Archive for July, 2009
Grocery Insurance-Next on Obama’s Agenda?
Posted by Tom in Nationalized Health Care on July 8, 2009
John Stossel’s July 8th article in Real Clear Politics, “Insurance Is No Answer” hits the nail on the head. As previously stated in our Cato Medical discussion, the objective should be to create real consumers of medical services.
Health care “reformers” keep talking about getting us more health insurance. Then they talk about cutting costs. This is contradictory nonsense.
Insurance, whether private or a government Ponzi scheme like Medicare, means third parties pay the bills. When someone else pays, costs always go up.
Imagine if you had grocery insurance. You wouldn’t care how much food cost. Why shop around? If someone else were paying 80 percent, you’d buy the most expensive cuts of meat. Prices would skyrocket.
That’s what health insurance does to medical care. Patients rarely even ask what anything costs. Doctors often don’t know. Often nobody even gives a damn. Patients rarely ask, “Is that MRI really necessary? Is there a cheaper place?” We consume without thinking.
By contrast, in areas of medicine where most patients pay their own way, service gets better, while prices fall.
Take plastic surgery and Lasik eye surgery: Because patients shop around and compare prices, doctors work hard to win their business.
They often give customers their cell-phone numbers. Service keeps increasing, but prices don’t. “In every other field of medicine, the price is going up faster than consumer prices in general,” says John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis (www.ncpa.org). “But the price of Lasik surgery, on average, has gone down by 30 percent.”
This shouldn’t be a surprise. What holds costs down is patients acting like consumers, looking out for themselves in a competitive market. Providers fight to win business by keeping costs down and quality up.
Yet politicians keep telling us the solution is more insurance. And they mean insurance not just for catastrophic diseases that could bankrupt us but also for routine treatments.
The politicians are so oblivious to reality that they are on course to make things worse. Obama would force every business to either give workers health insurance or pay a fine into the public system. Why is that something we should want employers to do? Premiums come out of our salaries, but insurers are accountable to our bosses, not to us.
Why not just have a free market where people can buy whatever kind of health insurance they want? Competition would then bring prices down.
Obama and his Senate allies would limit competition by requiring insurers to cover everyone for the same “fair” price. No “cherry picking,” the president says. No charging healthy people less.
They call this “community rating,” and it sounds fair. No more cruel “discrimination” against people who have a preexisting condition, obese people or smokers. But such simple-minded one-size-fits-all rules take from insurance companies their best price-dampening tool: Risk-based pricing encourages people to take better care of themselves, just as car-insurance companies reward good drivers. With one-size pricing your car-insurance company must give the town drunk the same deal it gives you.
Insane, but the health-insurance industry is playing along. Insurers say that if government forces everyone to have insurance, they will accept all customers regardless of preexisting illnesses.
They also offered to stop charging higher premiums to sick people. They’re even giving up on gender differences.
Sen. John Kerry huffed, “The disparity between women and men in the individual insurance market is just plain wrong, and it has to change”. The president of the industry trade group, Karen M. Ignagni, agreed that disparities “should be eliminated.”
Give me a break.
Women pay more than men for health insurance for good reason. Despite being healthier than men, they incur higher costs because they go to doctors more often, and they take more medicine. Kerry is pandering. I don’t recall him demanding that men be protected from higher life-insurance and auto-insurance premiums.
“Community rating” hides the cost of health care. It’s as destructive as ordering fire insurance companies to charge identical premiums for wood frame and stone houses. Universal health insurance with “no discrimination” pricing will make health care costs rise even faster.
When politicians interfere with free markets, unintended consequences harm everyone, except the companies that lobby hard enough to protect themselves.
Is it too much to expect our rulers to understand this?
Humor & Truth in WaPo’s “Salon Scandal”
Jonah Gloldberg’s July 8th NRO article on the Washington Post’s “salon” embarrassment is too good not to republish. Read in full below:
Before Sarah Palin stepped on the story, the talk of the Beltway was Salongate at the Washington Post. The venerable newspaper hatched a scheme whereby it would hold a series of “salons” at the home of publisher Katharine Weymouth in order to sell lobbyists and corporations access to Obama administration officials and the Post reporters and editors who cover them.
“Bring your organization’s CEO or executive director literally to the table,” read a flier for the first event. “Interact with key Obama administration and congressional leaders . . . Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No. The relaxed setting in the home of Katharine Weymouth assures it.”
The proposed ticket price? $25,000. Discount for eleven sponsorships? $250,000. Wonky badinage over crudites at Katharine’s pad? Priceless.
