S/L: Mandate Birth Control Insurance Coverage for Women

Cost should not matter when deciding birth control

My commentary:

Posted by zemack July 25, 2011 at 11:39AM

“But it’s up to every woman to decide for herself whether or not to use birth control.” Who would disagree with that? But it’s also up to that woman to pay for it herself, not force others to pay through a compulsory insurance mandate. But, there are hundreds of benefit mandates forced upon our “private” health insurance across the nation. So, if a woman is forced to pay for some guy’s prostate cancer treatment of Viagra in the same way, why shouldn’t she demand he pay for her birth control? It seems only fair, right?

What’s unfair is for government to impose any mandates at all. Insurers and their customers have a moral right to contract freely with each other, to mutual benefit, without government interference. Government’s job is to enforce those health insurance contracts and prosecute fraud and breech of contract, not redistribute wealth through regulation and law. That is not only immoral, but is one of the prime reasons for out-of-control health costs. When each of us is forced to pay for everyone else’s healthcare, but not our own, then the incentive is to not give a hoot what our’s costs, but to simply pressure government to dump our costs on others. Socialism turns everyone into predators, not “brothers and sisters”.

Our health insurance system is a socialized system through and through. “Private” insurance is only nominally so, and is really an extension of government. It is far from anything resembling a free market, being more in the nature of economic fascism – i.e., socialism through the back door. Of course, we have real socialism in the system too, through Medicare, Medicaid, S-CHIP, and so on.

The S/L justifies this new mandate on the grounds of “public health” because “About half of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned, which places a heavy strain on society.” But who switched the burden of unplanned pregnancies onto “society” – onto others through their taxes – in the first place? It was the statists themselves through government programs. To “fix” that problem, they propose to widen government control of medicine through our quasi-governmental insurance industry in the form of this new mandate.

No one is morally responsible for another’s health care needs, except as dictated by personal choices and actions – such as bringing a child into the world. Beyond that, the moral standards of individual rights, free markets, and a free society means every adult individual is responsible for his own healthcare needs only, until and unless he/she volunteers to give financial help to a neighbor or friend or even a stranger. No one’s unfilled needs places an automatic moral claim on the money or services of another, beyond private voluntary charity. Until we accept these moral truths, we will continue to build toward totalitarian socialism one brick at a time.

A GOP Idea Comes Back to Bite, But...

...it's unfair to paint all Republicans with the same RomneyCare brush. That said, The Star-Ledger makes an important political point in the December 2010 editorial.

Republicans liked what they now decry in health care reform

My Commentary

zemack December 15, 2010 at 7:04PM

The Star-Ledger is partially right, here. The dirty little secret of the entire healthcare debate is that the centerpiece of the entire ObamaCare package is a gift from Republicans. What I disagree on is the characterization of today’s GOP opponents of the individual mandate as the “Right” – if by Right one means support for individual rights and a government limited to protecting those rights.

How is it that “Without [the individual mandate], millions of younger and healthier people will go without coverage, gambling that they won’t get sick — and knowing that if they do, the cost will be spread to the rest of us through higher premiums or Medicaid”?

“Higher premiums” are a result of government mandates that force insurers to cover “pre-existing conditions” and hospital emergency rooms to treat the uninsured without charge. Medicaid is a government program that forces taxpayers to cover “the poor”. The GOP supports all three, even though they necessitated the individual mandate. They call the court ruling “a great blow for personal liberty”, even though many of the same conservatives hailed RomneyCare in Massachusetts as a “free market solution”.

But, it’s obvious that neither the Republicans nor the conservatives even know what “liberty” means. If they did, they would fight to overturn all three mandates, and the privatization and eventual phaseout of Medicaid. These immoral government intrusions into healthcare violate the rights of insurers, hospitals, doctors, and all taxpayers, who are forced to involuntarily provide or pay for the healthcare of others. Without their elimination, the ObamaCare individual insurance mandate does indeed appear to “seem reasonable”, as the Editors put it.

The sad fact is, there is no Right in American politics today. The Democrats are far Left, and the Republicans are moderately Left, and both keep marching farther and farther Left. Thus, the so-called “political center” keeps moving Left as well, by default. Most Americans, though, still lean toward individualism, which is manifested in the Tea Party Movement and the recent election: even though the movement still lacks a coherent ideological framework. Unfortunately, there is no major party political voice for individual rights, yet.

The consequence of all of this is that totalitarian socialism in medicine is almost here, and the rest of the economy is following suit, by default of a Republican Party that has abandoned its principles. Government controls beget more government controls, which beget more government controls, as the statist beat goes on. This editorial proves the point.

Other's Commentary:

jrsyshorjohn December 15, 2010 at 8:58PM

Folks, it's all true that 'Obamacare' is a Repubican program (first proposed by then President Richard M. Nixon) that now is reviled by third millenium Republicans, but that's not the issue here.

As an inner city kid who spent 13 years being taught very well by the Sisters of Charity, I learned that every right carries with it a concomitant responsibility. For example, the right to drive carries with it the concomitant rsponsibility to purchase auto insurance. The sisters believe that access to health care is a basic human right. I fully agree. However, with that right comes the responsibility to participate in the system by purchasing health insurance, even if you are a healthy twenty something who thinks he or she is immortal.

Talk to anyone who works in an Emergency Room and let them tell you about the young uninsured delivered by EMS after some traumatic injury, and the huge hospital bills that follow. Who's paying for their care? The rest of us responsible citizens who understand that rights carry responsibilities. It's that simple.

zemack December 16, 2010 at 4:56PM


jrsyshorjohn

“Responsibility”… determined and imposed by whom? It’s crucially important to understand exactly what we are talking about, as the stakes are high. What you are saying, in essence, is: “To secure these rights, governments are instituted to trample these rights”!

Rights are a guarantee and a sanction to freedom of individual action in a social context. They are moral principles that govern human relationships, by banishing force as a means of associating with one another. They assure each individual the freedom to think and act upon his/her own judgement, free from coercive interference by other people, including those acting in the capacity of a government official. Rights are unconditional, so long as you respect, and refrain from violating, the same rights of others. Rights are not, however, a claim to material benefits that must be supplied by others. Nor do they impose any involuntary, unchosen obligation to act against your own beliefs. Rights protect you from these kinds of coercion. By definition, rights can not conflict, with the rights of one necessitating the violation of the rights of others. Rights, in other words, are unalienable and possessed equally and at all times by all individuals. Rights are not a gift of the state, society, or God, accompanied by arbitrary “responsibilities”. They do not pop into existence because of the assertions of any persons who happen to “believe that access to health care is a basic human right”. Individual rights are an unconditional, unalienable birthright of every human being, because he is a human being.

The correct wording is: “To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men”.

The same principle of rights that protects an individual’s freedom of action, also defines the limits of that freedom. No one has a right to force some people to pay for the healthcare of another. No one has a right to force some people to provide medical treatment for another. No one has a right to force another person to buy health insurance. No one has a right to impose involuntary servitude on another human being. There is no price tag on rights. A “right” that imposes an unchosen obligation on some to provide unearned benefits to another is not a right at all – it is a privilege bestowed by a tyrannical government and paid for out of the exploitation of others. Sound familiar? Check your history. It’s a sad fact that, even in this day and age, we still can’t let go of some manifestation of the age-old scourge of slavery. Like a vampire, it keeps re-incarnating, returning in different forms that allow many to evade the truth of what they are advocating. Only a proper recognition of and understanding of individual rights will finally eradicate this dark human evil, once and for all.

For more on the relationship between individual rights and personal responsibility, read my post 5/11/09 post, Responsibility Depends on Individual Rights

Who's Really "Coming Between You and Your Doctor?"

In a recent op-ed posted at RealClearPolitics, Froma Harrop complains about the practices of private health insurance companies ( Coming Between You and Your Doctor). She writes:

"The lights must dim around Google's data-storage centers every time someone does a search for "government bureaucrat coming between you and your doctor." Foes of the Democrats' health-reform proposals have been chanting this on the hour for a year..."

After claiming, with some truth, that private insurance company bureaucrats already do the same thing, she asks:

"But why has the idea of letting the government do what private insurers do to save taxpayers money become such a hysterical hot button?"

The difference between government action and private action is the difference between force and voluntary, uncoerced agreement. But with regard to private health insurance in this country, the issue is muddied considerably by government intervention ... i.e., the introduction of force into the market.

We also see yet another example of an ObamaCare proponent taking the status quo as the given, thus avoiding the necessity of any analysis of how the government's policies have created the very problems "reform" is supposedly designed to fix. This tactic is vital to their case, because any honest look at cause and effect would lead to a greatly diminished government role and more freedom as the logical solution.

