Paul Ryan Dismantles The Health Care "Reform" Legislation On The Congressional Floor

Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan is quickly establishing a reputation in the republican community as an impassioned, logical, freedom loving voice of reason. A throwback republican of sorts. While certainly not our ideal politician, he's closer to the kind of republican that makes TILB still have hope for the GOP.

Here he blasts several of the most popular health care myths on the floor of the House of Representatives. He shows how it does nothing remotely close to reducing the debt, he rails against the legacy of leverage that we leave to the next generation to shoulder, and he lambasts the idea of government rationing health care rather than individuals making private decisions with their care providers and insurers.

Sadly, nobody listens; nobody cares.

Ron Paul On The "Health Care" Frankenstein Passage

We lost a chunk of freedom tonight as we continue the process of putting enough weight on our own shoulders that we collapse under its mass.

I can't bring myself to talk about this health care travesty. It's just so sad, immoral and unsustainable. To quote Congressman Ron Paul when asked what it will take to repeal the health care bill, "the bankruptcy of this country will repeal it... It will end, it will end badly and it will hurt the people that many [other] people are very seriously trying to help with medical care... Every country in the world today is on the verge of bankruptcy..."

Anyway, I'll let Congressman Ron Paul tell you about this debacle:

Jim Bunting Gives The Finger To...Well, To Everyone

...and we here at TILB fucking love it.

Before reading the below article, I didn't know jack about Jim Bunting save for one thing: he is retiring and his resignation has paved the way for the very real possibility that Ron Paul's son Rand Paul is elected to the U.S. Senate as Bunning's replacement.

That fact alone makes Bunning a hero in our eyes: even accidentally paving the way for potentially putting a Paul in the Senate is deserving of hero's praise.

But now we've learned one additional piecce of information about Senator Jim Bunning: he is single handedly holding up the extension (yet again!) of socialized unemployment and healthcare benefits. Workers already have had them extended from 26 weeks of state provided benefits to 26 weeks of state benefits plus 73 weeks from the Federal government! WTF!

Now without this extension, everyone is getting cut off once their current tier of benefits expires. While obviously it sucks tremendously for needy unemployed people, it is principled. All Bunting is saying is, (paraphrasing) "we need to cut an equal amount from somewhere else in the budget. I'm not going to be responsible for increasing the deficit any further given we already can't pay for what we have."

It's literally 99 to 1 in the Senate but it takes unanimity to extend an existing law without going through the traditional legislative process of actually passing a new law. As The Great Jim Bunning said on the Senate floor:

"If we can't find $10 billion to pay for something that we all support, we will never pay for anything on the floor of the U.S. Senate."

Amen Saint Bunning. Amen.

Oh, and because he's retiring and is basically untouchable as a result, he's literally flouting his opposition, including flicking off the media. Further, he actually told the Honorable Gentleman from Oregon, "Tough shit" when Senator Jeff Merkley criticized Bunning's stance.

I don't want to know anything else about the guy. Don't ruin this image of perfection.

I'm sure learning additional information would sully him in my eyes. But for now, he's perfect. On the one hand, he's going Mantan Moreland on them and putting his dick in the Senate's proverbial mashed potatoes while providing space for Rand Paul on the other.

Genius.

I'm gonna stick my dick in the mashed potatoes sound bite  Beastie Boys sound bites

Stay strong, Jim. Stay strong.

Here's the Yahoo! article.

[HT: TD]

The Borg, I Mean Obama Administration, Proposes Federal Price Controls On Health Insurers

Good lord, our president has no shortage of self-assuredness in his ability to control all aspects of society. Thomas Sowell preciently warned us of this prior to the 2008 election.

The Administration is apparently going to take another crack at health insurance reform (rather than healthcare reform) by imposing federal price controls on the insurance industry. The modicum of respect that I retain for the man declines everyday as his populist exploitations accumulate.

I mean, federally imposed price controls have worked so well in other areas of the economy. Fortunately, this effort is unconstitutional and clearly impedes states' rights and oversteps constitutionally limited federal authority. Unfortunately, we all know that Obama views the constitution as a simple set of best practices recommendations rather than the fundamental underpinning of the relationship between man and his servant government.

If it is not yet screamingly obvious that price controls reduce competition, reduce service quality, and impair productivity, then it never will be. There is not one sector of the economy that the government has ever successfully improved through price controls.

Here is the New York Times article on the topic of The Administration's efforts to set prices.

What's ironic is that every industry the government is heavily involved subsequently earns a terrible reputation: public schools, health care, banking, insurance, defense, etc. These are businesses that have costs that rise in excess of inflation and productivity gains that lag it. However, industries that are relatively more free such as high tech, retail, and consumer goods reflect the opposite: improving productivity, declining costs, and increasingly customer friendly prices and products.

The obvious answer is to free the health care and insurance sector of governmental interference and watch them blossom. Sadly, this will not happen under the rule of a man that believes he can impose better outcomes than individuals would receive through freedom (or, in the case of insurance, local judgement).

Dr. Shetty's Free Market Health Care Shows The Way Forward

Below and linked is a fascinating, fascinating article that is the Wall Street Journal at its best. The reporting shows what happens when providers are actually free to compete on cost and service as opposed to the heavily restrictive and regulated model that we have here (and are moving deeper into).

Improved outcomes at one-tenth the price!

For whatever reason - even though freedom from government in other market segments continuously leads to improving quality at ever lower prices - we seem to believe healthcare is different and that less freedom and more government gets the best outcomes. This article is as clear a repudiation of that ideology as I've seen.

Great quote from the article: "In health care you can't do one big thing and reduce the price," Dr. Shetty says. "We have to do 1,000 small things."

Call us skeptical that government will successfully accomplish that. Government's batting average is 0.000 so far, but perhaps this enormously complex sector of our society will be the one they get it right on...

At this point though, the socialist movement has gained such enormous momentum that you could literally bring the proponents of nationalized healthcare into the future and show them they are wrong and they still would not change their mind. Commitment and consistency bias is that powerful.

Link to the WSJ article

The Henry Ford of Heart Surgery In India, a Factory Model for Hospitals Is Cutting Costs and Yielding Profits

...

Dr. Shetty, who entered the limelight in the early 1990s as Mother Teresa's cardiac surgeon, offers cutting-edge medical care in India at a fraction of what it costs elsewhere in the world. His flagship heart hospital charges $2,000, on average, for open-heart surgery, compared with hospitals in the U.S. that are paid between $20,000 and $100,000, depending on the complexity of the surgery.

