The Freedom Minute

House Passes Health Reform Bill

We’re screwed. More to come…

Since I can’t feed content from Facebook directly into the blog, I decided to post the contents of a spirited debate that was started when I posted the following:

Jay Beeber:   Thomas Jefferson and the rest of our founding fathers must be spinning in their graves.

Kathy Ann Wittes
We’re going to fight back.

Kathy Ann Wittes
If you want, come to the Hollywood Republicans dinner 1st Wed in April at the

Steve Humphreys
Oh and they weren’t when we illegally invaded another country and waterboarded suspected terrorists?

Cristina Nenadov
I am with Steve!

Tom Quinn
Selective memory is so convenient, don’t you think?

Jay Beeber
@Steve are you advocating the “two wrongs make a right” theory of government?

Steve Humphreys
Jay: I’m not advocating “two wrongs make a right”. Please explain to me what is so horribly wrong with a health care policy that will help people we both know? (ie: all of our friends who have no insurance) It’s not perfect but at least after trying to do something since the deperession, it’s a start.

Louisa Cilento
I’m one of those people who’s job doesn’t provide health insurance but that didn’t stop me from getting it on my own. I’ve have my individual plan my whole life. I hate when people think not being able to afford it and don’t want to afford it are the same thing! People who don’t want to pay now are still not going to want to pay anything…and won’t. How is that right?

Tom Quinn
Well said, Louisa!

Stephanie Witherspoon
Tell that to my friend who’s stuck in a horrible job because her pre-existing conditions have meant she wouldn’t be able to change insurance carriers because the premiums would be too high, if they’d take her at all. Is it perfect? No, of course not. But it’s a step in the right direction, and the first step that’s been taken in 100 YEARS. It’s easy for people who HAVE insurance to bemoan the healthcare bill. Try talking to some people that NEEDED this change.

Robyn Castellano Rubin
Any company’s group policy would have accepted her. But not to worry, we’ll pay for everyone now so why get any job at all?

Rafferty Fartengaten
You mean you thought you weren’t paying for everyone already?! Wow, how naive. I guess if you knew you wouldn’t have agreed to that. Why do you think costs are so high? Well apart from the fact that insurance, pharmaceutical & medical supply companies can charge whatever they want. Who is going to say no. If you want no regulation like good Capitalists then accept this- in the short to medium term at least the companies have no need to have a moral responsibility, only an economic drive. So accepting that, anyone who can’t afford it should either stay sick… or “fall by the supply/demand wayside” … & by that I mean die. If you can accept that as legitimate collateral damage then bring forth complete open markets. Too many goddamn people anyway

Rafferty Fartengaten
Answer me this riddlers. I just got a prescription filled for generic Augmenten. How much without insurance is it? And how much in Australia or the UK? The basic multifunction effective antibiotic- it’s $103 here. It’s about $25 in Australia. Explain that price variation & why can’t we then just get our meds from oneseas legally if we have ‘open markets’ now. I wonder why the pharmaceutical companies would lobby the GOVT not to have that happen?

Jay Beeber
We don’t have open markets now. Health care, insurance, etc. are some of the most highly regulated industries in the US. Due to government interference, the market is not free, open or competitive. And yes, we can’t buy from overseas because the pharmaceutical industry co-opted the power of government to forbid us from doing something we should have every right to do. I don’t know the Australian system all that well, but I suspect that the drug is cheaper over there either because it is somehow subsidized by the taxpayers and/or the cost of developing the drug, getting approved, and bringing it to market is less than it is here. Another possibility is that the AU gov’t has put in place price controls and people in other countries that don’t have such controls are paying the difference.

Julien Batelaan Humphreys
Right, if she could find a job with a company providing employee health coverage, which many don’t nowadays.
And, besides, we are paying for those that don’t have it now. We pay for them to wait in long lines at USC Medical Center and get treated like subhumans (like my friend, who definitely can’t afford own her policy, and had nowhere else to go recently when she badly cut her finger).
Jay, I doubt Jefferson is spinning in his grave. He was too busy doing his female slaves to care about the many people suffering in many different ways at the time. (And, no, I’m not a Jefferson hater. Admittedly, just making a snarky point.) Brings to mind all the politicans who have been so vehemently against something that is meant to help the quality of life of their fellow Americans. Hypocrites and purveyors of death and destruction (read: our current war). Spent too much money on that to support something altruistic and for the greater good.

Jay Beeber
@Julien If it really would help the quality of life overall, I might be inclined to support it, but I believe it will make health care more expensive overall and the taxpayers will have to keep shouldering more and more of the burden down the road. To understand why I believe that, you have to read the posts on my blog, there is not enough room to put all that here. Post over there if you disagree with the facts I list and my conclusions.