Here is my commentary:

Posted by: Mike Zemack Mar 12, 07:26 PM


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“The powers in Washington have clearly decided to keep most working Americans in the hands of private insurance companies.”

So laments Ms. Harrop. The statement is true, but off by about seventy years. Decades ago, the Federal government established the third-party-payer, or employer-based, system of health insurance. This created an artificial middleman that disconnected the consumer of healthcare from the provider. Then came thousands of state-imposed insurance mandates across the nation– from community rating to guaranteed issue to benefits – that force insurers to tailor their policies to the demands of political pressure groups rather than market realities … i.e., to the desires and pocketbooks of the consumer, who is perversely not the customer. These same insurers are protected from interstate competition via interstate trade barriers imposed by government.

We’ve all heard the story of the fireman who starts fires, so that he can rush to the scene to “save” lives and property. (We had a real live one of those living in my neighborhood, some years ago.) Well, in regard to America’s health insurance system, the government is that fireman.

The health insurance industry that ObamaCare supporters love to demonize is a scapegoat and a straw man, because it is in fact a political creation. The alleged power of the insurance companies is an extension of government power and would not be possible in a free market. Our fireman now proposes to save us from its own creation! Our “private” health insurance industry is a government controlled and protected series of state-based cartels operating in a government-crippled insurance market. Our “private” health insurance system is in the nature of fascism, or back-door socialism, and is not indicative of a free market.

“Those who care to move this conversation to a more grownup level” start by examining the role that government intervention has played in placing the healthcare of Americans “in the hands of private insurance companies.” They will find that it was the government itself.

The argument for “letting the government do what private insurers do” is a red herring. It is a call for totalitarian centralized control of medicine by government bureaucrats unconstrained by the need to earn a profit … i.e., to satisfy their customers. Insurance company bureaucrats empowered by our government-imposed third-party-payer system are bad enough. Government bureaucrats possessing the legalized power of physical force - i.e., a gun - would end the remaining fragments of freedom to make our own healthcare decisions that we still possess.

The Supreme Court legalized abortion in Rowe v. Wade based on the argument that abortion is a health matter that should be decided solely between a woman and her doctor. Fair enough. The solution to the problems of health insurance rests with the same logic. Remove all government restrictions in the national health insurance market. Restrict government instead – to its proper role of enforcing laws against fraud and breech of contract, mediating legitimate contractual disputes between insurers and insured, and enforcing and protecting contracts and contractual freedom … i.e., to protecting everyone’s individual rights.

Health insurance is solely a matter between the individual and his insurer, and their rights to contract freely to mutual advantage should be protected. The natural incentives of the free market – the consumer seeking the best value for his money from profit-seeking providers seeking to expand sales in an environment of real competition – is the only moral way to “control costs” because people must consume in accordance with what they have earned and providers must price their products to their customers’ budgets. A government that “controls costs” ends up controlling people … i.e., ends up as a dictatorship.

In a free market “no one is going to come between patients and their doctors” because no one can come between patients and their insurers … or their healthcare dollars.

Who's Really Peddling "Big Lie"?

The Big Lie is on the prowl in the health care debate. But who is guilty of employing it? According to the NJ Star-Ledger, it's the GOP. In its 3/9/10 editorial, entitled Health care reform scare: 'Takeover' claim is GOP's big lie, the Editors had this to say:

"Republican congressional and party leaders are pedaling as fast as they can to distance themselves from the Republican National Committee plan to drum up fear that the Democrats are driving America toward socialism.

"But in fact the GOP has been running that playbook for over a year now, portraying President Obama’s policies as radically left-wing, socialist — in effect, un-American. The most obvious example is the Big Lie about his health insurance reform plan, that it’s 'a government takeover of one-sixth of our nation’s economy.'

"First of all, the fact that health care is consuming one-sixth of our gross domestic product is a big problem and not an argument for letting things be. But no one remotely connected with the Obama administration is suggesting anything like a government takeover of medical care in America. Yet the defenders of the status quo conjure up a dystopian nightmare of 'Obamacare' with Soviet-style hospitals and drone-like doctors and with faceless bureaucrats deciding who gets care and who does not. (How they would be different from insurance company bureaucrats is a mystery.)"

Here is my commentary setting the record straight:

Posted by zemack
March 09, 2010, 10:03PM

The “Big Lie” is an appropriate topic for the Star-Ledger to editorialize on in regard to healthcare. But it’s not the Republicans that are employing it. It is the ObamaCare minions, including the Editors here, who are employing that tactic to its fullest. The real Big Lie is the claim that the only choice we have is between Obama’s “reform” scheme and the status quo. But “the defenders of the status quo” are not entirely accurate either. ObamaCare, the logical consequence of which really will eventually be “Soviet-style hospitals and drone-like doctors and with faceless bureaucrats deciding who gets care and who does not”, is not an outright takeover of healthcare. It is rather another step in the decades-long, slow-motion advance toward an eventual full takeover.

As I’ve been arguing here and elsewhere, the missing ingredients in the entire Left-framed debate is an examination of the role that the government has played in creating the problems healthcare “reform” is supposed to correct, and the third alternative – reinstitution of a free market in healthcare. Despite its strengths made possible by the remaining free market fragments, all of the problems attributed to American healthcare are consequences of prior government policies. The runaway costs and the problem of pre-existing conditions are government creations. Thanks to our government-imposed third-party-payer (employer-based) system, thousands of state-imposed community rating, guaranteed issue and benefits mandates, and legal trade barriers barring interstate competition, our “private” health insurance industry is actually a government controlled and protected series of state-based cartels which is more in the nature of fascism (back-door socialism) rather than any semblance of a market-based system.

The health insurance industry that ObamaCare supporters love to demonize is a scapegoat and a straw man, because it is in fact a political creation. The alleged power of the insurance companies is an extension of government power and would not be possible in a free market.

Of course, making a government takeover of American healthcare inevitable is what ObamaReform is all about, the Editors’ protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. But the Dems have cleverly avoided concrete specifics in their plan, giving cover for the Editors’ outrageously false claim that “no one remotely connected with the Obama administration is suggesting anything like a government takeover of medical care in America”. No. Instead, their plan contains the theoretical blueprint for future totalitarian control of every aspect of healthcare. What does anyone think a 2000 page document is full of? The trick is that the specifics will come later under powers granted to government officials, in the form of an unending tidal wave of coercive rules and regulations.

In an analysis of only a small part of one version of ObamaCare, the House’s HR3962, Professor John David Lewis cites numerous examples of this in his Objective Standard essay, which can be read in full in the Winter 2009/2010 issue. His conclusion:

“[The plan] will reach deeply into federal and state regulations and laws, on a scale that will require years for experts to interpret. It will establish institutions that will be effectively irreversible. It will grant arbitrary powers to bureaucrats, who will have to interpret and enforce its dictates.

“This legislation empowers the executive branch, namely the Secretary of Health and Human Services and a ‘Health Choices Commissioner,’ to write thousands of pages of regulations, and to force Americans to comply with them. For every line in this bill, many pages of regulations will be written.

“The central meaning of both is the repudiation of individual rights. No longer will Americans have the liberty to preserve their own lives in the way they judge best—from now on, they will have to conform to government controls on the most intimate details of their lives.”

The Big Lie is alive and well, and firmly ensconced in the Obama Whitehouse … and in the offices of the Star-Ledger Editorial Board.

And here are some supporting comments from docforfreedom, whom I drew attention to in my last post:

Posted by docforfreedom
March 10, 2010, 3:40PM

Well said, Zemack.

When trying to decide which is worse-- government or insurance company control of health care-- the answer is BOTH. We need freedom to choose for ourselves-- what health care to access directly and which insurance to buy for ourselves. The free market would keep both of these in line if the government weren't so busy meddling. The government ought not be providing any health care.

We can now access websites that can tell us where to obtain services at what price. Radiology groups are beginning to post cash prices. Why do we need a middleman for the majority of services?

We take our cars to our local auto repairman hoping that he can fix it. If there is something more complicated, he sends us to a specialist. Of course, with health care, the bills can run up very high, but THEN we need insurance-- NOT for the routine. Why involve a costly middleman when face to face cash payments would save everyone a lot?

John Farmer's Booby Trap Exposed

The New Jersey Star-Ledger's John Farmer has made the case that Employer-based health care is a thing of the past.

This, I agree with. But there, we part ways. In classic liberal fashion, Mr. Farmer engages in a bout of breathtaking evasion, ignoring the fact that the insurance system we have now is a government creation. Instead, he simply accepts the status quo as an example of a failure of private insurance, because "the private insurance bigwigs' ... chief incentive is to increase profits in their own and their shareholders’ interest."

