Grasp of the obvious

http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/02/politics/planned-parenthood-bloomberg/?hpt=hp_t3

"Politics has no place in health care," said Mayor Michael Bloomberg, of New York City, in a written statement today, as he gave two hundred fifty million stolen dollars to Planned Parenthood.

Do you think he does not realize that he is a politician? That he personally is now responsible for a measurable ($250,000,000) political involvement in health care? Do we all need to write him a letter, get those closest to him to whisper in his ear and let him know what a ridiculous and embarrassing thing he said in his statement?

Is there a fund we can contribute to for the mayor's mental health care?

Clinging to freedom means you support SLAVERY!

Reid Compares Opponents of Health Care Reform to Supporters of Slavery

Wait - if you don't believe in forcing some of your neighbors to work to pay for substandard health insurance for some of your other neighbors, that makes you a supporter of slavery? You mean opposing involuntary servitude makes one a supporter of slavery?

I think I must be behind on my Newspeak.

I'll submit to whatever hair-brained scheme the rest of you come up with. I promise. I just really would life for people not to enslave my neighbors in my name. I'll submit; just please don't make me guilty of doing it to my neighbors and children.

And also, as long as I have the legal right to say what's on my mind, I'll keeping pointing out that economists like Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard proved decades ago that collectivist schemes like this will always be suboptimal, in books like "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth," and "Power and Market." The emperor really does have no clothes. Again, if you want to put these yokes and shackles on me, all right: here are my hands and neck, and I'll stoop down. But my neighbors and children are innocent. Please don't claim to represent me while making them suffer.

How to fix American healthcare

The following is shamelessly copied from The Ultimate Pro-WalMart Article, by Paul Kirklin, at The Ludwig von Mises Institute. Google says I've accessed this article from search results five times since August 14th. :) Today makes the sixth.

We're dealing with insurance problems right now. Our employer-provided insurance doesn't want to pay claims they are obligated by agreement to pay. I'm spending way too much unproductive time researching what they've done and calling them back.

I know that the reason insurance companies can be like this is because of government intervention. YES, insurance companies seek profit, as do all people, including people who complain about "evil, greedy" insurance companies. The difference is that with government help, you can often make profit by exploiting people, but without the mighty sword of government, in a free market, the only way to make sustainable profits is to serve people. If all civil laws related to medical care were repealed, including all laws related to medical insurance, the behavior of insurance companies would improve more than one thousand fold. Of course, a completely different class of more honorable people might be attracted to the industry as the change occurred. :)

Here's the excerpt. Below this paragraph, nothing is my own words:
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Healthcare Benefits

Wal-Mart improves access to healthcare by raising the real incomes of all the millions of people who are its customers or the customers of its competitors, whose prices are lower because of its powerful competition. This allows people to be able to afford healthcare more easily than they otherwise could.

In spite of this fact, another one of the Wal-Mart critics' favorite complaints is that Wal-Mart "reduces access to healthcare." The Wal-Mart critics believe this because Wal-Mart does not offer substantial healthcare benefits to all its employees. Employees who don't have substantial healthcare benefits are often unable to afford healthcare on their own, and thus they are left with little or no access to healthcare. Wal-Mart is blamed for their plight since the company is allegedly capable of offering more healthcare benefits but chooses not to. In part the critics are right; access to healthcare is becoming more problematic, but this is not caused by Wal-Mart or by "corporate greed." It is the result of an irrational healthcare system that causes us all to suffer, including Wal-Mart.
"Wal-Mart has made the system ingenious so its employees don't have to be."

This is not an article on the problems in our healthcare system. So I can only deal with that subject very briefly here. Many people are under the false impression that employers are responsible for the healthcare costs of their employees. The reason that so many people have this misconception is due to government intervention. For several decades, the government has put pressures — mainly powerful tax incentives — on companies to offer healthcare as a fringe-benefit. It has artificially created a system in which it is cheaper for an employer to purchase healthcare for an employee than for that employee to buy healthcare for himself with take-home wages. This has caused healthcare fringe-benefits to become so widespread for so long that most people have forgotten that they are fringe-benefits (i.e., an alternate way to pay wages.) Instead, many people incorrectly believe that healthcare benefits for employees are a moral duty of employers in addition to wages. But healthcare costs are not the responsibility of employers any more than the costs of food or clothing or anything else are.

