Stimulus Health Care: Give Me Freedom Or Give Me Death–UPDATED
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009UPDATED: Via Instapundit here’s this: “Putting Old People Into The Snow“
Sometimes commenters reveal the crux of the matter so beautifully, it seems wrong not to share. The question before the American people is simple: Is cradle to grave health care a right or a privilege? Are there some things that the government, i.e. all taxpaying citizens (remember only about 50% of working Americans pay Federal Income Tax) should provide for the whole? [Previous posts on the topic here, here, here]
A constitutionalist would say the list of government services should be rather short–defend and protect our borders and people, infrastructure for commerce, etc. Now, education and all manner of health and human services are considered necessities. Please note that I didn’t say that educated children and healthy people are necessary since there are no guarantees there, plus, it’s the government so there’s really no accountability, only that the services “should” be provided.
Commenter Lane comes down on the side of health care being another big government provision:
Thank you very much for providing more information regarding the Health Care provisions in the Economic Stimulus Package. I, however, must disagree with your bleak assessment of having the government support and help those who have or lost or never had or are losing health care. The decisions you mention, that of bureaucrats deciding who lives or dies, seems to lead one to believe that an insurance company or a self employed physician (both working for profit) do not make those decisions. The information for each patient will always be managed by clinics and physicians. That is the case in all modern health care systems. In fact, the insurance companies are notorious for doing exactly what you claim the government will do. The government is most likely going to come up with a flow-chart, that all health care providers do, that sets an efficient pay structure for procedures. If you want the government to act more like a business, than it would seem you would support this portion of the bill. As it allows many people who are not served by the current employer based insurance scheme to gain access to much needed health care for themselves and their families and have it run efficiently.
I hope you take a closer look at the details of the bill and take a moment to think about what our current health care system really looks like.
Lane fails to mention that I can sue an insurance provider. I can’t sue the government. Sure, some insurance companies have made heartless decisions, but there IS recourse. Good luck fighting with a government bureaucrat. Think IRS. Think DMV. Reader Rachel responds to Lane’s underlying bias:
Lane,
One particular phrase in your comment sticks out to me; namely, the following.
“The decisions you mention, that of bureaucrats deciding who lives or dies, seems to lead one to believe that an insurance company or a self employed physician (both working for profit) do not make those decisions.”
I find it interesting that you mention as an aside that insurance companies and self-employed physicians work for profit. Please correct me if I have interpreted this phrase wrongly, but it seems to me that your implication is that working for profit is somehow a bad thing.
I know it is a common conception that it is evil, selfish, and destructive to work for profit. The rich are maligned for their accomplishments, and the name of Capitalism itself is associated somehow with an aura of evil. However, it is the ambitious individuals that came to this country in order to pursue their own happiness and their own profit that made us so great. The people on whose backs this country was built were not working for their neighbor, they were not building their businesses so that they could hand off their hard-earned money to undeserving third parties; they did it for themselves.
When I go see my physician, I know that I am getting the best care possible, simply because I know that she is working for her own profit. A wise businessman knows that the best way to make a profit and stay competative is to provide the best services possible at the lowest prices affordable. My doctor has never failed to give me excellent service, and that’s what keeps me going back to her…and she knows it.
The government, however, is not a business, nor should it try to function as one. Their purpose is (or should be) to protect the rights of businesses and individuals, not to dictate them. It is, in the words of our founding fathers, “a necessary evil.” The government has absolutely no initiative to provide the best services possible, because if it is the only entity you can go to for your product, there is no need for competetive quality. It has no need to provide its services at the lowest price possible because it doesn’t have to worry about profit. All of its expenses are paid for in taxes by the very people who “buy” from them. By socializing healthcare, the government is essentially making our medicine system into one of the largest, most dangerous monopolies in history. Remember what happened to England when it socialized its healthcare? All its best doctors packed up and moved to America, where they could function freely under the free market.
Our free market is being shackled by the current administration. The greatest evil a government can do is to put its hand into businesses. The social project failed. Miserably. And yet it is being recreated here in our own great nation.
You advised the previous posters to carefully consider the current healthcare system, and I urge you to do the same. Check your premises.
I strongly urge any who wish to expand their educational horizons to read any of the works by Ayn Rand. It is amazing how well she predicted just the kinds of things that are happening now…which is astounding, given the fact that she died five years before I was even born.
If you have ears to hear…
Again, I am not naive to pencil pushing Insurance case workers making care reimbursement decisions seemingly by fiat. I am also not naive to people trying to game the system. I am also not naive to doctors doing extra testing for liability fears or just plain laziness. There is all sorts of waste and stupidity in the system as it now stands.
There seems to be some wide-idealistic belief that these forces would magically disappear if the government were in charge of the whole kit and kaboodle. This is mind-boggling to me. The government turns nearly every thing it touches to shit and people now want to place their health and their lives in the government’s hands and delight in the notion of “free”?