Of course, those profits are made possible by offering products that are in their customers' interest, a practice that is essentially forbidden under the very system he laments. Rather than remove those government restrictions and leave insurers free to pursue profits by satisfying their customers, he would rather place your healthcare fate in the hands of the government "whose leaders face the wrath of the voters if they get it wrong." In other words, your healthcare fortunes will be at the mercy of the latest ballot box mob, instead of your own judgement!

The Left is desperate to hang on to the statist controls thay have achieved thus far, and to use them as a springboard for further controls on the way to totalitarian socialized medicine.

I've left a detailed response at the Star-Ledger's website, which is published below. But I'd like also to draw attention to the remarks of docforfreedom, who has several comments posted for this article. He seems mostly right in his comments and a strong defender of the individual.

Here is my full commentary:

We’ve all heard the story of the fireman who starts fires, so that he can be the first on the scene to “save” lives and property. (We had a real live one of those living in my neighborhood, some years ago.) Well, in regard to American health care, the government is that fireman. All of the problems that ObamaCare allegedly addresses are government created. And like that fireman, the politicians - Democrats and many Republicans alike – now rush to fix the problems they created with massive new government interference into healthcare. The health insurance market is at the top of the list of government-created problems.

Today’s health insurance industry is a government created monstrosity. The “power” of the insurance companies derives directly from government interference into the market. Thanks to the tax and regulation-imposed employer-based, or third-party-payer, system, the insurance company works not for the consumer of healthcare, but for some third party. In other words, the consumer is not the customer. But that’s not the only problem. Thousands of state-imposed insurance mandates across the nation– from community rating to guaranteed issue to benefits – force insurers to tailor their policies to the demands of political pressure groups rather than market realities, and force coverages on consumers that they may not want or can afford. These mandates are nothing more than wealth redistribution masquerading as “insurance”. The insurance companies are then protected from competition through interstate trade barriers - imposed by government.

The health insurance industry that ObamaCare supporters love to demonize is a scapegoat and a straw man, because it is in fact a political creation. Our fireman proposes to save us from its own creation! Our “private” health insurance industry is a government controlled and protected series of state-based cartels operating in a government-crippled insurance market. Our employer-based system that Mr. Farmer laments is in the nature of fascism, or back-door socialism, in which the private ownership is more of a mirage than a reality.

The only practical and moral solution is a free market in health insurance. Our current system is as far from a free market as one can imagine short of overt socialized medicine.

A free market is one based on the recognition of individual rights, which means the sanction of freedom of action. This freedom includes the rights of patients, insurers, their customers, doctors, medical products producers, and other healthcare professionals to freely contract with each other through voluntary trade to mutual advantage. The government’s role in a free market is limited but vital – to protect the rights of all concerned, including enforcement of contracts and prosecution of fraud and breech of contract. Otherwise, people should be free of governmental coercion, which is what the “free” in free market means.

Mr. Farmer is right that the employer-based - i.e., third-party-payer - system of health insurance is unraveling. It was inevitable, and a bad idea to begin with. But he misses the obvious: Our deteriorating employer-based health insurance system is a failure of statism, not freedom. Instead, he simply lauds supporters of totalitarian healthcare, - excuse me, ObamaCare in all of its guises – as “those who know something” and writes off opponents as ignorant. But this is only a evasion, and sets the stage for his monumental booby trap – that our only choice is between socialism and fascism:

“Who can we best trust to oversee health insurance? The federal government, with its spotty record for efficiency but whose leaders face the wrath of the voters if they get it wrong? Or the private insurance bigwigs whose chief incentive is to increase profits in their own and their shareholders’ interest?”

The individual citizen who is free to “oversee” his own healthcare and health insurance needs doesn’t even warrant token consideration! Interesting, eh?

Mr. Farmer is dead wrong. The choice is not between government-run healthcare (socialized medicine) and the status quo (quasi government-run healthcare). The choice is between government-run medicine (in all of its incarnations) and a free market.

Where's the "Milestone"? Where's the "Change".

The New Jersey Star-Ledger has lauded the House of Representatives for its passage of the 1990 page health care "reform" bill, HR3962. They're calling it a Health care reform milestone!

It's no such thing. Here are my comments:


We’ve all heard the story of the fireman who starts fires, so that he can be the first on the scene to “save” lives and property. Well, in regard to American health care, the government is that fireman.

For the past 75 years, ever-increasing government interference into health care has led to a steady escalation of problems. The solution to the problems has always been more government interference. This has been mainly led by the openly socialist Democrats, but too often supported by Republicans (ex. – the HMO Act of 1973, SCHIP in 1997, and Bush’s Medicare prescription drug benefit).

The Editors themselves cite several examples of government-created problems. But once again, they don’t draw the obvious conclusions.

“When crisis hits, they land in emergency rooms, where steep costs drive up the health bill for all of us.”

Why do people who are unwilling or unable to pay their own way “drive up the health bill for all of us”? Because the government forces hospitals and doctors to treat all comers even if they can’t or won’t pay, whether the hospitals want to provide charitable care or not. This forces them to raise rates elsewhere, and causes states to tax the rest of us to subsidize the hospitals.

“For millions of middle-class families, the loss of a job has meant a loss in coverage.”

And exactly who created this absurd situation? The government did, by creating the third-party-payer health insurance system through its tax and regulatory policies, tying our insurance to our jobs.

“[The current bill] also ends the most obnoxious games that insurers play, like banning people with pre-existing conditions and imposing lifetime spending limits.”

“Pre-existing conditions” is a government-created condition, thanks to the aforementioned third-party-payer system, which forces you to find another insurer when you lose or change jobs – a situation that would not exist in a free market in which the patient/consumer actually owns his own policy. Did you ever wonder why you never hear of people losing their life insurance coverage because they contracted a life threatening illness or lost a job? It’s because people own their own policies, and they are guaranteed renewable. By contractual agreement, which is enforceable by the courts, the insurer cannot drop you as long as you pay your premiums (which is your responsibility, not your neighbor’s or other taxpayers).

Terms of contracts - such as “lifetime spending limits”, if any – are a matter between the insurance company and the customer. In our current system, the third party makes those decisions. Insurance companies can’t “impose” anything, at least not in a free market where there is real contractual freedom and competition (which, by the way, the government now forbids). They can only offer products for sale, which the consumers (which should be individuals spending their own earnings) are free to reject or accept. The most successful insurers in a free market would be those that are best at tailoring their products according to the needs and pocket books of the customers they seek.

Of course, if you don’t protect yourself and get sick, you must pay for your care out of pocket. You have no right to expect others to pay for it through government mandates on pre-existing conditions. But first, we need the freedom to take responsibility for our own lives, which only a free market can provide.

We need to get rid of the kinds of draconian government coercion that is crippling health care in this country, and restore the freedom of patients, providers, consumers, and insurers to contract directly and voluntarily with each other. Government has no right to dictate the contractual terms. Individual rights and personal responsibility are two sides of the same coin.

A true debate would begin with an examination of how we got to where we are today. Instead, we get an insane 2000 page blueprint for coercion to “fix” the problems created by government itself, and which is designed to ultimately fail, paving the way for a single-payer health care dictatorship.

The mawkish concern for the uninsured and the janitors and the “children [who] don't get the preventive care” is just a cover. The architects of this bill, and their supporters, are after power, and nothing else.

There’s no “milestone” here. There’s no “change”. There’s just another marker on the road to totalitarian government control of American medicine

Doctor For Single-Payer - Why?

This letter-to-the-editor appeared in the New Jersey Star-Ledger Reader Forum of 9/18/09.

Single pay is the way

I am deeply disgusted by the health-care debate. Single-payer health care is the only good solution. I am treating more and more patients for free, as they lost their jobs and health insurance. But this is not a long-term solution. The U.S. is destroying itself by not passing single payer -- and it well deserves it.

Judith Simon, M.D., Millburn

Here is my commentary, which is essentially repeated from my post of 4/17/09:

Posted by Zemack on 09/18/09 at 4:22PM

As a lay person, I have wondered about doctors who support some form of socialized medicine, such as the single payer system advocated by Dr. Judith Simon of Millburn. What would make a doctor want to sacrifice control of his/her career, judgement, and profession to the dictates of government bureaucrats wielding arbitrary powers? And make no mistake. We are talking here about a healthcare dictatorship. There is no getting around the fact that government is force, and nothing else. And when the government pays, the government sets the terms.

I suppose doctors that support socialized medicine have varied reasons for doing so...some innocent, some not. Here are a few of my suppositions.

