Two Americas

But who envies who?

Some new Heritage Research is very interesting.

The following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau, taken from various gov ernment reports:

Forty-three percent of all poor households actu ally own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.

Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.

Only 6 percent of poor households are over crowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.

The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)

Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.

Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.

Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.

Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.

Tragedy of Single-Payer Healthcare: A Story of Lindsey McCreith

HillaryCare Letter to the Editor

Thursday, July 5th, 2007

To the editor:

Canadian Lindsay McCreith doesn’t think too highly of Canada’s “universal” health care system that many presidential candidates want to emulate. He would have had to wait for four months just to get an MRI, then months more to see a neurologist for his malignant brain tumor. He had no choice but to visit a Buffalo, N.Y. hospital for lifesaving surgery. Now he's suing for the right to opt out of Canada's government-run health care, which he considers dangerous. He’s not alone. Long delays for critical surgery are common, and in hospitals one in ten patients wait more than a dozen hours for treatment. The Wall Street Journal notes that a, “Canadian government study recently found that only about half of patients are treated in a timely manner, as defined by local medical and hospital associations.”

In his anti-American care film “Sicko,” Michael Moore declares we could learn from Cuba’s universal health care system under Fidel Castro. What does Castro himself think about his miracle system? During his time of critical illness, he turned not to his own socialized doctors, but instead brought in capitalist doctors and equipment from Spain. Accordingly, Madrid’s regional president scoffed at Castro’s hypocrisy and failed socialist system.

Perhaps the most well known proposal in America is Senator Clinton’s “HillaryCare.” It depicts the current system—correctly—as being broken. A current system featuring a myriad of federal and state regulations that drive up costs, a tax code that provides few options in employer-provided coverage, and no room for individual coverage competition. However, she doesn’t advocate positive reforms such as less government regulation and more viable options for individual choice, perhaps through measures such as Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) or tax breaks to make private coverage more affordable to low-income citizens. Instead, she proposes that governmental bureaucracy handle all of it through a single-payer, taxpayer-funded format. Uninsured Americans are depicted as lost and forgotten—supposedly forty six million of them.

In fact, David Gratzer, M.D., a physician licensed both in Canada and the United States and fellow at the Manhattan Institute, paints a different picture. Dr. Gratzer explains that in a 2003 report, a third of the uninsured have family incomes of more than $50,000 a year, and for 16% of the uninsured, incomes exceed $75,000 a year. A Health Affairs study of non-poor uninsured Californians pegs their average annual health spending at $200 per person. Many people have done the math and decided not to pay for the coverage. Additionally, one third of the remaining Americans qualify for Medicare or Medicaid, and another third are without coverage for extremely brief periods, usually less than a few months. While approximately six million Americans slip through the cracks, it’s a far cry from forty six million.

Reform should be focused on providing maximum liberty, promoting the autonomy of individuals, and create more options to increase viable health care choices. The classic economist Adam Smith was correct in asserting, “Every man…is first and principally recommended to his own care; and every man is certainly, in every respect, fitter and abler to take care of himself than of any other person.”

Thompson vs. Moore - Obama on Social Security

The great battle of the wits is at hand.

Michael Moore, as many of you know, is currently in Cuba filming his new documentary, "Sickos," which chronologies how Cuba's health care system is allegedly superior to the United States'. We've previously covered the inaccuracy of such statements. He's received a good deal of criticism (shockingly), and is under investigation by the Treasury Department for a possible infringement of our embargo on Cuba.

In the midst of this, Moore lashed out at former Tennessee Senator and potential Presidential candidate Fred Thompson, who, as many of you know, is my pick for President.

Moore accused Thompson of supporting Cuba as well by purchasing Cuban cigars. He then challenged Thompson to a public debate on health care. Thompson then posted a video response on the internet that has been circulated since.

Watch the video. You won't regret it.



Senator and Presidential candidate Barack Obama appeared on ABC's program "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" last weekend. He had a little chit chat regarding social security reform, and apparently he's very open minded to being closed minded.

Stephanopoulos: You've also said that with Social Security, everything should be on the table.

Obama: Yes.

Stephanopoulos: Raising the retirement age?

Obama: Everything should be on the table.

Stephanopoulos: Raising payroll taxes?

