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20090819

The Free Market is a natural and wise regulator

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Posted by Ben Trovato : ,

9 comments:

  1. Quinty8/19/09, 4:55 PM

    I think Marxists would all do us a service if they simply reminded us of why Marxism got started. Way, way back then in the early nineteenth century. When the bloom on the blush of early Capitalism wore off. And Adam Smith became most quaint. As did Jefferson and other idealists.

    It got started for the simple reason the Proletariat, ie ordinary working men, and women, and children, got screwed. We may agree or disagree with Marx's solutions (I tend to disagree) but, after all, the poor guy was merely trying to make life better for working people. And that is only bad in the eyes of those who support (a) their own power (b) profits (c) and, yes, let's say it, personal greed.

    Who else in the world would fight to the death a prospective healthcare program which doesn't support the profit motive of insurance companies but us, Americans? Which is designed to better our healthcare? Who else would ignore why Socialism (modern socialism, that is) began in the first place? The reasons why?

    So why not bring back child labor, 12 hour days, six day weeks, and perhaps even slavery? Keep government off our backs! And don't let it touch our Medicare! (Hitler was of course a Socialist...... Has everyone seen this tape today..... Hilarious!

    Click on the video......

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/19/barney-frank-confronts-wo_n_262682.html )

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  2. Ben Trovato8/19/09, 11:59 PM

    "My question to you is, why do you continue to support a Nazi policy?" the woman asked Frank.

    "On what planet do you spend most of your time?," an incredulous Frank rhetorically replied, indignantly adding "You stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis....Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it."

    I say good for him!

    (Just for the record, Frank was born to a Jewish family.)

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  3. Ben Trovato8/20/09, 12:26 AM

    The bogeyman of Marxism is a convenient all purpose political red-herring (a device intended to divert the audience from the truth or an item of significance) in a nation in which the ghost of the Red Scare and McCarthyism (the politically motivated practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence) is still alive and well.

    The Scare was characterized by the fear that communism would upset the capitalist social order in the United States. Such an irrational fear seems oddly out of place in a day an age when the Berlin wall has fallen and even the People's Republic of China is embracing free market capitalism---except as we may cherish our ignorance and conspire with ourselves to preserve it.

    In 2000 the World Health Organization, WHO, published its rankings of 190 of the world's healthcare systems.

    The United States rank 37th, after:

    1 France
    2 Italy
    3 San Marino
    4 Andorra
    5 Malta
    6 Singapore
    7 Spain
    8 Oman
    9 Austria
    10 Japan
    11 Norway
    12 Portugal
    13 Monaco
    14 Greece
    15 Iceland
    16 Luxembourg
    17 Netherlands
    18 United Kingdom
    19 Ireland
    20 Switzerland
    21 Belgium
    22 Colombia
    23 Sweden
    24 Cyprus
    25 Germany
    26 Saudi Arabia
    27 United Arab Emirates
    28 Israel
    29 Morocco
    30 Canada
    31 Finland
    32 Australia
    33 Chile
    34 Denmark
    35 Dominica
    36 Costa Rica
    37 United Sates of America

    And who are we kidding here? I think it safe to say that none---absolutely none---of the countries on that list, which are ranking better than the United States, are operated under a Marxist regime, or anything even remotely close to Marxism.

    Healthcare in these countries is provided through a wide range of different systems run at the national level, and the systems are primarily publicly funded through taxation!!!

    Even in tax havens such as the Principalities of Andorra or Monaco, healthcare is provided by the government-run social security system.

    And none of these other countries exclude 16% of their citizens from what can be, in all justice, considered a civil right: reasonable access to basic health care (and Marxism has nothing to do with this).

    It is a worldwide embarrassment and a moral failing (not to mention a Christian failing) that the “richest, most powerful nation on earth” has been unable---or been unwilling---to provide basic universal health care to its population.

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  4. Ben Trovato8/20/09, 12:45 AM

    Israel ranks 28th on the list.

    Last time I checked---correct me if I am wrong---Israel was not a Marxist country.

    In 1995 the National Health Insurance Law came into effect, which made membership in one of the four existing Health Maintenance Organizations compulsory for all Israeli citizens. The law determined a uniform benefits package for all citizens---a list of medical services and treatments which each of the Health Maintenance Organizations is required to fund for its members. In addition, the law set out a system of public funding for health care services by means of a progressive health tax, administered by Bituah Leumi, Israel's social security organization, which transfers funding to the Health Maintenance Organizations according to a certain formula based on the number of members in each fund, the age distribution of members, and a number of other indices. Additionally, the Health Maintenance Organizations receive direct financing From the states money.

