What to do about healthcare.

Sadly,I think this author is right on about what will happen. Add health insurance to thelist of industries the Dems have destroyed in their quest for communisim.

Health Care: Arbitrage Obama And The Dems - The Market Ticker


Lumber
Ranching
Charity
banking
Automobiles
Oil
And many more that don't come to my mind at the moment.

Who Pays?

Doctors, nurses and other medical technicians all have to pay their rent and buy food. Hospitals and doctor’s offices must pay mortgages, electricity, and gas bills. So, someone has to pay for the medical services rendered to patients.

Who ever pays the bill gets to decide who gets what treatments.

Who do you want to make that decision for you and those you love? Some committee appointed by congress or the president? This is what Medicaid is and no one is eager to enroll in that program. (Also, think post office, DMV, and all the other government programs out there in order to get an idea of what medical care would become like under government control. There is no reason to believe health would be any more efficient or cost affective under government control.)

Now, I don’t want some board of some insurance company making those decisions for me either. Our system does need changing, but more government control is not the answer.

Less is.

Our current system is not a system a free-market system; it is simi-socialist. The government mandates certain businesses to provide health insurance (instead of paying their people enough they can pay their own bills), regulates a good deal of the industry, and for those who can’t buy their own (and for the elderly whether they can or not), they have their own programs. The government programs set the base line for cost and services eliminating the free market forces that keep costs under control.

Prices in health care began to rise dramatically about the time Medicaid was invented. The truth is that ANY industry ANY government in history has put its hands into has seen sky-rocketing prices and declining quality. Doesn’t matter if the industry is housing, bread making, or education; happens every time.

That is what has happened to our health care and the government taking it over will only make it worse.

“But what about the poor who can’t afford to pay their doctor’s bill?”

You know, we have allowed those who do not value freedom to brainwash us into thinking that the government is the only answer in many areas, especially where the poor are concerned.

Before the government began to mess around in charity, families, churches, friends and communities got together to help any one in need whether it was paying the doctor’s bill, educating or feeding their children, or raising a barn that had burned down. We weren’t little babies who needed to be “taken care of” by Big Brother. We took care of ourselves and each other. We can’t do this today because we pay so much in taxes (40% or more per family when you figure all the income, sales, property, value added, business, and employee taxes and all the fees for DMV and other things) we don’t have anything left to help ourselves much less each other.

It’s time to quit being babies and grow up. It’s time to take responsibility for ourselves and our neighbors instead of telling the government to rob others to pay the bills.

It’s time for freedom.

Who decides what salaries should be.

Salaries are the amount of money exchanged for labor, both physical and mental.

The basic law of economics is the Law of Supply and Demand:

The more an item is desired, the more the owner can charge to sell it.
The less an item is desired, the less the seller can get for it.

Labor is just as subject to these laws as any other good. The more people wanting to do a job, the less the employer must pay in wages. The fewer people who want a job, the more the employer must pay.

No amount of legislation will change this law of the universe.

Now, what happens to salaries when millions of criminals (the definition of ILLEGAL alien) are competing for jobs? The salaries go down, right? What would happen to the salaries of those same (undesirable) jobs if there were no illegals? Prices go up because the factories they work in simply must have the labor.

What happens to salaries when we institutionalize our babies from the day they are born and send mommy into the workforce? Again, salaries go down. This puts us in the position in this country where we have to have two salaries in order to survive because wages are kept artificially low by all the families with two incomes. Talk about a vicious circle!

What does minimum wage laws do to the equation? Nothing.

Minimum wage laws force employers to pay more than the market demands for certain jobs. They must then raise prices to compensate. Now it costs more to live, so the minimum wage earner is in the same place they were in before the law. I’ll give you an example:

At $1 per hour a man used to have to work 50 hours to pay a month's rent on the average home.

Fifty years later, minimum wage laws forced his employer to pay him $10 per hour, but rising expenses means he now has to work, uhhh, 50 hours to pay one months rent on the average house. So big deal; we added a zero to everything. We didn’t help Mr. Workingman in the least.

What we did do is make it so Mr. Employer won’t higher anyone who is unskilled for even unskilled labor. That very poor person the law was supposed to help is now unemployed because, well, if you have to pay $10 per hour anyway, you might as well hirer the college grad, right? Why would you hirer the dropout? Now if you were allowed to choose between the college grad at $10 and the dropout at $8 you just might take the dropout. This levels the playing field allowing everyone a chance to compete.