Perhaps some doctors do not understand the free market alternative to our current system, and see total government control as an undesirable but necessary evil.

Perhaps some may want to take the intellectually lazy career path and avoid the rigors of the free market. They would rather come to work every day, picking canned, off-the-bureaucratic-shelf solutions to their patients' healthcare problems in exchange for some guaranteed unit price from a central governmental authority. (This is what philosopher Leonard Peikoff identified as the "new bureaucratic doctors" practicing "assembly-line medicine". See his essay "Medicine, The Death of a Profession" in the book, The Voice of Reason, page 299).

Some may not like having to deal with patients who want to exercise their right to act upon their own judgement by demanding, say, some test or prescription drug that the doctor may not think is warranted. They would rather deny him that right by imposing the "rational" dictates of some unknown central planner.

Much of the medical profession, I suppose, sees a government-run health care dictatorship as inevitable, and believes that the "practical" course is to make a deal with the devil at the expense of their professional integrity.

Some may be motivated by a desire to help those who cannot afford adequate healthcare, but would rather avoid the responsibility of deciding when, how, and in what capacity to extend charitable care to their indigent patients...by forcing others to foot the bill for their compassion through taxes.

There are also undoubtedly many doctors who are egalitarian ideologues who don't like the fact that some people can afford to pay their own way and some cannot, and thus seek to impose "social justice" at the expense of actual justice.

Whatever their reasons, doctors who support state-run medicine should all recognize that by betraying their own freedom of judgement, careers, professional integrity, and rights, they are also selling out the rest of America...especially America's best blood. Those of us who do not want to trade our independence and freedom for a free appendectomy or cholesterol pill will also be victims.

Rationing - Canadian vs. American Style

We Ration. We Ration. We Ration. We Ration.

My Commentary:

Posted by: Zemack | August 31, 2009 8:45 PM

Mr. Klein's line of reasoning fails to distinguish between earning one’s keep and getting something for nothing, between government force and voluntary trade. As any honest man knows, one cannot consume what one has not produced. As any honest man knows, one can morally consume what another has produced only after acquiring it by voluntary means…by trade or private charity. As any honest man ultimately knows, one cannot consume in excess of what one earns.

Being unable to afford the price of what someone else produces is not rationing, despite the fact that that term is sometimes used in reference to the laws of economics. Your money represents the value that you have created for someone else through your productive work ... be it a product, service, your labor, or what have you ... in a voluntary trade. You then use your money to purchase the healthcare you need in the same manner … by voluntary trade, on mutually agreed terms, to mutual benefit. If no voluntary agreement is reached, no trade takes place. The fact that one person can’t pay for a medical procedure, while another can (whether in cash or some other means such as a prior contractual agreement like insurance), is not rationing. Nor is it unfair in any way. In a health care free market - which America’s semi-socialist, semi-fascist, government-controlled system is not - physical force is absent.

Government is a unique institution, possessing a legal monopoly on the use of physical force. When government runs healthcare, it must necessarily use its coercive powers to dictate who gets what healthcare when, because when government pays, government sets the terms. The winners are the moochers, the losers are the self-supporting. The essence of government rationing is to forcibly deny health care to those who have earned it, for the sake of those who haven't. The essence of market "rationing" is justice ... each person must earn his health care, by his own effort, in voluntary trade with providers. To advocate the former over the latter is a moral perversion. But then, socialism in all of its collectivist forms is a moral perversion.

Rationing is government distribution of goods and services, as in both World Wars. It is force, and nothing else. There is no coercive central distributive authority outside of government (or government controlled quasi-private insurance giants), only millions of individuals producing and trading by mutual consent. But however one chooses to define rationing, the choice is stark. The choice is voluntary human association or brute bureaucratic state force; earned wealth or the unearned; market justice or "social justice"; the risk of going without or government dependence; the dollar or the gun; freedom or slavery.

Missing the Real Alternative In the Health Care Debate

In an 8/29/09 editorial, the New Jersey Star-Ledger discusses a growing practice called "medical tourism." In this piece, entitled Seeking affordable health care overseas, the Ledger also exposes the fraudulant choice being presented to the American people.



My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 08/29/09 at 10:22PM

Also called "medical tourism", the Star-Ledger hints at what free markets create - competitive conditions under which "patients can receive quality care at lower costs". But the editors don't draw the obvious lesson from their own observations. Instead, the Ledger exposes a gross fraud being put over on the American people by the Left during this health care debate...that the only choice we face is between the status quo and complete socialized medicine. What's missing from this false choice is the third option - the only real antipode to the two choices cited above - a free market in health care. In this, the Left is all too often aided and abetted by conservatives and Republicans who, as the editors point out, merely defend "the world's greatest health system."

Ours does have its strengths. It is still the freest, making America the engine of innovation. If it weren't for America's market, cutting edge medical technology research would dry up, both here and abroad.

But the fact is, our "sick" American health care system is a government created monstrosity. Nearly 50% of healthcare spending is by government, through programs like Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, and a host of smaller state-level carbon copies...socialism. Nearly 40% of the spending is through the allegedly "free" part - the quasi-private, government created, government regulated, and government protected cartel of health insurance companies. The third-party-payer system and the state-imposed trade barriers protect them from nationwide competition as well as the necessity of having to compete directly for the consumer's business. Hundreds of government-imposed insurance mandates (nearly 2000 nationwide, from community rating to guaranteed issue to benefit) have turned "insurance" policies into pre-paid wealth redistribution schemes. Our government-crippled insurance market has turned private insurers into conduits for government coercion. This is not indicative of a free market, but is in the nature of fascism...i.e., socialism through the back door. This double-barreled government assault on medicine creates huge and unnecessary administrative expenses, empowers government and insurance company bureaucrats, disrupts the patient/doctor relationship, drives up costs, disconnects the patient from the providers, etc.

The problems in American medicine have grown in lock step with the growth of government intervention over the past 75 years. Any honest and objective healthcare reform debate must begin with an examination of how we got to this point to begin with. That is not what is happening. Instead, we get defenders of the semi-socialist, semi-fascist, semi-free status quo ... against those advocating more government control and/or outright nationalization masquerading as "reform". We get statists on each side, while the freedom alternative gets no major party sponsorship.

The only real alternative to all of the above is a free market. Instead of everyone being forced to pay for everyone else's healthcare, whether through government-run programs or government-controlled "private" insurers, people should be free to assume responsibility for their own healthcare with their own money. Insurers and providers should be free to compete directly for the consumers' business. A free market leaves patients, providers, consumers, and insurers free to contract voluntarily with each other to mutual advantage, based upon the principle of individual rights, without the kind of massive government coercion noted above. The absence of physical force is the hallmark of a free market. That is what the "free" in free market means. The government's only job, but an important one, is to protect against fraud and breech of contract, and to mediate legitimate contractual disputes.

The natural incentives of a free market ... the consumer seeking good value and the provider seeking expanded sales ... have been proven both in theory and practice to lead to increasing quality and ever-expanding affordability. Health care is more valuable and needed than most other products and services, but it is no different in the most basic fundamental respect ... it is man-made. As such, the same laws of economics apply to medicine as to any other economic sector. Most importantly, a free market is the only moral solution, because it forbids the predatory practice of people seeking to force others to provide for them what they perceive to be their "right" to healthcare. Instead, everyone is guaranteed their unalienable rights to their own life, liberty, and pursuit of their own health care (and happiness).

Related Reading:

Patients Without Borders: The Rise of Medical Tourism--by Brittany Hunter, 6/21/18

The more health care is able to function like an actual free market the more options will be provided to consumers.

Medical tourism Booms in Costa Rica via FIRM

See also The Henry Ford of Heart Surgery, Open-Heart Surgery--90% off, and Club Med.

Individualism, Collectivism, and "the Cause of Waste"

Amit Ghate has written a terrific piece, Misconstruing the Cause of Waste, which was published on Pajamas Media. He writes:

"Once again, the president has it backwards. But in flouting economics, he reveals his stance on a much deeper issue, one which is determining the fate of the country: individualism vs. collectivism.

"Individualism — the country’s founding idea — holds that each man is a moral end in himself.

"So how does this apply to waste? Waste, by definition, means 'spending to no avail or profit.' But observe that when men are free to pursue their own values, they’re incentivized to act carefully.

"Accordingly, under individualism, waste is minimized by each person, one transaction at a time. Indeed, the 'cost discipline' which free markets are so famous for emerges from this very fact.

"Contrast this to the collectivist approach favored by our current politicians. Under their view, the individual isn’t an end in himself, but merely a cog in the machine, a means to the group’s 'good.'

