Category Archives: Regulation

Co-op Or Co-optation?

Barack Obama, Democrats, Healthcare, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Regulation, Republicans, Socialism

As members of the two-party monopoly come together to hammer out a “compromise” on how best to send the health care we have to hell in a handcart, I thought you ought to know a bit about the co-op option; it is, after all, the buzzword being bandied about to replace the less-than soothing “public option” phrase. A co-op is “simply government-run health insurance by another name.” Over to Cato’s Michael D. Tanner:

“Now, if this was really going to be a co-op like rural electrical co-ops or your local health-food store — owned and controlled by its workers and the people who use its services — it would be a meaningless but harmless diversion. America already has some 1,300 insurance companies, so it’s hard to see what one more would add, but it would be unlikely to do much harm.

But these aren’t true co-ops. The members wouldn’t choose its officers — the president would. Plus, the secretary of Health and Human Services would have to approve its business plan, and thus could force it to offer whatever benefits, premiums and reimbursement schedules Washington wants. Finally, the federal government would provide start up, and possibly ongoing, subsidies.

[This is a] ‘co-op’ run by the federal government, under rules imposed by the federal government and with federal funding…

The Senate compromise also drops the job-killing employer-mandate that businesses provide their workers with health insurance or pay a penalty — and substitutes a more regressive employer mandate.

The compromise would have no specific mandate for employers to provide insurance. But any employer who failed to do so would have to pay the cost of all subsidies that the government provides his or her workers to help them pay for insurance on their own.

It is hard to see how this is different from any other employer mandate — except that it will hurt low-wage workers most.

Business owners care about the total cost of hiring a worker, not how that cost is apportioned between wages, taxes, health insurance or other benefits. If they have to pay the cost of subsidizing health insurance for their workers, employers will simply offset the added cost by lowering wages, reducing future wage increases, reducing other benefits (such as pensions), cutting back on hiring, laying off current workers, shifting workers from full-time to part-time or outsourcing.

It will ultimately be the worker who pays the subsidy’s cost. The government will be giving the worker a subsidy with one hand, and taking it back with the other. Does that make sense for any reason other than ‘compromise?'”

The complete Tanner piece here.

Michael D. Tanner is a Cato Institute senior fellow and the author of Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It.

Update III: Code Blue! How Canada Care Nearly Killed My Kid

Healthcare, Human Accomplishment, Liberty, Natural Law, Regulation, Socialism, The State

The excerpt is from my new WND.COM column, “Code Blue! How Canada Care Nearly Killed My Kid,” now on Taki’s Magazine:

“Code Blue Intensive Care Unit,” “Code Blue Intensive Care Unit”:

When the Code-Blue alarm sounded over the hospital’s loudspeaker system, my husband and I knew it sounded for our daughter. It was 11:00 at night. The hallways of the British Columbia hospital were dark. Only one emergency operating theater was in use. She was in it. The skeletal staff came running. Resuscitation carts were rushed toward the theater.

My own heart nearly stopped, because she is my heart.

To follow Dr. David Gratzer’s plainspoken definition (the good doctor is a Canada-care whistle blower), Code Blue is “the term used when a patient’s heart stops and hospital staff must leap into action to save him.” My then 12-year-old had stopped breathing on the operating table and was being revived. …

A cursory investigation into why [my daughter] coded that night was conducted. The findings were, conveniently, inconclusive. …

If you want to understand why the “subpar care Nicky had received” was just “a day in the life of a patient interned in a state-run health care system,” read the complete column, “Code Blue,” now on Taki’s Magazine. That’s where you can catch the weekly fare every Saturday.

Update I (July 31): The child can take pain. As a child, she suffered from severe asthma, which runs in the family (a great uncle died during an attack). My child’s heroic stoic composure during some of the procedures she endured in the course of this deadly disease—I cannot praise enough.

Update II: Readers: please make a habit of posting your comments to the blog, rather than sending them to me. I cannot answer all letters (although I try). Besides which other BAB posters here will often respond eloquently to your questions about liberty.

Rebutting those who say that my experience is typical of private establishments as well lies in advancing rights-based and utilitarian/economic arguments—you must address natural rights, and the structure of incentives in socialized systems. I speak to those issue in my work, regularly; have for years. But I also explain in the current column why this episode is certainly par for the course in the sphere of the “public option.”

