Posted on by mikecronin2013

BAD MEDICINE: A DEBATE ON QUORA

In addition to this blog, I write on a forum called Quora.  I had the following exchange this past week.
Question to Quora audience:
Mike Cronin (M.C.):

Yes:

  1. Everyone has the right to life, but not at the expense of other’s rights, such as their right to dispose of their time, skills, knowledge, and materials as they see fit.
  2. Socialized medicine, AKA “universal healthcare,” violates those rights by demanding that others must pay for my care (or vice versa), and it violates the rights of providers by coercing them to to give said care to me at government prescribed rates vice market rates, which means: at a loss.
Quora Respondent Max Jones (M.J.):
“I would posit that healthcare is as important to the defense of the country as the military or education. Somethings are better if we use economies of scale which implies the government’s participation… “socialized” is just a word used to imply something derogatory.
M.C.:

“If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”

If healthcare and education are “important to the defense of the nation,” then why on earth would you want the US government involved? The purpose of the US government, as codified in the founding documents, is to protect our rights. That implies the use of force, if necessary, a la the military or the police and the courts…and not a whole lot else.

The thing that distinguishes government from other entities is its authority (derived from us) to use force to do its proper job…but since force is its only real tool, applying that tool to problems that don’t involve violating our rights is…dysfunctional at best, usually absurd, and frequently wasteful and/or harmful, and occasionally result in the direct violation of the very rights that are supposed to be protected!

Here’s an interesting thought experiment to help make my point. Try replacing the words “by the government” with the words “by force” in the following sentences:

Healthcare should be run by the government

Education should be run by the government

Social Security should be run by the government

Fiscal and monetary policy should be run by the government

National Parks should be run by the government

Radio and television broadcast frequencies should be controlled by the government

The internet should be controlled by the government

See what I mean?

M.J.:
M.C:

My answer should not have been any great revelation. I am pro free-market capitalism and individual rights. That “bias” informs my answers to many questions on Quora. On the other hand, your reply reveals a few factual errors and/or reasoning flaws.

The 50 states do have militaries: The (fill in the state) National Guard.

A private company cannot “make as much profit as possible” unless it delivers a product or service its customers want to buy. Only government has the power to force you to buy something you don’t want at price that doesn’t generate profit, then tax you to make up the difference, fail at that, then devalue your currency, still fail to make a profit, then borrow money against future revenue, then still not make ends meet. That’s why we have a 20 trillion dollar national debt.

Beside using force, what is the US government good at? I contend it is worse at anything and everything it tries that could be done by private enterprise, because government eliminates competition and profit motive. The very thing you are decrying is the thing that has driven the ever increasing standard of living for the past ~200 years.

M.J.:
M.C.:

First up: You stated you “know all about the military.” Have you served?

Second, you might not be against private enterprise or profit, but you have a very different idea about what a free market is. A “free market” where government controls entire industries isn’t free at all. At best, it’s a mixed economy where cronyism takes root; at worst it’s fascism a la Nazi Germany. I am not for anarcho-capitalism OR fascism. Anarchy would never last; it would be supplanted by a dictatorship run by the most powerful bully in short order. But capitalism is another matter.

I am for an economy where the government protects our rights via enforcing laws against force and/or fraud, but keeps its mitts off otherwise. That is capitalism without the anarchy.

I am against “single payer” healthcare because “single payer” is code for “government,” and government just isn’t the right tool to provide goods and services, nor does the Constitution delegate it any authority to do so, save for one case: the post office. The term “single payer” is also disingenuous, because it’s really paid for by us taxpayers. Private enterprise and non-profits can and do provide goods and services much more effectively than government – when the government butts out.

Of course, our government couldn’t butt out of healthcare. In fact, it’s the reason the industry is what it is today. Health insurance has been around a long time in some form or fashion, and “mutual aid societies” existed even before that, but businesses “thought it up” and began offering it in earnest during WWII as a means to attract employees. Why? Because, in a perfect example of violating the very rights it’s supposed to protect, the government froze wages during the war! With a good chunk of the workforce drafted into the military (another rights violation!), companies had to find creative ways to offer competitive compensation. Health insurance was often the answer. It was a popular perk – so popular that it became a routine offering after the war, then expected, and now demanded as a “right.”

To summarize: Government interference into the not-so-free market induced the evolution of the healthcare industry into the monstrosity we know and hate today – and you are advocating for exponentially more government to “solve” it, asserting against all evidence that it will save us all money and make us healthier, while purporting to be pro-free market. That is bad medicine.

M.J.:
Posted on by mikecronin2013

More Comfortable Lies and Painful Truths

By Mike Cronin

Comfortable Lie: Healthcare is a right. The US is the only developed country without universal healthcare. Obamacare reduced the gap. We must close that gap, but the Republican just tried (and failed) to open it back up.