Obama: Everything should be on the table. I think we should approach it the same way Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan did back in 1983. They came together. I don't want to lay out my preferences beforehand, but what I know is that Social Security is solvable. It is not as difficult a problem as we're going to have with Medicaid and Medicare.

Stephanopoulos: Partial privatization?

Obama: Privatization is not something that I would consider . . .

Good show, Mr. Obama.

Castro Ditches His Own Economic Ideas

Investor's Business Daily reported a humorous spectacle in Cuba during Fidel Castro's severe health scares. The domestic policy cornerstone of the Castro Regime has been their universal health care coverage, internationally lauded and locally flaunted.

However, on while Castro was in critical condition he refused to use his own health care system. Instead, he brought in (lo and behold) free market physicians and equipment. IBD:

Spanish medics also brought in new capitalist-world medical equipment, part of a series of such shipments the Cuban government has been quietly provisioning for Castro since June, well before he ceded power to his brother, Raul...

But what a sorry spectacle, given the claims of Castro and his apologists that communist health care is a humane and superior alternative to that in the capitalist world of double-entry bookkeeping, where health care is not free but something of value.

The president of Madrid's regional government, Esperanza Aguirre, swiftly spotted the hypocrisy of Castro's special treatment. Castro supporters, she said, "practically justified dictatorship, and the lack of the most elemental human rights," by "claiming to have an extraordinary health service."

CEOs Saddled Up with HillaryCare? - Plus Schwarzenegger Pushes for Universal Coverage

The Wall Street Journal's on top of a story regarding Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott hooking up with labor unions to promote "universal health care."

As previously reported on this blog, hiking health care spending tends to do do more to the detriment of the bourgeois pocketbook than it helps (Conover, et al). The OJ juries of media and convenience fail to pass judgement on the deceptively appealing plan of Hillary Care.

WSJ explains:

But any money government spends on health care has to come from somewhere (read: taxpayers). Health care is a big reason that the overall tax burden is as high as it is in most of Europe. According to the OECD, the "tax wedge" as a share of all labor costs was only 29.11% in the U.S. in 2005. It was above 40% in most of Europe, and above 50% in France and Germany. These countries spend little on defense, so "national health care" and other social services explain the high tax burden. We haven't noticed these economies being especially "competitive" of late.

Before deciding that corporations that are symbols of private enterprise such as Wal-Mart inherently understand market effectiveness and capability, thus giving them deistic authority on health care, some facts should stay in the back of our minds. Primarily that a major cost to these businesses is health care benefits, and what's more convenient than the idea of dumping it on the taxpayer.

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As Oxford Analytica explains, there are three commonly attributed advantages to Universal Coverage: access, less free-riders, and less adverse selection; while having two disadvantages: affordability and financing. Noble as it sounds (perhaps with shaky redistribution morals), sustainability is non-existent.

The most attention-grabbing Hillary Care issue of late is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's (R-CA) push for universal coverage in California. David Gratzer, M.D. a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of The Cure: How Capitalism can Save American Health Care issued a must-read critique of the plan a couple of weeks ago. He explains that the Schwarzenegger plan regulates how and how much providers spend on their policies, institutes outrageous physician fees, and hikes taxes. Perhaps one of the most enlightening observations goes beyond revealing plan failures, and back to examining how the status quo is portrayed.

The uninsured are depicted in popular culture as lost and forgotten--the single mother in the emergency room struggling to make ends meet for her three children. But the uninsured are a heterogeneous group. Drawing on Census Bureau data, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association found in a 2003 report that a third of the uninsured have family incomes of more than $50,000 a year, and for 16% of the uninsured, incomes exceed $75,000 a year. A Health Affairs study on nonpoor uninsured Californians pegs their average annual health spending at $200 per person. Many people have done the math and have decided not to get coverage. In addition, a third of the uninsured already qualify for Medicaid or some other type of program. Of the remaining third, many are without insurance for only a brief period, usually less than a year.

To be sure, there are 8 million Americans who slip through the cracks, unable to get coverage. But that's far fewer than the commonly quoted disaster figure of 46 million.

Dr. Gratzer explains that only six states have more service mandates than California. Plans cover acupuncture, in vitro fertilization, chiropractors, and so forth while repealing measures that protect providers from competition. He also spends time explaining the necessity of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), which I have long advocated. He also laments the folly of poorly structured tax incentives while maintaining the need for giving breaks to those who can't acquire care.