But the main point of my original post is that there is supposed to be limits on what the Federal Gov’t can and can’t do. I object to people being forced to buy a product from a private company (especially companies that have a track record like the health insurance industry). Never before has the Federal Gov’t extended itself this far and I think it’s a terrible precedent to set, no matter how well intentioned. And I’ll be posting about that in detail on my blog as well if I can steal a free moment away from answering comments on FB.

March 21st, 2010 Posted by freedomminute | Federal Government, Health Care | 2 comments

Lessons from the Massachusetts Special Election

To a large extent, the special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat was a referendum on the Democrats’ legislative ambitions in general and the current health care reform bill in particular. There are lessons to be learned from Scott Brown’s defeat of Martha Coakley to become the 41st Republican in the Senate, and one hopes the President and Congress are a quick study.

Contrary to what some liberals (oops, I mean “progressives”) like Michael Moore would wish to believe, the Democratic base did not desert those in power because they weren’t liberal enough. On the contrary, Brown won because independents and many moderate Democrats are unhappy with what appears to be this administration’s preference for big government solutions and the resulting increases in taxes and debt.

The health care bill is a good case in point. The President and the Democratically controlled Congress are attempting to foist upon the American people a trillion dollar health care plan, bought and paid for with backroom deals, and loaded with giveaways to the health care and health insurance industries. The President campaigned on “change”. But if this health care bill doesn’t prove that it’s still business as usual in Washington, nothing does.

So what should the President do? First, he should abandon the health care reform bill in its current form. Make no mistake, neither the House nor Senate bills address the real reasons for out of control heath care costs and would do little more than force everyone to purchase the health insurance industry’s flawed product; most likely at a higher cost. Pushing this catastrophically flawed bill through Congress, especially if the effort appears to involve any appearance of political gamesmanship, would be political suicide for the Democrats. Instead, the President and Congress should concentrate on only those reforms upon which most everyone can agree. It’s likely that with a scaled back, targeted approach to health care reform a few Republicans could be brought on board. (I’ll provide details in another post.) Not only would this be a huge win for the American people, but politically it would show that Obama is not only interested in bringing about change, he’s capable of change himself.

Second, the President should recognize that you can’t win elections without the backing of moderate and independent voters, and in Massachusetts they voted for a course correction. In his first year in office, Obama made the same mistake Bill Clinton made in 1992. Clinton beat Bush by appealing to independents and the so called “Reagan democrats”. But once in office, he pushed a classically liberal democratic agenda, the centerpiece of which was a big government health care reform bill. His approval ratings tanked and in the 1994 mid-term elections the Democrats lost control of both Houses of Congress. But Clinton learned his lesson, and for the rest of that term he chose to govern from the center, rather than the liberal left. He handily won re-election and by all accounts left office a popular and successful president. (Except, perhaps, for that impeachment thing.)

President Obama is actually lucky in that he’s had some early warning signs of the impending political disaster headed his way. If last November’s Republican gubernatorial wins in Virginia and New Jersey didn’t wake him up, certainly what happened in Massachusetts should do the trick. If he’s smart, he’ll make it clear that he’s heard the will of the people. He’ll become more fiscally conservative and dial back on his ambitious agenda. He’ll try to truly usher in an era of bipartisanship by repudiating ideas that would lead to bigger government intrusion in our lives and he’ll take a more market oriented approach to the reforms he wants to implement. He’ll steer clear of job killing legislation like Cap and Trade and he’ll consider options for reducing the deficit, not increasing it.

Hopefully, President Obama has gotten the message sent by the voters of Massachusetts. If not, in the 2010 midterm elections, it will be, as Yogi Berra used to say, deja vu all over again.

January 20th, 2010 Posted by freedomminute | Election, Federal Government, Health Care | 4 comments

Thanks, 60 Minutes

It’s really gratifying when your analysis of an issue is validated on a respected national news show. On last night’s broadcast of 60 Minutes, Steve Kroft had this to say about why health care costs, especially for end of life care, are spiraling out of control:

In almost every business, cost-conscious customers and consumers help keep prices down. But not with health care. That’s because the customers and consumers who are receiving the care aren’t the ones paying the bill.

In fact, as Kroft reveals, 85 percent of health care bills are paid by the government or private insurers, not by patients themselves.

If this sounds familiar, you might be remembering that I basically made the same case in part two of my series on health care reform.