Once Politico broke the story, the Post’s newsroom went ballistic. The newsies were never asked to participate, and they swore they never would have. Weymouth cancelled the scheme, and the Post blamed an aggressive marketing executive/event planner, Charles Pelton, for the debacle, saying he never cleared the fliers with her.
Would you invite a bunch of CEOs and pols to your boss’s house without her seeing the invitation? Moreover, invitations to two politicians were sent from Weymouth’s personal e-mail address. Oh, and Pelton still has his job.
But the funny part is how everyone — including the culprits — agrees this was an affront to all that is good and holy. The New York Times called it a “grievous wound.” And because the Times is a dead paper walking, it should know.
Yes, some of the scheme does seem duplicitous. The Atlantic’s Joshua Green reports that Weymouth’s e-mail to Rep. Jim Cooper (D., Tenn.) didn’t mention corporate underwriting or the presence of lobbyists. Trying to cash in on influence-peddling without giving lawmakers a heads-up, never mind a piece of the action, does seem gauche, like asking a girl on a date only to set her up with a stranger by surprise — and for a fee.
But here’s the thing: What the Post proposed is hardly radical. Lots of major publications — and by lots, I mean pretty much all of them — offer an array of meet-and-greet opportunities. The Atlantic, which has been tsk-tsking the Post, is famous for such lavish get-togethers, as are the Wall Street Journal and The Economist. I’ve been to ten national political conventions and long ago concluded that they are giant money-laundering operations whereby corporations funnel money through news organizations for maximum schmoozability.
Now, the ethical rules governing such events vary widely, and to my knowledge, none have been as crass and brazen as what the Post proposed. But these shocked media outlets are acting like erotic masseuses scandalized by the whorehouse next door.
“You cannot buy access to a Washington Post journalist,” insisted Marcus Brauchli, the Post’s executive editor. Really? As a close observer, I say balderdash. You may not be able to pay cash or make out a check to the Washington Post Co., but getting access to journalists is pretty easy. They make it hard to buy them lunch — the fastest access in the old days — but a party with an open bar still works. A surefire way for lobbyists to gain access to a reporter is to give him or her a scoop. Another way is to help them with their stories. You could also subsidize a think-tank conference, sponsor a PBS show, or just flatter the dickens out of a reporter. This last is the cheapest financially, but often costly in terms of self-esteem.
The real trick to these methods is to make it seem like they’re not methods at all. The best lobbyists know everybody, get along with everybody, and make things happen for their clients and bosses. That’s the value of lobbyists; they make it look so easy and take the sting off the fact that they’re lobbyists. Washington is rich in rituals in which incredibly valuable favors are exchanged for other incredibly valuable favors. Nobody puts a price on them, but everyone understands they’re not free.
Perhaps what really offends is the flier’s truth in advertising. If the Post didn’t try to charge for attendance, most journalists, politicians, and lobbyists would have leaped at the chance to attend. That’s the way things used to work for Weymouth’s grandmother, Katharine Graham, who hosted Washington’s most famous high-powered salon for decades.
Of course, that was when newspapers were hugely profitable and money was the tawdriest medium of exchange. That’s what makes all the outrage so quaint. It’s like passengers on the Titanic refusing to leave their cabins before the steward lays out their evening clothes. Some things just aren’t done.
— Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.
via Post’s ‘Salon’ Mess Brazen, Not Shocking by Jonah Goldberg on National Review Online.
Summer Reading-Not at All Lite!
Posted by Tom in Law, Morality & Religion in the Public Square, National Character on July 7, 2009
Two excellent book reviews in the June 22nd issue of National Review:
Right Time, Right Place-Coming of Age with William F. Buckley, Jr. by Richard Brookhiser tells the story of a 40 year career at the National Review during which time Bill Buckley led the conservative movement which got Reagan elected and in a sense ended the cold war. It presents a history both intellectual and political of that movement. And it gives a vital portrait of both men and their enduring relationship. I’ve started this book; it’s an engaging read.
Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesqieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect by Paul A Rahe suggests that living in a democracy render the continued survival of democracy increasingly doubtful. With soft despotism we slowly surrender our responsibilities to the state. France is Rahe’s epitome and he uses French philosophers and French history to demonstrate this French disease which we are more rapidly contracting. As Mark Steyn says “Obama is attempting Euro-statism, but, unlike Europe, without the counterweight of America to preserve some approximate relationship to reality.” For the sake of our grandchildren to quote Bill Buckley we need to “stand athwart history yelling STOP.”
Our Fourth of July Chatauqua
Posted by Tom in National Character, Politics on July 3, 2009
It’s good to recall our roots as a nation. No better way to attempt that than to hear Patrick Henry’s famous call to arms from David Baldwin, the first Utube segment that follows. To hear a modern “get off your duff, America” speech from Tom Paine via Bob Basso, the second such segment, provokes some thought.
