At least the questions are being asked. This guy is such a snake.

Another fantastic essay by Yuri Maltsev of the Mises Institute:

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

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

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

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

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

In order to receive minimal attention by doctors and nursing personnel, patients had to pay bribes.

. . . .

Not surprisingly, government bureaucrats and Communist Party officials, as early as 1921 (three years after Lenin’s socialization of medicine), realized that the egalitarian system of healthcare was good only for their personal interest as providers, managers, and rationers — but not as private users of the system.

So, as in all countries with socialized medicine, a two-tier system was created: one for the “gray masses” and the other, with a completely different level of service, for the bureaucrats and their intellectual servants. In the USSR, it was often the case that while workers and peasants were dying in the state hospitals, the medicine and equipment that could save their lives was sitting unused in the nomenklatura system.

. . . .

Socialized medical systems have not served to raise general health or living standards anywhere. In fact, both analytical reasoning and empirical evidence point to the opposite conclusion. But the dismal failure of socialized medicine to raise people’s health and longevity has not affected its appeal for politicians, administrators, and their intellectual servants in search of absolute power and total control.

Most countries enslaved by the Soviet empire moved out of a fully socialized system through privatization and insuring competition in the healthcare system. Others, including many European social democracies, intend to privatize the healthcare system in the long run and decentralize medical control. The private ownership of hospitals and other units is seen as a critical determining factor of the new, more efficient, and humane system.

(Read more at mises.org)

“The state is trying to shut down a New York City doctor’s ambitious plan to treat uninsured patients for around $1,000 a year.

Dr. John Muney offers his patients everything from mammograms to mole removal at his AMG Medical Group clinics, which operate in all five boroughs.

‘I’m trying to help uninsured people here,’ he said.

His patients agree to pay $79 a month for a year in return for unlimited office visits with a $10 co-pay.

But his plan landed him in the crosshairs of the state Insurance Department, which ordered him to drop his fixed-rate plan – which it claims is equivalent to an insurance policy.” (Read more from crownheights.info)

As is usually the case government regulation = eliminating competition for big business. Let it not be said that the problems in our healthcare system are the result of free markets. We have not had free markets for a very long time.

“These are perilous times to believe in liberty. Because I oppose Obama’s expansion of government (socialized health care), people assume I was for Bush’s expansion of government (wars, domestic spying, suspending habeas corpus for detainees, monitoring domestic travel, etc.).

Such is the world through the lens of left-versus-right glasses. I’ve been lumped together with neo-cons, called a Republican agent, and faced such comments as, ‘Think of [alternative-energy subsidies] this way: It’s a new weapon to use against the Middle East. It’s weapons research. That should satisfy your tiny repubtard mind.’

I’ll note that I voted for neither McCain nor Obama — neither for the old white guy who believes in bank bailouts and expanding foreign, undeclared wars, nor for the young black guy who believes in bank bailouts and expanding foreign, undeclared wars.

In both cases, dissenters were/are portrayed as fringe, radical, unreasonable, and irrelevant. In both cases, the conflict is crammed into a paradigm of left versus right, and, in both cases, it’s an uphill battle for those of us who oppose an expansion of government.” (from DailyIowan.com)

“Last week several Israeli officials claimed that settlement construction had been effectively frozen by the government as a gesture to the US. Most of the officials expressed annoyance at the freeze and promised it wouldn’t last long, though it still led President Obama to praise them.

But despite public outrage from the Israeli right, which has condemned the pause as a betrayal of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s camapign promises, settlement watchdog Peace Now issued a report today noting that the construction is continuing and there is absolutely no sign of any freeze being underway.” (Read more from antiwar.com)

These are perilous times to believe in liberty. Because I oppose Obama’s plan for expanding government, people assume I was for Bush’s expansion of government, his wars, etc. Such is the world through the lenses of left-vs-right glasses.

I’ve been lumped together with neo-cons, called a Republican agent and faced comments like: “You Republicans want taxes to kill people in Iraq, while Democrats want taxes to *save* people in America.”

I’ll note that I voted for neither McCain nor Obama – neither the old white guy who believed in bank bailouts and expanding foreign, undeclared wars, nor the young black guy who believes in bank bailouts and expanding foreign, undeclared wars.

The opponents of socialized healthcare are demonized, just as the opponents of the Iraq war were demonized. In both cases, it’s ordinary people resisting the power of government. In both cases, dissenters are portrayed as fringe, radical and irrelevant, and the conflict is crammed into a paradigm of left-versus-right. In both cases, it’s an uphill battle for those of us who oppose an expansion of government.