Unfortunately, the health care reform plans favored by the President and Congress will only make matters worse since they further insulate consumers from the cost of their medical care decisions by forcing more Americans to buy basic health insurance and covering more of the population under government paid for health care programs. This is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing. Instead of making people more responsible for their decisions, the government is drafting legislation that will make people less responsible for the cost of their health care. As Dr. Elliot Fisher says at another point in this 60 Minutes segment, “In medicine we have turned the laws of supply and demand upside down”.

But don’t take my word for it, watch the 60 Minutes report here or read the transcript.

November 23rd, 2009 Posted by freedomminute | Health Care | one comment

The Problem with Health Insurance

In part one of this series, we looked at the underlying reasons why healthcare is so expensive. We now focus on health insurance and the role it plays in causing our health care system to be more dysfunctional than it need be. We’ll see that the health insurance system which has evolved here in the United States both contributes to the high cost of medical care and creates additional impediments to providing health care to the population as a whole.

An Historical Perspective

In order to understand health insurance in the United States, it’s necessary to know a little about how the system evolved into what we have today. An excellent history can be found here and I encourage you to read it.

To summarize, the modern health insurance system has its roots in the 1920’s. Around this time, costs for medical care began to rise due to advances in technology and a subsequent increase in demand. In addition, increased requirements for physician licensure, education and the accreditation of medical schools restricted physician supply, putting upward pressure on the costs of physicians’ services. Continue reading “The Problem with Health Insurance”

November 2nd, 2009 Posted by freedomminute | Federal Government, Health Care | 4 comments

Why is Health Care So Expensive?

This is a multipart series on health care reform. You may find it easier follow the discussion from the beginning. If you haven’t already read the introduction, you can find it here.

First, we need to define what we mean when we say that health care is too expensive. Do we mean that it costs too much to visit the doctor for a checkup, or an x-ray, or a flu vaccine? Do we mean that the average person can’t afford any type of health insurance? Do we mean that if you get cancer or some other major disease or need major surgery you can’t possibly afford to pay for all the medical bills you will incur? Or are we talking about the fact that the percentage of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) spent on heath care continues to increase every year and is much greater than what is spent in other Western countries?

When we break it down this way, we can see that in some cases, heath care is not “too expensive” for the average American. Most people, even those without health insurance, can afford to visit the doctor for minor or routine medical care. Sure, it might cost more than we’d like, but then again it cost me more than I’d have liked to replace the clutch in my Toyota, but I accept that as the normal cost of owning a car. If you take on the responsibility for anything, be it a car, or a house, a child, or your body, eventually you will have maintenance costs and you just have to plan for such things. Although the price of a doctor’s visit is actually more expensive in real dollars today by about a factor of two than it was in the early sixties (later we’ll discuss the reasons for that and the fact that it’s not an apples to apples comparison) the cost is still not out of reach for the average person. Likewise, while the cost of what we call health insurance (I’ll explain later why it isn’t really “insurance”) continues to increase, almost 85% of the U.S. population is able to obtain health insurance either on their own or through their employer. True, there are huge problems with health insurance that need to be addressed, but generally health insurance is still somewhat affordable for most people. Of course there is a small percentage of the population, the very poor, who can’t afford any health care or health insurance, though many of them can obtain some basic health care through existing Federal and State programs.
Continue reading “Why is Health Care So Expensive?”

September 30th, 2009 Posted by freedomminute | Federal Government, Health Care | 11 comments

Health Care Reform – Introduction

I considered avoiding this topic since there’s so many others writing and talking about it, but with all the misinformation on all sides of this issue, I feel I need to bring some sanity to the conversation. Health care reform is a complicated issue and there’s no way I can cover everything that needs to be said about it here at the Freedom Minute. Countless books, research papers, college courses and articles provide volumes of information for anyone who wants to look for it. Yet most people don’t look for it. They continue with their pre-conceived ideas, certain in the correctness of their “facts”. I’ll attempt to distill down the vast amount of information available and present it in a clear and concise manner, free as much as possible from ideology and rhetoric.

I’m going to divide this up into a bunch of different posts, partly because I don’t want to have to write it all at once and partly because dividing it up will make it easier to follow. Much of what follows is not simply my opinion, but rather the result of countless hours of research and investigation. I use mostly verifiable, independent, peer-reviewed sources and if I make an assertion, I’ll attempt to cite those sources so you can check them out yourself. Mostly I’ll be paraphrasing the relevant data, but when I quote another source directly, I’ll use italics so you know when that’s happening.
Continue reading “Health Care Reform – Introduction”

September 30th, 2009 Posted by freedomminute | Federal Government, Health Care, Libertarian Philosophy | no comments