May
1
The Problems With Health Care
Filed Under Healthcare | Leave a Comment
With the current economic recession possibly pushing more people into the ranks of the medically-uninsured, many Democrats will be looking to seize the opportunity to create an expanded government health care system. Whether this comes from mandates, expanding existing programs, a combination of the two, or the less-likely alternative of single-payer has yet to be seen.
Of course I oppose any measures that involve the government meddling with or providing health care. The purpose of government is to protect us from force and fraud. Providing health care does not fit under this umbrella. It’s that simple really.
At least to me.
Now there are some that believe that my point is wrong-headed because our fellow humans are entitled to health care. Of course I would love to see everyone’s medical needs taken care of. However, having the state force some people to pay for the needs of others is robbery. We need shoes, do we not? If you support hiring the state to force earners to pay for others’ health care, why not shoes?
In case my moral posturing hasn’t persuaded you against government run or subsidized health care, perhaps a consequentialist argument will suffice. The problem with access to health care is not so much in having enough money. Health-care, like education, has had a ton of money thrown at it over the years with little or no gains in return. In an excellent piece from Dan Boudreaux (who blogs at CafeHayek), we can see clearly how not allowing individual incentives to do their work, as they do in the free market, has led to a mess in healthcare. Dan begins by saying:
One of the cherished beliefs of many Americans today is that health care can be improved only through a collective effort. As a television talking head expressed it recently, “We all have to pull together to improve health care in this country.”
Nonsense.
Each of us has it within our power to improve our own health care.
To help explain the dynamics of the situation, Boudreaux offers up an analogy:
To see why, ask the following question posed by my George Mason University colleague Russell Roberts. If you go to dinner with a large group of strangers and you know that the bill will be split evenly, aren’t you more likely to order pricier dishes and drinks than you would order if you, and you alone, were responsible for picking up your full tab?
The answer is surely “yes.” Let’s say that you’d be content to order the pork chop priced at $15, but would get even greater enjoyment from ordering the rack of lamb priced at $25. If you alone were responsible for your tab, you’d order the lamb only if it is worth to you at least the extra $10 that it costs. So suppose that you value the lamb by only $8 more than you value the pork chop. In that case, you’d order the pork chop. You wouldn’t spend an extra $10 to get extra satisfaction worth only $8.
But if the bill is evenly shared among, say, 10 diners (yourself and nine others), then if you order the lamb, your share of the higher bill will be only $1. That’s $10 split evenly 10 ways. You’ll order the lamb.
You might think that this sharing arrangement is good. After all, in this example, the cost to you of getting something you valued more (the lamb rather than the pork chop) was reduced. It became sensible for you to order the lamb.
Look more deeply, though. What happened is that society (here, the 10 diners) was led to supply something that wasn’t worth its cost. The lamb was worth to you only an additional $8, but to make it available to you, society spent $10. Ten dollars were used to raise the welfare of society by only $8. (You’re a member of society, so any improvement in your welfare counts as an improvement in the welfare of society.) That’s a waste of $2.
You are better off, but the group is worse off.
Now look even more deeply. Everyone at the table faces the same incentives that you face. You’re not the only person who will order excessively costly dishes and drinks. Everyone will. The entire table over-consumes. The total bill is higher — even your share is higher — than it would have been had the bill not been split evenly. Resources are wasted.
Such sharing of our medical-care bill takes place now on a massive scale. It is impossible to see how expanding this sharing will reduce the bill.
Make sure to read the whole thing. I realize I quoted more than half of it, but the point made is important. I illustrated the point back in March here.
Megan McArlde warns against expecting any kind of Utopian solution to health care, while also noting the similarities between healthcare and education:
What you will see–what you do see, among specialists who are monitored for their success rates on procedures–is what liberals complain about with insurance companies: physicians will compete to get rid of their sicker patients. Pay for office visits, and you will get a lot of unnecessary office visits. As David Cutler once told me, it’s no coincidence that health care and education are the two fields where outcomes are hardest to monitor, and where costs are growing uncontrollably.
I’ve tried my best to make the point that socialized health care is not only wrong, but ineffective. But what about the unintended consequences? I’ve warned many times on this blog that once you allow the government into bed, it’ll start taking all the covers. There are strings attached:
Access to healthcare is one of many very important issues to which the left in this country have a never-ending list of government solutions. However, we as citizens need to be aware of the strings attached when we accept such bribes. Whether it is universal healthcare, or light rail from stimulus funds, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Maybe New Zealanders should join gay Mexicans in voting Republican. The following from Cato @ Liberty illustrates an important point:
One of the factors considered by New Zealand in ruling on applications from would-be immigrants is health. If you are fat — and thus at risk for various health conditions — forget it!