California needs to allow businesses to provide plans to cover catastrophes, it should engage in HSAs, adjust the tax code, and maintain innovation with accessibility. This won't happen by using tax dollars to provide coverage to families earning $60,000 annually, or by divorcing choice from consequence in health care.

The 110th Congress' Healthcare Panacea?

The Democrat-controlled 110th Congress would find no greater joy than stabbing the juicy $500 billion t-bone of defense spending[1] with a steak knife, and re-allocate it toward novelties such as "providing health care to Americans." Laudable as this may be, the current state of the compulsory healthcare system (which is moving ever-closer to being single-payer) finds itself in the most miserable of states, certainly having no need to be exacerbated by HillaryCare. Medicare and Medicaid aren't wretchedly farther down the road in bankruptcy from social security, and we look toward a solution to deliver us from the imminent bankruptcy grave of big three (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security) entitlement spending.

The primary prerequisites for reform should be that it, a) provides for maximum liberty and autonomy of the individual, b) re-calibrates the system to stabilize the fiscal crisis, and c) deliver maximum affordability to the widest range of people. The utopia of a system would be a complete individual-initiative healthcare, but entitlements are here to stay, so we're dealing with reasonable reform. The only realistic course of action thus far presented for social security, aside from the reverberating instinct to raise taxes, would be private social security accounts. These prove distinctly appealing due to the fact that they initially provide, for the first time, a degree of actual growth in one's begrudging contribution to the social security fund (in the unheard of event it actually stayed there). Additionally, they move toward a system of individual responsibility. Likewise, Bush unveiled an intriguing healthcare proposal with Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). An HSA is a unique, tax-manipulated account that, again, provides economic stability as well as personal autonomy. This innovation has fallen to the gutter lane of Capital Hill, and has been employed in life by only three million Americans.

The CATO Institute explained, "In 2003, Congress took a giant leap toward market-based health care reform by creating health savings accounts (HSAs). Cato Institute scholars first identified health savings accounts in the 1980s and were leaders in popularizing them among the public and policymakers. HSAs combine a personal savings account dedicated for medical expenditures with a low-cost, high-deductible health insurance policy for catastrophic expenses. These accounts will undo much of the damage wrought by excessive third-party medical payments by changing consumers' incentives. Below the health insurance deductible, all payments are made by the consumer with money they can keep. Humans are much more careful consumers when spending their own money versus someone else's. Patients will curb their consumption and thus help contain medical inflation. Because consumers have built-in incentives to make wise choices, many of the restrictions that insurers have placed on patients will begin to disappear. Because patients own their health savings accounts, they will have some self-insurance coverage when they switch jobs and be better able to afford catastrophic coverage on their own. Health savings accounts will thus make health insurance more affordable for people in and out of work. Cato's research on HSAs seeks ways to improve access to consumer-driven health care plans so that patients and doctors—not third party payers—have the power to make crucial medical decisions."[2]

The other main contributions to the debate by members of the 110th Congress to the healthcare crisis have been:

1) Oppose ideas stemming from GOP or otherwise conservative circles.
2) Raise payroll taxes--the "mild" solution when contrasted to
3) Single-payer health care provided by the state (HillaryCare).

The Republican Party, along with conservative and libertarian advocates of free-market ideas, tend to find themselves on the moral low-ground on the issue of "compassion."

A most shocking study conducted by Duke University professor Christopher J. Conover concluded that government intervention has been disastrous in health care. Costs of health services regulation outweigh the benefits by two-to-one, and cost the average household over $1,500 per year. Prof. Conover also found 4,000 more Americans die every year from costs associated with health services regulation (22,000) than from lack of health insurance (18,000). The total cost of regulation is $169.1 billion over and above any benefits it provides. Government regulation of health care facilities, professionals, insurance, drugs and devices, and the medical malpractice system places a significant burden on the health care system and is responsible for more than seven million Americans lacking health insurance.

Perhaps it is actually the responsibility of the government to provide for national security, and in private health care the free market is the most effective—and, yes, ethical—mechanism for maintaining public health.

In his classic work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, classic Scottish economist Dr. Adam Smith maintained, “Every man…is first and principally recommended to his own care; and every man is certainly, in every respect, fitter and abler to take care of himself than of any other person.”

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[1] US Senate Subcommittee on Appropriations

[2] CATO Institute Research: Health Care – Medical Savings Accounts