The disastrous byproduct of healthcare fringe-benefits being offered on such a widespread basis is that healthcare costs have become collectivized. Employers cannot directly pay unlimited amounts for all the healthcare any employee would ever desire, so instead they routinely contribute amounts into employee health "insurance" policies. Employees spend money for healthcare out of giant pools of these contributions. If employees bought healthcare with take-home wages, they would have no reason to collectivize all their healthcare costs in health insurance policies. Many employees would get health insurance for catastrophic events, but not for routine health expenses.

Unfortunately, collectivization turns economic progress on its head. Healthcare is a product of human labor. Just as we can improve our ability to produce all other products through increases in productivity, we can improve our ability to produce healthcare. The same market mechanisms that caused television sets to become increasingly better and more affordable can cause all healthcare to become increasingly better and more affordable. But instead of becoming more and more inexpensive as time goes by, healthcare in our country is becoming more and more expensive, a typical result of collectivization. Since money for healthcare is spent out of giant pools of contributions, for the most part, people don't feel any direct financial effects from their healthcare expenditures. Therefore, an individual has little reason to show any restraint in his healthcare spending, and few people do when they know "insurance is paying for it." Furthermore, there is no limiting force on prices of healthcare. Healthcare providers want prices going up higher and higher without limit, and healthcare buyers who don't feel the direct financial effects of buying healthcare have no reason to exert pressure on providers to keep prices down. Mainly for these reasons, healthcare costs are sharply rising.
"Many people are under the false impression that employers are responsible for the healthcare costs of their employees."

The fundamental problem with access to healthcare in this country has nothing to do with employers who may or may not choose to offer healthcare fringe-benefits in the face of sharply rising healthcare costs. The fundamental problem is: healthcare costs are sharply rising.

As healthcare costs rise, it will become increasingly difficult for companies and individuals to afford, and paying for it will become more of a drag on the rest of the economic system. The sensible solution is not to pressure companies like Wal-Mart to attempt to clean up the government's mess by dumping more and more money into the bottomless pit of healthcare collectivization as it gets more expensive. The sensible solution is to eliminate healthcare collectivization altogether, the cause of sharply rising healthcare costs. We must get the government out of healthcare, and we must expose as false the idea that employers have a moral duty to provide for their employees' healthcare costs. In the absence of government pressure, healthcare collectivization would end. Healthcare fringe-benefits would be dramatically reduced, take-home wages would increase, health insurance would be used primarily for catastrophic events, and most people would buy healthcare with take-home wages just as they buy almost everything else with take-home wages. Most importantly, the healthcare industry would get back on a path of economic progress, and healthcare would become increasingly better and more affordable for everyone as time went by.

Governor Rick Perry: in charge

Governor Rick Perry has issued an order to all sixth grade Texan girls to receive the Gardasil HPV vaccine. Funny, the last I checked, state governors commanded the state militias (analagous to the way the President is commander-in-chief of the military), but there was nothing about commanding schoolgirls.

Also, last time I checked, Presidents are governors not kings, and law was to be made by the legislatures. Of course, it would still be wrong, immoral, and detrimental for the legislature to issue such a law, but this principle of separation of powers should function as at least a possible check against such tyranny. Since Governor Rick Perry doesn't really possess the legal authority under our system to make law, every single argument in favor of him issuing this decree because it is "the right thing to do" and because it "needs to be done" also authorizes me to issue such a decree. I've got just as much authority to do this as he does.

Democracy, republicanism, constitutionalism, separation of powers -- none of these are liberty, but all of them came about as ways to protect liberty. Unfortunately nobody knows what liberty is anymore. Here's a hint: if you have the power to make somebody do something (other than making them leave you and yours alone), that person doesn't have liberty. When you vote, you're asserting that your society doesn't have liberty, but is instead responsible for doing whatever the vote says, tyrannical or not.

Here's another hint: if a vaccine or any other health care option is a good idea, then you won't need to issue a law (or "executive order," which is a fancy way for saying "a law issued by the king, rather than the legislature") to make people do it. They will do it on their own. The free market is infinitely more capable of making this decision than Governor Rick Perry, or any other single human being or centralized group.

Thought for the day: Romans 13:3-4 says, "For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. ... it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil." Where in here do rulers get to define what is evil and what is not? Rulers are empowered to be a terror against evil. Evil is breaking God's law. When rulers ("us", in a democracy) make law, they are deciding what is and is not evil.

Is not vaccinating your little girl for promiscuity evil?

Hiatus

Sorry for the hiatus the last few days; my son has been very sick, but is much better now. Fun little brush with semi-socialized health care. It's amazing how hard it is to get a doctor to pay attention to what you're saying when 99% of the parents he sees are just there with something minor, rather than there because their regular pediatrician said, "Take him to the emergency room; he's dehydrated."