There is no free.
Baby Boomers who see the market, see their bank accounts shrinking and are looking at the children they’ve raised and want guarantees for their old age. That was part of President Bush’s drug reimbursement program–a guarantee. So government-run health care expansion seems like a good choice. Everyone wants a guarantee.
These services come at a price, both personal and economical. And those driving government-run health care are making the assumption that the free market can’t figure this out. But it can. The problem is that no one is talking about how. I’m quite confident that technology and innovation can help streamline this business while doctors continue giving elite care. Doctors are notoriously slow to change methods. That could be encouraged.
Fundamentally, it’s a question of belief systems. Either a person believes the individual or the government is the biggest force for good. I trust individuals more. The government has shown me over and over to be a harsh task-master. Right now, we have Congress people whose claim to fame is winning an election making decisions about executive pay, telling businesses how to do their jobs, controlling the banking industry, etc. Do these same people deserve the power to decide who lives and dies? No.
Cross-posted at RightWingNews
More On Mourning Michigan
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009A blog reader commented on my post from this summer about Michigan. It was so telling, that I thought I’d share it:
I, too, live in Houston but was born and raised in Michigan. And, you are so right about Michigan.
Beautiful. I miss the four seasons.Anyway, I hear comments to your blog about how can liberal policies have caused this? I am a
chemical engineer and when I graduated from college (University of Michigan) in 1975 Michigan
had a vibrant chemical and process business economy. However, I remember Attorney General
Frank Kelly waging his war against that same industry. I remember the unions striking one chemical,
pharmaceutical, and food processing plant after another. The result was obvious. Not a sudden
move out, rather a slow disinvestment in the state. Plants didn’t shut down immediately, There just
was no investment. So departments and plants slowly rotted until one after another they were shut
down. If you don’t want business, it isn’t going to stay for long.Michigan could have a strong chemical business but most are gone and those that are left are
just rumps of what they were. Michigan could have a strong food process business but who wants
to deal with the environmental hassle? So, most the plants are in northern Indiana or northern Ohio.Michigan’s economy has caved in because they drove everybody out except the auto business. This
took 30 years. Now, the only one left is dying. So, what happens? The state dies.
And this cycle is the cycle that the Democrats would like to impose on the whole country. When there is no where to escape to, America will be like Europe. High unemployment, cushy social services for the lazy, low productivity, long vacations, little innovation (why invest when the government takes the gains?), low birth rates (who can afford kids) and importing labor from regions who don’t like the host country very much creating an angry underclass sucking off of social services.
In a word: socialism. It slowly crushes the spirit and defeats the individual. Unions like it though–everyone is “equal”. Equally miserable.
Michigan Has A Chance…Maybe
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009It’s easy to get lost in loserville when thinking about Michigan’s socialist policies and unremitting corruption. When corpsicles are ignored, a formerly great city and state has surely hit rock bottom. Then again, maybe not.
Aw, heck. Let’s be hopeful. The only place to go for Michigan, has to be up.
A Michigan lawyer friend, out-of-work and still looking for a year now, sent me this little ray of hope. Government cuts are included:
Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s ideas for shrinking the size of state government are getting positive reviews from pro-business groups, but raising fears of layoffs among state workers.
The Democratic governor plans to propose changing the way state government is organized and to suggest other belt-tightening steps in her seventh annual State of the State address tonight.
On Monday, Michigan Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Rich Studley welcomed her proposal to close the Department of History, Arts and Libraries this year, although he said he’ll need to see if the changes save money. The $52.8 million department gets $39.7 million from the state general fund.
“Although history and arts and libraries are important, it is not an essential service like the Michigan Department of State Police,” Studley said during a news conference.
He also backs a suggestion by Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, to recombine the departments of Natural Resources and Environmental Quality. They were separated under Granholm’s predecessor, Republican Gov. John Engler.
It’s a start. Now that’s some hope. Hopefully, we’ll see some change.
P.S. The reason I keep bringing up Michigan, besides having been a former resident, is because Michigan is what unchecked liberalism looks like. Michigan is like the Europe of the U.S.–a nice, close example of government corruption and largess. This is not how we want America to look.
It’s Going To Get Worse Before It Gets Better And It Ain’t Bad Yet
Monday, February 2nd, 2009Had a discussion with a liberal Texan who has not, in her adult years, experienced economic difficulty. That is, unlike me, she has not lived in an economically dying state (New York in the mid-90′s, Michigan in the late 90′s early 00′s) and finally, an economically dead state (NY and MI now). So, a few people at her place of employment have been laid off and she’s worried. She was supremely offended when I said, “It’s not bad yet and it’s going to get worse.”
Just as a citizen in Michigan and New York has a hard time fathoming how thoroughly boiled a frog he is, a Texan or Floridian has a difficult time fathoming how good he has it.
