Post by msguide on Jul 30, 2009 6:04:55 GMT -8
www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php
Albert Einstein supposedly defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Indeed, if Einstein was correct, then the U.S. Government is about to embark on a course of insane medical care in the name of "social justice," "morality," and "fairness."
As one who believes that insanity should not be equated with "social justice," I would like to place myself firmly on the side that believes that we need less government control of medical care, not more. Unfortunately, we have a lot of people, including individuals masquerading as "economists" that are claiming that government control of medical care will result not only in more access to care, but also will create a greater supply of it.
One of the most vocal advocates for "universal" care has been Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel Prize winner in economics who has a twice-weekly column in the New York Times. Krugman, who teaches economics at Princeton University, claims that government care actually will increase the availability of medical care, making it less costly and higher-quality. He recently laid out how that would be done:
"Reform, if it happens, will rest on four main pillars: regulation, mandates, subsidies and competition."
He goes on to explain what he means by each. Regulation would be a set of rules forbidding private insurers from denying coverage due to an individual’s health conditions. (It would be like ordering State Farm to insure you upon request, even if you had a dozen traffic accidents on your record.)
Mandates would involve a requirement that everyone purchase insurance. Those who could not afford the rates would receive subsidies from the government paid by individual taxes and heavy new business levies.
Competition would be the creation of a new government "insurance" plan to "compete" with private insurers, something that Krugman claims "would help hold down costs." The idea would be that this new "plan" would provide a benchmark of service that would "encourage" the insurers to be more generous.
As one who has studied other "universal" medical policies in other countries, I have a different set of descriptive terms for the program that Krugman outlines: command, control, coercion and contraction. In fact, what I have listed is the hallmark of "universal care" elsewhere, and the idea that the American political classes can create a similar "plan" and avoid the pitfalls that plague those systems simply is insane, if we use Einstein’s definition.
To read the rest of the article, click the link
Albert Einstein supposedly defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Indeed, if Einstein was correct, then the U.S. Government is about to embark on a course of insane medical care in the name of "social justice," "morality," and "fairness."
As one who believes that insanity should not be equated with "social justice," I would like to place myself firmly on the side that believes that we need less government control of medical care, not more. Unfortunately, we have a lot of people, including individuals masquerading as "economists" that are claiming that government control of medical care will result not only in more access to care, but also will create a greater supply of it.
One of the most vocal advocates for "universal" care has been Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel Prize winner in economics who has a twice-weekly column in the New York Times. Krugman, who teaches economics at Princeton University, claims that government care actually will increase the availability of medical care, making it less costly and higher-quality. He recently laid out how that would be done:
"Reform, if it happens, will rest on four main pillars: regulation, mandates, subsidies and competition."
He goes on to explain what he means by each. Regulation would be a set of rules forbidding private insurers from denying coverage due to an individual’s health conditions. (It would be like ordering State Farm to insure you upon request, even if you had a dozen traffic accidents on your record.)
Mandates would involve a requirement that everyone purchase insurance. Those who could not afford the rates would receive subsidies from the government paid by individual taxes and heavy new business levies.
Competition would be the creation of a new government "insurance" plan to "compete" with private insurers, something that Krugman claims "would help hold down costs." The idea would be that this new "plan" would provide a benchmark of service that would "encourage" the insurers to be more generous.
As one who has studied other "universal" medical policies in other countries, I have a different set of descriptive terms for the program that Krugman outlines: command, control, coercion and contraction. In fact, what I have listed is the hallmark of "universal care" elsewhere, and the idea that the American political classes can create a similar "plan" and avoid the pitfalls that plague those systems simply is insane, if we use Einstein’s definition.
To read the rest of the article, click the link