Garden Planning 2010 – Your Suggestions

I’m planning a larger garden for 2010. I’ll keep everybody posted with the progress. I’d love to hear suggestions of things to grow. You can leave them in the comments. Thanks!

Vaccine Nation – Director’s Cut (Gary Null) – Documentary

Health Insurance: Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?

by D. Saul Weiner

Watching the so-called health care debate in this country, the health insurance industry obviously has come under fire. Why is this? In part, it is due to being in the position of being the bearer of bad news. The insurance company informs us that our premiums are rising yet again, that we are not covered for something that we thought we were, or that we will no longer be offered coverage. Even if our expenses are covered, we may find it frustrating and confusing to go through all of the paperwork required, especially when we are confronted with a major health problem.

From a political standpoint, there is another reason for this. Politicians find that they can gain support for their schemes when they can frame the problems that they are trying to address as the result of the behavior of a bad actor (i.e. a scapegoat) that may or may not have very much to do with the problem at hand. Demagoguery will elicit support for their scheme to punish the bad guys and drive attention away from an objective assessment of whether or not their scheme is likely to improve conditions or make things worse. Bad guys are chosen, like so much in politics, based on the path of least resistance. Of course, the politicians are not likely to highlight their own role in creating the problem. And while they may know that past actions taken by the AMA have contributed significantly to the health care crisis, they also know full well that many people like their own doctor and regularly watch handsome and compassionate MD’s on TV who perform heroic acts for suffering humanity. On the other hand, people rarely, if ever, see handsome and compassionate health insurance executives on TV going to bat for patients in need. For this reason and the ones mentioned earlier, health insurers make an inviting target.

Note that my intent here is not to rationalize the role that health insurance plays in the current environment. First, I will briefly discuss how some of the problems that people associate with today’s health insurance companies are not inherent. Then I will discuss how health insurance companies operating in a free market actually could play a critical role in solving the problems of cost containment and access to services that seem so intractable in the current environment.

The first thing to note in analyzing “health insurance” offered in the United States today is that most of it is not really insurance at all. I am referring to the benefits offered through employers. Insurance, for one thing, refers to the spreading of the expected costs of coverage proportionately amongst people who pose similar levels of risk. Thus, for example for life insurance, there are different rates for males and females, people of different ages, smokers and non-smokers, and so forth. For employer-based health insurance, employers pay most of the cost and the employees each typically pay the same cost (except if they are insuring other family members). In such a context, there is little financial incentive for an employee to minimize his risk or to economize in his usage of health care. What is more, due to mandates, insurance must cover a great many benefits that companies and individuals would not pay for, if they were allowed to choose. In effect, part of the premium represents insurance and part of the premium is a tax which redistributes wealth to providers with political clout.

One might wonder how it became the norm for health insurance to be offered through one’s employer, when the need for health care is independent of one’s working status. It turns out that this arrangement had a lot to do with government intervention. During WW2, when resources were scarce and wage increases were limited by law, as a workaround companies offered fringe benefits such as health insurance and pension plans as incentives in order to attract sufficient workers. The costs for such coverage were tax deductible to employers (though not for individuals buying their own insurance) and this also encouraged our current system to evolve as it did. In light of all this, one can see that many of the problems that people today associate with health insurance are not inherent, but are the result of perverse incentives which have shaped the current environment. We might reasonably ask how things might be different if free market conditions prevailed.

We know that, in a free market, over time goods and services tend to improve in quality and become less expensive. Since that has not been the case, for the most part, in health care, we must consider the possibility that government interventions have interfered with that process. While medical licensing, patents, and FDA regulations have undoubtedly played a major role in the costliness of today’s health care, interference in the free market for health insurance may be the straw that is breaking the economy’s back. To see why this is the case, consider the role that health insurance in a free market could play in driving costs down and quality up. There have always been medical entrepreneurs who have found more cost-effective approaches, but health insurance companies have never been free to pay for only the most cost-effective treatments. The “approved treatments” are subject to the determination of medical boards which, not surprisingly, favor established treatments and look askance at innovations which have not yet been widely accepted in professional circles, regardless of the promise that they hold or the appeal they may have to patients.

