All Posts Tagged With: "healthcare reform"
Alarmism 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 | ContinuedWhat’s Sauce for the Goose…
Supporters of Barack Obama’s pro-industry health insurance overhaul are absolutely right to condemn the threats and acts of violence that followed the House vote on Sunday. All decent people should join in that condemnation. It is immoral on its face, not to mention the taint it leaves on the cause of diminishing government power. By [...]
25Mar2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedSee? Repealing the Law of Scarcity Is Easy!
To the surprise of no one who understands Congress, ObamaCare passed, and the Usual Suspects are celebrating this leap into the abyss.
24Mar2010 | William L. Anderson | 19 comments | ContinuedTGIF: Countdown to Health Insurance Nationalization
Keith Olbermann must be unfamiliar with the law of scarcity, for he shows no sign of realizing that even if the government devoted 100 percent of GDP to paying medical bills, some people would end up going without “enough” and a “death panel” would have to be set up to ration services. He can’t be [...]
26Feb2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedHealth Care and the GOP
My American Conservative article critiquing the congressional Republican response to efforts to nationalize health insurance is now online here.
24Feb2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | 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 | ContinuedBig Insurance Wins One from Obama
Barack Obama this morning unveiled his plan for overhauling the health insurance industry in an effort to get the stalled legislative process going again. The bill was just posted on the White House website (Putting Americans in Control of Their Health Care” [!]). Here’s the first detail to jump out, according to the Wall Street [...]
22Feb2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedGoing Broke
Barack Obama says “no one ought to go broke when they get sick in the richest nation on Earth.” He also says “no one should go broke because they chose to go to college.” Question: Does “no one” include the government or society as a whole? I only ask because of the trillion-dollar deficits that [...]
6Feb2010 | Sheldon Richman | 6 comments | ContinuedTGIF: Obama and the Public
Broken or not, government at the moment is not inspiring confidence in the majority of people. That’s good news for those who look to government for neither inspiration nor solutions (to problems it itself has created). There’s no more urgent task that to fan the flames of political cynicism, emphasizing that what’s wrong with health [...]
5Feb2010 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | 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 | ContinuedTGIF: Opaque 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. Imagine if you could witness all the backroom dealing, logrolling, outright bribery, and the rest of the shenanigans that go on under the laughable rubric “governing.” It wouldn’t last a week. [...]
8Jan2010 | Sheldon Richman | 0 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 | ContinuedThe Senate's 40 Percent Middle-Class Tax
The New York Times‘ Bob Herbert has a thought-provoking column for a change. He shows that the Senate health-insurance bill’s 40 percent tax on “Cadillac” coverage, which has been sold as a tax on the rich, will easily become a tax on the middle class — if it works as the authors expect. Within three [...]
29Dec2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Health Care Debate Has Been “Meaningful”? It Just Ain’t So!
There is a clash of fundamental values in the health care debate, but it’s not within conventional electoral politics. The real debate is between politics as a means of providing health care and a freer, more humane alternative: consensual social organization.” Read the rest of Charles Johnson’s article at TheFreedomOnline.org.
22Dec2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Health Care Debate Has Been “Meaningful”? It Just Ain’t So!
Credit where credit is due: David Brooks does say one true thing in his New York Times column “The Values Question” (Nov. 24) 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 [...]
22Dec2009 | Charles Johnson | 22 comments | ContinuedThe Low Road and the High Ground
[W]hen things get nasty … we shouldn’t just shrug our shoulders and say things never change. Such nastiness can and should be avoided, and those of us in the freedom movement can take the lead by setting a better example.
17Dec2009 | Steven Horwitz | 7 comments | Continued-
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