A Southern liberal also has a tough time comprehending the destruction the union mentality and heavy taxation brings to a state. Unions destroy productivity and detach performance from pay. This, ironically, interferes with individualism. As in, the individual defers to the whole and becomes less inclined to be the best he can be. His spirit is destroyed. So much so, that in absence of unions, many men (mostly men) sit and wait for salvation. They are used to the strength coming from without, not from within.
Heavy taxation does it’s own sort of damage. Businesses, bodies of people together, reach a point where the work load isn’t worth it. The companies either move or fold.
Texas has grown because states like Michigan and New York kill their business climate. And yet, a Texas liberal refused to hear the truth about taxes and unions while simultaneously lamenting lay-offs at her company. This kind of disconnect is disturbing, but revealing.
What liberals want is a guarantee. She wants no one to ever lose a job. She wants no one to ever to know economic discomfort. She wants the country to have Texas’ economy but tax and unionize like New York and Michigan. You can’t have it both ways. It won’t work, as California is now learning. The safety net, large and cushy, is its own sort of noose. Eventually it kills the golden goose. The goose dies or flies South.
The worrying thing is that if the whole nation operates like Michigan, New York and California, the economy everywhere will die. At a certain point, government money runs out. That can’t just keep printing it forever.
It’s a terrible thing when liberals get their way. The policies do the exact opposite of their intention. It’s not bad here in Texas. In fact, it’s still pretty good. Liberal policies won’t prevent disaster here. They cause them. I’m afraid not enough people know that.
“Little Marxists”
Monday, December 15th, 2008Dr. Helen answers a question from a librarian/teacher about goose-stepping 4th graders and how to help kids get properly educated about such things as capitalism versus socialism.
In our kids’ school, the Third Grade project is starting a business, paying more rent for better space (the front classrooms), choosing partners, a product to sell, marketing it, etc. Well guess what? There’s much gnashing of teeth when a kid picks a slouch for a partner. There’s agony (even though the teachers try to spin it positively as our “civic duty”) when the teacher comes and collects the taxes from hard earned bucks. It’s a nice learning experience all the way around.
What would be an even better solution in my opinion is to create a socialist week, in all it’s mediocre glory. So everyone works as a group, makes a crappy product that no one wants to buy, two kids do all the work, but all the kids get the same pay and the government takes 80% of their income. Then, a kid decides he’s hurt his toe and can’t work but gets the same pay. If they work harder they only get a C.
If kids got to experience both capitalism and socialism, they’d make the right choice because socialism is inherently unfair, rewards failure, and is a disincentive to achievement and production. Kids are hardwired for fairness. They get it.
While I know education is important, I think how a kid is raised is even more important. A dull-witted parent emphasizing self-esteem over honest achievement will destroy the best school lessons. And a parent who emphasizes hard work and morality will inoculate against soft-headed ideas rooted in post-modern and Marxist philosophies.
Team sports help because there’s winners and losers. Individual sports help because there is only achievement. Getting a job during High School helps a kid manage his energy and money.
Marxism has to be taught and indoctrinated because it goes against natural law. It is antithetical to how men are wired and ignores basic psychology. Marxism sounds great on paper and stinks in real life. It feels good to believe in collective everything, but it falls flat in practice. That’s why any training about these philosophies needs to be taken out of the realm of theory and into real life.
Get a kid on a ball field or court and he’ll learn the concepts of talent, hard work and winners and losers pretty quickly. Let him makes some money and then have the government take half to spend how they see fit, and he’ll understand why excessive taxation is a disincentive.
Real life cures Marxists.
Cross-posted at RightWingNews and the Houston Chronicle
“Resilience Vs. Anticipation”
Saturday, December 13th, 2008“Resilience Vs. Anticipation”
Via Jay Rosen on Twitter
Defending Evil
Saturday, December 13th, 2008In a post-modern world where no one is right and no one is wrong, it doesn’t surprise me that the Smarty Pants Set defend evil doers (via Dr. Helen) over those the evil doers harm. To condemn evil action would be to discriminate against something, and for a leftist it’s the discriminating that’s the crime. Crime happens theoretically, externally and as a result of another injustice that is no fault of the evil doer. S/he the victim too. We’re all victims!
Tigerhawk says this:
While this is no doubt true to a certain extent, it is far from the entire story. There has been an intellectual class for thousands of years. Sympathy with criminals has been one of its touchstone issues only for a couple of generations (which is why the song “Gee, Officer Krupke” was so funny). Why the change? I think it is because it has recently (as in the last 60 years) become popular among intellectuals to identify social rather than individual causes for pathology. If poor people, unwed mothers, and drug abusers are the victims of social conditions rather than of their own poor individual choices, then it must also be true that muggers, rapists, and stick-up men are victims, too. Either way, this thinking goes, it is society that causes the problem. Well, if that is true then calling for more individual “responsibility” will not do a damned thing. Social problems call for social — meaning statist — solutions. It is all very convenient for people who want government even more involved in the lives of Americans.