The 51-year-old, who has not been named, argued that her 52 inch waistline was no obstacle to her work as a nurse, which involved 60-hour weeks.
She was offered a job in a home and hospital for the elderly in a provincial town in New Zealand, documents from the country’s Residence Review Board said, and applied for residence in March 2008. But officials rejected the argument that 10 years’ experience as a nurse meant she should be allowed to live there — even though there is a shortage of qualified nurses.
The woman decided to move to New Zealand after a holiday in 2007 and wanted to set up home there with her husband, a crane driver, and her daughter who planned to work in a shop.
But medical advisors calculated that with a weight of 21 stone and height of 5ft 1in, her body mass index (BMI) was 55.2, putting her at a high risk of developing health problems.
This isn’t the first time New Zealand has turned down an applicant for health reasons. Adds the Telegraph:
In 2007, a British man who moved to New Zealand was told his wife was too overweight to join him.
Socialism, in all of its forms and degrees, not only is wrong from the perspective of rights, but it is ineffective and only serves to grossly expand the powers of the state.
Feb
16
Gay Mexicans Should Vote Republican
Filed Under Civil Liberties | 3 Comments
Group identity politics seem to be all the rage now, especially with the Democrat Party in charge in Washington. No longer viewed as individuals, people are now seen as members of large, homogeneous groups, rife with societal grievances and ripe for political exploitation. The American population can be split along any lines imaginable in regards to race, skin color, ethnicity, religion, age, sexual orientation, geographical distribution, income, occupation, etc.
Many affiliated with the Republican Party see the last two elections as the party’s “failure” to “reach out” to groups in this manner. Much has been made about the impact of the Hispanic vote given recent demographic changes. Immigration and social welfare issues are seen as very important to these groups, and those who espouse collectivist ideals want to tailor the conservative movement to accommodate such groups.
Another growing political trend has been the rise of the gay rights debate. Many have likened the movement to legalize gay marriage to the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s.
For reasons that are beyond my understanding, the Democrat party has been seen as the allies to immigrant and homosexual rights proponents, while the evil Republicans are seen as the enemies of liberty to these disadvantaged groups.
Regarding the issues of gay rights and immigration, I am a strict libertarian. Regarding the former, I cannot see how being homosexual is harming anyone else, and therefore do not support laws discriminating against it. As for marriage, I don’t believe it is any of the government’s business.
When it comes to immigration, I believe that it is not government’s job to manage demographics over a given geographical area (in other words, immigration quotas), nor is it a function of the state to manage our ‘culture’. As long as you are not a criminal, terrorist, or have an extremely dangerous communicable disease, come on in. Just don’t live off of my dime (which will be the idea of this post). Coyoteblog has a very good piece concerning immigration here.
Arguing my side of these two points would be more than this post is intended for. What this post is meant to do is illustrate that both the Democrat and Republican parties are enemies to the freedoms of gays and immigrants, and that people who already agree with me should vote for the lesser of two evils and for what will realistically bring about the reforms we support. So, if I grouped people into political identities instead of free-thinking individuals, I would, as my (I think rather catchy) title says, urge that gay Mexicans should vote Republican.
It’s easy to say the Republican party is against gay rights and immigration. Democrats are generally for relaxing immigration standards, while Republicans are generally for strict immigration enforcement and sometimes reducing immigration altogether. Proponents of legalizing gay marriage tend to be Democrats or liberals, whereas Republicans oppose gay marriage and support a constitutional ban.
The first thing I can’t stand is why Democrats seem to have the default support of immigrant and gay-rights groups when they differ very little from Republicans. For instance, as this article points out, all of the major 2008 Democrat presidential candidates opposed gay marriage, although they supported civil unions. Then-candidate Barack Obama:
“When you’re a black guy named Barack Obama, you know what it’s like to be on the outside,” said the Illinois senator at the nationally televised forum in Hollywood. “And so my concern is continually to make sure that the rights that are conferred by the state are equal for all people.”
The love may have been flowing at a forum specifically for gay rights, but political realities bogged down Obama when he actually became president. Homosexual blogger Perez Hilton lamented Obama’s decision to cut out of an HBO broadcast a prayer by a gay bishop and also to invite Rick Warren to attend the inauguration. Over a picture of Obama, the blogger scribbled “He’ll let u down too.”
While such politically-motivated moves may shock gays who are liberals like Perez Hilton, it doesn’t shock conservatives or libertarians like me. We realize that statists like the Democrat party employ a strategy of lumping people into groups, promising them things in order to gain power, and rob freedom from everyone, including the groups they claim they’re helping.