"The ramifications to waste are threefold. First, by prohibiting certain activities, government eliminates competition...Next, because it can confiscate our money to pay its bills, government has little incentive to control costs...Finally, because the government has usurped their prerogatives, individuals no longer decide what is worthwhile and what isn’t. Government forcibly disconnects the decision of what’s valuable from the people who actually pay for the values."

My Commentary:

32. Mike Zemack:

Amit Ghate has done a terrific job of exploding another of the many fallacious arguments against freedom in medicine. More importantly…and I know I’m not the first to acknowledge this…Mr. Ghate identifies the basic philosophical conflict that will determine the future direction of American healthcare and of America generally. Only capitalism is consonant with the premise that the sovereign individual is the standard of value, because it alone bans predatory force in human relations. All other social systems (including welfare statism and democracy) embody collectivism to some degree, with the rulers as omnipotent representatives of the collective. This cannot be stressed too often or too strongly. Collectivism is tyranny, and the only humane antipode to it is individualism.

I also have to address correspondent #2, Anonymous. His comments bring to mind a passage from Francisco’s “money speech” in Atlas Shrugged:

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.”

Anonymous condemns the money earned by the people who produce the valuable products and services without which there would be no healthcare debate. He demands “government intervention in the health care market” to grab by force for himself the “benefit from the advances in medical technology” so he doesn’t have to “line the pockets of these folks”… the very folks in the “private system that does not value human beings” who produce the goods that can keep Anonymous and his ilk healthy and alive.

Read Francisco’s money speech, then draw your own conclusions about the ethical character of Anonymous.

Also relevant to his comments is Harry Binswanger’s “The Dollar and the Gun”.




Aug 25, 2009 - 4:58 pm

WF's John Mackey on Health Care Reform

A Wall Street Journal op-ed by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has ignited quite a “debate” on WF’s website under the heading “Health Care Reform”. I place the term debate in quotation marks because, well, the pro-Obamacare minions have mostly remained true to form…resorting to what my daughter told me is “absolute hatred [that] is sickening”.

What warranted this vitriolic outburst against the man who runs a very successful company that heretofore had been a favorite of what my son-in-law calls the “stereotypical tree-hugger clientele”? Judge for yourself from these brief excerpts:

"While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone:"

After detailing the eight free-market reforms he advocates (He does not endorse laissez faire.), he goes on:

"Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care—to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals.

"Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That's because there isn't any. This "right" has never existed in America.

"Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.

"Health-care reform is very important. Whatever reforms are enacted it is essential that they be financially responsible, and that we have the freedom to choose doctors and the health-care services that best suit our own unique set of lifestyle choices. We are all responsible for our own lives and our own health. We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health. Doing so will enrich our lives and will help create a vibrant and sustainable American society."

Take responsibility for your own healthcare, and give us some freedom to do so. But you do not have the right to demand that someone else provide it. What can be more American than that? Apparently, there are plenty of people in the country that have no right to call themselves Americans.

Here is my contribution to that “debate”:

Thank you, Mr. Mackey, for advocating real reform, not more of the same old government interference masquerading as "change". The problems in American healthcare have grown in lock step with the growth of government intervention over the past 75 years. Real reform begins by recognizing that fact.

But, especially, thank you for recognizing the core issue, the nature of individual rights.

The fundamental question surrounding the healthcare debate is: Does the individual own his own life based upon the principle of unalienable rights, as the Founders understood? Or is he the property of the state (or "society", as represented by the state), as every dictator in world history preached?

Consider the claim that a manmade product such as healthcare is a right, and what it actually means in practice. If someone requires medical care, then the providers (doctors, nurses, pharmaceutical and device makers, etc.) must be legally obligated (i.e., compelled) to provide their services to that person. Likewise, that person’s neighbor, or the guy 3000 miles away, must be legally obligated to pay for his treatment. In other words, the providers whose skills make medical care possible, as well as those whose taxes pay for it, are serfs.

Rights, properly understood, are guarantees to freedom of action and place no obligation or duty on the individual save one…to respect the same rights of all. The idea of a right to material values such as health care forces an involuntary servitude on others to provide it. Any "right" to products or services that must be produced by others obliterates our actual rights to life, liberty, and property. That is why the alleged "right" to health care requires a government takeover of the medical field…to give the state the power to loot and enslave the productive and self-reliant.

A free market based upon actual individual rights is the only moral solution to our healthcare "crisis".

Thank you again, Mr. Mackey. You have more supporters than you may know!

-Mike Zemack

And here is my rebuttal to a Canadian supporter of Obamacare who thinks he knows what our Founding documents say:

"We are Canadians and are appalled at Mr. Mackey's comments about health care in Canda. Universality of access is a basic tenet of Canada's medicare programme. Moreover, I can't believe that the president of a company that purports to have a social conscience could argue that there is no intrinisic right to health care. The American constitution guarantees the right to life, liberty, and the pusuit of happiness. Ctizens without access to medical care when needed, are deprived of their right to these constitutional guarantees."

Harvey Williams misunderstands America’s founding documents. It is not the Constitution, but the Declaration of Independence that "guarantees the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". The Constitution enumerates those rights, which are guarantees to freedom of action in pursuit of happiness. There is no right to healthcare, food, or any other product or service that must be provided by others.

The idea of a right to material values such as health care forces an involuntary servitude on others to provide it. Any "right" to products or services that must be produced by others obliterates our actual rights to life, liberty, and property.

Many of us Americans are not so quick to hand over our freedom in healthcare to an elite, politically appointed gaggle of "medical experts" that we don’t know and that don’t know us, in exchange for a "free" appendectomy or cholesterol pill.

Mr. Mackey, by defending individual rights based upon their true, moral meaning, is exhibiting the real nature of a "social conscience".

Nothing "Vague" About Freedom

The following letter and comment was published in the Star-Ledger Reader Forum on 8/4/09

Short-sighted opposition

As a patient currently in chemotherapy for an aggressive cancer, I am amazed that some people can be opposed to health care reform that includes a "public plan." Without Medicare -- the government plan that has been in operation for decades, which paid for a necessary surgical biopsy and is now paying for the therapy at the cancer center of my choice -- I would probably be destitute soon if I had to rely only on the private plan whose premiums I paid all these years.

I'm surely not alone. Anyone over 65 who has unfortunately needed health care has almost certainly blessed their access to insurance support from this "public plan." The opposition of younger people, who can safely bet they will be older someday, seems to me curiously short-sighted.

In my view, the most reasonable and effective government insurance program would be a carefully thought-out single-payer plan, which, during these long months of hearings, has been kept off the table by big insurance and big drug companies whose profits leave them lots of money to pay lots of lobbyists.

Those who complain about a vaguely defined loss of freedom under government regulation might reflect that without a public plan, the American public will be free to get very sick indeed.

Alice Mariani, Hillsborough

Posted by patriots4u on 08/04/09 at 9:34AM

Alice Mariani, Hillsborough wrote:
Those who complain about a vaguely defined loss of freedom under government regulation might reflect that without a public plan, the American public will be free to get very sick indeed.

It is not vaguely defined in the text of the bill itself. Yes, the bill is difficult to read, but after taking some time and going through the first 100 pages or so already, I'm finding some disturbing things.

There is a section (pg 16) on Protecting Choice, but it clearly defines that after the bill goes into affect you cannot change or re-enroll in your current coverage. How ironic.

There is a section (pg 50) on Prohibiting Discrimination in Health Care, that first states "EXCEPT as otherwise explicitly permitted by this Act...".
So the Government is free to discriminate, but the rest of us aren't.

Here is another section that blatantly states if the bill is found to be Unconstitutional, too bad.
pg 53 - SEC. 155. SEVERABILITY.
"If any provision of this Act, or any application of such provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be unconstitutional, the remainder of the provisions of this Act and the application of the provision to any other person or circumstance shall NOT be affected.

Try reading the bill, and let me know if your opinion still stands.

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 08/04/09 at 9:08PM

patriots4u is right to be concerned about the effects this bill will have on our freedom. Alice Mariani calls these kinds of objections "a vaguely defined loss of freedom under government regulation". So, let's clear up the "vagueness" by defining our terms.

Freedom means only one thing - unalienable individual rights. As the Declaration of Independence states, we are all endowed equally with these rights. Importantly, rights are guarantees to freedom of action within a social context...such as the rights to speech, religious practice, and the earning of property through productive work and voluntary, mutually beneficial trade. A right is not an automatic claim on the products, services, earnings, skills, or property produced by others. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by any other person, group, or the government.

Clearly, Medicare (and all such welfare state schemes) is a massive violation of individual rights. Medicare did not, as Ms. Mariani claims, pay for her treatment. Nor did it come from any personal-type account funded by her's or a spouse's earnings. That money was confiscated from other people through force of taxation, in clear violation of both the constitution and their individual rights. There is nothing vague about that.

