All Posts Tagged With: "insurance"

Mr. Obama and the Bankers: “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly”

Speaking to a very receptive Elyria, Ohio, crowd a few months ago, President Obama took off the gloves and promised that he was ready to fight to provide more jobs, improved education, and security from the threat of bankruptcy for homeowners. Turning his attention to the Wall Street bankers, who had just announced another round [...]

20Apr2010 | Bruce Yandle | 1 comment | Continued

The Market Doesn’t Ration Health Care

Health care “reformers” say they have two objectives: to enable the uninsured and underinsured to consume more medical services than they consume now and to keep the prices of those services from rising, as they have been, faster than the prices of other goods and services. Unfortunately, Economics 101 tells us that to accomplish those [...]

24Feb2010 | Sheldon Richman | 9 comments | Continued

Health-Care Cons

Economist Joan Robinson (1903–1983) wrote, “The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of readymade answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” A better reason to study economics is to avoid being deceived by politicians; they are the far greater threat to life, liberty, and [...]

1Apr2008 | Sheldon Richman | 6 comments | Continued

Wildfires and State-Worship

Whenever wars or other tragedies rage, so too rage those who worship at the altar of government. In his World War I-era essay, “War Is the Health of the State,” writer Randolph Bourne argued that during peaceful times people concern themselves mostly with their own business, but that during war everything changes. “To most Americans [...]

1Jan2008 | Steven Greenhut | 1 comment | Continued

Uncle Sam’s Flood Machine

When NASAs Pathfinder spacecraft landed on Mars in 1997 and sent back pictures showing that the planet was once flooded, comic Alan Ray quipped: “Of course, Mars lacks the one factor that makes high waters on Earth so much more devastating. Mars has no FEMA.”

1Jan2006 | James Bovard | 5 comments | Continued

Social Security and the Insurance Illusion

In 1937, shortly after Franklin Roosevelt threatened to destroy the independence of the Supreme Court by “packing” it with ideological cronies, the Court came to heel and handed down verdicts in three cases affirming that the Social Security Act was, unlike several structurally similar pieces of pre-intimidation New Deal legislation, in accord with the U.S. [...]

1Sep2005 | Will Wilkinson | 3 comments | Continued

Social Security: Mythmaking and Policymaking

Beginning in 1935, when Social Security was enacted, the program’s administrators made a huge effort to shape the public’s understanding of and beliefs about it. In speeches, articles, pamphlets, and other mass-circulation literature, they described Social Security as “insurance” under which workers pay “contributions” or “premiums” to receive “guaranteed” benefits that, being “paid for,” are theirs “as a matter of earned right,” without any means test.1

1Dec2003 | John Attarian | 7 comments | Continued

How Government Disables Private Disability Insurance

Robert Wright is author of the newly published Wealth of Nations Rediscovered (Cambridge) and Hamilton Unbound (Greenwood), coauthor of Mutually Beneficial (NYU Press, 2003), and co-editor of History of Corporate Finance and Corporate Governance in Historical Perspective (both Pickering and Chatto, 2003). Taxed Social Security earnings determine the level of three major types of Social [...]

1Feb2003 | Robert E. Wright | 1 comment | Continued

Of Genomes and Lemons

Michael Rupert is a senior majoring in economics at Berry College in Rome, Georgia. Frank Stephenson is an assistant professor of economics in Berry College’s Campbell School of Business. While the recent announcement of the mapping of the human genome was greeted with optimism about cures for dread diseases, it also led to predictable teeth-gnashing [...]

1Sep2001 | and and Michael E. Rupert | 0 comments | Continued

The Positive Nature of Risk

Christopher Mayer is a commercial loan officer and freelance writer. There would be no risk if the future were known and all of one’s plans played out exactly as expected. Because of pervasive uncertainty, a variety of risks permeates all human endeavors. It is a common human desire to want to feel secure, to want [...]

1Aug2001 | Christopher Mayer | 0 comments | Continued

Bipartisan Drug Entitlement

Washington came close to wrecking the U.S. health-care system in 1994. Only resolute resistance to the Clinton administration’s proposal to take over American medicine prevented this nation from proceeding down the disastrous path of nationalized care prevalent around the world. Although defeated in his attempt to gulp down the health-care system, President Clinton has succeeded [...]

1Sep2000 | Doug Bandow | 1 comment | Continued

Orissa’s Man-Made Tragedy

Barun Mitra is founder of Liberty Institute, an independent think tank in New Delhi, India. Reprinted by permission of The Asian Wall Street Journal, November 10, 1999. Copyright 1999, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. New Delhi—Twelve days after a super cyclone hit the state of Orissa, India is still grappling with [...]

1Feb2000 | Barun S. Mitra | 0 comments | Continued

The Savings Crisis

John Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation, a non-profit think tank based in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the author of The Heroic Enterprise: Business and the Common Good (The Free Press). It’s a constant refrain among politicians and the news media: America has a low savings rate. This, it is said, has dire [...]

1Mar1999 | John Hood | 0 comments | Continued

Who Pays the Price for Motherhood?

Ross Levatter, M.D., is a physician who writes often on economics and political issues; Rebecca Geshelin is a financial director with an applied economics background. The authors thank David Dorn for providing details of the appropriate federal laws and regulations. Congress, with President Clinton’s approval, recently mandated that health maintenance organizations (HMOs) permit women giving [...]

1Jan1998 | and and Ross Levatter | 0 comments | Continued

Insurance Redlining and Government Intervention

Gary Wolfram is George Munson Professor of Political Economy at Hillsdale College in Michigan. Redlining has been a topic of public policy debate and action for several years. Figuring most prominently in the provision of real estate and mortgage services, it has now spilled over into the provision of insurance. Unfortunately, policy recommendations have generally [...]

1Jun1997 | Gary Wolfram | 0 comments | Continued

Insurance: True and False

Mr. Rockwell is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. The movie classic Double Indemnity tells the story of a couple’s attempt to commit murderous insurance fraud. Their plans were foiled through the investigation of a hard-bitten insurance executive. At the time, audiences were shocked that a middle- class couple would attempt [...]

1Apr1996 | Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr | 0 comments | Continued

Legislated Security Is Bondage

Excerpts from an address, December 5, 1916, The “grand old man” of labor—president of the AFL, 1886-1924—warned his union members to look behind the humanitarian slogans used by the advocates of government-guaranteed security There has never yet come down from any government any substantial improvement in the conditions of the masses of the people, unless [...]

1Sep1955 | Samuel Gompers | 0 comments | Continued

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