This movie is essential viewing for all voting citizens. Schedule 30 minutes to be educated about the looming debt crisis. This is a bipartisan movie which was created largely in response to the Bush years.
The graphical demonstration of historical debt and the social security time bomb is very illuminating. One bone I have to pick is the simplistic description of the 80's as " unprecedented" in peace time spending. The fact is, it is okay to go in debt if you get a return on investment. WWII: great return on investment. Winning the cold war and creating 20 years of prosperity? Great return on investment. So President Bush, to me, is at fault for wasting the Reagan dividend. He gave us TSA, earmarks, and Medicare part D. I agreed with Operation Iraq Freedom, but we should have been making harder choices at home.
The other bone to pick with this movie is the lack of dynamic tax modeling. The 2003 Bush tax cuts are largely misunderstood. Those tax cuts created more revenue for the government. It turns out that when you reduce penalties to wealth generation, more of it gets generated. Kind of like how McDonalds makes more selling Big Macs for 2.99 as opposed to 4.99. So I say "yea!" for the tax cuts, but why squander this excellent tax lesson on expanding government?
My RX for the national debt is simple: the FairTax along with a balanced budget amendment. Raising taxes on the rich is the wrong answer. If anything we need a flatter tax with less deductions and credits and one which includes all voting citizens not just the top 50% of tax payers.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Gun-point analogy doesn't hold water
(This is my rebuttal to BadTux's explanation of why health costs defy free market forces. There it is argued that inelastic demand allows health providers to hold patients hostage for any amount they want to charge)
BadTux, at least your honest that Obamacare IS the takeover of the insurance industry that Obama refuses to admit. He got this through by hook and by crook. IF we wanted to make the insurance companies into a public utility, it should have been sold to the American people that way, not as a trojan horse. BTW, I agree with you that single payer is more efficient than Obamacare as it now stands.
I flatly reject your points numbered 2 and 3. I have two points to make about your argument #2 (I'll label mine using letters) A. Your point about inelasticity of demand could be applied to food. Why don't farmers hold us all at sickle-point for all our money because we'd die if we didn't eat? Because supply is not inelastic (at steady state and when natural resources are not a limiter). The more people are willing to pay, the more supply springs into existence until an equilibrium is reached where prices cannot rise further. (The price is where the supply and demand curves intersect.) And there are ways to create the conditions for a steeper supply curve. Like in France where they subsidize medical training.
But you're gonna say supply is inelastic when it comes to highly trained doctors who can perform transplants or rare treatments. Nope. It is only temporarily inelastic as doctors cannot be trained overnight. The only way the gun-point scenario can exist is if doctors operate as a cartel. And I agree the do! So what do labor cartels do to inflate wages? This is classic Adam Smith BTW: they raise barriers to entry! Yes, American doctors raise barriers to entry into their profession. Obamacare does nothing to help with this. The way to ensure that the cartel cannot hold people at gun point is to break the cartel. This means creating more paraprofessionals that require fewer years of training, it means relaxing accreditation rules to allow more medical schools. It means allowing pharmacists to prescribe drugs, optometrists to perform laser eye surgery, etc. etc. It means allowing tradeoffs wherein inexperienced doctors are allowed to perform heart surgery if the patient is willing to accept the risk (and benefits in terms of cost). There are so many ways to solve the inelasticity of supply and Obamacare does none of it. Badtux, have you read my post Freedom-based Vision of Health Care?
