June 2012
24 posts
6 tags
Timothy Leary marries J.P. Morgan
Let’s say you’re one of those well educated leftists believing in a significant role of government in our lives. You hate the republicans because they are just a bunch of crony capitalists, funneling tax dollars away from the poor and middle class to their rich friends in various industries. Part of your justification for your belief and faith in government is that after all, if the...
14 tags
SCOTUS as a Fundraising Accomplice
If you are paying $1000/mo in health insurance premiums now, that number will soon be much higher as a result of today’s court decision. Premiums will increase because of the definition of “insurance” in this law. The benefits that are mandated (breast cancer and pregnancy coverage for all, including males!) will result in these higher premiums, as none of these goodies will be...
12 tags
SCOTUS: Obama's Brother-in-Law
The idea that a branch of the leviathan federal government (that is in charge of reviewing the power of the very same leviathan government) would issue a ruling that would limit the power of the very same leviathan government is naive. This corrupt “brother in law” arrangement, as Gary North has called it, precludes any objectivity by SCOTUS. As Tom Woods has said, it should come as...
4 tags
Missin' Hippies
I remember the hippies. I miss them. What happened to them? What happened to the liberal loonies that didn’t trust the government? Antiestablishment became a word during the hippies’ time. They didn’t believe a word about Vietnam. What happened to this distrust of the government?
If you listen to NPR you hear hushed voices talking of utopia. Free health care for all....
12 tags
Ethics? According to Joshua Perry
Joshua Perry, an assistant professor at the Kelley school of business at the University of Indiana recently wrote that “short of banning physician-owned hospitals, there is sufficient justification for aggressive regulation of such hospitals in the (Un)Affordable Care Act.” His findings were published in the American Business Law Journal. You can read a summary of his findings here....
20 tags
"After Obamacare." Could be a country song.
I’ve been asked how physicians and patients will be affected by the Court’s declaring the Unaffordable Care Act unconstitutional. My sources tell me that this is extremely likely. I am reminded of the comment of the brilliant Joe Sobran, who said, “…if Iraq needs a constitution let them have ours…we’re not using it.” Incredibly, this...
8 tags
Health Information Technology, Bastiat and...
A recent article in the NY Times declares HIT (health information technology) as a growth industry with the potential to create over 200,000 jobs. 20 billion dollars in subsidies have been provided by the federal government (taxpayers) toward the effort to digitize all patient information.
I can’t think of a better example of Bastiat’s “What is Seen and What is Not...
13 tags
"Let me know if you want me to stop killing you."
There are many reasons to object to government-run health care. Some would argue that if the government runs it, it will run like everything else in the government: poorly and corruptly. Failure by a government program, an extremely poor performing school, for instance, simply results in more money chasing the failure. Whatever ails the delivery of health care in the U.S. (virtually all of...
7 tags
Statists and Canadian Health Care Get A Black Eye
You know that a statist and critic of liberty has drawn their last breath in an argument when they invoke the plight of “the children.” “What about the poor children?” The statist or socialist demands guarantees that the poor and unfortunate (particularly “the children”) will be cared for by the state, as a free society left to its own devices provides no such...
13 tags
Anya Rader Wallack, Hayek and Illegal Health...
Allow me to introduce you to Anya Rader Wallack. Her career and background read like a most wanted list for fans of the free market in health care. Let’s just say that she is to free markets in health care what Ron Paul is to the federal reserve system.
Ms. Wallack is president of Arrowhead Health Analytics. Their website is here. This outfit has been created to help private and public...
10 tags
$1000 Toilet Seats and Obamacare
Can you imagine buying insurance for your car or home, not knowing what they are worth? If the prices of health care make no sense, how can the cost of the insurance be calculated? Or could the incalculability of health costs be intentional, thus hiding the profits of the “risk-taking” insurance companies and creating the fear of bankruptcy necessary to sell these...
8 tags
Socialism and Marathon Training
A few years ago, with the help and encouragement of my older brother, I ran the Chicago marathon. It was hard. The training was hard. The hardest part of the training was the mental part, that part where I had to overcome the anxiety and disbelief that having completed a 10 mile run on a Saturday, there would come a day when I could do a training run of 12, then 15, then 20. Once the 12 mile...
15 tags
Schumpeter's Mistake
Professor Robert Higgs toward the end of his brilliant book, “Crisis and Leviathan,” discusses the errors of the renowned social scientist Joseph Schumpeter with regards to his prediction of a socialist U.S., post WWII. Higgs describes a post-war march toward a more mixed economic result, one characterized by a government that gives lip service to private property but whose intense...
9 tags
Political Theatre: Starring the Usual Suspects
United Health Care has announced that regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision regarding the constitutionality of the Unaffordable Care Act (UCA), as a company they will honor some of the provisions provided within the legislation, including the elimination of lifetime benefits on medical care and “no cost” preventive screenings. You can read the LA Times version of the...
4 tags
Medical Technology as a Crutch
I remember the first time I saw the BIS (bispectral index) brain monitors (developed to display “depth” of anesthesia in an effort to avoid awareness episodes) displayed at an anesthesia meeting. The sales representative was explaining to a bunch of wide-eyed young residents how indispensable this new device was. “Soon, doing an anesthetic without this monitor will be...
7 tags
The Favors We Can Live Without
Austrian economists, most notably Ludwig von Mises, have written about the business cycle (and the booms and busts that result) and the role that easy credit, created by low interest rates, plays. Government intervention such as artificially low interest rates, or confiscatory taxation, the spoils of which are awarded to certain connected players in the game, causes “investment” in...
6 tags
Dilution of Value: Inflation and Health Rationing
A parent repeatedly tells a child at the supermarket “No,” as the small child continues to ask and beg for this and that. Pouting and temper tantrums follow. Spankings in the grocery store don’t seem to make much difference. The next time the child asks again and again for this or that, the parent gets an idea. Instead of “No,” she says, “Not...
8 tags
Lawrence Gostin makes Bastiat Obsolete
I love the writings of Frederic Bastiat. Get your hands on anything this Frenchman wrote and you’ll be changed by it. In his struggle to promote the ideas of liberty, he found the utilization of reductio ad absurdum to fit his needs. Simply, he would take the argument of his foe to extremes in order to magnify the true meaning behind a socialist’s proposal or statement. Here are...
6 tags
EPO=HMO=Fraud
Thanks to the goons in D.C., health insurance is basically witheld from most folks’ paycheck just like the Ponzi schemes social security and Medicare. That the purchase of health insurance is a deductible expense for employers and not for employees creates the most perverse consequences, one of which is that insured employees feel like their health care is essentially “free.”...
7 tags
Consumer Reports Outs Medical Price Gougers
Several people sent me the same two articles this week to read and blog about. You can read them here and here. Both articles have one thing in common. Pricing in health care makes no sense. The first article from Consumer Reports was written by someone who doesn’t understand the genesis of the health cartel and how the schizophrenic pricing has evolved to benefit those who set it up....
5 tags
Insurance Bought For You, Not By You
I’ve read that Ludwig von Mises was asked one time what he would do if he were king for a day. He replied without hesitation, “Abdicate.” When the neocon godfather William Buckley was running for office in New York he was asked what he would do first if elected. He wryly said, “Demand a recount.” Laughing with my libertarian stock broker buddy one time about these...
3 tags
Clash of the Hospital Titans
A large “not for profit” hospital system has built outpatient treatment facilities here in the Oklahoma City area consisting of emergency rooms with physician offices and certain diagnostic ancillaries attached. These facilities are architectural works of art, looking like something displayed under glass at the Guggenheim. One of these facilities was built in the back yard of another...