Anyway, here are some flame wars, and excerpts from emails I’ve received from friends about their own struggles. Esoteridactyl, you have my thanks and admiration.

I got dragged into a facebook flame war on the subject. Someone posted about how “stupid those stupid fucking townhall protesters are”. I had to comment that, well, many people have very serious concerns and willfully mis-representing their arguments does disservice to oneself.

Anyway, we went back and forth a few rounds on that, until I delivered the closer: I support the interpretation that Roe v Wade guarantees certain privacy rights; how can you oppose gov’t intrusion into fertility, but support it for every other health decision. The sputtering rage was priceless.

so, i am officially out of the closet on health care, at least on facebook. and i hate to admit it, but im so scared everyone i know is going to hate me :( or that i wont have the energy or will to effectively argue the position. this shit is hard!

. . . .

its just such a frustrating thing to have to keep reassuring people that i dont want to kill all the poor people.

. . . .

oh boy, here we go: “Dude, I’m sorry but if you keep on this townhall-meeting propaganda status kick, I might have to defriend you, just a warning.”

. . . .

i feel like im having an argument with myself a year ago

Comment wars on Reddit. I should have known better than to bring the ideas of economic freedom to a post about one their most sacred cows, subsidies of alternative energy. I’ve since learned that most liberty-minded people are hiding out in the Libertarian subreddit, leaving politics and economics for the statists.

rangerkozak -6 points 15 days ago[-]

Here in Iowa, I know a guy in the bio-diesel industry who readily admits it’s complete bullshit, but if you close your eyes, tap your ruby slippers together and say “bio-diesel” or “sustainable” or “electric car”, then money begins to fall from the sky.

Problem is, the money is taken from you and me at the point of a gun. This is nothing but a giant subsidy of less efficient energy production which wouldn’t be able to compete in a free market.

ParanoydAndroid 13 points 15 days ago* [-]

This is nothing but a giant subsidy of less efficient energy production which wouldn’t be able to compete in a free market.

Exactly. Since this technology wouldn’t be able to compete in the open market, it wouldn’t get developed. This way we provide the money, the technology gets developed and improved, the efficiency increases, and then it becomes marketable without subsidies.

Suddenly everyone has cheaper fuel sources, renewable energy makes our lifestyle more sustainable, and everyone wins.

Or we could keep rabble-rousing about how since the technology is bad right now then that it means it could never, ever improve our lives at any point in the future, whatever floats your boat.

rangerkozak -6 points 15 days ago[-]

Double Facepalm!

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” ~George Orwell

captainwasabi -1 points 14 days ago[+] (0 children)

Think of it this way. It’s a new weapon to use against the middle east. It’s weapons research. That should satisfy your tiny repubtard mind.

bad_llama 6 points 15 days ago* [-]

Problem is, the money is taken from you and me at the point of a gun.

Stop with the hyperbole.

rangerkozak -1 points 15 days ago[+] (22 children)

This is no hyperbole. If you want to see the guns and just how real they are, then stop paying your taxes.

Our government’s benevolence is financed by money taken from us under threat of violence.
This is no hyperbole. If you want to see the guns and just how real they are, then stop paying your taxes. Our government’s benevolence is financed by money taken from us under threat of violence.

Braggs 3 points 15 days ago[+] (0 children)

Going even further, if the government would have kept its nose out of the commercial sector in the first place (i.e. subsidies on gasoline/diesel vehicles and petroleum products) then the increased prices (due to lack of government funding) would have already forced the commercial sector to provide more economical alternatives. What is happening is the government competing against itself.

bad_llama 3 points 15 days ago* [+] (19 children)

You live in a society that has a governing body. You are represented in this governing body. You can vote, you can protest, you can debate freely. There are a million and one ways to make a change in this system. If you don’t like something (like the ways our taxes are spent) you are free to try to change it. The thing is, everyone else in this society has a say in how it operates (how it spends taxes) as well. If you have a compelling argument and can sway the people in the society to agree with you, change will happen in your favor. If you don’t have a compelling argument, society will not agree with you and things will keep moving along with or without you.