Ahh, but then we wouldn’t have the ammunition necessary to force untold thousands of young adults that they must stay in our indoctrination centers (schools) well into adulthood, but that is a different post.

Reclaiming Education,

Introduction: Rethinking Education, pgs 14-16,
by James Tooley

Suppose that in the late nineteenth century it had been decided that
children needed an adequate diet to grow up into good citizens and
employees, and it was observed that not all children were getting
this. Hence the state, invoking the 'protection of minors' principle,
intervenes to ensure an adequate diet for all children. Through a
bold series of ever-more encompassing reforms, starting with the
setting up of a National Bread Board through to the creation of the
Department for Nutrition, the system is in place by, say 1970,
whereby the vast majority of children attend Local Nutrition
Authority (LNA) kitchens for all their eating requirements. Children
are directed to their local kitchen by their LNA, neither they nor
their parents have any choice in this matter. Food is provided free
at the kitchen, and officials strongly warn against provision of food
outside of the kitchen. (In any case, as parents would have to pay
for such additional food, there is very little motivation for them to
do so.) Attendance at the kitchens is compulsory for all children,
and they have to eat three meals a day, at set times. All children
have the same amount of food and the same amount of time in which to
eat it. If they haven't finished one course when the time is up, they
have to move on to the next. They eat their meals in their own part
of the kitchen around tables with 30 other children of the same age,
supervised by one member of the Feeding Profession. If they do not
eat their meals at the set times, they are punished, often by serving
them the meal that children least like when everyone else has gone
home.

The Nutrition System as outlined comes under mounting pressures. In
many kitchens, it is alleged, food is of poor quality, leading to
illness and listlessness. Some of the Feeding Profession cannot
control their charges, with consequent riotous meal-times. Moreover,
it is pointed out that because diet is not centrally prescribed, some
kitchens are experimenting with different kinds of food, with
disastrous consequences for children thus exposed. Samosas served at
one school instead of steak and kidney pie creates a huge national
scandal. Questions are asked in the House of Commons. All this seems
grossly unfair, particularly as at other institutions, meal-times are
orderly and the food good, at least in part. Finally, the children of
the rich, it is noted, can afford to opt out of the state system, and
have food in restaurants or even, in rare cases, cooked at home by
their own parents. This adds to the inequity of the system, because
it is agreed that the quality of private restaurants is better than
the state kitchens, and because home cooking clearly deprives
children of their national nutritional entitlement. It is apparent
that urgent reforms are needed.

The party that wins the next election favours 'markets' as a panacea
for the country's ills. It introduces market reforms into the public
services, including Nutrition. To avoid alienating the Department for
Nutrition and the Feeding Profession, the government sets up a
National Dietary Division (NDD) and brings out a National Diet (ND),
prescribing the quantity, quality, speed of eating, table levels and
so on, to take place in all kitchens in the country. To ensure
national accountability - so important in a democracy - a testing
regime is enhanced, with frequent eating examinations and publication
of kitchen (league) tables. But these are not the key market reforms.
These, enthuse the politicians, liberate nutritional demand and
supply. On the demand side parents are now permitted to choose their
preferred kitchen from the two or three in their area. Moreover,
whereas previously kitchens had received funding regardless of how
many children they had to feed, now they are to be allocated a
specific amount for each child. That should keep these kitchens on
their toes! On the supply side, kitchens are now given control of
much of their budgets and a rather small number of brand-new
expensive kitchens opened, with superb modern cooking equipment. With
these demand and supply-side revolutions in place, the government
presents its Nutrition Market.

However, it is not long before critics begin condemning the market.
Says one professor: look how markets exacerbate inequality! For it is
clear that, under the reforms, some kitchens are far more popular
than others. Lo and behold, just as one could have predicted, the
popular kitchens are able to choose between parents. Under the guise
of consumer choice, it is the producers who are empowered, not the
customers, and particularly not the disadvantaged, who end up in the
worst kitchens from which the middle classes have escaped. The debate
rages, and when a new government comes into power, under agitation
from the Nutrition pressure groups, the market reforms are curtailed.