Painful Truth: We have the right to life, but not the right to live at the expense of someone else. We have no more right to use the coercive power of government to take our neighbors’ money than we do to rob our neighbors in person, regardless of whether the loot is to be used to pay for healthcare.  Universal healthcare has been made to sound wonderful by the people who stand to gain the most power by implementing it; and it has been made to sound ghastly by the people who stand to gain the most by not having it. The fact that the US is the only developed country that does not have universal healthcare is irrelevant. We have been the first, or only, country to do, or not do, many things – one of which is to be the first nation established on the principles of individual liberty and freedom – which require individual responsibility and self-reliance. Reliance on the state leads to stagnation and mediocrity and the erosion of liberty and freedom.

Comfortable Lie: “fake news” and “alternative facts” are a recent phenomenon born of the 2016 election and social media.

Painful Truth: All news is fake; some news is useful.  This has been the case since the days of the town crier and before. Events that make the news involve, and/or are witnessed by, people – some of the least effective or reliable data recording and play-back devices known! (Remember the game called “telephone” from grade school?  Line everyone up and whisper a story into the first kid’s ear, then have him whisper it to the second kid, who whispers it to the third, and so on.  By the time the story gets to the last kid, it’s unrecognizable.) Sometime the “fakeness” of the news is due to misconceptions; sometimes it is deliberate, as mentioned in previous posts.  Sometimes the reason for the deliberate fakery seems not worth the effort, as when, in the days long before Photoshop, Life magazine retouched this shot of the infamous 1970 Kent State incident. Were they worried that somehow the public would assume the girl is screaming because a fence post seemed to be growing out of her head (right) in the original, and not because her friend lay dead in the street?

Or: What return on investment did the publishers of TV Guide gain by grafting Oprah Winfrey’s head onto Ann-Margaret’s body?  Did they think a genuine picture of Oprah would not sell as well at the check-out stand?

Comfortable Lie: The “experts” know when to raise interest rates, “inject liquidity,” or otherwise enact some control over the economy.

Painful Truth: An economy is an incredibly complex interaction between independent agents, the items they wish to buy and sell, and the relative scarcity of those items. “The economy” is impossible for even the most brilliant humans to understand at a level sufficient to make effective control decisions.  Invariably, those that try end up making small problems bigger and big problems into disasters. They also manage to steal from us by devaluing the currency we have left after paying taxes.  Consider: The humble candy bar cost a nickel a century ago, now it costs $1.25. The chocolate didn’t become 25 times more valuable in that time; our dollars have lost 75% or more of their buying power!

Posted on by mikecronin2013 · 1 Comment

Obamacare: Dysfunction & Chaos!

Kathleen Sebelius

By Mike Cronin

Why has the Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare) been a failure so far? Because it was doomed from the start. Just like any other sector of the economy that gets taken over by the government, health care cannot and will not be improved by central planning and control.  But don’t we need Obamacare, so that people who don’t have health insurance can finally get coverage?

According Dr. Michael Hurd, a psychotherapist who writes a comprehensive mental health blog:

Health insurance started out as hospital insurance. People purchased hospital insurance in the marketplace so that they could afford catastrophic care when and if they needed it. Government regulations (e.g. mandating coverage for primary care) and tampering with/restricting the marketplace (e.g., no purchasing insurance across state lines; tax credits for large companies, but not individuals) are what led to health insurance premiums skyrocketing in the first place.

Piecemeal government interventions made the health care industry dysfunctional and insurance premiums un-affordable, so now the solution is…higher premiums for total government control of health care? Insane.

Health care providers will be unsatisfied because they will be paid based on what the government says they should be paid, not what free-market factors allow them to earn. Further, they will, be micromanaged and second-guessed by bureaucrats and bean-counters, and they will have to comply with ever more red tape.  Bright young people, realizing this, will opt out of medical careers, exacerbating the shortage of care providers. To compensate, the government will be forced to either pay bonuses to medical providers…or draft people into the medical profession.

Beneficiaries are discovering that, enrollment debacle aside, they will be charged exorbitant premiums, (especially the youngest, healthiest adults, in order to pay for the more medically needy); sometimes including mandatory coverage that they don’t need (such as pregnancy coverage for males);  that they won’t be able to keep insurance they already have (not because they law says they have to change companies, but because the economics of implementation have caused their employers to drop their old insurance), or the doctors they already have (again, because their insurance has changed). Some of the sickest beneficiaries will also discover that the government can arbitrarily decide that a given care regime is too costly, so it will be denied to them.

Think of it another way:

Imagine if we relied on auto insurance for “primary care” for our vehicles (fluid changes, tire rotations, wiper blades). Think of the paperwork and billing hassles we would endure for each little oil change. The overall cost of auto maintenance would increase to cover the business overhead. Soon, fewer Americans would be able to afford auto insurance, with serious ramifications for liability, setting the stage for a national crisis. It’s a ridiculous idea, isn’t it? Yet this is the way that health care works in America today. (from dpcare.org)