Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Permission To Survive

14 Comments

Some thoughts on the health-care debacle, in Massachusetts and the nation:

Insurance companies in Massachusetts are thus required to offer numerous benefits as determined by politicians and lobbyists, but they may only charge what government bureaucrats permit. It would be akin to the government requiring restaurants to sell $50 steak dinners, but only allowing them to charge $25.

When similar price controls and “guaranteed coverage” laws were imposed in South Dakota and Kentucky, many insurers left these states rather than be slowly bled to death. As similar laws are phased in nationally under ObamaCare, the government could drive private insurers out of business altogether, enabling it to herd unwilling Americans into a “public option.”

ObamaCare thus places a noose around insurers’ necks. Insurance companies will be allowed to survive only at the arbitrary pleasure of the government.

…The trend is becoming clear. First, insurers must seek government permission to survive. Then, patients must seek permission to receive some forms of medical care. Will we soon need government permission simply to live?

That’s what seems to generally happen at the end of the road we’re on. A quarter of a billion people were, after all, murdered by their governments in the last century.

14 thoughts on “Permission To Survive”

  1. Um Rand, let’s not give Jim and Chris and the rest of the Usual Suspects a flying start. It is a largish leap from the inevitability of Health Care Reform in starting a long-term slide in the general quality of health care to the millions whose lives were ended, mainly by outright starvation or by forced labor under caloried-restricted rations (probably the primary mode by which the Holocaust ended lives — there were a variety of direct and indirect means used).

    I see Health Care Reform as perhaps continuing a trend that has been going on for many years. Under employer-provided health insurance, there have been strong incentives to get your health care from an HMO. Having experienced HMO and non-HMO medicine, the way I see the tradeoff is that outside of the HMO network you are dealing directly with insurance companies and endless direct involvement in the hassles of reimbursement (it is your responsibility, yadda, yadda). Inside the HMO network you see much less of that, but you see rationing — long wait times to see a regular doctor and very long wait times when you get the proper referral to a specialist when required.

    The HMO was supposed to be about preventative medicine blah, blah see your Primary Care Doctor regularly and get all the screening tests so you don’t need to see specialists, or gosh forbid, The Emergency Room. Hah, HMO’s, apart from the “Hey, get $40/month off gym membership” promotions, are all about rationing, pure and simple because giving people all of the screening tests costs more mony than it saves (think of the recent howls about the recent “suggestions” that women hold off on some cancer screening tests into an older age).

    So HMO==Christian Science, meaning, that there probably are some acute conditions for which Mrs. Eddy’s teachings are ineffectual, but by and large the reason Christian Scientists are not this huge burden on the health system (Christian Scientists are clogging ER’s because they won’t see a doctor! — not) is that general health comes from general sanitation, clean food, and other public health measures and not from the various expensive interventions that we use to hang on to life.

  2. That’s what seems to generally happen at the end of the road were on.

    Road, you say? Thank goodness Hayek warned us about the evils of government-organized health insurance:

    Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance, where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks, the case for the state helping to organise a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong. There are many points of detail where those wishing to preserve the competitive system and those wishing to supersede it by something different will disagree on the details of such schemes; and it is possible under the name of social insurance to introduce measures which tend to make competition more or less ineffective. But there is no incompatibility in principle between the state providing greater security in this way and the preservation of individual freedom.

    I guess we should toss Hayek in with Romney, Dole, and all those other socialists.

  3. I am just a neutral bystander, wandering over to this Web site for information on space policy. Our esteemed host, Rand, on occasion wanders off topic and launches into right-wing random diatribes against Health Care Reform. Our distinguished commentator, Jim, gently tries to set our esteemed host on the right path, chiding him that Health Care Reform is not the Road to Serfdom as the legendary Dr. Hayek, himself, considered some form of “social insurance”, a legitimate role of the State and one that would not imperil liberty, although where Dr. Hayek would stand on making women wait until age 50 for a radiological test for a common form of cancer specific to women apart from having the BRCA gene is not known.

    I really don’t know where I stand on this issue, whether Health Care Reform is Mr. Obama’s unappreciated gift to future generations of the American people as suggested by Jim or will lead to the Gulag as suggested by Rand. You know Jim, I really don’t know where I stand on this issue, and I mean this sincerely as I don’t think I have taken a single “Right Wing” position on any of your comments apart from my snarky remark that their Shannon entropy measure tends to be low.

    But I go to the grocery store and see a car properly festooned with bumper stickers for Madison, Wisconsin, where I reside. The same car has “Health Care for All” advocating single-payer — yes, I know this is not what we are getting from Health Care Reform, and as far as the insurance industry being taken care of, the “fix” is probably “in” on this one as the stock market took a big hit when Mr. Brown joined the Senate and the stock market roared right back when Health Care Reform got passed.

    But the other bumper sticker was for “The Hemlock Society”, in fine print advocating for “death with dignity” or some such thing.

    Hmmm, Health Care for All and The Hemlock Society from the same (presumably) left-liberal motorist. And Rand is a Wing Nut who doesn’t know what he is talking about . . .

  4. Our esteemed host, Rand, on occasion wanders off topic and launches into right-wing random diatribes against Health Care Reform.

    Ignoring the issue of whether or not my concerns about HCR are “right wing” or not, there is nothing that is off topic at this site. It is not a space policy blog. If that’s all that interests you here, you can use this link instead of the main index.

    And Jim, if you think that Hayek would have approved of either this legislation or the corrupt manner in which it was achieved, you’re out of your mind.

  6. Well, according to Obamacare, so long as your hospital re-admissions are below average, you have permission. Otherwise, you’ll probably need to appeal to the good graces of HHS — just don’t call it a, “death panel,” or you’ll be denied for sure.

  7. Rand, it was sarcasm, but it wasn’t directed at you.

    I guess I am not very good at sarcasm, and out of respect for you as our host, I will stop.

  10. Dammit, Rand, how dare you address an issue on this blog simply because it interests you.

    Please cancel my subscription immediately and refund my money!

  12. “I guess we should toss Hayek in with Romney, Dole, and all those other socialists.”

    If your fellow travelers in Congress were stopping at the HCR, it might not be so bad. Cap and trade, financial “reform”, immigration “reform” all add up to some serious government control.
    I’m sure those in Russia, China, Germany and Cambodia all said in the beginning, “How bad can it be?”

  13. Jim Says:
    April 25th, 2010 at 12:42 pm

    “I guess we should toss Hayek in with Romney, Dole, and all those other socialists.”

    I fail to see how an allowance for public provision of catastrophic health coverage can be read as an endorsement of complete public takeover of the health care system from top to bottom.

    FTA: “First, insurers must seek government permission to survive. Then, patients must seek permission to receive some forms of medical care.”

    I used to think Ayn Rand was a bombastic writer of turgid prose whose MO was to use over-the-top scenarios and rhetoric to make her point. Today, reality threatens to leave her most overwrought imagery in the dust. As to the nominal purpose of this blog, my $0.02 is that we have got to find a way off of this blasted rock before the governmental python completely asphixiates us, its prey, in its relentless squeeze play, and we are swallowed whole to languish in the belly of the beast.

  14. “I used to think Ayn Rand was a bombastic writer of turgid prose whose MO was to use over-the-top scenarios and rhetoric to make her point.”

    One part of the economy that Obama certainly has stimulated is the printing of Atlas Shrugged. This book had gotten more mentions in the last year than its previous 49 year history combined.

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