Okay point B) to your point 2. The heart surgery example is not what I was speaking of when I said we should eliminate all middlemen. That is an example where insurance is well suited. We do have middlemen for high stakes items. But we don't need middlemen for routine maintenance. You maintain your automobile without insurance don't you? You only see the insurance company for an accident. As pointed out recently by David Goldhill in the Atlantic, there is no reason whatsoever why people shouldn't be able to budget for and pay directly for 90% of the healthcare they will need during their life. Especially things like pregnancies, vaccinations, eye exams, etc. Why in the name of Pete do we need to buy insurance for anything but a catastrophe? How much do you think food would cost if we had a food insurance system with a bureaucracy to pay for it? Even if your inelasticity argument carried weight for heart surgery, it wouldn't for 90% of the reasons why we see a doctor. Obamacare takes over the 90% that is non-catastrophic. In fact he abhors the concept of catastrophic only insurance (insurance was invented for catastrophes)
Now point C) to your point 3. Do you mean to say that the writers of the constitution meant that the tax code should be used to influence (socially engineer) individual behavior? Please! How much have you studied the constitution? I've read the Federalist papers and Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton, the original protagonist of both taxation and the welfare clause. The power of taxation was to fund the federal government not to manipulate people! The revenue was to enable the government to perform its enumerated powers, which for Hamilton and Madison meant mostly national defense. Manipulating people was not the primary motivation. (that the Whiskey tax might reduce liquor consumption as a side benefit was completely adjunct to raising revenue) And for the record, I don't support the home interest deduction either. I've always been consistently against using the tax code to micromanage people. In fact, the only good solution is the FairTax.
In a followup, you said the fact that uninsured who have no middleman and who get charged exorbitantly are proof the we need middlemen to fix prices. This again harks back to my catastrophic versus routine care point. We do need middlemen for catastrophes. But we'll all benefit when we eliminate middlemen for 90% of non-catastrophic care especially the uninsured who benefit from lower prices more than any of us. The exorbitant fees (which are usually negotiated down even for the uninsured as pointed out in the article) are a reflection of a bureaucratic 2-middleman system that discourages price transparency. They have all the incentive in the world to hide the true price of care because demand is not checked by price but by bureaucratic wrangling. Obamacare just enshrines this system into place while trying to cover the uninsured in a way that will ensure that the true price of medicine is never found and thus, capital will never flow to where a free people would want it to go.
BadTux, at least your honest that Obamacare IS the takeover of the insurance industry that Obama refuses to admit. He got this through by hook and by crook. IF we wanted to make the insurance companies into a public utility, it should have been sold to the American people that way, not as a trojan horse. BTW, I agree with you that single payer is more efficient than Obamacare as it now stands.
I flatly reject your points numbered 2 and 3. I have two points to make about your argument #2 (I'll label mine using letters) A. Your point about inelasticity of demand could be applied to food. Why don't farmers hold us all at sickle-point for all our money because we'd die if we didn't eat? Because supply is not inelastic (at steady state and when natural resources are not a limiter). The more people are willing to pay, the more supply springs into existence until an equilibrium is reached where prices cannot rise further. (The price is where the supply and demand curves intersect.) And there are ways to create the conditions for a steeper supply curve. Like in France where they subsidize medical training.
But you're gonna say supply is inelastic when it comes to highly trained doctors who can perform transplants or rare treatments. Nope. It is only temporarily inelastic as doctors cannot be trained overnight. The only way the gun-point scenario can exist is if doctors operate as a cartel. And I agree the do! So what do labor cartels do to inflate wages? This is classic Adam Smith BTW: they raise barriers to entry! Yes, American doctors raise barriers to entry into their profession. Obamacare does nothing to help with this. The way to ensure that the cartel cannot hold people at gun point is to break the cartel. This means creating more paraprofessionals that require fewer years of training, it means relaxing accreditation rules to allow more medical schools. It means allowing pharmacists to prescribe drugs, optometrists to perform laser eye surgery, etc. etc. It means allowing tradeoffs wherein inexperienced doctors are allowed to perform heart surgery if the patient is willing to accept the risk (and benefits in terms of cost). There are so many ways to solve the inelasticity of supply and Obamacare does none of it. Badtux, have you read my post Freedom-based Vision of Health Care?