The treatment she receives was made possible by the social conditions created by America's founding principles of individual rights and limited rights-protecting government...principles that are now eroding. The scientists, entrepreneurs, businessmen, inventors, and investors had the freedom to think and act on their own judgement, invest their own time and money, set their own goals, take their own risks, produce the healthcare products and services and offer them for sale to willing buyers, and profit from their achievements under the protection of a government of objective laws. There is nothing vague about that. Again, that freedom is steadily eroding.

Obamacare would wipe out the last vestiges of that freedom. Does Ms. Mariani really want the conditions that existed before the Enlightenment, the American Revolution, and capitalism, which made possible the rise, in a mere 200 years, of modern medicine? That was a time when people really were "free to get very sick indeed", and suffer and die young without the hope that our freedom-spawned modern medicine gives us.

As to the healthcare "reform" bill, it is a dictatorial monstrosity. patriots4u only scratches the surface. Care will be heavily rationed. Providers will be enslaved. Innovation will be smothered in this, the last remnants of a free market. As Marc K. Siegel writes in the 8/3/09 NY Post, there will be "new committees and commissioners with undefined but far-reaching powers -- a Health Choices Commissioner, a Health Benefits Advisory Committee, a Comparative Effectiveness Committee, a Task Force on Clinical Preventative Services..."

I acknowledge that Medicare has been popular, but it is beginning to break down, with more and more doctors dropping out. Ms. Mariani is enjoying the early "workable" phase of this Ponzi scheme. But that is coming to an end. In the bill is this gem for seniors to behold:

"A prime example comes in the section starting on page 425 of the House bill. This dictates that an Advanced Care Planning Consultation must take place every five years from the age of 65 -- with the intervention of so-called counselors, trained and appointed by the government. [Many] senior citizens [will] be shortchanged or pushed prematurely to euthanasia.

Whose decision should it be to phase out such people? The government's?"

Yes, according to this bill.

I have been forced to pay into Medicare for more than four decades, and am approaching enrollment age. For that, I will be confronted with the complete loss of my freedom...my individual rights...to determine, in consultation with my doctor, the appropriate treatment and payment options. Bean-counting state bureaucrats who don't know or care about my circumstances will have complete power.

I will spend the rest of my life...whatever time the state allows me...fighting to abolish Medicare, controls and regulations on insurers and providers, and other state intrusions into medicine. For the sake of my children, grandchildren, and anyone who values freedom, I will fight for free market capitalism, individual rights, and a government that protects our rights - as a moral imperative.

More on the "Public Option"

The following letter was published in the Star-Ledger Reader Forum om 8/4/09.

Where's the freedom?

In your editorial "Making a mess of it" (July 26) regarding health care reform, you make the incredibly specious reference to free enterprise and government competition in the health insurance industry.

Since when does the government compete with the private sector? The federal government's function is to promote free commerce, not impede it. What kind of competition are we talking about where one player makes the rules for the other? The government has no entrepreneurial risk when it has the power of taxation.

The federal and state governments have already made the rules for the private sector players. This has led directly and indirectly to rising costs. These costs in turn increase the uninsured rolls. Now the public option proposes to set reimbursement at Medicare levels, while the private players must abide by reserve formulas based on loss ratios. No such regulations exist for the government plan.

From whom will patients seek remedy when the federal board refuses to pay? Who regulates the "public option"?

Competition? Please.

Jerry Kopychuk, Hackettstown

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 08/04/09 at 5:28PM

Jerry Kopychuk is exactly right, and I'd like to expand on this notion of "public - private" competition.

The government is a unique institution, distinguished by its legal monopoly on the use of physical force. America's great achievement was to limit that compulsive power to the protection of our inalienable individual rights. That is government's proper role. Stepping outside of those constraints invalidates government, as America's Founders understood.

The proposed "public option" is intended to destroy private health insurance, and clear the way for single-payer medical tyranny. Everyone knows it. The politicians will do whatever it takes to support their "competitor". They will use government's tax and monetary powers to keep premiums "affordable"; regulatory powers to hamper private insurers; force below-market prices on providers; harass private executives with explicit or implied "back-room" threats using the arbitrary and capricious powers of the regulatory apparatus, the IRS, or antitrust division of the Justice Department. The employment of government's unique powers of legalized physical force to destroy private businesses, industries, and livelihoods is legalized criminality.

Obama's plan is a continuation of the trend of the past 50-75 years...socialized medicine through the fascist back door. There is nothing "market-oriented" about it. There is, in fact, nothing market-oriented about our current semi-socialized, government controlled system.

Nevertheless, to allege that there can be "competition" between a government plan and private business is to equate an armed thug with his victims. The aim is to snuff out the last shreds of freedom and individual rights in American medicine. The public "option" is organized crime on a scale that relegates Al Capone to the status of a petty thief.

Health Care - Not the "Right" Thing to Do

The following two letters appeared in the Star-Ledger Reader Forum on 8/1/09. One is pro-socialized medicine, and the other is against. The second letter-writer is on the right track.

Health care reform

Months of debate have produced "health care" bills that need life support. They are so riddled with conditions that they are doomed to destruct. The original concept has been shot full of holes, bearing little resemblance to what I think Americans really want: a chance for them and their families to be healthy and to get reasonable treatment when not, without having to take out a second mortgage.

Why have dozens of civilized countries been able to provide health care for all, for decades, at a sensible cost, but America cannot? I believe it is because they, unlike America, do not view health care as a cash cow for private interests, but "the right thing to do", and a social investment in its own citizens.

Why is it so much easier for Congressmen to fund killing, than caring? For the last 8 years, they have ignored domestic needs while throwing over a trillion dollars to support invasive war and brutal destruction - and barely debating it. Yes, they have prioritized death, injury and displacement of over a million civilians, and have subjected our military and their families to an untenable burden.

Have they all lost their minds? Have we, to accept this from our elected officials, who are our employees?

Jo Sippie-Gora, Kinnelon.


Wrong on health rights

In a letter to the editor ("Health care is a right," July 30) a writer stated that health care was a human rights issue. Some argue that health care is a "precondition of life itself." This argument is flawed. There are other more important preconditions for life, such as food, shelter, and clothing.

If health care is a right, how did our forefathers miss that? It's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," not life, an appointment with a doctor, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The question of health care is not rights, but how best to provide health care at the lowest possible cost. The outcome would make health care more affordable.

The number of "uninsured" Americans that is thrown around, 45 million, is easily corrected when you look at the 2007 census. The truer figure is 22 million once you remove the 14 million undocumented workers, the 15 percent who choose not to have insurance for their own reasons and those 5 percent that are between jobs.

The true way to provide affordable health care to more of those 22 million citizens is to foster competition between insurers. Remove restrictions on citizens crossing state lines to seek affordable health care. Limit malpractice lawsuits. Keep your freedom to choose, don't turn health care over to a swollen, mismanaged federal government.

W. Paul Kelley, Berkeley Heights

My Commentary:

W. Paul Kelley is absolutely correct. Health care is not and can not be a right. Neither can any man-made product or service.

The fundamental principle that America was founded upon is unalienable individual rights possessed equally by all people, at all times, and protected equally and at all times by government. Rights are guarantees to freedom of action within a social context...such as the rights to speech, religious practice, and the earning of property through productive work and voluntary, mutually beneficial trade. A right is not an automatic claim on the products, services, earnings, skills, or property produced by others.

Consider the claim that a manmade product such as healthcare is a right, and what it actually means in practice. If someone requires medical care, then the doctors, nurses, pharmaceutical and device makers, etc., must be legally obligated (i.e., compelled) to provide their services to that person. Likewise, that person’s neighbor, or the guy 3000 miles away, must be legally obligated to pay for his treatment. In other words, the providers whose skills make medical care possible, as well as those whose taxes pay for it, are serfs.

Rights, properly understood, are political and place no obligation or duty on the individual save one…to respect the same rights of all. The idea of economic rights…the right to material values such as health care…forces an involuntary servitude on others to provide it. Economic rights...which are actually entitlements, not rights...obliterate our actual rights to life, liberty, and property. That is why the alleged “right” to health care requires a government takeover of the medical field…to give the state the power to loot and enslave the people.

This is not, as Jo Sippie-Gora claims, "the right thing to do", no matter how many other peoples and nations say so. The sacrifice of the productive and self-supporting to the parasites and the power-lusters has been the scourge of mankind that the United States of America was created to banish; by guaranteeing to each human being the rights to his own life, his own liberty, his own earned property, and the pursuit of his own goals and happiness.