The approach has transformed health care in India through a simple premise that works in other industries: economies of scale. By driving huge volumes, even of procedures as sophisticated, delicate and dangerous as heart surgery, Dr. Shetty has managed to drive down the cost of health care in his nation of one billion.

His model offers insights for countries worldwide that are struggling with soaring medical costs, including the U.S. as it debates major health-care overhaul.

"Japanese companies reinvented the process of making cars. That's what we're doing in health care," Dr. Shetty says. "What health care needs is process innovation, not product innovation."

At his flagship, 1,000-bed Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital, surgeons operate at a capacity virtually unheard of in the U.S., where the average hospital has 160 beds, according to the American Hospital Association.

Narayana's 42 cardiac surgeons performed 3,174 cardiac bypass surgeries in 2008, more than double the 1,367 the Cleveland Clinic, a U.S. leader, did in the same year. His surgeons operated on 2,777 pediatric patients, more than double the 1,026 surgeries performed at Children's Hospital Boston.

Next door to Narayana, Dr. Shetty built a 1,400-bed cancer hospital and a 300-bed eye hospital, which share the same laboratories and blood bank as the heart institute. His family-owned business group, Narayana Hrudayalaya Private Ltd., reports a 7.7% profit after taxes, or slightly above the 6.9% average for a U.S. hospital, according to American Hospital Association data.

The group is fueling its expansion plans through private equity, having raised $90 million last year. The money is funding four more "health cities" under construction around India. Over the next five years, Dr. Shetty's company plans to take the number of total hospital beds to 30,000 from about 3,000, which would make it by far the largest private-hospital group in India.

At that volume, he says, he would be able to cut costs significantly more by bypassing medical equipment sellers and buying directly from suppliers.

Then there are the Cayman Islands, where he plans to build and run a 2,000-bed general hospital an hour's plane ride from Miami. Procedures, both elective and necessary, will be priced at least 50% lower than what they cost in the U.S., says Dr. Shetty, who hopes to draw Americans who are uninsured or need surgery their plans don't cover.

By next year, six million Americans are expected to travel to other countries in search of affordable medical care, up from the 750,000 who did so in 2007, according to a report by Deloitte LLP. A handful of U.S. insurance plans now give people the choice to be treated in other countries.Some in India question whether Dr. Shetty is taking his high volume model too far, risking quality."

...

But Jack Lewin, chief executive of the American College of Cardiology, who visited Dr. Shetty's hospital earlier this year as a guest lecturer, says Dr. Shetty has done just the opposite -- used high volumes to improve quality. For one thing, some studies show quality rises at hospitals that perform more surgeries for the simple reason that doctors are getting more experience. And at Narayana, says Dr. Lewin, the large number of patients allows individual doctors to focus on one or two specific types of cardiac surgeries.

In smaller U.S. and Indian hospitals, he says, there aren't enough patients for one surgeon to focus exclusively on one type of heart procedure.

Narayana surgeon Colin John, for example, has performed nearly 4,000 complex pediatric procedures known as Tetralogy of Fallot in his 30-year career. The procedure repairs four different heart abnormalities at once. Many surgeons in other countries would never reach that number of any type of cardiac surgery in their lifetimes.

Dr. Shetty's success rates appear to be as good as those of many hospitals abroad. Narayana Hrudayalaya reports a 1.4% mortality rate within 30 days of coronary artery bypass graft surgery, one of the most common procedures, compared with an average of 1.9% in the U.S. in 2008, according to data gathered by the Chicago-based Society of Thoracic Surgeons.

It isn't possible truly to compare the mortality rates, says Dr. Shetty, because he doesn't adjust his mortality rate to reflect patients' ages and other illnesses, in what is known as a risk-adjusted mortality rate. India's National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers asks hospitals to provide their mortality rates for surgery, without risk adjustment.

Dr. Lewin believes Dr. Shetty's success rates would look even better if he adjusted for risk, because his patients often lack access to even basic health care and suffer from more advanced cardiac disease when they finally come in for surgery.

...

In a second-floor operating room one October morning, Dr. Shetty finished sewing a new aorta onto the heart of his 11-year-old patient. The process provided an example of how he slashes costs. Four years ago, the sutures would have been bought from a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary. Today they are made by a Mumbai company, Centennial Surgical Suture Ltd.

Four years ago, Dr. Shetty scrutinized his annual bill for sutures -- then $100,000 and rising by about 5% each year. He made the switch to cheaper sutures by Centennial, cutting his expenditures in half to $50,000.

"In health care you can't do one big thing and reduce the price," Dr. Shetty says. "We have to do 1,000 small things."

He says he would also like to find lower-cost versions of his priciest medical equipment. But the Chinese makers that have brought good quality, cheaper machines to market don't yet have enough local service centers to ensure regular maintenance.

So he is still buying equipment from General Electric Co. He pays $60,000 for echocardiography machines, which use sound waves to create a moving image of the heart, and $750,000 for cardiac catheterization labs, which produce images of blood flow in the arteries and allow surgeons to clear some blockages using stents and other devices.

V. Raja, head of GE's health-care business in India, declined to comment on specific pricing, but says Dr. Shetty drives a hard bargain and wrestles some savings because he is such a big customer. Between Narayana Hrudayalaya and another hospital he runs in Calcutta, Dr. Shetty's group performs 12% of India's cardiac surgeries, Mr. Raja says.

...

Dr. Shetty also gets more use out of each machine by using some of them 15 to 20 times a day, at least five times more than the typical U.S. hospital.

George Will: Forcing Citizens To Buy A Product Is Unconstitutional

What George Will doesn't understand is that the Constitution is simply a recommended set of best practices; not the underlying foundation of our legal and governmental system. That latter concept has been misunderstood by freedom loving Americans for two-plus centuries. TILB suspects we're about to be collectively clued into the fact the former is the new truth.

Orwell would be proud.

Here's the link to Will's WaPo Opinion Piece.

Here's a highlight:

The court says the constitutional privacy right protects personal "autonomy" regarding "the most intimate and personal choices." The right was enunciated largely at the behest of liberals eager to establish abortion rights. Liberals may think, but the court has never held, that the privacy right protects only doctor-patient transactions pertaining to abortion. David Rivkin and Lee Casey, Justice Department officials under the Reagan and first Bush administrations, ask: If government cannot proscribe or even "unduly burden" -- the court's formulation -- access to abortion, how can government limit other important medical choices?

