All Posts Tagged With: "health insurance"
Contraception: Insuring the Uninsurable
It makes no sense to talk about insuring against the eventuality that a particular person will reach child-bearing age and use contraception.
10Feb2012 | Sheldon Richman | 9 comments | ContinuedCongress Can’t Repeal Economics
It’s raining! I don’t like it! Why hasn’t Congress passed the Good Weather Act and the Everybody Happy Act? Sound dumb? Why is it any dumber than a law called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which promises to cover more for less money? When Obamacare was debated, we free-market advocates insisted that no [...]
22Dec2010 | John Stossel | 13 comments | ContinuedAppropriating Hayek
J. Mick Tilford, a professor of health policy and management at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, attempted to enlist F. A. Hayek in his defense of the Obamacare health insurance mandate. In an op-ed published Sunday in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Tilford wrote (subscription site): Even the fervent libertarian Freidrich [sic] Hayek wrote that [...]
15Nov2010 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedFree Stuff!
The Obama administration will forbid health insurance companies from charging policy holders to cover screenings and other preventive services. They must be free of all charges. “The rules will eliminate co-payments, deductibles and other charges for blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol tests; many cancer screenings; routine vaccinations; prenatal care; and regular wellness visits for infants [...]
15Jul2010 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedTaming the Beloved Beast: How Medical Technology Costs Are Destroying Our Health Care System
Daniel Callahan has written a bracing and exasperating book on health care policy. It is bracing in its realistic assessment of the tradeoffs and dilemmas facing U.S. policymakers, but exasperating in its assessment of the relative merits of using market processes or government intervention to resolve these issues. Callahan, a senior scholar at Yale, makes [...]
29Jun2010 | Arnold Kling | 2 comments | ContinuedOne Last Time: Markets Don’t Ration!
The Wall Street Journal takes Donald Berwick, likely the next Medicare chief, to task for saying, “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care—the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly.” Fine. But then the editorial writer adds, “In fact, the [...]
27Apr2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedAlarmism or Realism?
A standard charge against opponents of the medical insurance overhaul is that the dire predictions are nothing but alarmism. The argument is something like this: “You said the same thing when Medicare passed in 1965.” This is actually a very funny contention. One of the arguments against Medicare was that it would pave the way [...]
26Mar2010 | Sheldon Richman | 10 comments | ContinuedWishful Thinking on Health Care
For a century the foundation of medicine in the United States has steadily shifted from cooperation and competition to compulsion and management through government power.
26Mar2010 | Sheldon Richman | 19 comments | ContinuedCapital Letters
Who Is a Mormon? As a long-time reader and supporter of The Freeman, I express my enjoyment in reading the articles by Dr. Thomas Szasz. I appreciate his critical thinking and his skill in constructing the written word in a most efficient and powerful style. However, I take issue with part of his December 2009 [...]
24Mar2010 | mnolan | 2 comments | ContinuedWill Medical “Reform” Cut Real Costs?
There is no possibility that the President’s plan will even remotely cut real costs. The true legacy of this bill will be to add costs in ways we hardly can imagine.
17Mar2010 | William L. Anderson | 7 comments | ContinuedA Contemptible Congress and a Derelict Court
What can Congress do that the Supreme Court would find unconstitutional? Or, what can Congress do that a president would veto as unconstitutional? It is not much exaggeration to say that Congress can do whatever it can muster a majority vote for, whether it is constitutional or not. The members only have to worry about [...]
24Feb2010 | Walter E. Williams | 5 comments | ContinuedThe Health Care Debate Was “Meaningful”?
Let’s give credit where credit is due. David Brooks does say one true thing in his New York Times column, “The Values Question”, on government health care reform: “The system after reform will look as it does today, only bigger and more expensive.” Brooks is certainly right that no “health care reform” proposal with any [...]
24Feb2010 | Charles Johnson | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Mandated Health Insurance Outrage
The most outrageous aspect of health care “reform” is the insurance mandate: Every individual will have to buy government-defined comprehensive medical coverage (if it isn’t provided by his employer)—or be fined. You must buy it. Who do these politicians think they are? For those who wonder by what authority the government can make us buy [...]
23Feb2010 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedHow Can that Be?
The White House website’s summary of Barack Obama’s health insurance plan says these two things: New plans will have to offer preventive care and immunizations at no cost; and Nothing in the proposal forces anyone to change the insurance they have. Period. Can both be true? What if you have a plan that doesn’t include [...]
22Feb2010 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedObama: Enemy of the Working Class
Barack Obama, the current White House occupant, recently reaffirmed his support for employer-based health insurance. In my book that makes him the enemy of all working people. The tethering of employees to their bosses is a rotten leftover from World War II and should have been abolished long ago. Those who believe in freedom and [...]
12Feb2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Snare of Incremental Heath Care “Reform”
Opponents of (more) government control of health care and health insurance are breathing a sigh of relief after Tuesday’s upset senatorial election in Massachusetts. But now that the celebrations are subsiding, I feel compelled to warn that the most perilous days may lie ahead.
22Jan2010 | Sheldon Richman | 9 comments | ContinuedOpaque By Design
The phrase “transparent government” is just this side of a logical contradiction. A really transparent government would barely qualify as a government at all.
8Jan2010 | Sheldon Richman | 6 comments | Continued-
The Latest
Contraception: Insuring the Uninsurable
Update below. Controversy rages over the Obama administration’s mandate that all employers – including... Read More
The Snow Plowers’ Petition
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Super Bowl versus Education?
In the spirit of Super Bowl weekend I’d like to deconstruct a Facebook status update that a friend... Read More
Capitalism, Corporatism, and the Freed Market
When a front-running presidential contender tells the country that thanks to Barack Obama, “[w]e are... Read More
Creating Jobs versus Creating Value
Picking on New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is one of the largest participation sports on the Internet.... Read More
