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

dex.htm”>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

Two important articles offering everything you need to know about government healthcare rationing:

1. “The Road to Rationing” — showing how the idea of “a right to healthcare” leads inexorably to socialized medicine. Outstanding!
http://atlassociety.org/cth-43-2217-road_to_rationing.aspx

2. “Rationing by Any Other Name” — showing the difference between market “rationing” of goods and services, and political rationing of goods and services.

http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/08/rationing_by_any_other_name.php

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:

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

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

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

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

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

A top Atlanta eye doctor weighs in on government medicine, speaking from experience:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/obamacare_and_me.html

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

20 Questions to Ask Your Congressman on Healthcare:

http://www.intellectualactivist.com/php-bin/news/showArticle.php?id=1126>

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)

FROM THE MERCER VAULT:

The Authentic Ass-troturfers
8/14/2009
Destroying Healthcare For The Few Uninsured
8/7/2009
Code Blue! How Canada Care Nearly Killed My Kid
7/31/2009
Obama’s Politburo Of Proctologists

Update (August 18): I’m indulging Robert Bidinotto and posting this: “How American Health Care Killed My Father.” Robert dubs this long, drawn-out essay the best he’s read in the topic. I completely disagree; it’s boring, discursive, takes ages to buildup to a point, and is full of linguistic redundancies (“cements in place”). I could read no more when the writer left off the dead grandpa and picked-up with the wisdom of his grandma, having still not made a material point.

In any case, you be the judge, and do distill any worthwhile, “new” insights for us. As someone who’s able to make crucial points in 850 words, I think prolixity ought to be punished, not lauded.

Updated: Vin Suprynowicz On The Immigration Vexation

Classical Liberalism, Crime, Founding Fathers, IMMIGRATION, Individual Rights, libertarianism, Multiculturalism, Reason

“Californians are living now what will be America’s future—unless mass immigration is stopped,” writes Peter Brimelow of VDARE.COM. I thought I’d beat the daring VDARE folks by mentioning the latest American of note to be picked-off by an immigrant: NFL quarterback Steve McNair. His alleged assailant was a 20-year-old Iranian woman, Sahel Kazemi. But VDARE, being unbeatable on exposing the miseries and contradictions of enforced, centrally planned “third-world immigration and immiseration”—that proved impossible.

I do want you to read “Letting the looters vote on who’s for lunch,” an eminently reasonable column by another intrepid freedom lover, Vin Suprynowicz. Other than Vin, myself and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, I have not come across a libertarian who was willing—and able—to offer a sane, reality-based, countervailing analysis of current libertarian “thinking” on immigration:

“A recent column on the euphemisms used by proponents of illegal-immigrant amnesty brought some irate buzzing from all seven members of the Young Anarchists’ League.

As near as I can figure, I’m “not allowed” to call for the enforcement of current immigration laws — or possibly of any laws, even those few (like the immigration laws) enacted within the powers delegated to Congress under the Constitution — because any such enforcement of the law amounts to some kind of “collectivist police state fascism” against people who have “not initiated force or fraud.”

I’m not sure how you cut through a border fence without “initiating force,” or how you rent an apartment, register a car and go to work every day using someone else’s Social Security number without “initiating fraud.”

I’m further “not allowed” to cite the cost to taxpayers of illegal alien trespassers swarming our public schools and hospitals, lest I be accused of somehow “supporting” tax subsidies for schools and hospitals.

As it so happens, as a libertarian (not an anarchist) I do stand proudly and publicly against tax subsidies for schools and hospitals. People should pay their own way, and seek private charity if unable to do so. This would bring down costs for everyone. But that’s not enough for my young anarchist friends. Instead, I am apparently obliged to pretend these current, swelling tax burdens do not exist.

Perhaps this is an easier position to maintain if Mommy and Daddy still pay all your taxes, while allowing you to live in the basement, pounding your keyboard.

I do remember hearing my friend Jackie Casey, former head of the college Libertarians at the University of Arizona, regaling me with tales of how she would join her mother to visit rental properties the family owned south of Tucson.

Virtually every night, the human waves pouring north through the area would invade these residence units, using the sinks and other available surfaces for bodily activities which most of us reserve for actual toilets. Jackie and her mom would don elbow-length rubber gloves and go to work with their ammonia and bleach, cleaning up the human feces deposited by our noble wave of “harmless guest workers” who I’m “not allowed” to call trespassers because they “never initiative force or fraud” against anyone, merely going “where landlords and employers want them.” …

“Tara Cleveland was a lovely Las Vegas beauty pageant runner-up, an all-A student who wanted to go to law school and who sang at an annual “Spring Fling” employee party here at the Review-Journal 15 years ago. A short time later she was involved in a minor traffic accident in nearby North Las Vegas in which her car was struck by another car driven by two illegal Mexicans.

These two honored Latino guest workers immediately thought, “What would brave freedom fighters like George Washington and Nathan Hale have done, in these circumstances?” So, of course, they ran away.