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Ron Paul: Healthcare “Reform” Will Make a Flawed System Immeasurably Worse

Operation Health Freedom – Peter Schiff

Euro Pacific Capital President Peter Schiff talks about problems with the employer-based health care system and how costs would go down over time without government involvement in health care.

Gerald Celente predictions for United States:long decline, war, & terror 2010.

Here is the bread I made on sunday night.

It is called Challah. Yumm.

Ron Paul on NPR – Sunday September 20, 2009

Ron Paul makes another appearance on NPR, this time talking about the government &  health insurance plans.  Enjoy.

Ron Paul – National Public Radio

What Soviet Medicine Teaches Us

by Yuri N. Maltsev

In 1918, the Soviet Union became the first country to promise universal “cradle-to-grave” healthcare coverage, to be accomplished through the complete socialization of medicine. The “right to health” became a “constitutional right” of Soviet citizens.

The proclaimed advantages of this system were that it would “reduce costs” and eliminate the “waste” that stemmed from “unnecessary duplication and parallelism” — i.e., competition.

These goals were similar to the ones declared by Mr. Obama and Ms. Pelosi — attractive and humane goals of universal coverage and low costs. What’s not to like?

The system had many decades to work, but widespread apathy and low quality of work paralyzed the healthcare system. In the depths of the socialist experiment, healthcare institutions in Russia were at least a hundred years behind the average US level. Moreover, the filth, odors, cats roaming the halls, drunken medical personnel, and absence of soap and cleaning supplies added to an overall impression of hopelessness and frustration that paralyzed the system. According to official Russian estimates, 78 percent of all AIDS victims in Russia contracted the virus through dirty needles or HIV-tainted blood in the state-run hospitals.

Irresponsibility, expressed by the popular Russian saying “They pretend they are paying us and we pretend we are working,” resulted in appalling quality of service, widespread corruption, and extensive loss of life. My friend, a famous neurosurgeon in today’s Russia, received a monthly salary of 150 rubles — one third of the average bus driver’s salary.

In order to receive minimal attention by doctors and nursing personnel, patients had to pay bribes. I even witnessed a case of a “nonpaying” patient who died trying to reach a lavatory at the end of the long corridor after brain surgery. Anesthesia was usually “not available” for abortions or minor ear, nose, throat, and skin surgeries. This was used as a means of extortion by unscrupulous medical bureaucrats.
“Slavery certainly ‘reduced costs’ of labor, ‘eliminated the waste’ of bargaining for wages, and avoided ‘unnecessary duplication and parallelism’.”

To improve the statistics concerning the numbers of people dying within the system, patients were routinely shoved out the door before taking their last breath.

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The Health Care Bill: What HR 3200, ‘‘America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009,” Says

by John David Lewis

What does the bill, HR 3200, short-titled ‘‘America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009,” actually say about major health care issues? I here pose a few questions in no particular order, citing relevant passages and offering a brief evaluation after each set of passages.

This bill is 1017 pages long. It is knee-deep in legalese and references to other federal regulations and laws. I have only touched pieces of the bill here. For instance, I have not considered the establishment of (1) “Health Choices Commissio0ner” (Section 141); (2) a “Health Insurance Exchange,” (Section 201), basically a government run insurance scheme to coordinate all insurance activity; (3) a Public Health Insurance Option (Section 221); and similar provisions.

Although I am an associate professor in the Philosophy, Politics and Economics program at Duke University, this document is neither an academic nor a professional analysis. This is the evaluation of someone who is neither a physician nor a legal professional. I asked some simple questions about the bill, considered them in context with the overall structure, definitions, and procedures in the bill, and quoted only the immediate passages involved. I am citizen, concerned about this bill’s effects on my freedom as an American. I would rather have used my time in other ways—but this is too important to ignore.

We may answer one question up front: How will the government will pay for all this? Higher taxes, more borrowing, printing money, cutting payments, or rationing services—there are no other options.  We will all pay for this, enrolled in the government “option” or not.

(All bold type within the text of the bill is added for emphasis.)

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