Democrats' health bills depend on forcing individuals to buy insurance or face severe fines or imprisonment. In 1994, the Congressional Budget Office said forcing individuals to buy insurance would be "an unprecedented form of federal action," adding: "The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States."

This year, the Congressional Research Service delicately said "it is a novel issue whether Congress may use the [commerce] Clause to require an individual to purchase a good or service." Congress has the constitutional power to "regulate commerce . . . among the several states." But a Federalist Society study by Peter Urbanowicz and Dennis Smith judges it perverse to exercise coercion under the commerce clause "on an individual who chooses not to undertake a commercial transaction." As Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) says, there is "a fundamental difference between regulating activities in which individuals choose to engage" -- e.g., drivers can be required to buy auto insurance -- "and requiring such activities" just because an individual exists.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) says Congress can tax -- i.e., punish -- people who do not buy insurance because the Constitution empowers Congress to tax for "the general welfare." So, could Congress tax persons who do not exercise or eat their spinach?

What Side Of History Do You Want To Be On?

Representative Paul Ryan gives an impassioned plea to vote for liberty, to vote for freedom, and to vote against statism and creeping dependancy. It's a solid use of two minutes of your time - sadly, his fellow Congressmen and women failed to fulfill their duty and protect citizens from their government.

John Mackey Of Whole Foods Gives Great WSJ Interview

The Saturday Wall Street Journal continues to be our favorite news publication.

In today's version, John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, comes back to the WSJ and gives the weekend interview. His last foray at the Journal was his spirited and logical dismembering of the so-called public option for health care (hopefully more successful than public options that already exist in mortgage underwriting and deposit insurance). That OpEd was roundly criticized by democrats (thouugh praised by TILB).

This week he returns with a long and thoughtful interview about his conversion from a corporate and profit hating 70's youth to someone who understands that capital and the aggregation of the free, individual day-to-day decisions of men are liberating forces to humanity.

Some highlights:

"President Obama called for constructive suggestions for health-care reform," he explains. "I took him at his word." Mr. Mackey continues: "It just seems to me there are some fundamental reforms that we've adopted at Whole Foods that would make health care much more affordable for the uninsured."

What Mr. Mackey is proposing is more or less what he has already implemented at his company—a plan that would allow more health savings accounts (HSAs), more low-premium, high-deductible plans, more incentives for wellness, and medical malpractice reform. None of these initiatives are in any of the Democratic bills winding their way through Congress. In fact, the Democrats want to kill HSAs and high-deductible plans and mandate coverage options that would inflate health insurance costs.

The Whole Foods health-care story has been largely ignored by proponents of a government-run system. But it could be a template for those in Washington who want to drive down costs and insure the uninsured.

...

I ask if he thinks the attacks were instigated by unions. While many other grocery chains are unionized, Whole Foods is not. "Well, the unions have had an adversarial relationship with us," he replies. "I don't think all the protests are strictly union-based, but I do think the unions have contributed to that. I think they've piled on and in some cases are orchestrating some of it." He says he can't divulge private information about whether the boycott hurt sales, but the stock hasn't taken any hit.

"I sometimes think that unions don't understand that we live in a free society and people have the right to not select union representation if they don't want it. I oftentimes hear things like 'Whole Foods is preventing people from unionizing,' which is a lie. That's illegal. We can't prevent anyone from unionizing," Mr. Mackey says.

So why aren't they choosing it? "Because it's not in their best interest," he insists. "We have better benefits and higher pay" than Whole Foods' unionized competitors. "We wish the unions would respect people's right to not have a union." Do they keep agitating? "Yeah, they do."

...

"Before I started my business, my political philosophy was that business is evil and government is good. I think I just breathed it in with the culture. Businesses, they're selfish because they're trying to make money."

At age 25, John Mackey was mugged by reality. "Once you start meeting a payroll you have a little different attitude about those things." This insight explains why he thinks it's a shame that so few elected officials have ever run a business. "Most are lawyers," he says, which is why Washington treats companies like cash dispensers.

...

Then he adds: "And we provide jobs. And we provide capital through profits that spur improvements in the world. And we're good citizens in our communities, and we take our citizenship very seriously at Whole Foods."

I ask Mr. Mackey why he doesn't collect a paycheck. "I'm an owner. I have the exact same motivation any shareholder would have in the Whole Foods Market because I'm not drawing a salary from the company. How much money does anybody need?" More to the point, he says, "If the business prospers, I prosper. If the business struggles, I struggle. It's good for morale." He hastens to add that "I'm not saying anybody else should do what I do."

Well, that's not exactly true. Mr. Mackey has been vocal in his opposition to recent CEO salaries. "I do think that it's the responsibility of the leadership of an organization to constrain itself for the good of the organization. If you look at the history of business in America, CEOs used to have much more constraint in compensation and it's gone up tremendously in the last 30 years."

...

But there's one other institution John Mackey thinks needs a makeover—and that's government. He describes what the Federal Reserve has done with massive money creation as "debauchery of the currency." He thinks the bailouts were a travesty.

"I don't think anybody's too big to fail," he says. "If a business fails, what happens is, there are still assets, and those assets get reorganized. Either new management comes in or it's sold off to another business or it's bid on and the good assets are retained and the bad assets are eliminated. I believe in the dynamic creativity of capitalism, and it's self-correcting, if you just allow it to self-correct."[emphasis added]

Link to WSJ interview here.

[Hat Tip: Big Earn]

Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac: Examples Of The "Public Option"

As President Obama prepares to pound the table for the so called "Public Option" using his bully pulpit later this week and the debate rages on about what said "option" would do to the private healthcare insurance market, TILB believes we need look no farther than the public "option" that already exists in the conforming mortgage market.

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the FHA (collectively the GSEs) were created in spite of what had been - over time - a competitive, functioning home mortgage lending market called "banks". You may have heard of these companies. At one time, these so called "banks" made things called "loans" and kept the risk of these "assets" on their balance sheet in an attempt to earn an acceptable risk-adjusted "spread" between their cost of funds and their earning assets. The federal government (aka FD Roosevelt) did not appreciate the slow evolution of these private market lenders (which already are subsidized in many ways) and thus felt they needed public "competition" to spur them on.