Please check out the Articles Archive under socialized medicine and natural rights. The Barely A Blog archive (search “Socialism,” “Regulations,” and “Health & Fitness”) is a good source too, as we’ve conducted extensive debates on this lively forum.

I’m afraid that defending liberty demands the STUDY of—and familiarity with—principles. In other words, some work, a mental effort. Quick answers won’t replace the work liberty’s defenders must do. All too often readers demand quickies. Intellectual sloth extends to not even searching my accessible web and blog databases.

Begin by signing up for the Mercer Weekly Newsletter.

Updated: Doctor Distribution

Affirmative Action, Constitution, Democracy, Economy, Healthcare, Regulation, Socialism, The State

THE AMERICAN AFFORDABLE HEALTH CHOICES ACT OF 2009, the shamelessly euphemized title of Obama’s unaffordable, choice-limiting, health care takeover, makes no attempt to conceal its radical, energetic, race-based distributive impetus.

The following initiatives come under the PREVENTION AND WELLNESS (IV) and the WORKFORCE INVESTMENTS (V) sections of the Act’s Summary:

—A focus on community-based programs and new data collection efforts to better identify and address racial, ethnic, regional and other health disparities.
—Greater support for workforce diversity.

With state takeover of 20 percent of the economy, more massive, racially-based transfers of wealth and resources are in the offing.

Understandably the ACT is not easy to locate. The White House’s promises of transparency notwithstanding, I hunted high and low for the accursed thing, finally finding a link on the Heritage Foundation’s website to the Act.

As shamelessly does the ponce in power speak of taxing the “rich” so as to be able to pay for his profligacy. Was it those earning more than a million or half a million? Is this equality under the law? As Peter Schiff has pointed out, “While the government has the constitutional power to tax to ‘promote the general welfare,’ it does not have the right to tax one group for the sole and specific benefit of another. If the government wishes to finance national health insurance, the burden of paying for it should fall on every American. If that were the case, perhaps Congress would think twice before passing such a monstrosity.”

Not once will you hear the following question from the pols and their media support system:

Is it constitutional?

All you’ll hear is:

How many Americans want it?

A nation of laws? Who are we kidding. This is a tyranny of the mindless, wayward majority.

Update (July 26): I understand “Moon Man’s” justified passions, but, at times, the Fed issue becomes a blanket charge. Who exactly are those earning half a million to a million depreciated dollars? Small business owners. Those of you who work in the corporate world, outside Wall Street, know that few and far between are the high-ups who garner such wages. The rich, middle-class entrepreneur: that’s who Obama is looking to filch without flinching.

Totaling Health Care For The Few Uninsured

Economy, Healthcare, Regulation, Socialism, Welfare

I can’t say that Obama is bankrupting the country for the ostensible benefit of 26 or so million people, because the US is already insolvent, courtesy of this president and his predecessor. What I can do is present you with the number of uninsured, mostly by choice—prudent choice, given this demographic’s youth and risk—for whom the traitor-in-chief is burying the medical profession, and with it my health care and yours.

According to the Census Bureau report “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007” (p. 20), “In 2007, the percentage and number of children under 18 years old without health insurance were 11.0 percent and 8.1 million, lower than they were in 2006—11.7 percent and 8.7 million (Table 6). Although the uninsured rate for children in poverty decreased to 17.6 percent in 2007, from 19.3 percent in 2006, children in poverty were more likely to be uninsured than all children.

• The uninsured rate and number of
uninsured for non-Hispanic Whites
decreased in 2007 to 10.4 percent
and 20.5 million (from 10.8 percent
and 21.2 million in 2006). The uninsured
rate for Blacks decreased to
19.5 percent in 2007 from 20.5 percent
in 2006. The number of uninsured
Blacks in 2007 was not statistically
different from 2006, at 7.4
million. (Table 6).

• The percentage and number of
uninsured Hispanics were 32.1 percent
and 14.8 million in 2007,
lower than 34.1 percent and 15.3
million in 2006 (Table 6).

DOES anyone care to do the honors and total the number of people, of whom at least 15 million are illegal aliens, for whom the health care of the majority of Americans will be sacrificed? Be my guest.