Let me say again, you live in a society. That is a fact. Nothing you can do will change this. Everything you do affects others and everything others do affects you. Everyone gives and takes according to the agreed upon rules. That is how a society functions and this is how a society advances.

rangerkozak comment score below threshold[+] (17 children)
rangerkozak -6 points 15 days ago* [-]

The fact of a society is no excuse for a tyranny. What in our Constitution gives government the right to redistribute wealth from some industries to others???

Speaking of facts, in America, 1/6th of the labor force is employed DIRECTLY BY GOVERNMENT. (source)

The taxes on every five people support the salary (and benefits) of a sixth. So I would be very, very hesitant to call for more government programs, more government spending, more government good ideas.

Yes, we live in a society. I’m not calling for anarchy, I’m calling for economic freedom, and you should too.
The fact of a society is no excuse for a tyranny. What in our Constitution gives government the right to redistribute wealth from some industries to others??? Speaking of facts, in America, 1/6th of the labor force is employed DIRECTLY BY GOVERNMENT. ([source](http://www.lostrepublic.us/archives/637)) The taxes on every five people support the salary (and benefits) of a sixth. So I would be very, very hesitant to call for more government programs, more government spending, more government good ideas. Yes, we live in a society. I’m not calling for anarchy, I’m calling for economic freedom, and you should too.

[deleted] 5 points 15 days ago[-]

There are countries that operate as you suggest. The problem is they are dirt-poor and nobody wants to live there.

Look around at all the really good countries – the countries where it is possible to accumulate wealth and have a nice life-style. Do you notice how those countries all have taxes and social programs and strong central governments?

Maybe your “economic freedom” fantasy just doesn’t work as well as you think.

rangerkozak -5 points 15 days ago[-]

The fantasy is the success of centrally-planned economies. There is tremendous evidence suggesting that liberty works best:

* West German vs East Germany
* South Korea vs North Korea
* Hong Kong in the 80s vs China in the 80s
* Estonia vs Latvia or Lithuania
* Botswana vs the rest of Africa
* Chile vs the rest of S. America

This debate was settled (again) when the Berlin wall fell, at yet socialist ideas continue to rise from the grave. I’ll never understand the public’s lust for tyranny.

Recommend Hayek’s Road to Serfdom

dethbunny 1 point 15 days ago* [-]

Chile? The same Chile that was ruled by Augusto Pinochet for 16 years? What a shining beacon of liberty! . . . .

rangerkozak -2 points 14 days ago[-]

Obviously, Pinochet was a murderous dictator, and deserved the condemnation he receives. In everything but economics, he was a tyrant.

If you care to to look at economics, however: The Global Competitiveness Report for 2007-2008 ranks Chile as being the 26th most competitive country in the world and the first in Latin America

WRT Scandinavia in general, and Sweden in particular, there are some good excerpted essays here which cast doubt on the common perception. They are authored by Swedes.

A smart comment I saw on reddit in response to this article:

genius_in_progress 6 points7 points8 points 2 hours ago* [+] (1 child)

Brilliant article!
The US government actively pursues policies that both drive up demand and drive down supply.
To drive supply down:

* Professional licensure and immigration restrictions artificially limit the supply of physicians
* Perverse incentives at the FDA regarding safety and efficacy standards artificially restrict the supply of medication
* A large regulatory burden and a prohibition against selling health insurance across state lines artificially restrict the supply of insurance

To drive demand up:

* Publicly funded programs encourage over-use (Medicare and Medicaid)
* Tort law encourages doctors to order excessive tests and procedures, to avoid malpractice suits
* Tax incentives for employers to shop for insurance on behalf of their employees. If employees chose their own insurance, they would likely opt for lower premiums and higher deductibles, and would therefore be more selective about what health care expenses they incur

If that’s not a recipe for high prices, I don’t know what is.

#3 is especially interesting.

“It’s true that the US health-care system is a mess, but this demonstrates not market but government failure. To cure the problem requires not different or more government regulations and bureaucracies, as self-serving politicians want us to believe, but the elimination of all existing government controls.

. . . .

1. Eliminate all licensing requirements for medical schools, hospitals, pharmacies, and medical doctors and other health-care personnel. Their supply would almost instantly increase, prices would fall, and a greater variety of health-care services would appear on the market.

Competing voluntary accreditation agencies would take the place of compulsory government licensing — if health-care providers believe that such accreditation would enhance their own reputation, and that their consumers care about reputation, and are willing to pay for it.

2. Eliminate all government restrictions on the production and sale of pharmaceutical products and medical devices. This means no more Food and Drug Administration, which presently hinders innovation and increases costs.

