Friday, July 3, 2009

Wal-Mart: Always Corporate Welfare, Always 

By John LaPlante

Does Wal-Mart's embrace of an employer mandate for health care signal some sort of turn towards progressive (or paternalistic) views? Not quite, say one economists, such as this one: "Wal Mart is known for supporting the minimum wage because it hamstrings its competitors. Mandated employer health care (Wal Mart already provides health care insurance to its employees) also has a negative effect on competitors, especially smaller ones."

• posted by John LaPlante
• 3:24 pm
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Friday, July 3, 2009

Debunking the Obama Infomercial 

By John LaPlante

The Cato Institute produced a fine debunking of the Obama informercial-as-"town hall" event of last week. You can view it here, among other places.

• posted by John LaPlante
• 3:17 pm
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Friday, July 3, 2009

Enjoy Independence Day While You Can 

By John LaPlante

This time of year we usually have a holiday which casually goes by the name "July Fourth," or a variation thereof. The official holiday this year is today, July 3, which means that's important to remember that officially what we observe--when we're not thinking of cookouts, trips to the beach and what not--is Independence Day.

It's appropriate, then, to review the Declaration of Independence, in which the John Hancock and his counterparts from the various colonies review their grievances against King George III and lay out a political philosophy:

It states, in part (emphasis added):

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

In other words, government protects a person's right to act in freedom, not to deliver any particular good or service, such as health care.

One of my favorite passages, speaking of King George III, sounds apt for today: "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance."

Sounds like today.

• posted by John LaPlante
• 12:35 pm
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Thursday, July 2, 2009

Against a Right to Health Care 

By John LaPlante

While it seems that using government to control costs (!) is a major excuse to enact comprehensive health care reform these days, a more long-lasting rationale has been to declare that "health care is a right," and then back that up with government action.

Andrew E. Busch takes on this argument in an essay published by the Claremont Review of Books.

First up, he argues that a right to health care is not consistent with traditional, historic understandings of what a "right" is:

"health care is not a natural right as the founders or John Locke would have understood it. In their view, natural rights exist prior to the formation of government. Since there is no government in the pre-political state of nature, there cannot be a right to government-supplied health care in the state of nature."

Americans, Busch says, have rejected other appeals to establish a positive right, including a right to welfare or a right to obtain an abortion and get public funding to do so. (At least one state, Minnesota, actually has deemed a right to have taxpayers fund for one's abortion.)

The one example of a "positive" right to taxpayer support--to obtain legal defense in a criminal trial--is uniquely related to the state's power to deprive a person liberty, a situation not at all similar to medical concerns.

Busch also mentions two possible justifications for government-paid health care--utilitarianism and the "veil of ignorance" of John Rawls--and found them wanting.

If a positive right to health care existed, further, it would trump political rights. "Accepting a positive government obligation to fund social services claimed as a matter of right would lead inexorably to government without limits."

He closes with an appeal to the value of letting civil society find a solution to the problems of health care access.

• posted by John LaPlante
• 8:10 am
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Thursday, July 2, 2009

Words to Judge Health Care Policy By 

By John LaPlante

In a classic essay published eight years ago, Milton Friedman asked a question still worth pondering: Why, after a tremendous increase in technology in health care, are we still unhappy?

Since the end of World War II, the provision of medical care in the United States and other advanced countries has displayed three major features: first, rapid advances in the science of medicine; second, large increases in spending, both in terms of inflation-adjusted dollars per person and the fraction of national income spent on medical care; and third, rising dissatisfaction with the delivery of medical care, on the part of both consumers of medical care and physicians and other suppliers of medical care.

An advancement in the state of the art combined with dissatisfaction and increased spending is unique to health care, he wrote.

Friedman blamed two factors: third-party payments, and the tax-exempt nature of (certain) health care purchases. He admits that European countries do a better job of restraining growth of spending, but at the cost of government rationing.