Okay point B) to your point 2. The heart surgery example is not what I was speaking of when I said we should eliminate all middlemen. That is an example where insurance is well suited. We do have middlemen for high stakes items. But we don't need middlemen for routine maintenance. You maintain your automobile without insurance don't you? You only see the insurance company for an accident. As pointed out recently by David Goldhill in the Atlantic, there is no reason whatsoever why people shouldn't be able to budget for and pay directly for 90% of the healthcare they will need during their life. Especially things like pregnancies, vaccinations, eye exams, etc. Why in the name of Pete do we need to buy insurance for anything but a catastrophe? How much do you think food would cost if we had a food insurance system with a bureaucracy to pay for it? Even if your inelasticity argument carried weight for heart surgery, it wouldn't for 90% of the reasons why we see a doctor. Obamacare takes over the 90% that is non-catastrophic. In fact he abhors the concept of catastrophic only insurance (insurance was invented for catastrophes)
Now point C) to your point 3. Do you mean to say that the writers of the constitution meant that the tax code should be used to influence (socially engineer) individual behavior? Please! How much have you studied the constitution? I've read the Federalist papers and Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton, the original protagonist of both taxation and the welfare clause. The power of taxation was to fund the federal government not to manipulate people! The revenue was to enable the government to perform its enumerated powers, which for Hamilton and Madison meant mostly national defense. Manipulating people was not the primary motivation. (that the Whiskey tax might reduce liquor consumption as a side benefit was completely adjunct to raising revenue) And for the record, I don't support the home interest deduction either. I've always been consistently against using the tax code to micromanage people. In fact, the only good solution is the FairTax.
In a followup, you said the fact that uninsured who have no middleman and who get charged exorbitantly are proof the we need middlemen to fix prices. This again harks back to my catastrophic versus routine care point. We do need middlemen for catastrophes. But we'll all benefit when we eliminate middlemen for 90% of non-catastrophic care especially the uninsured who benefit from lower prices more than any of us. The exorbitant fees (which are usually negotiated down even for the uninsured as pointed out in the article) are a reflection of a bureaucratic 2-middleman system that discourages price transparency. They have all the incentive in the world to hide the true price of care because demand is not checked by price but by bureaucratic wrangling. Obamacare just enshrines this system into place while trying to cover the uninsured in a way that will ensure that the true price of medicine is never found and thus, capital will never flow to where a free people would want it to go.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Liberal Hypocrisy
Ten questions for liberals**
**Neo-liberals. Classical liberal = modern conservative
- Why would you support a health care law that requires people to report to the IRS what they do for health care but then vilify President Bush for wiretapping terrorist suspects?
- Why would you rant about profligate Republican spending from 2000-2008 but then support trillions in new government programs and deficit spending under Obama?
- Why did you rail against Republican threats of a "nuclear option" to bypass the filibuster in 2005 (to confirm judges) but then support the effectively the same tactic to pass health care in 2010?
- Why did you harp about the Iraq war for 4 straight years, but now that Obama is president (and has "stayed the course" for the most part) you are silent? Why no calls to bring the troops home anymore?
- Why do you care about 18,000 who supposedly die for lack of health insurance (this has been debunked) but you stand idly by while the lives of 1.2 million preborn children are aborted?
- Why is the secret ballot sacrosanct for general elections, but not for union elections? Why is it okay for big labor unions to support political causes but big companies should be barred from doing so?
- Why was Karl Rove style politics wrong during the Bush years, but Chicago style politics is just fine in 2010? Why isn't Obama called out by prominent democrats and reporters for 180 degree turnabouts on two major campaign promises to improve transparency and bipartisanship? (Have you seen his "50 plus one" statements before being elected?)
- Why is big-anything bad (big pharma, big oil, big banks, etc.) except when talking about the government?
- Why does your love of free speech stop at the doors of Fox News and Clear Channel Communications?
- Why do you claim to be rights activists while attacking the 1st, 2nd, ninth, and tenth amendments?
**Neo-liberals. Classical liberal = modern conservative
Friday, March 19, 2010
Why the current "demon pass" healthcare should be voted down
The "demon pass" health care bill should be voted down. Here is why.
(USA Today has a great summary of the recent changes as of 3/19/2010)
See:
Right to Health Care: When Freedom is Slavery by Another Name
My Freedom Based Vision for Health Care Reform
**Some folks may in fact want to trade health for comforts of another sort. It is not up to the government to make those choices for them. By the same token, the government cannot be on the hook to bail out people who change their minds about being uninsured when it is too late...their care must be at the whim of whatever society can afford but be NOT guaranteed.