Tara pursued and confronted the pair. At that point, channeling the spirits of brave patriots like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, these two south-of-the-border freedom fighters shot Tara Cleveland in the face with a double-barrelled shotgun, which had the predictable effect of killing her. They then stole her car and ran away again, eventually reaching Mexico.

It sure puts me in mind of the courage, the principles, the self-sacrifice of the men who risked their lives and their personal fortunes to fight the American Revolution, doesn’t it you?

One of the pair, Joseph Villezcas, was turned over by Mexican authorities in 2006, after they determined he was not actually a Mexican national. He was returned to Nevada and convicted of second-degree murder. But the other, now-33-year-old Fernando Garcia Valenzuela, received sanctuary in Mexico.

Clearly a genius on the order of Ben Franklin, freedom-fighter Valenzuela was not about to stay home, though. He was arrested in California in 1998 and 1999, though authorities there did not link him to the outstanding Las Vegas warrant, possibly because he used fake ID and a fake date of birth — while somehow still not “initiating force or fraud,” you understand.”…

[SNIP]

Read the complete column, “Letting the looters vote on who’s for lunch.”

This writer has argued that on certain “moral (and legal) matters, patriotic, freedom-loving Americans agree instinctively.” The right and righteous rage Suprynowicz expresses comports with the aforementioned observation.
It also reminds me of my sentiments in “José Medellín’s Dead; Cue The Mariachi Band.” To say nothing of my unabashed refusal, in the fractious Comments Section of a BAB debate (scroll down for the referenced exchange), to succumb to Tom Knapp’s egalitarianism-tainted brow-beating and admit that we are all essentially the same, and that—because all immigrants—libertarian scribe ilana mercer and her Ph.D., productive spouse were comparable in their combined contribution to this country to a scum, uneducated, illegal alien, Mexican drug dealer.

In its vim and verve, the Vin piece captures all that stuff. And it’s all good.

Update: Do me the courtesy of at least being vaguely acquainted with my position on immigration (gleaned from going through the Immigration Archive). My policy is not to quote distortions of my positions. I’ve never contended that “illegal immigration” is the country’s demise. Rather, mass immigration, legal and illegal, will indeed be the country’s undoing. I’m an immigration restrictionist for a reason. And those who’re not are rightly termed the “Treason Lobby.”

In response to the tired, so called argument to the effect that, “We have local criminals and welfare bums in the US,” I have countered again and again in articles and on the blog (only the other day) that,
“From the fact that taxpayer-funded welfare for nationals is morally wrong, why does it follow that extending it to millions of unviable non-nationals is economically and morally negligible? Or that it remotely comports with the libertarian goal of curtailing government growth? How is this stock-in-trade, truncated argument different from positing that because a bank has been robbed by one band of bandits (welfare-dependent nationals), repelling or arresting the next (welfare-dependent non-nationals) is unnecessary because the damage has already been done?”

If the leap is not too difficult, please apply this logic to local versus imported criminals, and please do not again inflict on me the vacuity of the non sequitur, “But, but, we have plenty local criminals in the country…”

So bloody what? The premise of that “argument” is: Importing more detritus is negligible to life and property (the robbed bank analogy), because, once some nationals steal property and snuff-out lives, then non-nationals ought to be allowed to have at these expendable resources.

'Wise Latina' Loses

Affirmative Action, Constitution, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Race, Racism, The Courts

Sonia Sotomayor’s Latina wisdom has come back to hurt and haunt her in the case of the New Haven Honkies, whose discrimination case she dismissed. So too is the Supreme Court’s blah blah Bader Ginsburg’s dissent noteworthy for its unwise quality. At least neither one of these Delphic ditzes carried the day. Reports the Christian Science Monitor:

“The US Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 on Monday that the Connecticut city violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by using race as the key criterion in refusing to certify a group of white and Hispanic firefighters for promotion.

City officials said they were afraid that if they promoted the white and Hispanic firefighters but no African-American firefighters, the city would be subject to a lawsuit by black firefighters. The high court disagreed.

“Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer’s reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.

The high court’s action overturns the 2008 decision of a three-judge appeals-court panel that included Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s nominee to replace retiring Justice David Souter.

The New Haven firefighters case – and the Supreme Court’s view of it – are expected to play an important role in Judge Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation hearings next month.

The judge is believed to be a strong supporter of New Haven’s legal position in the case. In addition, it is unclear why her three-judge panel initially handed down a brief, unpublished, unsigned summary order disposing of the case without offering even cursory legal analysis.

Beyond the Sotomayor nomination, the decision is important because it provides guidance to employers that they may continue to rely on objective, work-related exams without facing a discrimination lawsuit from those who do not pass the test.

At the heart of the case were two competing provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. One section bars discriminatory treatment based on race or ethnicity. A different section urges employers to avoid making job-related decisions that create a disparate impact on minority workers.