WaPo Attempts “Access” Sale
Continuing losses at the Washing Post, $19.5 million this first quarter, spurred management to foster solutions. So publisher Katharine Weymouth hit upon the idea of selling “off the record” access to “those powerful few” Obama administration officials, members of Congress and WaPo reporters and editors. This was offered to lobbyists and association executives in a informal “salon” environment at the Weymouth home for a mere $250,000 per head.
Hell, if then Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich can sell Obama’s Senate seat for a lump sum, why shouldn’t the Washington Post be able to sell access to Obama’s administration and WaPo editorial positions on an easy payment plan basis? This is probably the only free market idea these leftists have had in recent memory. If you can’t make money selling papers, sell favors!
As comic as this seems, when you think of the way the Cap and Trade ACES bill was put together, it is really tragic in the truest sense. Read about the embarrassment when this story leaked in Mike Allen’s and Michael Calderone’s fine article in Politico, here. As always, FOLLOW THE MONEY!
Tom Motherway, tom@renohayek.com
Please, Just Stand There, Don’t Do Anything!
Posted by Tom in Energy Facts & Policies, Environment on July 2, 2009
How can the American Clean Energy and Security Act be justified to Americans during this severe recession? It is the worst of special interest pork barrels. It costs the taxpayers, current and future, dearly but provides no benefits. What reasonable person would buy off on this? In other words, how can the public be goaded into suspending reason.
Mat Welch, Editor in Chief of Reason Magazine, showcases the perennial argument of the demagogues to grow government and their own importance. “The Cost of Doing Something” is something we truly cannot afford!
On the eve of what would be a 219-212 House of Representatives vote in favor of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the New York Times editorial board argued that whatever the bill’s eventual price tag, it sure beat “the costs of doing nothing.” Warned the Gray Lady: “By any measure—drought, famine, coastal devastation—the costs of inaction, of clinging to a broken energy policy, will dwarf the costs of acting now.”
If that argument sounds familiar, it is. Times columnist Paul Krugman, while declaring those 212 nay votes guilty of “treason against the planet,” posited that “we’re facing a clear and present danger to our way of life, perhaps even to civilization itself.” Therefore, “How can anyone justify failing to act?”
The same logic, minus some of the apocalyptic language, is being used this summer to push through President Barack Obama’s other massively expensive overhaul to the way America does business: health care reform. “I can assure you,” the president said recently in Green Bay, Wisconsin, “the cost of doing nothing is going to be a lot higher in the years to come. Our deficits will be higher. Our premiums will keep going up. Our wages will be lower. Our jobs will be fewer. Our businesses will suffer.” Echoed Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius a week later: “The cost of doing nothing will render us a second rate nation on into the future.” Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), in subsequent House hearings, went still further: “There is not one child, not one worker, not one employer, nor one taxpayer who can further bear the cost of doing nothing.”
Hyperbole aside, the urge to have the government do something in the face of a perceived crisis is arguably the most powerful and effective legislative engine known to man. If the crisis is acute enough, backers of state intervention will even admit that content matters less than the mere existence of action itself. During the height of last fall’s financial panic, for example, New York Mayor and financial journalism titan Michael Bloomberg said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “Nobody knows exactly what they should do, but anything is better than nothing.” As the House of Representatives was passing the stimulus package this February, Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, thundered that “the cost of doing nothing would be catastrophic.” Auto bailout? “The cost of doing nothing is cataclysmic,” warned Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn.) last December.
Read his full article on the link provided and just hope that the American people are a bit more intelligent than the ruling classes and charlatans think they are!
Tom Motherway, tom@renohayek.com
Democrats vs. the Environment: ACES
It’s sadly laughable what Obama and Pelosi are trying to foist upon the American people and the world economy. We’ve all read the headlines describing how the House passed the ACES cap and trade bill, all 1500 pages, without reading it.
Well Stephen Spruiell and Kevin Williamson have taken the trouble to read it and explain some of its most 50 heinous aspects in this National Review Online article. This is a must read.
The American people don’t have a chance. As the concluding paragraph states: “Waxman-Markey will create a lot of jobs for Wall Street sharps, Big Business rent-seekers, ACORN hucksters, utility-company lobbyists, grant-writers at left-wing organizations, college administrators, light-bulb-policing bureaucrats, and an army of parasitic hangers-on.” Read the article and FOLLOW THE MONEY!
Oh, by the way, this is an anti-environmental bill!
Tom Motherway, tom@renohayek.com