All of us fighting against "universal health care" must recognize that health care is not a right…if all manifestations of socialized medicine are to be stopped and the proper free market reforms can be implemented.

The "Public Option" and Organized Crime

Here's more deception from the socialized medicine crowd.

For lack of a better term

by Clarence Page

July 12, 2009


My Commentary:

The proposed “public option” is intended to destroy private health insurance, and clear the way for single-payer medical tyranny. Everyone knows it. The politicians will do whatever it takes to support their “competitor”. They will use government’s tax and monetary powers to keep premiums “affordable”; regulatory powers to hamper private insurers; force below-market prices on providers; harass private executives with explicit or implied “back-room” threats of regulatory, IRS, or antitrust actions, etc.

The government is a unique institution, distinguished by its legal monopoly on the use of force. America’s great achievement was to limit that compulsive power to the protection of our inalienable individual rights. That is government’s proper role. Stepping outside of those constraints invalidates government, as America’s Founders understood. The employment of government’s unique powers of legalized physical force to destroy private businesses, industries, and livelihoods is legalized criminality.

To allege “competition” between a government plan and private business is to equate an armed thug with his victims. The public “option” is organized crime on a scale that relegates Al Capone to the status of a petty thief.

Any honest and objective healthcare reform debate must begin with an examination of how we got to this point to begin with. The problems in American healthcare have grown in lock step with the growth of government intervention over the past 75 years. The solution is to discover capitalism. The only just and moral course to take on healthcare reform is to rid healthcare of government interference. End all government insurance mandates, barriers to inter-state competition, and the third-party-payer system; phase out existing “public” plans like Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP, and let people take personal responsibility for their own healthcare, as is their unalienable right under American principles. Leave healthcare dollars in the hands of the people that earned it through some vehicle like HSAs, leave providers and insurers free to compete directly for those consumer dollars, and restrict the government to its proper role of protector of the individual rights of all (which includes anti-fraud laws and enforcement of contracts). The natural incentives inherent in a free market provide the proper, moral dynamics for affordable, widely available quality healthcare.

Government "Incentives" in Healthcare

The following article by David I Knowlton, a former deputy commissioner of health in New Jersey and current president and CEO of the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute, has been published in the June 24, 2009 Star-Ledger of NJ. This is just another man with another statist plan.

Health reform isn't brain surgery

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 06/24/09 at 8:39PM
The purveyors of government control of medicine, euphemistically called "national health care reform", offer all kinds of angles to plug their wares. In all cases, they start by citing the current problems in American healthcare, and propose some government-imposed solution.

What they never acknowledge is the fact that our current system is a creation of government. Yet they hold the government up to be champions of their own victims.

The premise that "we are all our brothers' keepers" is the governing principle, and is the first major problem. America currently spends some $7500 per capita per year ($30,000 per family of four and rising) on healthcare. Almost 90% of that amount represents people spending other people's money. There are the government programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP. There is the tax distortion-created third-party-payer system. There are the thousands of state and federal dictates imposed on the insurance industry such as community ratings, guaranteed issue, and benefits mandates which are nothing more than wealth redistribution masquerading as insurance. Today's private insurance industry is actually a quasi-private, government created and protected cartel, and is not indicative of a free market. It is a conduit for government edicts, not a dynamic, competitive, entrepreneurial industry free to tailor policy choices to market realities.

Our system is a combination of communism for seniors, the poor, and some peoples' children...and fascism for the rest of us.

Ours is a system in which everyone is forced to pay for everyone else's healthcare, but is not responsible for his own (except for small co-pays and deductibles). What kind of incentives does anyone think that will create? Yet Mr. Knowlton prattles about "urging our leaders to realign incentives in the health care system", and "plenty of models we can look to for guidance". There sure is a model to look toward - a free market, the system based upon the recognition of individual rights. Instead of forcing us to take care of everyone else, while at the same time demanding that everyone else...i.e., the government...take care of us, how about getting government out of healthcare and health insurance and leave us free to make our own decisions and take personal responsibility for our own health? You'd be surprised what kinds of incentives are evident when you reap the rewards of good habits and pay the price for the bad, while having our unalienable rights guaranteed.

But it is not solutions that are the goal. It is power...the power of control by bureaucratic and political elites. The artificial "incentives" and tax-funded "investments" are code words for the coming tyranny.

It gets tiresome to hear the David Knowltons of the world keep promoting government solutions to the problems created by government. Our money is not "there for the taking" by any man with another plan. Our money and property are not his, nor the government's, nor anyone's to dispose of...except those who earned it.

The current "debate" on "reform" is an intellectual and philosophical fraud, leaving Americans with the false perception that our choice is either the status quo or submission to state-run medicine. There is no political sponsorship for the authentic alternative.

Any honest and objective healthcare reform debate must begin with an examination of how we got to this point to begin with. The problems in American healthcare have grown in lock step with the growth of government intervention over the past 75 years. The solution is to discover capitalism. The only just and moral course to take on healthcare reform is to rid healthcare of government interference. End all government insurance mandates, barriers to inter-state competition, and the third-party-payer system; phase out existing "public" plans like Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP, and let people take personal responsibility for their own healthcare, as is their unalienable right under American principles. Leave healthcare dollars in the hands of the people that earned it through some vehicle like HSAs, leave providers and insurers free to compete directly for those consumer dollars, and restrict the government to its proper role of protector of the individual rights of all (which includes anti-fraud laws and enforcement of contracts). The natural incentives inherent in a free market provide the proper, moral dynamics for affordable, widely available quality healthcare.

One NJ Doctor's Rebellion

From the Star Ledger Reader Forum.

Cash-only health care

As a psychotherapist, I do not accept Medicare or Medicaid. Why? Because they pay a pittance compared to private health insurance. Yet private insurance has been reducing reimbursement rates with no warning or notification to providers. In fact, there has been no increase in reimbursement since 1994. Can you imagine not getting a raise in pay for that long and having your income reduced as well?

If President Obama's health care reform passes, any provider worth his weight will not take insurance at all and take only cash, freeing themselves from the organized crime of insurance all together. This will leave only the worst providers as "In network." Quality care will be left only to the rich, while those trying to save a buck will save little. People need to speak up and demand answers from "for-profit" insurance companies.

Leo Battenhausen, Roselle

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 06/22/09 at 7:26PM

Leo Battenhausen describes how American medicine is slowly being destroyed, but misses a crucial fact and thus blames the wrong culprit... the "for-profit" insurance industry.

Our system of health insurance is an absurd, government-created Rube Goldberg concoction, administered by quasi-private companies forbidden to tailor policies to market demand; i.e., the choices and budgets of the actual, individual consumers of healthcare. Our current system is not indicative of a free market, but of a mixed economy. Perversely, the insurance company works not for the consumer...i.e., the patient...but for the employer, union, or other third party, to which it is beholden. It has created huge administrative costs throughout the system, undermined the doctor-patient relationship, placed undue power in the hands of insurance company bureaucrats, and tied people to their jobs.

I have encountered, as a patient, the squeeze between what my doctor wants to prescribe and what the insurer demands. Since I am not the insurer's customer, I have no leverage and no choice. Because of the third-party-payer system, which was created and maintained by tax-code distortions, the doctor-patient relationship is disrupted, leading to the kinds of problems described by Mr. Battenhausen.

What is needed, for the private sector, is an end to the third-party-payer system, all insurance mandates, and all state-imposed restraint-of-trade laws. Government, through its controls and interference, is the source of the seeming power of the "private" insurance company. The proper role for government is an important one; to protect against fraud and breach of contract, and to mediate contractual disputes. Beyond that, the politicians should get out of the insurance business altogether. Health insurance is properly a contractual matter to be decided between the individual and his insurance company, as a matter of unalienable right. Likewise, healthcare services are a matter between the provider and the patient. If the insurer works directly for the patient, then he...the doctor's customer...is responsible for payment, whatever the contractual arrangements he has with his insurer happen to be. A doctor and patient are free to make payment and price arrangements directly, by mutual agreement, as it should be.

The problem is not "for-profit" insurance as such, but government interference, which inverts the normal market incentives. In a free market - which is a system based on individual rights - insurers, providers, customers and patients are free to contract with each other, voluntarily to mutual advantage. Profits are a natural consequence of the free market. They are the result of providing goods and services at prices that are both affordable yet above the cost of production, and accrue to companies best at doing that. The profit motive drives prices lower and quality higher, but only in a free market where companies compete directly for the consumer's business. The whole history of capitalism, when it is allowed to function, is one of growing profits by cutting prices by cutting production costs, thus expanding the market by increasing affordability. More importantly, the right to any profits earned by one's own productive work in any field is a moral, unalienable human right. Profits, properly understood, are noble.