Let's leave this parable and return to Michael Barber's point, and
consider the 'more authentic' market as we know it in Nutrition, or,
as we call it, food. Parents can choose in what ways they wish their
children to be fed. They purchase food using their own money, and the
myriad of these individual choices have an influence on the final
price of the food, giving information to suppliers to act according
to demand. They can choose uncooked, cooked, or partly cooked food.
They choose from an incredible diversity of suppliers, from
traditional markets, supermarkets, hypermarkets, late stores, corner
shops and wholesalers. Some grow food for themselves. Some eat out
for certain meals at restaurants or fast-food stores, or order
take-away food. Some eat with friends or extended family. The
government is not involved in the funding or provision at all. There
is some state intervention in this market for sure. The food
suppliers need to conform to safety and informational requirements.
Moreover, there are two 'safety nets' to ensure that children don't
suffer. If parents are neglectful, there are mechanisms to ensure
children are cared for properly. For poor parents, there are money
handouts to ensure their children eat properly. These mechanisms, if
working properly, enhance but don't undermine the market.

I hope I have written enough to bring out the stark contrast between
an authentic market and the 'so-called' one. The tiny aspects of
markets which were introduced in the parable are largely
insignificant, and indeed, as the critics pointed out, may even
exacerbate the unfairness of the previous system. The moral of this
parable is, I hope, that tinkering with heavy state intervention does
not bring about a market, even if the tinkering is introducing some
vaguely market-like mechanisms. All we have in education is this
tentative tinkering; the so-called market is as different from a more
authentic market as the reformed Nutrition System is from the market
in food.

Or finally, perhaps another analogy will help. Suppose that a new
'choice' reform is introduced into a prison system. Prisoners are now
allowed a choice of food within the prison canteen. Prisoners have to
go to the one prison canteen of course, and have to eat at the set
mealtimes, but nonetheless they have a choice of food when they get
there. Would anyone want to say that such choice is the same as real
freedom? Of course not. It is the same in the education system. The
choice systems in education are as far removed from real markets as
real freedom is from the prisoner.

When did it become a sin to earn a profit?

I don’t see that in my Bible among the lists of sins (Ephesians, Galatians, Exodus).

Greed IS a sin, yes. But earning an honest profit is not. In fact, the ability to earn a profit makes capitalism the most overall compassionate system possible.

That’s right; capitalism is compassionate.

If you see a need in a capitalist society, and come up with a way to meet that need, you get rewarded. Walmart did not become the third biggest economy in the world by being greedy or cruel. They became rich by offering my husband and I and a whole lot of other people food for half of what it would cost us in a regular grocery store. They offer cheap food, we choose to buy there instead of at a more expensive place, they get the reward of our money. Pretty simple, really.

Economists tell us that a profit of as much as 20% will encourage more people to invest in a certain area (thus causing competition and lowering prices, meeting even more people’s needs).

Now lets look at some of the “evil” businesses our socialist media have vilified:
Big oil makes a whole 3% profit a year (yes this is billions of dollars, but it is still a very small amount of money comparatively and most of that money goes to stockholders; in other words, any Workingman with a retirement account.)
Big Pharm (an industry I don’t like for various other reasons) makes about the same amount of profit. They would not bother to develope new drugs if they couldn't make some profit. You don't see new meds coming out of profit-less, socialist Europe for a reason.

In fact, you will find if you do the research that most of the business that are portrayed as evil make very tiny profits (comparatively) most of which goes to stockholders.

The truth is that if you look at the history of our media over the last sixty years or so you will see them taking on one industry after another on either environmental or supposed greed issues, starting with those industries that were doing the best jobs to make people independent enough to not need government help (lumber, ranching, oil, cars, banking, etc.)

This has been a systematic attack on our freedom.




If I exchange my labor (whether physical or mental) for money, I should have the right to do what I want with that money. Can we all agree with that?

If I give the government the power to tell someone else what to do with their money, I am giving them the power to tell me what to do with mine.

It doesn’t matter if that person is my elderly neighbor lady or the CEO of Exxon, the principle is the same; if it is wrong for the government to tell me what to do, it is wrong for them to tell Bill Gates what to do. By protecting his freedoms, I protect my own.

And it is this capitalist system that has created a country where our poorest citizens are rich enough to be fat and have exploding closets and storage units.

Meeting needs should be rewarded. Riches freed from government control create more riches. Wealth is not finite. Gates being rich in no way prevents me from being rich. There is enough for us all to be wealthy. The best way to achieve that universal wealth is to allow everyone to be rewarded for meeting the needs they see around them.