    Before enactment the Health Insurance Law, the only Health Maintenance Organization to accept members without discrimination based on age or medical situation was the Clalit HMO which was then in the ownership of the Histadrut labour federation. After enactment of the 1995 law, membership in any of the four Health Maintenance Organizations was guaranteed for all citizens, and Israelis were given the right to transfer between Organizations once per year.

    The 1995 law also imposed a system of financial and medical oversight of HMOs by the State.

    In addition to the uniform benefits package provided to all citizens, which provides coverage for basic and essential health care, every HMO fund provides their members with the option to acquire "supplementary insurance", which includes services and treatments that are not covered by the publicly-funded system.

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  5. Ben Trovato8/20/09, 1:13 AM

    Singapore is 6th on the list, and according to an analysis by global consulting firm Watson Wyatt, it has "one of the most successful healthcare systems in the world, in terms of both efficiency in financing and the results achieved in community health outcomes."

    The dominant political party over there is deeply suspicious of communist political ideologies (despite a brief joint alliance with the communists against colonialism in Singapore during the party's early years). Free-market policies have been popular since the 1980s and Singapore frequently ranks extremely high on indices of "economic freedom" published by economically liberal organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

    Yet, there too, healthcare comes under the responsibility of the government's ministry of health. And Singapore has a universal healthcare system, which co-exists with the private healthcare system!!!

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  6. Ben Trovato8/20/09, 1:34 AM

    The Health Insurance industry in the USA has been compared to the Mafia---and probably with good reasons!

    Jonathan Kellerman is an M.D. and he is telling it like it is:

    "You don't need to be an economist to understand that any middleman interposed between seller and buyer raises the price of a given service or product. Some intermediaries justify this by providing benefits, such as salesmanship, advertising or transport. Others offer physical facilities, such as warehouses. A third group, organized crime, utilizes fear and intimidation to muscle its way into the provider-consumer chain, raking in hefty profits and bloating cost, without providing any benefit at all."

    "The health insurance model is closest to the parasitic relationship imposed by the Mafia and the like. Insurance companies provide nothing other than an ambiguous, shifty notion of "protection."

    "But even the Mafia doesn't stick its nose into the process; once the monthly skim is set, Don Whoever stays out of the picture, but for occasional "cost of doing business" increases. When insurance companies insinuate themselves into the system, their first step is figuring out how to increase the skim by harming the people they are allegedly protecting through reduced service."

    "There will be progressively draconian rationing using denial of authorization and steadily rising co-payments on the patient end; massive paperwork and other bureaucratic hurdles, and steadily diminishing fee-recovery on the doctor end."

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  7. Ben Trovato8/20/09, 2:04 AM

    Organized crime is as organized crime does.

    It is the same all the world over, wherever it finds itself in a position to flourish---it matters little whether it is under a flag bearing the hammer and sickle or under the star-spangled banner.

    Organized crime has no border and no ideology. And its only tenet is profit.

    If you are looking for "death panels" look no further than the current Private Health Insurance industry as it stands now, they call it "denial of service"---nothing personal, just business.

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  8. Quinty8/20/09, 4:42 PM

    "The bogeyman of Marxism is a convenient all purpose political red-herring... :

    As it always has been. In Grapes of Wrath one character asks another: "What is a red?" The reply is someone who asks for 30 cents an hour, rather than 25. And the guy who asked the question says, "Then I'm a red."

    The triumph of our corporate mind trend setters is that nobody sees the irony in that exchange today. Or relatively few. Since the worst thing in the world is to be a "socialist." Who, of course, is against freedom. That freedom being, of course, the right to screw anyone you want to: employees, consumers, the world at large. Freedom is the free market which is the freedom to take whatever you can. And if you fail in this endeavor it is because you are week, inferior, or shiftless and lazy. And not desiring to achieve all this accruement of money and power is no excuse. That's tough if you don't even believe in it.

    Europeans sometimes think we are a country with a "wild west" mentality. If certain characters brought guns to a political confab the police would immediately arrest them over there. Or at least confiscate their guns. Only in America (I think) is flashing your hardware in front of the President of the United States seen as an expression of freedom and political belief. Others, with more level heads, may worry one of these toters may actually want to use his gun.

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  9. Quinty8/27/09, 4:23 PM

    How France does it..... a partial survey from CBS

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNR_6UuVl4s&NR=1&feature=fvwp

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