(USA Today has a great summary of the recent changes as of 3/19/2010)
- Forcing insurance companies to accept patients with pre-existing conditions destroys the concept of insurance. We will no longer have insurance in the U.S. but instead we'll have an inefficient form of socialized medicine that will magnify all the bad aspects of our current system.
- This bill is a blow to freedom.
- It takes away individual freedom by mandating that everyone purchase insurance. People are forced into economic relationships against their will. It forces priorities onto people that they may not otherwise choose for themselves. This directly interferes with freedom of conscience and the the pursuit of happiness. **
- It forces companies to provide benefits outside of normal market forces. This is an affront to free enterprise and can only have the side effect of increasing unemployment and depressing wages.
- It forces insurance providers to run their business in a way the government sees fit. They become agents of the government rather than agents of free enterprise.
- It takes away individual freedom by mandating that everyone purchase insurance. People are forced into economic relationships against their will. It forces priorities onto people that they may not otherwise choose for themselves. This directly interferes with freedom of conscience and the the pursuit of happiness. **
- One of the ways the bill attempts to pay for itself is with Medicare cuts. Medicare cuts in and of themselves would be a great way to ensure future solvency of Medicare, but the cuts should not be used to "rob Peter to pay Paul". Medicare is being used as a cow to milk. It is wrong to use this sleight of hand to create yet another entitlement which cannot possibly be anymore solvent than Medicare has turned out to be. (And who believes that these cuts will even stick? Every year congress relents and delays cuts that were supposedly already made in the past.)
- New taxes. An increase on the Medicare payroll tax on high income earners. Does anyone believe high income earners will just "eat" tax increases without changing their behavior? A new excise tax on health insurance. Taxes and surcharges on individuals and companies who don't comply with mandates. When push comes to shove, these initiatives will backfire in ways that reduce the optimistic CBO revenue estimates. Which leads me too...
- Exploding national debt. If you really believe this bill will "cut" the deficit (and the word "cut" here is like when a furniture store has a "sale" after marking up prices) then you haven't been paying attention to the last 30 years of entitlement history.
See:
Right to Health Care: When Freedom is Slavery by Another Name
My Freedom Based Vision for Health Care Reform
Monday, October 19, 2009
Obama's Title of Nobelity
President Obama's recent acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize is an affront to the United States Constitution. Yes, I know that two prior sitting presidents have received the award. I don't excuse them either. But in this case, since the award is intended to influence our President's future actions, it constitutes direct foreign meddling on the office of the President. Roosevelt and Wilson were still free to place American interests above those of the Nobel committee because their awards were for specific past accomplishments.
The spirit of the Constitution's emolument clause is to prevent undue foreign influence:
Federalist Papers 2,3,4,5, and 22 all warn of the dangers of foreign influence. George Washington warned in his Farewell Address:
P.S.
A movie was made in 2006 which also considers Nobel winners to be "nobility".
Here is another good writer on the subject.
The spirit of the Constitution's emolument clause is to prevent undue foreign influence:
Article I Section 9.8: No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States; and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.The Nobel Peace Prize is a title. The money is an emolument. And the Nobel committee, though not a foreign state, is a foreign entity. (Some argue that since the committee is elected by the Norwegian Parliament, it is an extension of a foreign state) . It is good that President Obama intends to donate the money to charity. But he is retaining the title and intends to let it guide his future actions. This clearly go against the principles of republican government.
Federalist Papers 2,3,4,5, and 22 all warn of the dangers of foreign influence. George Washington warned in his Farewell Address:
As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. ...I understand that the President has tried to make the best of a difficult situation. Part of me believes that he would have rather this never happened. But why didn't he consult the constitution before quickly accepting the prize? He was sworn to protect that document. Whether he is conscious of it or not, he now has another set of puppet strings.
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.
P.S.
A movie was made in 2006 which also considers Nobel winners to be "nobility".
Here is another good writer on the subject.
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