If, for example, a city conducts an exam to determine which workers will be promoted and then no African-Americans are identified for promotion – that disparate impact on black workers is presumed to be illegal. The city is expected to correct the situation.

But the law also forbids employers from using race as the sole or primary criterion for hiring or promotions – including decisions that disfavor white employees because of their race.

In this way, New Haven found itself in a Catch-22.

Justice Kennedy and the other majority justices resolved this dilemma by ruling that New Haven needed a “strong basis in evidence” to justify its discrimination against white and Hispanic firefighters. He said a mere statistical disparity alone could not amount to the strong evidence necessary.

Kennedy added that once a fair test procedure is set, employers may not invalidate the results based on race or ethnicity. “Doing so … is antithetical to the notion of a workplace where individuals are guaranteed equal opportunity regardless of race,” he wrote.

In a dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said New Haven had not engaged in illegal discrimination against the white firefighters because they had no vested right to a promotion.

She wrote that the majority justices ignored “substantial evidence of multiple flaws in the tests New Haven used.” She added that the court failed to acknowledge better tests used in other cities.

“The court’s order and opinion, I anticipate, will not have staying power,” she said.

[SNIP]

From “Beware of ‘Absolut’ Libertarian Lunacy”: “By petitioning the courts, when they should go gentle into that good night, white men like Ricci are seeking equality of results much as blacks do through coercive civil rights laws. … Ricci was wronged for excelling. He is not petitioning for special favors; he’s petitioning against them. If anything, Ricci is asking only that the city accept inequality of outcomes; accept that not all are created equal—and that he, more so than his less-qualified colleagues, is most suited to fighting fires and dousing departmental flames.”

‘Wise Latina’ Loses

Affirmative Action, Constitution, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Race, Racism, The Courts

Sonia Sotomayor’s Latina wisdom has come back to hurt and haunt her in the case of the New Haven Honkies, whose discrimination case she dismissed. So too is the Supreme Court’s blah blah Bader Ginsburg’s dissent noteworthy for its unwise quality. At least neither one of these Delphic ditzes carried the day. Reports the Christian Science Monitor:

“The US Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 on Monday that the Connecticut city violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by using race as the key criterion in refusing to certify a group of white and Hispanic firefighters for promotion.

City officials said they were afraid that if they promoted the white and Hispanic firefighters but no African-American firefighters, the city would be subject to a lawsuit by black firefighters. The high court disagreed.

“Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer’s reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.

The high court’s action overturns the 2008 decision of a three-judge appeals-court panel that included Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s nominee to replace retiring Justice David Souter.

The New Haven firefighters case – and the Supreme Court’s view of it – are expected to play an important role in Judge Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation hearings next month.

The judge is believed to be a strong supporter of New Haven’s legal position in the case. In addition, it is unclear why her three-judge panel initially handed down a brief, unpublished, unsigned summary order disposing of the case without offering even cursory legal analysis.

Beyond the Sotomayor nomination, the decision is important because it provides guidance to employers that they may continue to rely on objective, work-related exams without facing a discrimination lawsuit from those who do not pass the test.

At the heart of the case were two competing provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. One section bars discriminatory treatment based on race or ethnicity. A different section urges employers to avoid making job-related decisions that create a disparate impact on minority workers.

If, for example, a city conducts an exam to determine which workers will be promoted and then no African-Americans are identified for promotion – that disparate impact on black workers is presumed to be illegal. The city is expected to correct the situation.

But the law also forbids employers from using race as the sole or primary criterion for hiring or promotions – including decisions that disfavor white employees because of their race.

In this way, New Haven found itself in a Catch-22.

Justice Kennedy and the other majority justices resolved this dilemma by ruling that New Haven needed a “strong basis in evidence” to justify its discrimination against white and Hispanic firefighters. He said a mere statistical disparity alone could not amount to the strong evidence necessary.

Kennedy added that once a fair test procedure is set, employers may not invalidate the results based on race or ethnicity. “Doing so … is antithetical to the notion of a workplace where individuals are guaranteed equal opportunity regardless of race,” he wrote.

In a dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said New Haven had not engaged in illegal discrimination against the white firefighters because they had no vested right to a promotion.

She wrote that the majority justices ignored “substantial evidence of multiple flaws in the tests New Haven used.” She added that the court failed to acknowledge better tests used in other cities.

“The court’s order and opinion, I anticipate, will not have staying power,” she said.

[SNIP]

From “Beware of ‘Absolut’ Libertarian Lunacy”: “By petitioning the courts, when they should go gentle into that good night, white men like Ricci are seeking equality of results much as blacks do through coercive civil rights laws. … Ricci was wronged for excelling. He is not petitioning for special favors; he’s petitioning against them. If anything, Ricci is asking only that the city accept inequality of outcomes; accept that not all are created equal—and that he, more so than his less-qualified colleagues, is most suited to fighting fires and dousing departmental flames.”