As such, the GSEs are, in substance, the public option for conforming residential mortgages. If you are interested in borrowing to acquire a house and both you and your desired loan qualify for GSE standards ("conforming"), there is a 100% chance you will be rolled into a GSE product.

100% marketshare? Now that is a display of some awesome competitive power! These must be really well run businesses to drive their "competitors" completely out of the market. Hell, not only that, the GSE standards serve as a vortex that sucks all other "non-conforming" products toward GSE them. Amazingly good work, dear Fred and Fan!

As this Washington Post article highlights, not only do the GSEs have 100% market share of the conforming mortgage market, they have 90% market share of the entire mortgage market.

Luckily for us citizens, these wholly apolitical entities have managed to be purveyors of good and stability for our society...

....I mean, other than when they create the occasional systemic economic collapse leading to periodic multi-trillion dollar public bailouts.

The GSEs have been manipulated for political gains again and again creating a lollapalooza of unintended consequences that ultimately led to one of the greatest borrowing orgies of all time. Not surprisingly, this led to a period of horrific malinvestment and indescribably bad human behavior that subsequently was followed by the greatest financial collapse our nation has seen since the Great Depression. Luckily, the public option for healthcare will be magnificently better.

We at TILB are convinced that as politicized as housing (and thus the GSE system) has been, healthcare and the human behaviors associated with it will be totally outside the political spectrum and that the results of this socialist experiment will be grand indeed. There will be no political meddling. The natural short termism of man will not be made worse by election cycles and desires to buy votes with handouts. The seemingly good intentions of the public option's creators will never be replaced with the less good intentions of their future political replacements. The public option will endeavor to earn an acceptable commercial return on capital that puts it on even footing with private options. It will not lead to malinvestment and unusually horrible human behavior. It will not crowd out private capital and, most importantly, it will lead to improved healthcare outcomes.

How could the Public Rainbow Special Happy Happy Friendly Love Your Neighbor Option not accomplish all these wonderful things when Dear Leader says it will?

Just because every other socialist experiment in history led to less freedom, less productivity and a slew of negative unintended consequences does not mean that this will be the same.

In fact, we have been assured that "this time is different."

Back in the world of sanity, logic and reason, we suppose the "good" news is that because the proposed socialist health care system is clearly untenable in the long-term, we can trust that it will ultimately fail leading to a subsequent increase in freedom. Sadly, the long-term can take a long time indeed and our liberty can be taken from us for the duration before that welcome collapse and rebirth into an actual commercial and thus tenable solution takes hold.

In any case, we look forward to hearing The Administration's attempt at mass assimilation. Don't worry, dear reader, I'm sure it will sound wonderful. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the tales of pixie dust and Tooth Fairy economics.

"Resistance, is futile. Your life, as it has been, is over. From this time forward, you will service...us."

The Public Option; TILB Debates Government Spending And Socialized Health Care With The Left: Part I

A long Time TILB friend and hard leaning leftist that we will refer to as Batfish took up the baton for socialized health care and made an argument for why government spending is not, in fact, simply taking money from your neighbor (TILB blogged our original argument here for government spending and here for health care).

Below we present a back and forth between TILB and Batfish (and a few brief interludes by OB).

We edited down some of the volume of the content, but we believe the main discussion points remain intact. Without getting too defensive before the main course is served, we feel it's necessary to point out that Batfish often tries to lump TILB in with the GOP, which is not at all an accurate representation of our views. We just want that out there before folks read on and think Batfish's characterization of our views is accurate (it is often not). That said, his points still merit attention as they are deeply considered and indicative the way many well intentioned folks think.

Part I of our debate is below, with an initial focus on the health care debate. Part II to follow in the not too distant future. Let us know where you stand!

Batfish email to TILB and OB:

It's fun to watch the conservative movement kill itself. Please don't stop. And by all means keep on trying to say taxation is theft and there's no such thing as government spending. (Among other things...)

Planet Wingnuttia is getting more and more entertaining every day from here on Earth.

Demagoguing end-of-life counseling issues??? How repugnant. Health reform is unconstitutional? Riiiiight. Death panels? "Im losing my country?" My GOD you people deserve to lose this one. Your strategies pretty much guarantee it at this point. There will be a health care reform law. Mark my words. There has to be. The current system is broken, no serious person disputes that.

WTF is wrong with people? You guys cant possibly support all this right-wing populist anti-government nonsense, even if you have what you perceive to be a self-interest in doing so. There is no evidentiary support for hard core libertarian economics. NONE. You two are much, much smarter than that. There would be no "free market" that is actually also FAIR without a government as the trustee and participant - much more than just referee. You damn well know that. Cmon, you can do better. And yet .....

Whatever. Here's an investment tip: lots of people are buying popcorn right now. Keith and Rachel and John Stewart and Steven Colbert are delivering big time, not to mention Kos and Crooksandliars and the rest of the blogosphere. Butter and salt would make good investments at this moment too come to think of it. It will expand your property base which you can then defend through your novel constitutional interpretations, and then we'll buy MORE popcorn and win MORE seats in legislatures. The wingnuts will keep blowing their gaskets, we'll relish the entertainment value of it, then you can invest more in popcorn. See how it works?

-Batfish

[here TILB cuts down on some cut and pasted text and instead just provides the headline and links to a series of articles Batfish included in his email]

The 'Tea Party' nexus: Mainstream conservatives empowering far-right extremists who want a new civil war
By David Neiwert Tuesday Aug 11, 2009 12:00pm
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/tea-party-nexus-mainstream-conservat
---
NH Teabagger on illegal immigrants: 'Send them home with a bullet in the head'
By David Neiwert Tuesday Aug 11, 2009 5:00pm
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/nh-teabagger-illegal-immigrants-send
---
"Death Panels" - How Rovian
August 11, 2009
by Dave Johnson
http://www.seeingtheforest.com/archives/2009/08/death_panels_ho.htm
---
'Concerned father' on Fox: Obama's health-care reforms 'sentencing our families to death'
By David Neiwert Monday Aug 10, 2009 1:00pm
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/concerned-father-fox-obamas-health-c
---
The Lies Never Cease To Astonish
August 8, 2009
By Dave Johnson
http://www.seeingtheforest.com/archives/2009/08/the_lies_never.htm
---
Whistleblower: Insurance firms ‘very much’ behind town hall disruptions
By David Edwards and Daniel Tencer
Published: August 11, 2009
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/08/11/whistleblower-insurers-put-profits-before-care/

Batfish sent a quick follow-up email with these two links and the text "Just getting started."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/12/jonathan-cohn-tells-colbe_n_257336.html
http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/jon-stewart-crazed-town-hall-protesters

[there are many more articles Batfish sent us, but for the sake of space, we stop adding them here. If you'd like to see the rest of the links, let us know and we'll forward them to you. The sample we included is indicative in that it basically is left-leaning bloggers saying that right leaning folks are a) misframing the health care issue; b) ginning up false anger; and c) profit driven and/or corporate slaves]

OB brief interlude back to Batfish

Interesting. I have not heard most of those "lies" and probably agree that they are false, but have some truth behind them as government healthcare always ends up in some form of rationing, see Canada and France.