Another dark side of statism is that it gives legitimacy to government control of things like marriage and immigration, because costly social welfare programs give the federal government a vested interest in restricting such things. Case in point, the rise of welfare, Medicare and Medicaid, and Social Security have only strengthened the argument to limit the amount of people eligible for American citizenship and equal recognition under the law.
I understand that xenophobia has always and will always exist. However, as civilization progresses, we begin to become more tolerant and see people as individuals, not as members of stereotypical groups whose needs and qualities are all alike. Then how are issues like immigration and gay marriage still significant in modern political discourse?
Take immigration, for example. In a completely free country with a government as the constitution intended, citizenship would mean little more than where you lived. The only argument against open immigration would be that some ethnic groups are undesirable. As I said, such a xenophobic stance has become less and less popular. But what legitimizes an argument towards limiting immigration? Massive (and massively expensive) government entitlement programs like welfare, Medicare and Medicaid, and Social Security, all programs supported by the statist Democrat party. We cannot expect citizens who have been paying into such programs for decades to accept immigrants taking benefits after being here for a fraction of the time. Not only is it not right morally, it is not fiscally feasible. Libertarians like me cannot accept open immigration, as it would bankrupt taxpayers. The Republicans are completely right when they say that immigration restriction and reform are top priorities. Without governmental largess created by Democrats, there would be no need to restrict these freedoms, and xenophobic policies would begin to politically ring hollow in a nation of immigrants. LBJ and FDR did more to restrict immigration than Tom Tancredo could ever hope to.
The argument that Democrat big-government programs are an enemy to civil rights causes is even more blunt when dealing with gay marriage. The error of gay-marriage proponents, with whom I agree, is that their strategy is to make gay marriage acceptable in society. Unfortunately, not only do we have no right to force our viewpoints on others, such a task is not plausible. A Quinnipiac University poll gave the following three choices:
1. Same-sex couples should be allowed legally to marry
2. Same-sex couples should be allowed legally to form civil unions but not marry
3. Same-sex couples should not be allowed to obtain legal recognition of their relationships
The results of the poll show that 62% opposed legalizing gay marriage. The respondents had varying degrees of support for a either a constitutional ban on gay marriage or allowing some civil rights to gay couples. However, these are all the wrong questions. The question should be why the hell the government has a vested interest in who the hell gets married anyway. That answer is simple - Social Security.
Social security not only pays disability, unemployment, and a contributor’s own retirement benefits, it will also pay spousal benefits. In the event of a spouse’s death, the survivor will receive either their own benefit amount, or half that of their deceased spouse’s, whichever is greater. Because of government control of retirement, the feds have a vested interest in what kinds of relationships are recognized as marriage.
Take the following example: There are two relationships, one homosexual, the other heterosexual. In each, one member makes a very good living at their job, so that the other one has no need to work and devotes their time to a local charity and has no reported earnings. After 30 years of marriage, the high-earning member dies in a car accident. The difference between the two relationships? Well, under the current system that the Democrats favor, while the heterosexual survivor would receive half of their spouse’s benefit to live on, the homosexual survivor would be out of luck and the government would pocket their partner’s sizable contributions. If the government would get out of the business of running people’s retirements and left it to private accounts, similar to what Republican George W. Bush tried to implement, the homosexual earner could have designated their partner as the beneficiary in case of death. In a 401(k), you can designate whomever you wish as a payee if you kick off, including your mother, brother, dog, live-in girlfriend, or even a charity. With Social Security? No dice.
But wait, wail the “progressives,” if we legalized gay marriage, wouldn’t that get rid of the problem? Yes, but as that poll cited earlier, its going to be a bit of a stretch politically. The truth of the matter is that that which you give the government control of will also be under the control of whoever is in power and the political whims of the day. It’s all well and good when your guy is in power, but it won’t always be that way. A much wiser policy is to give others, government included, as little control over your own life and earnings as possible.
In the cases of both immigration and gay rights, Republicans are the party of less government control. The knee jerk reaction of freedom advocates, from libertarians like myself and progressives, may be to try to change the view of the world. But that is not a prudent course. It is best to allow a system where people are allowed control over themselves, and themselves alone. While Republicans may be doing things for reasons we disagree, they may be the right course of action after all.
Postscript: Pajamas Media had a great piece explaining why Dick Cheney was the most pro-gay VP in history. In the article, he is quoted as saying:
We live in a free society, and freedom means freedom for everybody. We shouldn’t be able to choose and say you get to live free and you don’t. That means people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. It’s no one’s business in terms of regulating behavior in that regard. The next step then, of course, is the question you ask of whether or not there ought to be some kind of official sanction of the relationships or if they should be treated the same as a traditional marriage. … I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions, and that’s appropriate. … We ought to do everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of relationships people want to enter into.
I guess those evil Republicans (even Cheney!) aren’t so bad, are they?