It’s a win-win. Evil is good. Societal solutions are key. Government grows. It’s a socialists paradise and excuse for the intellectuals to control you, the average victim.
Guest Post: Socialism Is UnAmerican by Duane Lester
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008The following is a guest post from Duane Lester of All American Blogger, where you can find other great articles. Sign up for their free RSS feed so you don’t miss a single post.
What is the spirit of America, and what does it mean to be an "American." Perhaps I am old fashioned, but I think the American spirit exists in the blood, sweat, and tears of hard work, effort and the desire to achieve on the strength of self, with as little government interference as possible.
It is rugged individualism, yet it is also community. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but I’ll explain it.
An American is an individual. He is responsible for himself, and for his family. He works hard, uses his head and becomes a success, however he defines it. If he finds himself in some rough times, he turns to the community. Family, churches and charities are there to offer support, whether it be food, a place to rest his head, or simple reassurance that this too shall pass. They don’t have to. They want to. And he accepts their charity thankfully and puts it to use. He continues to move forward until he becomes a success. Once a success, he begins to give back to the community.
There was a man whose father was a traveling salesman. The father "expended considerable energy on tricks and schemes to avoid plain hard work." The son, however, took a job at 16 as an assistant bookkeeper and vowed to give 10% of his wealth to charity upon retiring. His name was John D. Rockefeller and he ended up giving away $550 million.
But no one forced him to help. No one forced him to surrender property to another because a third party thought it was "fair." That would be unAmerican. Property rights are sacred. Consider the words of one of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson:
“To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association–’the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.’”
In Jefferson’s mind, it was unacceptable to force you to surrender your property so that another 
could have it out of "fairness." He makes it very clear. No one, no man nor agent of government, should take from one to give to another because it is felt that one has too much and another too little, even when faced with a tragedy.
Col. Davey Crockett explains how he was educated on this principle, from a constituent of his who said he would never vote for Crockett again because he voted to give $20,000 to residents in Georgetown who had suffered from a fire. He was told:
In the first place, the government ought to have in the Treasury no more than enough for its legitimate purposes. But that has nothing to do with the question. The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man, particularly under our system of collecting revenue by a tariff, which reaches every man in the country, no matter how poor he may be, and the poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means. What is worse, it presses upon him without his knowledge where the weight centers, for there is not a man in the United States who can ever guess how much he pays to the government. So you see, that while you are contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from thousands who are even worse off than he. If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right to give to one, you have the right to give to all; and, as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to any and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe, is a charity, and to any amount you may think proper. You will very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other. No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity. Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose.
We have drifted away from the principles taught to Col Crockett, the principles this country was founded upon.
On this founding principle sits my premise. Socialism does not fit into America in any way, shape or form. Socialism is the government sanctioned genocide of the one minority not protected by liberalism: the individual. There is no individual in the collective. You do not have property, the collective does. You don’t get rewarded for your hard work, you get what the collective thinks you need. You don’t get to achieve, as there can be no one who stands out in the collective.
Winston Churchill said:
…a socialist policy is abhorrent to the British ideas of freedom. Socialism is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the object worship of the state. It will prescribe for every one where they are to work, what they are to work at, where they may go and what they may say.
We have been slowly moving towards socialism. We are not there yet, but we are moving towards it every day. The government taxes people, meaning they seize their property, so that others may get food stamps, rather than going to a church run food bank. They seize property of those without children to ensure that other people’s children are taught according to guidelines established by the government. This is done for the "common good." Socialists talk about spreading the wealth around because it would be "fair." America is not about the redistribution of wealth. It is about creating the opportunity for others to create their own wealth.
Everything socialism stands for is the antithesis of what America stands for. And yet we continue to march down the road to serfdom. This should terrify those living in countries where America is the shining city on the hill. Places like Cuba, where people still risk their lives fleeing from socialist rule, in search of an American shore. I remember a story Ronald Reagan told in 1964.
He said:
Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don’t know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.
The last stand on Earth is being overrun by the slow marching socialist hoards, moving under the banner of fairness. When it eventually falls, where will the downtrodden and persecuted of the world turn to for inspiration and freedom?
The only thing left will be the collective.
Does Socialism Scare The Market?–UPDATED Iowahawk’s Tour Of Socialist Celebration
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008Nah.
What little capital gains you made, you might want to take, right? Nah.
UPDATED:
Somebody’s happy. Lots of somebodies.
Why The Really Rich Love The Socialists
Friday, October 31st, 2008Why The Really Rich Love The Socialists
Socialism usually is an oligarchy. Something I’ve argued before.
