Health Care: Do we Need a Lexus?
IMAGINE the sort of car you’d drive if government regulations made it illegal to sell any automobile that didn’t feature 380-horsepower direct-injection V6 engines, computer-controlled electric power steering, eight-speed automatic transmission, four-wheel-drive, automatic climate control, “smart key’’ technology, touch-screen navigation, backup cameras, LED headlights, acoustic glass, surround-sound stereo, and leather seat stitching.
If those were the minimum requirements every car had to meet before it could be sold, would you commute to and from work every day in a Lexus LS 460 or some other luxury vehicle? Well, you might, if the steep price wasn’t an obstacle. But it’s more likely you wouldn’t be driving at all. If the government barred you from buying anything but a high-end car, you’d probably have no choice but to rely on the bus or subway, or to find a job closer to home.
What is true of transportation is true of everything else: Increase the number of amenities that a product or service must include, and more consumers will be unable to pay for that product or service.
1982 Walter Williams Discussing Poverty, Blacks and Government
Watch the first part above of Walter Williams' PBS documentary Good Intentions based on his book, The State Against Blacks (1982). The documentary was very controversial at the time it was released and led to many animosities and even threats of murder.
In Good Intentions, Dr. Williams examines the failure of the war on poverty and the devastating effect of well meaning government policies on blacks asserting that the state harms people in the U.S. more than it helps them. He shows how government anti-poverty programs have often locked people into poverty making the points that:
- being forced to attend 3rd rate public schools leave students unprepared for working life
- minimum wages prevent young people from obtaining jobs at an early age
- licensing and labor laws have had the effect of restricting entrance of blacks into the skilled trades and unions
- the welfare system creates perverse incentives for the poor to make bad choices they otherwise would not
Arrogance
This article by John Stossel from Real Clear Politics.
It's crazy for a group of mere mortals to try to design 15 percent of the U.S. economy. It's even crazier to do it by August.
Yet that is what some members of Congress presume to do. They intend, as the New York Times puts it, "to reinvent the nation's health care system".
Read more here.
Video on Canadian Health Care...
Here is the contact information for Rep. Jim Marshall (D-GA-8). He is from
Phone: (478) 464-0255
Toll-free: (877) 464-0255
Fax: (478) 464-0277
Phone: (478) 296-2023
Fax: (478) 296-2802
Tifton Phone: (229) 556-7418
504 Cannon House Office Building
Phone: 202/225-6531
Fax: 202/225-3013
John Barrow (D-GA-12) is the other Democrat from
Savannah is probably the best office to call here.
213 Cannon HOB
p: (202) 225-2823
f: (202) 225-3377
p: (706)722-4494
f: (706) 722-4496 764
Sandersville
City Hall,
p: (478) 553-1923
f: (478) 553-9215
p: (912) 354-7282
f: (912) 354-7782
Vidalia
p: (912) 537-9301
f: (912) 537-9266
FOR REPRESENTATIVES IN PENNSYLVANIA
Rep. Patrick Murphy
Rep. Tim Holden
Rep. Christopher Carney
Rep. Jason Altmire
You can also sign this petition:
Flatline ObamaCare Now!
Alright folks,
Phone: (478) 464-0255
Toll-free: (877) 464-0255
Fax: (478) 464-0277
Phone: (478) 296-2023
Fax: (478) 296-2802
Tifton Phone: (229) 556-7418
504 Cannon House Office Building
Phone: 202/225-6531
Fax: 202/225-3013
213 Cannon HOB
p: (202) 225-2823
f: (202) 225-3377
p: (706)722-4494
f: (706) 722-4496 764
City Hall,
p: (478) 553-1923
f: (478) 553-9215
p: (912) 354-7282
f: (912) 354-7782
p: (912) 537-9301
f: (912) 537-9266
It's Not An Option
Congress: It didn't take long to run into an "uh-oh" moment when reading the House's "health care for all Americans" bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.
When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.
It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states:
"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law.
So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.
Want a 30% Reduction in Health Care Costs? Here's how...
~National Public Radio
MP: More than 1,000 companies, like Rockwell Aviation (featured in the NPR story), offer on-site health care clinics, and they are expected to serve 10-15% of the working population within the next few years. So while President Obama and politicians in Washington dream up the latest grandiose government health care reform to address rising healthcare costs, the most effective, affordable and convenient healthcare solutions might be right on location at your workplace health care clinic.
Who's the Materialist?
This form Cafe Hayek
Don BoudreauxHere's a letter that I sent recently to the Washington Post:
While capitalism emphatically does improve material living standards, all the great champions of economic freedom (aka capitalism) ultimately justify this system because only it affords true dignity to individuals - the dignity that is denied by interventionist systems which arbitrarily diminish each person's freedom to choose. For "Progressives" such as Mr. Dionne not to share the value of freedom is fine. But it's rather cheeky to accuse, with one breath, proponents of capitalism of being unduly focused on material goods, and with the next breath to insist that a major problem with capitalism is that some people get fewer material goods than do other people.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Lying Hypocrites
Lying Hypocrites
Don BoudreauxPoliticians have no shame. None. Here are the first two paragraphs of Betsy McCaughey's article in today's Wall Street Journal:
Last September Sen. Barack Obama promised that under his health-care proposal "you'll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves." On Monday, President Obama repeated that promise in a speech to the American Medical Association. It's not true.
The president is barnstorming the nation, urging swift approval of legislation that is taking shape in Congress. This legislation -- the Affordable Health Choices Act that's being drafted by Sen. Edward Kennedy's staff and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee -- will push Americans into stingy insurance plans with tight, HMO-style controls. It specifically exempts members of Congress (along with federal employees; the exemptions are in section 3116).
Lies. Special privileges.
Par for the course.