The biggest lie pushed by Obama is that his plan is "reform." It is not reform, but change. Reform would be a very different plan and a good thing, but he has to pander to many special interests, both corporate and union. While his plan has some reforms in it, it is not in whole reform, but a move towards a government run plan.

Batfish replied to OB with the following (this is what finally set TILB off):

A "government run plan" ........ so you want to do away with Medicare and the VA? Make our veterans duke it out on the private markets such as exist right now? Do you think they would have a problem with pre-existing conditions? Not pretty.

Personally Id support single payer. Much of the scare stories about rationing in Canada are false. Most Canadians like their system and think we are "off our meds" so to speak. ... The much-dreaded Michael Moore has covered all this but he's been censored out of the whole discussion, as has single-payer. That would be change as opposed to reform.

Anyhoo there is no easy answer to all of this, and no system is perfect but it's good to see some rationality here. Id just like to see the perfect not made the enemy of the good, and I think there is something to be said for noblesse oblige. The commons really does benefit all. The reforms currently under proposal take us in the right direction. There is a way to do this right and if we can have a functional conversation about it and dispense with all the hissy fits and pearl-clutching and fainting couches, we might just get somewhere.

TILB Loses their ability to stay above the fray and responds with the following:

There’s no such thing as a private insurance market, so who knows? Insurance, other financial companies, education, and defense are the four most regulated industries in America. Utilities are in the argument as well. I’d say three of those are amongst the top five most broken industries in our nation. Probably not a coincidence. [After sending that, we thought to come up with another industry that constantly comes up short for its customers. We came up with air travel, also an incredibly heavily regulated industry...pattern continues]

Batfish replied with a cut and paste article that we basically have to show in its entirety, because he later references it several times. We believe it frames the context of Batfish's beliefs fairly well:

Well if you are partaking in all the profit-making festivities, I can certainly see why you dont want the government involved. After all, what's wrong with lining up in the rain for volunteer care in animal stalls? Is this a great country or what?

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rachel-maddow-show-wendell-potter-health-c

Rachel Maddow Show: Wendell Potter on the Health Care Industry Putting Soaring Profits Before People
By Heather Wednesday Aug 12, 2009 11:00am

Rachel Maddow talks to whistleblower Wendell Potter about the health care industry's rising profits while more and more Americans lose their health care insurance.

MADDOW: Are you by any chance a health insurance company executive? No? Me neither. And you and I, therefore, even though I know nothing else about you, you and I have one thing in common for sure. We are both in the wrong line of work.

SEC filings show that between the year 2000 and the year 2007, profit of the country‘s 10 largest health insurance companies rose 428 percent. In 2000, they had $2.4 billion in profit. By 2007, it was $12.9 billion.

Now, of course, this is America, we are capital C “Capitalists,” nobody begrudges anyone a ginormous profit, particularly if they‘re serving an important national need, like providing health insurance to the American people.

So, while the 10 biggest health insurance companies were seeing their profits rise over 400 percent between 2000 and 2007, how were they doing at serving that important national need? How were they doing at the whole providing health insurance to the American people thing? Eww! Apparently, while they quadrupled their profits between 2000 and 2007, the number of Americans without health insurance grew by 19 percent.

That seems bad. But not for everyone - also by 2007, the CEOs of the 10 largest health insurance companies were taking home an average compensation of $11.9 million each every year, while the number of Americans without health insurance for whom a burst appendix can mean bankruptcy has gone through the roof.

It was the insurance industry that bankrolled efforts to kill the last effort of health care reform in Bill Clinton‘s first term. And now, the industry says they‘re OK with reform of a sort. They just want to make sure that they don‘t get any competition from a non-profit government-run insurance plan that patients could opt into if they didn‘t like what the private sector was dishing out. You know, if I was a health insurance company executive, I‘m sure I would want that, too.

Joining us now is a former health insurance executive-turned-whistle blower, his name is Wendell Potter, and he was the head of public relations for CIGNA, one of the nation‘s largest insurers. He‘s now a senior fellow on health care at the Center for Media and Democracy.

Mr. Potter, thank you very much for joining us.

WENDELL POTTER, CIGNA FRM. HEAD OF PUBLIC RELATIONS: Thank you for the invitation.

MADDOW: The leader of America‘s Health Insurance Plans, the industry association, says that the health insurance industry is being unfairly blamed as the president and Congress try to reform the health care system.

Do you think it is unfair to single them out for blame?

POTTER: I think that she‘s doing what she‘s paid to do. I think that the health insurance industry deserves a great deal of the blame because they‘re very much behind the town hall disruptions that you see and a lot of the deception that‘s going on in terms of disinformation that many Americans apparently are believing.

MADDOW: Why do you think it is that profits for health insurance companies have ballooned so dramatically over the past seven years or so? We‘ve seen since 2000 to 2007, we‘ve seen such a dramatic increase in profits. Why is that?

POTTER: Well, for one thing, since 1993, in particular, the amount of money that the insurance companies take in on premiums, less and less of that is going—they‘re using it to pay medical claims—in 1993, it‘s about 95 percent. In a couple years ago, it was down to just around 80 percent. So, that‘s one way.

Another is that they kick sick people off the rolls when they do get sick or when people get injured—either through, whether they have bought their insurance through the individual market or through small employers.

It‘s—and also, they‘re paying fewer claims.

MADDOW: Well, if the government were to provide a health insurance option to the public, for example, like a widening of Medicare so that anybody could opt into it if they wanted to do—could private insurance companies compete alongside a government-run non-profit plan like that?