Costs and prices would fall, and a wider variety of better products would reach the market sooner. The market would force consumers to act in accordance with their own — rather than the government’s — risk assessment. And competing drug and device manufacturers and sellers, to safeguard against product liability suits as much as to attract customers, would provide increasingly better product descriptions and guarantees.

3. Deregulate the health-insurance industry. Private enterprise can offer insurance against events over whose outcome the insured possesses no control. One cannot insure oneself against suicide or bankruptcy, for example, because it is in one’s own hands to bring these events about.

Because a person’s health, or lack of it, lies increasingly within his own control, many, if not most health risks, are actually uninsurable. ‘Insurance’ against risks whose likelihood an individual can systematically influence falls within that person’s own responsibility.

All insurance, moreover, involves the pooling of individual risks. It implies that insurers pay more to some and less to others. But no one knows in advance, and with certainty, who the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ will be. . . . I would not want to pool my personal accident risks with those of professional football players, for instance, but exclusively with those of people in circumstances similar to my own, at lower costs.

Because of legal restrictions on the health insurers’ right of refusal — to exclude any individual risk as uninsurable — the present health-insurance system is only partly concerned with insurance. The industry cannot discriminate freely among different groups’ risks.

As a result, health insurers cover a multitude of uninsurable risks, alongside, and pooled with, genuine insurance risks. They do not discriminate among various groups of people which pose significantly different insurance risks. The industry thus runs a system of income redistribution — benefiting irresponsible actors and high-risk groups at the expense of responsible individuals and low-risk groups. Accordingly, the industry’s prices are high and ballooning.

To deregulate the industry means to restore it to unrestricted freedom of contract: to allow a health insurer to offer any contract whatsoever, to include or exclude any risk, and to discriminate among any groups of individuals. . . On average, prices would drastically fall. And the reform would restore individual responsibility in health care.

4. Eliminate all subsidies to the sick or unhealthy. Subsidies create more of whatever is being subsidized. Subsidies for the ill and diseased promote carelessness, indigence, and dependency. If we eliminate such subsidies, we would strengthen the will to live healthy lives and to work for a living. In the first instance, that means abolishing Medicare and Medicaid.” (Read more from mises.org)

By Diana Furchtgott-Roth

“Buried in the 1,017 pages of the House Democrats’ health-care bill is a little-noticed provision that for the first time could give the government access to the checking or credit-card information of every American. Under section 163, which is entitled ‘Administrative Simplification,’ the bill sets new ‘standards’ for electronic transactions between individuals and their health-care providers.

According to section 163, the standards will ‘enable the real-time (or near real-time) determination of an individual’s financial responsibility at the point of service . . .’ In addition, they will ‘enable electronic funds transfers, in order to allow automated reconciliation with related health care payment and remittance advice.’”
(from nationalreview.com)

A friend of mine who describes himself as liberal and pacifist put it this way: I support the interpretation that Roe v Wade guarantees certain privacy rights; how can you oppose gov’t intrusion into fertility, but support it for every other health decision.

“The United States is ‘unyielding’ in its support for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, U.S. President Barack Obama said in a special video message to the Muslim world on Friday to mark the beginning of Ramadan.

Obama used the occasion to reiterate his desire to mend relations between the United States and Muslim countries, an effort he began with a major speech in Cairo in June to the Muslim world.” (Read more from haaretz.com)

There’s a lot of behind the scenes anger at Obama for taking such a strong stance, at least with rhetoric – not with his political appointees. Can it be???? Is this change that I do believe in?

See also: Democratic rep. criticizes Obama demand for Israeli settlement freeze

This picture started appearing all over the internet a few weeks ago. It’s content and then-unknown author was quickly denounced as racist by major new media. (See here, here, and here.)

From prisonplanet.com: “It turns out the image was created not by a Republican white supremacist but by a Muslim-American of Palestinian descent who didn’t vote for Obama or McCain.

Firas Alkhateeb, a 20-year-old senior history major at the University of Illinois, created the image as a reaction to the Christ-like status being afforded to Obama by the establishment, and also in protest at Obama’s appointment of Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff.

‘Emanuel is a fervent anti-Islam voice in Washington,’ he wrote on his Flickr page. ‘A Zionist, he takes a hard line stance against the Palestinian cause, and shows a clear anti-Muslim racism.’”