As to government-run "insurance" programs, they should be phased out and abolished. They are corrupting and destroying medicine in this country. By refusing to deal with Medicare and Medicaid Mr. Battenhausen is taking more than a practical step. He is taking a moral stand against his own enslavement. Perhaps if more doctors rebelled in this manor, we would get the only moral solution to the problems plaguing American healthcare - a free market - rather than the ultimate disaster we appear headed for.

Ken Gordon on "The Public Option"

The gross dishonesty and/or ignorance about the causes of the current healthcare/health insurance "crisis" is evident in this piece.

Nothing Good Just Happens

The author, Ken Gordon, is the former Majority Leader of the Colorado State Senate.

My Commentary:

Mike Zemack said...

What Mr. Gordon doesn’t say is that our system of health insurance is a creation of the government. The third-party-payer system was imposed by government via tax-code distortions. Perversely, the insurance company works not for the consumer but for the employer, union, or other third party that purchases the policy, even though the consumer’s own earnings pay for it. The thousands of state and federal mandates imposed on the insurers dictate the content of the policies, force consumers to pay for coverages that they may not want, sharply drives up the cost of the policies, and actually creates a system of pre-paid healthcare…not insurance. State restraint-of-trade practices prevent a competitive national insurance market from developing, also driving prices up and choices down.

Our system of health insurance is an absurd, government-created Rube Goldberg concoction, administered by quasi-private companies forbidden to tailor policies to market demand; i.e., the choices and budgets of the actual, individual consumers of healthcare. It has created huge unnecessary administrative costs throughout the system, undermined the doctor-patient relationship, placed undue power in the hands of government and insurance company bureaucrats, inverted the normal market incentives that lead to higher quality, lower prices, and wide availability, and tied people to their jobs.

Now Mr. Gordon and his ilk propose to “solve” the problems they themselves caused by creation of the fraud called a “public option”. This is nothing more than a back-door attempt at something Americans have never wanted…totalitarian government control of healthcare. The government holds a legal monopoly on physical force. The “option” is backed by this power of the gun. The politicians can and will do whatever it takes to support their “public option”. It will use tax subsidies to keep premiums “affordable”; arbitrary regulatory powers to hamper its private “competitors”, etc. The government will act as any organized crime syndicate does…use its unique power of physical compulsion to drive private citizens out of business. To say that there can be competition between a government-owned entity and private companies is to see no difference between an armed thug and his victims.

The obvious and only moral solution to the problems in health insurance cited by Mr. Gordon is to liberate the insurance market of all of this government interference, leaving individuals and insurers free to contract directly with each other to mutual advantage…a freedom that is theirs by unalienable right. But solutions are not the goal; power is. Having crippled the industry, making it unable to function, it is now cast as the villain. Every advancing dictatorship needs scapegoats.

The real liars here are the “public option” advocates. The problems in American healthcare have grown in lock step with the growth of government intervention. Any honest and objective healthcare reform debate must begin with an examination of how we got to this point to begin with. Instead, they are now declaring that freedom has failed, consumers are too stupid to understand health insurance, and that dictatorship is the answer.

But today’s problems in medicine represent a failure, not of freedom, but of statist government intervention. The choice we face…for ordinary Americans and providers alike…is between being held in a stranglehold by government central planners, or taking control of our own healthcare in a truly free market.

"Health Care Debate"--What about the Third and Moral Option?

The following letter was published in the Star-Ledger Reader Forum.

Health care debate

I am perplexed and discouraged by the fight over health care. It's pretty obvious that what we're doing isn't working so well.

In the big picture, it seems to me, if we want our businesses to be competitive, getting health care off their backs is a necessity.

I still hear people, even those who love their Medicare, complain they don't want the government involved in their health insurance. They don't want a government bureaucrat telling their doctor what's okay to do and what's not okay. Meanwhile, I guess, they don't mind some insurance company bureaucrat making those decisions.

I've heard some people suggest we be allowed to buy our insurance in another state where it's cheaper. Think they'll have any preferred providers in your state?

I believe in a compromise: single payer via taxes with a government plan in the mix and private insurance companies competing. This would get the premium dollars off of industry, would let those who want private insurance get it, would let those who want public insurance get it, and would insure all the uninsured. It would help our industries be more competitive, and your health care wouldn't be connected to your employment.

John Smith, Hamilton


My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 06/12/09 at 8:29PM

John Smith cites a couple of problems such as employer-based health insurance and insurance company bureaucrats making healthcare decisions. His solution, though, amounts to "First, do more harm".

All of the problems in American healthcare can be attributed directly to government intervention. The third-party-payer system was imposed by government via tax-code distortions. Perversely, the insurance company works not for the consumer but for the employer, union, or other third party, even though the consumer's earnings pay for it. The thousands of state and federal mandates imposed on the insurers force consumers to pay for coverages that they may not want, sharply drives up the cost of the policies, and actually creates a system of pre-paid healthcare...not insurance. These mandates are really wealth redistribution masquerading as insurance. State restraint-of-trade laws prevent a competitive national insurance market from developing, also driving up prices and choices down. Medicare and Medicaid, which have made government the largest purchaser of healthcare products, have so corrupted the market that the normal forces that lead to higher quality and lower costs have been inverted. This is just part of the story.

Our system of health insurance is an absurd, government-created Rube Goldberg concoction, administered by quasi-private companies forbidden to tailor policies to market demand; i.e., the choices and budgets of the actual, individual consumers of healthcare. It has created huge administrative costs throughout the system, undermined the doctor-patient relationship, placed undue power in the hands of government and insurance company bureaucrats, and tied people to their jobs.

Yet Mr. Smith's "compromise" would reward the government with totalitarian control over all aspects of healthcare. When the government pays, the government sets the terms...period. You hand your money over to the state, and in exchange you give up your freedom...a lose-lose proposition. This, in essence, is communism. "Allowing" private companies to "compete" against the government-run "option" is merely socialism through the back door, where "private" companies are merely conduits for government control...i.e., fascism. So, according to Mr. Smith, the choices are either the status quo, or some totalitarian combination of communism and fascism.

It's imperative, before we sink to that level, that we consider the third option...the only moral one and the one ignored by both major parties. End the system of compelling everyone to pay for everyone else's healthcare. End all government interference in the insurance market, leaving government to its proper role of protecting individual rights such as through anti-fraud laws and contract enforcement and mediation of disputes. Leave consumers and patients free to decide, along with their doctors, what treatments to use along with prices and payment options. Leave everyone free to plan for their own retirement, to accept responsibility for their own decisions, to take responsibility for their own lives...not be forced to pay other people's expenses. Leave everyone free to decide when and in what capacity to help others, based upon each person's own personal values, assessments of the worthiness of the recipient, and affordability.

Leave insurers and providers free to compete directly for the consumer's business. Leave providers, consumers, insurers, doctors, and patients free to act upon their own judgement, and to contract voluntarily with each other to mutual advantage.

Free market capitalism, the original American system based upon the unalienable and equal rights of every individual, is the only moral path to health care reform. The government's proper role is to protect individual rights, which are guarantees to the freedom to take the actions necessary for the advancement of one's own life and happiness. Rights are not an automatic, unconditional claim on the earnings, property, products, services, or skills produced others. The government's job is not to guarantee health insurance or healthcare to all, but to maintain the societal conditions of liberty and non-coercive association required for people to live their lives and solve their own problems.

Eliminating coercive government interference in healthcare and insurance combined with individual rights in medicine will dramatically reduce the cost and lead to greater quality. That is what always happens when consumers are free to spend their own money and producers to compete for their business. Healthcare, though a high value product and need, is essentially no different than any other man-made product. Consumers seeking the best value for their money, and profit-driven producers seeking to expand sales and grow, places incentives on the side of greater and greater availability and affordability. These basic laws of economics would work no different in healthcare than they would in any other market, when people are left free.

The current healthcare "crisis", if you want to call it that, is not a failure of freedom or free markets. Any honest and objective healthcare reform debate must begin with an examination of how we got to this point to begin with. The problems in American healthcare have grown in lock step with the growth of government intervention. The solution is to discover capitalism. The only just and moral course to take on healthcare reform is to rid healthcare of government interference.

Today's problems in medicine represent a failure, not of freedom, but of statist government intervention. The choice we face is not between a government-run healthcare dictatorship and the status quo, as Mr. Smith, would have us believe. The choice we face...for doctors, patients, drug producers, etc...is between being held in a stranglehold by government central planners, or taking control of our own healthcare in a truly free market.