POTTER: Well, they could, absolutely. I‘ve seen the health insurance industry change its business models many, many times. The insurance companies who operate now are very different from the companies that operated a few years ago. They adapt very quickly. And the one thing they know how to do is make money.

MADDOW: You worked for CIGNA for 15 years, you left last year.

What caused you to change your mind about what you were doing and to leave?

POTTER: Well, two things. One, it was kind of gradually. One instance or in one regard because I was becoming increasingly skeptical of the kinds of insurance policies that the big insurance companies are promoting and marketing these days. And they‘re really pushing more people into the so-called consumer-directed plans that feature high deductibles, and that is a leading reason why so many more people are in the category of the underinsured.

The other thing that really made me make this final decision to leave the industry occurred when I was visiting family in Tennessee a couple of summers ago, and I picked up the local newspaper and saw a story about the health care expedition that was being held across the state line in Virginia, in the coal mining area in southwest of Virginia. So, out of curiosity, I just went up there to check it out and was absolutely dumbstruck when I went through the fairground gates. This is being held at the Wise County fairground.

And what I saw when I went inside the fairground‘s gates were hundreds and hundreds of people who were lined up, waiting in the rain, to get care that was being provided to them by volunteer doctors throughout the state of Virginia in animal stalls. Other volunteers had come previously to scrub down the animal stalls to make sure that they were sanitary enough for these doctors to treat people who otherwise couldn‘t get any care.

MADDOW: And this is the system that the health industry has been able to construct and lead us into over the past—over the past generation and that they‘re fighting so hard to preserve now.

POTTER: That‘s right.

MADDOW: Wendell Potter, senior fellow on health care at the Center for Media and Democracy, a man who‘s been through a very big change in his life in recent years—thanks very much for joining us, sir.

POTTER: Thank you, Rachel

Batfish followed up that email with this one, which we've edited down to take out another cut and paste article (leaving in the subject line, link, and last paragraph since it gives context to Batfish's final statements):

Even I am pretty gobsmacked by all this ... Wow.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/8/12/765379/-Who-are-the-Shouters

Who are the Shouters?
by Hunter
Wed Aug 12, 2009 at 07:46:03 AM PDT

Standing two feet from the senator, Craig Anthony Miller, 59, shouted into his face, “You are trampling on our Constitution!”

You might ask yourself why, of all possibilities, reforming America's healthcare system is the thing that "tramples on the Constitution" or "leaves the existence of the Republic at risk." You might ask this, because you're probably not insane. But again, this matches what we've been seeing in every "deather" protest so far --people angrily denouncing government intervention and "socialized medicine" -- but they all love Medicare. They don't want government to supposedly decide who's too expensive to keep alive, with visions of "death panels" and the like -- but insurance companies are doing that now, all the time, and there's nary a peep about that. The opposition, in other words, doesn't know the first damn thing about the thing they're supposedly protesting.

The hostility goes back to what I was pondering in my Sunday essay: that the aggressive, furious attempts to even shut down the possibility of a political discussion is reminiscent of the anti-desegregation movement, a point that becomes noteworthy when you aggregate the motives of the "birthers", who loudly deny Obama's citizenship, the "teabaggers", who loudly declare that the same taxes they paid under Bush are tyrannical under Obama, the "deathers", who loudly assert that healthcare reform is secret plot to euthanize seniors and others that the government deems unproductive. None of these positions makes a lick of sense or has any evidence to back it up, but in large part it is the same group of hard-right, almost entirely white conservatives that believes all three at once. If you believe the shouters themselves, in their own words, the healthcare debate isn't about healthcare but about a conspiratorial government and the end of the Republic.

This is, by definition, a far-right position, and less charitably a batshit insane one, and that it has managed to make it so far and be featured so prominently is testament to just how completely the farthest of the far right has captured the Republican party.

At this point, as you might imagine having perhaps followed TILB for some time, we could no longer sit by idly and not respond. Finally the debate began to rage. We will save the bulk of it for Part II, but here are a few appetizers:

It’s kind of disappointing that the argument that the pro socialized health care crowd wants to address is not the argument of why putting the government in total control of something they already have shown an utter lack of ability at is a good idea. Everyone already knows the answer to that, so instead, they want to convince people that are reasonably upset that they shouldn’t be upset because some other portion of upset people are “organized”. I’m a little surprised that organized protest is something the left frowns upon, given that’s their bread and butter.

In any case, this has nothing to do with the core argument: the portion of health care that government is already in charge of is an abject failure so giving them the rest of the system is literally insane (per Ben Franklin, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting it to come out different). If Franklin's right, then this is insanity magnified: we’re not just doing it again, we're doing it bigger; we're giving the government more responsibility! I also think the argument that Obama made that health care is a “right” is an immoral argument. Goods and services cannot be a “right”. They are not inalienable. The only way to provide for that “right” is to take liberty from someone else to pay for it. It may be something we choose to provide, but it is anything but a “right.” This is the discussion that should be taking place, but both sides prefer distraction from it, especially the left given it will undress the reality that this is simply another (although on giant scale) unfunded mandate that will result in taking enormous gobs of earnings and savings from some people and granting it to others.

Batfish back at TILB

Well you argument is logically coherent but I maintain rests on unfounded assumptions. If Medicare and the VA are such abject failures why do people like them so much? Admittedly they are costly and I'll admit that nothing is free. But I have tried to address the redistribution problem by pointing out what is sometimes referred to as "mutual reciprocal advantage" esp. in the context of zoning laws. By your argument, all zoning laws are unconstitutional takings of private property. The Supreme Court long ago dispensed with that claim in the line of cases starting with Pa. Coal v. Mahon and its progeny, where the doctrine of mutual reciprocity of advantage supersedes the idea that anyone's property rights are being violated by zoning laws. All property owners benefit from an ordered system of managing real property. Similarly, all benefit from a system of health care that prioritizes services over profits. It doesnt eliminate profits, and what is being proposed is not total government control.

The "rights" debate is the subject of another conversation - for now it's well to ask why property rights should be more fundamental than other rights. If a corporation claims the right to prevent you from drinking water out of a public waterway because they have staked some private claim to it, have your rights been violated? If you then sue and get a court to enjoin a corporation against preventing you from drinking that water, have the corporation's rights been violated? Who owns that water in the first place, and are those ownership rights transferable? Does anyone own the oxygen in the air? How about the genetic information contained within agricultural crops that have taken millenia for indegenous farmers to develop? It's onething to speak in general principles and it's comforting to try to deduct universal principles from them, but it gets alot more complicated when you hit the -road with your rubber.

