RE: Mandating Health Insurance
There seem to be two nearly universal constants these days. First, The Winston-Salem Journal is going to publish some kind of collectivist tripe without a by-line, and second, Strother is going to post it on the BP and offer it as having some merit.
Suddenly, the nation's health-care crisis doesn't look unsolvable.
Right off the bat, we know we're in trouble. Some liberal is screeching about yet another made-up "crisis." Among the overwhelmingly obvious bits of evidence that this "crisis" is completely phony are the very repeatable stories we hear about people demanding their right to government-sponsored antacids.
In truth, the lead-in to this piece negates, all by itself, the credibility of every single sentence that follows. The whole article is predicated on some assumed "crisis" that has not been proven in any way to actually exist.
Individualists might find fault with this message, saying, "That's my business." But they're wrong.
I guess they're wrong because the Journal says they are. This is a typical liberal tactic: naked assertion as rhetorical proof. But I have news for the Journal, individualists, by definition, are never wrong. The instances in which the rights of the collective trump the rights of the individual are few and far between and health care isn't one of them.
His costs are shifted onto the rest of us, suckers who are responsible enough to have insurance so we can pay health-care providers for their services.
I see, so the solution is to get the government to force everyone to be a sucker. Whoever writes this stuff should not be left to wander around without a collar. This is ever the excuse collectivists use to force planned economy down our throats. It is, as Ayn Rand called it, "the leper's bell of the approaching looter."
If they don't pay, medical providers shift the costs of that care onto others.
So close, and yet so far away.
Collectivists never seem to understand the basics of a capitalist economy. I suppose that's one of the fundamental reasons they are collectivists. This argument goes: Force the slackers to buy health insurance. If they can afford it and choose not to participate: tax them. If they can't afford to pay, "government subsidies" kick in. To the collectivist mind, it sounds like a panacea, why it is almost a market-like solution. The sad truth is that it won't change a thing.
The costs of health care are largely fixed and the market, with the possible exception of pharmaceuticals, is almost completely non-competitive due to heavy government regulation. Health care insurance is a zero-sum game. By forcing those who choose to "pay-as-you-go" to participate in health care insurance or penalizing them with taxes, capital is removed from discretionary private sector investments and redistributed to the health care insurance pool, making it even less competetive. This will result in less money for salaries and employer-paid health benefits all around, forcing more people into the situation in which they will require government subsidy or will cause them to leave the system altogether. Fewer participants in employer-sponsored insurance will cause the cost of those remaining in the group to pay more. Those who were forced into the pool will not offset the losses from employers and employees who remove themselves from the pool by leaving the area. You say paying a "little extra" into health care won't make employers leave the state? Silly child, why do you think GM is bankrupt? There is no such thing as a "little extra" in health insurance. The more government regulated it becomes, the less competative it needs to be and the more it will cost.
Not everyone who chooses not to have health insurance will end up in an emergency room and of those who do, not all of them will stiff the hospital. This penalizes those who are not part of the problem, but this particular lack of "fairness" will be ignored by those who preach fairness as a universal truth. They will reason that it is for the good of the collective and the loss of freedom is unimportant.
It's not clear whether this plan would work in North Carolina.
Oh why not? North Carolina is well on its way to being the Taxachussetts of the South anyway. We already pander to every lost soul who shows up on our doorstep with his hand out, why not go ahead and take this next step into communism?
The solutions to the high cost of health care and the "crisis" elites whine about incessantly are basic and repeatable: deregulation, torte reform, privatization, competition. Sadly, there is a segment of our population who always requires us to step through every other "solution," regardless of how obviously unworkable or doomed to failure it might be. The power elite use this to their advantage to accrue capital and political power to themselves and their industry: government largesse.
The Winston-Salem Journal, like some mindless beast, simply rolls along with the herd.
Suddenly, the nation's health-care crisis doesn't look unsolvable.
Right off the bat, we know we're in trouble. Some liberal is screeching about yet another made-up "crisis." Among the overwhelmingly obvious bits of evidence that this "crisis" is completely phony are the very repeatable stories we hear about people demanding their right to government-sponsored antacids.
In truth, the lead-in to this piece negates, all by itself, the credibility of every single sentence that follows. The whole article is predicated on some assumed "crisis" that has not been proven in any way to actually exist.
Individualists might find fault with this message, saying, "That's my business." But they're wrong.
I guess they're wrong because the Journal says they are. This is a typical liberal tactic: naked assertion as rhetorical proof. But I have news for the Journal, individualists, by definition, are never wrong. The instances in which the rights of the collective trump the rights of the individual are few and far between and health care isn't one of them.
His costs are shifted onto the rest of us, suckers who are responsible enough to have insurance so we can pay health-care providers for their services.
I see, so the solution is to get the government to force everyone to be a sucker. Whoever writes this stuff should not be left to wander around without a collar. This is ever the excuse collectivists use to force planned economy down our throats. It is, as Ayn Rand called it, "the leper's bell of the approaching looter."
If they don't pay, medical providers shift the costs of that care onto others.
So close, and yet so far away.
Collectivists never seem to understand the basics of a capitalist economy. I suppose that's one of the fundamental reasons they are collectivists. This argument goes: Force the slackers to buy health insurance. If they can afford it and choose not to participate: tax them. If they can't afford to pay, "government subsidies" kick in. To the collectivist mind, it sounds like a panacea, why it is almost a market-like solution. The sad truth is that it won't change a thing.
The costs of health care are largely fixed and the market, with the possible exception of pharmaceuticals, is almost completely non-competitive due to heavy government regulation. Health care insurance is a zero-sum game. By forcing those who choose to "pay-as-you-go" to participate in health care insurance or penalizing them with taxes, capital is removed from discretionary private sector investments and redistributed to the health care insurance pool, making it even less competetive. This will result in less money for salaries and employer-paid health benefits all around, forcing more people into the situation in which they will require government subsidy or will cause them to leave the system altogether. Fewer participants in employer-sponsored insurance will cause the cost of those remaining in the group to pay more. Those who were forced into the pool will not offset the losses from employers and employees who remove themselves from the pool by leaving the area. You say paying a "little extra" into health care won't make employers leave the state? Silly child, why do you think GM is bankrupt? There is no such thing as a "little extra" in health insurance. The more government regulated it becomes, the less competative it needs to be and the more it will cost.
Not everyone who chooses not to have health insurance will end up in an emergency room and of those who do, not all of them will stiff the hospital. This penalizes those who are not part of the problem, but this particular lack of "fairness" will be ignored by those who preach fairness as a universal truth. They will reason that it is for the good of the collective and the loss of freedom is unimportant.
It's not clear whether this plan would work in North Carolina.
Oh why not? North Carolina is well on its way to being the Taxachussetts of the South anyway. We already pander to every lost soul who shows up on our doorstep with his hand out, why not go ahead and take this next step into communism?
The solutions to the high cost of health care and the "crisis" elites whine about incessantly are basic and repeatable: deregulation, torte reform, privatization, competition. Sadly, there is a segment of our population who always requires us to step through every other "solution," regardless of how obviously unworkable or doomed to failure it might be. The power elite use this to their advantage to accrue capital and political power to themselves and their industry: government largesse.
The Winston-Salem Journal, like some mindless beast, simply rolls along with the herd.
posted by Anonymous | 8:24 AM
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