All Posts Tagged With: "healthcare reform"
Public Support for Healthcare Reform Drops Even More
“A bare majority of Americans still believe government action is needed to control runaway health-care costs and expand coverage to the roughly 46 million people without insurance. But after a year of exhortation by President Obama and Democratic leaders and a high-octane national debate, there is minimal public enthusiasm for the kind of comprehensive changes [...]
16Dec2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 0 comments | ContinuedUh oh: The Latest Health Care Plan
From the New York Times: Senate Democrats have provided few details about their latest health care proposal, but this much seems clear: Anyone who wants to buy the same health benefits as members of Congress, or to buy coverage through Medicare, should be prepared to fork over a large chunk of cash. Are the people [...]
11Dec2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedTGIF: Perverse Health Care Incentives
The common impulse for “health care reform” is entirely honorable. It is distressing to know that so many people are vulnerable to bankruptcy-threatening medical bills or to raw deals from State-cartelized insurance companies. Who wouldn’t change that if he could? The question is: Which approach has a better chance of changing it? Centralized bureaucratic decision-making [...]
11Dec2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedPerverse Health Care Incentives
Ronald Brownstein of The Atlantic is the only mainstream reporter I am aware of who glimpses what the debate over health care economics should be about. Last month he wrote, “To save costs, Democrats mostly want to change the incentives for providers. Republicans mostly want to change the incentives for patients by shifting toward a [...]
11Dec2009 | Sheldon Richman | 9 comments | ContinuedHealth Care Nationalization Equals Emancipation?
Senate Leader Harry Reid says that opposing what he calls health care reform is like supporting slavery. “When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said, slow down, it’s too early. Let’s wait. Things aren’t bad enough…. There are now those who don’t think it [...]
9Dec2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedUSA: No. 1 in Health Care?
In our drive to oppose even greater government intervention in health care, we must be sure not to misrepresent the current system as something close to the free market but for a few interventions. The current system is a corporatist nightmare, infested at the very root by government interference with freedom (usually in the form [...]
9Dec2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedTGIF: The Mandated Health Insurance Outrage
Want to know how the politicians justify forcing us to buy health insurance? I discuss their screwball grounds in this week’s TGIF.
20Nov2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Mandated Health Insurance Outrage
With the introduction of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s 2,074-page health insurance nationalization bill, we can be thankful for one thing at least. It will most likely be the last bill of its kind introduced this year. Who’d have time to wade through another? This doesn’t mean there is anything in the bill to be [...]
20Nov2009 | Sheldon Richman | 39 comments | ContinuedTGIF: Health Insurance Scam
How can you get insurance for a volitional act? Regardless of one’s position on abortion, there is no denying that it is something a woman chooses. It doesn’t happen without her initiative and consent. My objective here is not moral judgment but precision. For all kinds of reasons a pregnant woman might feel she needs [...]
14Nov2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Fallacy in Lowering Healthcare Costs
No one understands or explains healthcare economics better than John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis. His latest brings some badly needed clear thinking to the subject of cost. Read it here.A taste: …the only “cost” that really matters is “social cost.” That is the cost to all of us collectively. I [...]
11Nov2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedInsurance for Abortion: What's Wrong with This Picture?
The health-insurance nationalization bill that passed the House Saturday night has a lot of enemies. One reason for this is that in order to get a majority to support the bill, House Speaker Pelosi had to accept an amendment by Rep. Bart Stupak that would ban tax-funded abortions (except for rape, incest and danger to [...]
10Nov2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedNot with a Bang But a Whimper
Social change can be revolutionary, sudden, and swift. More commonly it moves at a glacier pace. Yet glaciers work great change, and great damage, given enough time.
3Nov2009 | Ross Levatter | 2 comments | ContinuedPelosi Health-Insurance Bill Summarized
Happily, you need not invest the next few weeks of your life reading the 1,990-page House overhaul of the health-insurance — and by implication, the healthcare — industry. A convenient summary has been provided, compliments of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, [...]
31Oct2009 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedTGIF: The Welfare State Corrupts Absolutely
Let’s begin at the beginning. Medical care is not a free good found in nature. Of course, no one really thinks it is. But that doesn’t keep most people from wanting to pretend otherwise, and the current institutional setting makes that possible. After a while, one forgets one is pretending. Yet medical care goes on [...]
30Oct2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedHouse Health-Insurance Bill Made Public
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has delivered on her promise to unveil a comprehensive health-insurance overhaul bill (pdf). It’s 1,990 pages long, which I am happy to report I have fully read and digested.Just kidding . . . which is what anyone who tells you he has read and fully understands the bill will be doing [...]
29Oct2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedCompetition
Give Me a Break! Competition by John Stossel John Stossel is the hosts of Stossel on Fox Business and the author of Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel—Why Everything You Know is Wrong. Copyright 2009 by JFS Productions, Inc. Distributed by Creators Syndicate, Inc. “Choice, competition, reducing costs—those are the things that [...]
23Oct2009 | John Stossel | 1 comment | ContinuedThe “I Hate the Poor” Act of 2009
So I was shaving the other day, and the man on the morning talk radio show was on a roll. Cash for Clunkers was being temporarily shut down, or so declared the PR flack in the Department of Waste that administers the program, and Talk Show Guy thought this taught great lessons. “This was a good program! [...]
23Oct2009 | Christopher Westley | 4 comments | Continued-
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