TILB, diving at the keyboard, began the responding volley with the following paragraph. The balance of the debate will be in Part II...

I don't think it's as complicated as you want it to sound. The air - a shared property - is not owned by any single person and thus can be reasonably regulated, though I have certain rights within the airspace above my property. Health care is not a shared property. If, as I believe you are saying, health care is subject to the same concepts as eminent domain, then I guess you advocate forfeiting your right to your own being if the government sees fit to take your being for public use. Not my cup of tea, personally.

Stay tuned for more in Part II. We are just heating up, I assure you.

Let us know where you stand.

Obama Compares Public Health Care Option To The Success Of The US Postal Service

In the below clip, answering a Town Hall questioner who worries about the public health care "option" suffocating out private insurance, President Obama replies with an analogy to the package and letter shipping industry, "UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. Right? It's the post office that's always having problems."

We saw this live and quickly thought to ourselves three things:

1) Shock Phase: "wha, wha, what?! Did you just make the argument that government insurance would be akin to and inherently flawed like the US Postal Service? I'm sure someone in your office vetted this analogy ahead of time; how did you let this happen?"

2) Practical Phase: "I don't often wait in lines at FedEx (actually, they create all sorts of convenient innovative alternatives to waiting in lines) but I sure do at the post office. Extrapolating that to health care..."

3) Realization Phase: "In fact, UPS and FedEx are not able to compete with the USPS in the USPS's core business of regular mail because the USPS operates in a manner that creates value destructive returns on capital; so is your point that public health care will similarly crowd out private health care in core functions?"

Eek.

This whole debate frightens us on a number of levels, not least of which is that the proponents of public health care seem to want the debate not to be about public health care itself, but to be about their perception of fake anger at the Town Hall meetings. As if to convince the majority of America, which is legitimately worried about the creeping death of socialism, that their worries are illegitimate because the Town Hall protests are too angry and too organized.

Who cares about Town Hall meetings? These distraction arguments have nothing to do with the actual merits of health care reform or socialized health care. TILB will address the actual merits tomorrow (though the Whole Foods founder and CEO did a great job elucidating the dangers of public health care already).

For now, we leave you with the source clip for President Obama's frightening analogy of public health care to the US Postal Service:




Hat Tip: Ernie.

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey Comes Out Swinging Against "Obamacare"

John Mackey, purveyor of organic food to hippies everywhere, comes out guns blazing in a WSJ OpEd taking on public health insurance. He begins by making the point that socialism's inevitable end is failure. He goes on to note that the more government involvement we have, the lower quality service we receive per dollar. In fact, he argues the solution is less government, more freedom, more personal accountability, and more personal responsibility.

As we occasionally do with OpEds only, we show it below in its entirety. We strongly encourage you to pay homage to the WSJ as they continue to be, by far, the best provider of business news coverage in America. They are quickly closing the NY Times' lead on mainstream geopolitical coverage as well.

AUGUST 11, 2009, 7:30 P.M. ET
The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare;
Eight things we can do to improve health care without adding to the deficit.

By JOHN MACKEY

"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out
of other people's money."

—Margaret Thatcher

With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people's money. These deficits are simply not sustainable. They are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation, or they will bankrupt us.

While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone:

• Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs). The combination of high-deductible health insurance and HSAs is one solution that could solve many of our health-care problems. For example, Whole Foods Market pays 100% of the premiums for all our team members who work 30 hours or more per week (about 89% of all team members) for our high-deductible health-insurance plan. We also provide up to $1,800 per year in additional health-care dollars through deposits into employees' Personal Wellness Accounts to spend as they choose on their own health and wellness.

Money not spent in one year rolls over to the next and grows over time. Our team members therefore spend their own health-care dollars until the annual deductible is covered (about $2,500) and the insurance plan kicks in. This creates incentives to spend the first $2,500 more carefully. Our plan's costs are much lower than typical health insurance, while providing a very high degree of worker satisfaction.

• Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. Now employer health insurance benefits are fully tax deductible, but individual health insurance is not. This is unfair.

• Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines. We should all have the legal right to purchase health insurance from any insurance company in any state and we should be able use that insurance wherever we live. Health insurance should be portable.

• Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. These mandates have increased the cost of health insurance by billions of dollars. What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual customer preferences and not through special-interest lobbying.

• Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These costs are passed back to us through much higher prices for health care.

• Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost. How many people know the total cost of their last doctor's visit and how that total breaks down? What other goods or services do we buy without knowing how much they will cost us?

• Enact Medicare reform. We need to face up to the actuarial fact that Medicare is heading towards bankruptcy and enact reforms that create greater patient empowerment, choice and responsibility.

• Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren't covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care—to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals. While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter?

Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That's because there isn't any. This "right" has never existed in America

Even in countries like Canada and the U.K., there is no intrinsic right to health care. Rather, citizens in these countries are told by government bureaucrats what health-care treatments they are eligible to receive and when they can receive them. All countries with socialized medicine ration health care by forcing their citizens to wait in lines to receive scarce treatments.

Although Canada has a population smaller than California, 830,000 Canadians are currently waiting to be admitted to a hospital or to get treatment, according to a report last month in Investor's Business Daily. In England, the waiting list is 1.8 million.

At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits they most want the company to fund. Our Canadian and British employees express their benefit preferences very clearly—they want supplemental health-care dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments. Why would they want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have an "intrinsic right to health care"? The answer is clear—no such right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K.—or in any other country.

Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.

Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity—are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices.

Recent scientific and medical evidence shows that a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most degenerative diseases that kill us and are expensive to treat. We should be able to live largely disease-free lives until we are well into our 90s and even past 100 years of age.

Health-care reform is very important. Whatever reforms are enacted it is essential that they be financially responsible, and that we have the freedom to choose doctors and the health-care services that best suit our own unique set of lifestyle choices. We are all responsible for our own lives and our own health. We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health. Doing so will enrich our lives and will help create a vibrant and sustainable American society.

Mr. Mackey is co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc.

There Is No Such Thing As "Government" Spending

There is no such thing as government spending. Period.

The government is not a private citizen that creates wealth that it subsequently uses for its own investment or consumption. The government does not "earn" money.