So what's the ideal? He offers the following:

The ideal way to do that would be to reverse past actions: repeal the tax exemption of employer-provided medical care; terminate Medicare and Medicaid; deregulate most insurance; and restrict the role of the government, preferably state and local rather than federal, to financing care for the hard cases. However, the vested interests that have grown up around the existing system, and the tyranny of the status quo, clearly make that solution not feasible politically. Yet it is worth stating the ideal as a guide to judging whether proposed incremental changes are in the right direct.

As it stands now, we're getting further away from that ideal.

• posted by John LaPlante
• 6:06 am
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Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Give that Man an "A" in Constitutional History 

By John LaPlante

Among the many problems with Congress and the president hatching plans for your health care is they obliterate the distinction between "national" and "federal." It's important to keep those two ideas separate. One of my favorite reference works is Garner's Modern American Usage.The book's publisher, Oxford University Press, sends out daily e-mail missives. Here's today's entry, which seems especially timely:

 

national; federal

In a nation with a federal system of government, these two terms might seem interchangeable. But the founders of the United States carefully distinguished them -- particularly James Madison, who wrote:

"[T]he Constitution is to be founded on the assent and ratification of the people of America, given by deputies elected for the special purpose; but, on the other [hand], . . . this assent and ratification is to be given by the people, not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong. It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, derived from the supreme authority in each State -- the authority of the people themselves. The act, therefore, establishing the Constitution will not be a national but a federal act." The Federalist No. 39, at 243 (James Madison) (Clinton Rossiter ed., 1961).

Thus, as Madison explained, the foundation of the Constitution is "federal"; the operation of governmental powers under the Constitution is "national"; and the method of introducing amendments is mixed. Ibid. at 246.

Some state legislators are taking notice, and saying "Just a minute now" to the idea of the beltway bandits taking over health care for the whole country.

• posted by John LaPlante
• 10:16 am
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Wednesday, July 1, 2009

What's Elective About Life-Saving Surgery? 

By John LaPlante

Categories: Single-Payer Follies

John Stossel rounds up a few horror stories about government-run health care in the U.K. and Canada.

Here's my favorite:

Shirley Healy, like many sick Canadians, came to America for surgery. Her doctor in British Columbia told her she had only a few weeks to live because a blocked artery kept her from digesting food. Yet Canadian officials called her surgery "elective."

"The only thing elective about this surgery was I elected to live," she said.

• posted by John LaPlante
• 9:57 am
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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Freedom to Go to Pot--or Freedom in Health Care? 

By John LaPlante

The previous post on a move towards legalizing marijuana use makes me wonder. Which will come first: Freedom to smoke a joint, or freedom to select the medical treatment and health insurance of your choice, free from the heavy hand of government or the Hobson's choice offered by the HR department of your particular employer?

It would be an ironic development if Americans would get the right to light up a maryjane cigarette just as they're losing the ability to light up a tobacco one--or worse, being herded into government-run health care.

• posted by John LaPlante
• 11:12 pm
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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Sam's Rolling in His Grave 

By John LaPlante

From USA Today: Wal-Mart, reviled in some quarters as a puppet-master of the right wing, endorses a play or pay mandate.

"We are for an employer mandate which is fair and broad in its coverage." Perhaps the company got tired of being the #1 target, in the business world at least, of the political left.

Wal-Mart, Woolworth, whatever, privileging employment-based insurance through the tax code is a bad idea. is bad for workers. An employer mandate locks in that error and adds new problems, such as making it harder to create new jobs.

• posted by John LaPlante
• 4:37 pm
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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

White House Wants Your Questions 

By John LaPlante

If you have a concern about health care policy, here's your chance to be heard: The White House invites you to submit questions via Facebook, YouTube and Twitter for a "town hall" meeting tomorrow (no time given).

More news: "If you are a Twitter user, you can also ask your question with this hashtag: #WHHCQ or head to Facebook and ask your question there."

• posted by John LaPlante
• 10:20 am
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