During the Bush administration, much of the anti-war movement was portrayed as the fringe and irrelevant left. Now, much of the anti-socialized-healthcare movement is portrayed as the fringe and irrelevant right. In both cases, it’s individual liberty vs. government power. In both cases, the conflict is portrayed as left vs. right.

Fantastic Lew Rockwell essay on campaignforliberty.com:

“Writing in The State and Revolution in 1917, Vladimir Lenin summed up the economic aim of socialism as follows: ‘To organize the whole economy on the lines of the postal service….’

Incredible, isn’t it? After centuries of treatises and miles of paper and tubs of ink, this is the great historical turning point: government employees carrying sacks of paper mail from house to house, and operating at an economic loss.

It’s fascinating how it all comes down to the post office, again and again in the history of public policy. And so it is in our time, with Obama’s admission/gaffe/slip concerning the post office and its analogy to what he wants to do with health care.

Here is a transcript of his spontaneous talk at a high school. A student raised a question about the government’s provision of health services and its impact on private services.

‘How can a private company compete against the government? My answer is that if the private insurance companies are providing a good bargain, and if the public option has to be self-sustaining, meaning that taxpayers aren’t subsidizing it, but it has to run on charging premiums and providing good services, and a good network of doctors, just like private insurers do, then I think private insurers should be able to compete.

‘They do it all the time. If you think about it, UPS and Fed-Ex are doing just fine. It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems…. there is nothing inevitable about this somehow destroying the private marketplace. As long as it is not set up where the government is being subsidized by the taxpayers so that even if they are providing a good deal, we keep having to pony up more and more money.’

Now, these comments are nothing short of incredible. The Post Office has been on the loser list for many decades. Most recently, it has been included on the GAO’s high-risk list, increasing its debt to $10.2 billion and incurring a cash shortfall of $1 billion.

Note that the post office is not being shut down for this mess. On the contrary, it is being subsidized not only with tax dollars but, most importantly, with laws. Title 18 (I.83.1696) says that ‘Whoever establishes any private express for the conveyance of letters or packets’ can be fined and jailed. Moreover, the law (39.I.6.606) says that any letter delivered by unlawful means can be seized and stolen by the government. It is immune from antitrust action and criminal liability. [emphasis added]

. . . .

Therefore Obama is right in a strange way: private enterprise has triumphed and government service is terrible. Everyone knows this. It is utterly preposterous that a government mail service exists at all. There is no theory of economics that supports it. There is not now nor has there ever been any economic reason for government postal service. It should be immediately abolished and private enterprise should take over. Even on the basis of Obama’s thin and strange statements, you might argue this conclusion.

But perhaps Obama meant to suggest that the reason the Post Office is so bad is because it has to compete with private enterprise. If he meant that, he lives in a socialist fantasy land, and we have a very dangerous man on our hands. In the real world, no living person could possibly believe that mail service would be improved by getting rid of the efficient producers and granting a totalitarian monopoly to a single government-backed provider.

. . . .

The right path to health-care reform is the market path (no subsidies, no monopolies such as drug patents, no licensure, no anything) that tends toward universal distribution at very low prices and relentless improvement in service. The wrong path is to make health care run the same way as the post office. Obama seems to favor the latter path, even though he admits that it is the least well-performing one. This is surely the definition of fanaticism. If the mobs aren’t angry, they should be.” (Read more on campaignforliberty.com)

(more from news.yahoo.com)

From the guy who said there was no housing bubble and that the high home prices were supported by the strength of the economy (July 2005), that a dramatic drop in housing prices was unlikely (July 2005), that the motor vehicle sector was strengthening and the housing ‘correction’ wasn’t going to have a major impact (November 2006), that he expected moderate growth in the middle of the year and that the broader mortgage market was healthy (February 2007), that income and employment would grow and that the economy would see moderate growth for the remainder of 2007 (July 2007).

<sarcasm>Phew! I feel so much better.</sarcasm>

If you haven’t already, check out Radio Free Market for weekly internet broadcasts on economics and freedom.

August 15th 2009
* Special Interview * with New York Times Best Selling Author Thomas E. Woods, Jr. Author of Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse. Host Michael McKay and Special Commentator Jeffrey Hedquist discuss with Tom what really happened in the fall of 2008 and how we can still avert a bigger crisis – if enough of us act now.

Robert Novak, a rare journalist who was right about the Iraq war and unafraid to criticize Israel, died of brain cancer on August 18, 2009.

(more here)