The government is simply a conduit through which we make collective decisions.

Government is, in essence, a private club with broad membership. It makes regular assessments (taxes) to fund what we require of it. However, unlike most clubs, it does not assess members evenly or based simply on usage, it actually charges successful members (from a monetary success standpoint) a greater assessment than less successful members. It charges an uneven rate for its membership.

We make the point about the non-existence of government spending because we believe it is vital to understanding what "government spending" actually is. Government spending is simply the act of taking money from certain citizens to use for some purpose that, presumably, those citizens would not make via the sum of their individual collective decisions. It serves as an override on individual liberties in the name of the greater good.

In order to grasp this important idea - that the government has no wealth to spend that it does not first take (or prepare to take via borrowings) from its citizens - we need to recognize that this is a limitation on freedom; that man should not be allowed to retain the fruits of his labor or to use them as he sees fit.

Warren Buffett wrote that value investing is like an inoculation: it either quickly takes or it never does; once explained people either quickly grasp the concept or they never do. The concept of government spending that we are talking about is similarly an inoculation: you either quickly understand or you don't that if you ask your government to spend on something, you are asking the government to take money and liberty from your fellow citizens and redirect it toward your purposes and away from theirs.

The majority of people either do not understand this or willfully ignore it...and yet it is so fundamental to our lives.

TILB was skimming Facebook the other day and noticed that a friend from college wrote, after being frustrated with her inability to get private health insurance at a price she appreciated, "bring on the Obama health care plan." Her view was that the government should spend "its" money on her health care insurance rather than her spending her own money. If instead we worded her desire as, "I would like to force my neighbor to pay for my health care plan because I don't like having to pay for it myself," we would quickly extrapolate the implication that her actual request is for the few to pay for the needs of the many. Clearly her request is not that the burden or assessment should be made equally, otherwise she would reap no benefit. Rather, she implicitly believes it should be an unequal system. She obviously does not believe she should pay for other folks' health care; she doesn't even think she should have to pay for most of her own! Instead she wants to go up the pyramid and take resources from the few and shower them on the many.

Yet I honestly doubt she recognizes that is the essence of her request.

We cannot ask the government to spend in a vacuum. All we can do is ask the government to confiscate wealth from our neighbor in order to sprinkle our neighbor's former wealth onto others or ourselves. When thought of this way, the insidiousness of "government spending" comes quickly to light. It seems easy to ask the faceless, bottomless pocket of government for more handouts. It is quite another thing to go next door and shakedown our neighbor to their face.

Sadly, that is exactly what a request for government spending is: an impersonal way of requisitioning our neighbor's wealth.

TILB stands against this theft of liberties other than for limited constitutional purposes: national defense, protecting personal liberties, prosecuting cheats, and contract enforcement. All else falls outside the duties of government. If not explicitly limited in this way, the incremental theft of freedom becomes too easy to give into and the desire too great to resist.

After writing the above paragraph, TILB went searching for a good quote on the matter. We came across the below from Congressman Ron Paul, which we will leave you with for today:

"In a truly free nation, the government acts only as a referee by protecting property rights, enforcing contracts, prohibiting force and fraud, and providing national defense. Such was the system [envisioned] by the Founding Fathers, who strictly limited regulatory and tax powers in the Constitution. They were tired of having their business affairs managed by the Crown, so they created a servant government that would allow freedom and capitalism to flourish.

"Today’s political rhetoric demonstrates that the servant has become the master. Most politicians, and too many Americans, have accepted the premise that government should plan our lives and control the economy. This subservient mindset encourages political pandering, as candidates strive to convince voters of their superior plans to take care of all of us. For a nation founded upon rugged individualism and self-reliance, the modern political landscape represents a wake-up call. Unless and until Americans begin to reclaim the mentality that made us great, we are destined to slide further into an economic and political malaise that cannot be solved by the grandiose plans of politicians."

PS: Keep your eyes peeled for a similar post in the future about corporate taxation, which is a misnomer. There are, of course, no corporations that are not ultimately owned by people. Corporate tax is simply another form of personal income tax.

Liberty Quote Of The Day: Cliff Asness

Cliff Asness is known for his role as the founder and intellectual leader of investment firm, AQR Capital. His below quote is directed at The Obama Administration's efforts to nationalize healthcare and establish the provision of health care services as a right.

From TILB's mouth to Asness's fingers:

"Listing rights generally involves enumerating things you may do without interference (the right to free speech) or may not be done to you without your permission (illegal search and seizure, loud boy-band music in public places). They are protections, not gifts of material goods. Material goods and services must be taken from others, or provided by their labor, so if you believe you have an absolute right to them, and others don't choose to provide it to you, you then have a 'right' to steal from them. But what about their far more fundamental right not to be robbed?"

- Cliff Asness

Amen.

We add below this video clip which neatly summarizes our view of The Administration's efforts on so many fronts:



Don't fight it. Simply hand your (formerly) free will over to The Administration and their collection of czars. Why think for yourself when silver tongued aggressors are willing to think for you?

Ah, sweet sweet mindless freedom...

[HT: LB]

Nationalizing Healthcare At Only $120,000 Per Person!

HT: to ZeroHedge

Good news, dear reader, it appears a mere $600 billion in incremental tax increases are coming.

Even better news: that's just to pay for health care, much less the debacle that's going on now - forget the $2 trillion deficit we would have anyway.

Luckily, the plan is simply to further soak the rich (how wet can somebody get before they are thoroughly soaked?) and have five million people subsidize three hundred million.

Obama has pledged that health-care changes won’t add to the deficit. To accomplish that, he’s proposed getting about $600 billion by reducing tax deductions available to the wealthy, and by trimming Medicare payments to insurance companies.

He goes on to state that he understands that number is too big and there will have to be cuts. If past is prologue, he'll cut some nominal amount and then stomp for approvale at his grand achievemnt.

Or, as the good folks at Zerohedge state it:

Additionally as Obama has pretty much staked his political career on only raising the taxes of those who make over $250,000 per year. That's what - 4, maybe 5 million Americans? So, $600 billion divided by 5 million, that makes... oh, about $120,000 in tax increases per person.

I'll note that is before those same people pay for the deficit/debt that already exists.

...sigh...

Someday, perhaps, Atlas will indeed shrug as even his capable shoulders can only bear so much burden. TILB mourns for America...