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19 Nov 09
Canadian sanctimony on healthcare unwarranted
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Alarmist terminology aside, in a single-payer, public system, the state will decide how to mete out finite resources. Of course, with private healthcare there are also “death panels.” But at least you can shop around for an insurer who will be generously inclined towards your various ailments.
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Due to luck of the draw and the hospital to which her cardiologist was linked -- as opposed to wealth or influential friends -- my mother had her surgery performed by one of the best heart doctors in the country.
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18 Nov 09
Corruption, Panic and Incompetence Fueled Geithner's Backstairs Intrigue
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Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for
the federal Troubled Asset Relief Program, has now
issued a harshly critical report on Geithner's handling of
the AIG bailout. -
Barofsky's report [pdf]
details how the bailout vehicle "Maiden Lane III" was created,
and why Geithner quickly decided to pay 100 cents on the dollar
to AIG counterparties -- including Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank,
and others. (Go to page 23 for the full list.) The deal ended up
costing taxpayers at least $13 billion. - 1 more annotations...
Health 'Reform' Gets a Failing Grade
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Our health-care system suffers from problems of cost, access and quality, and needs major reform. Tax policy drives employment-based insurance; this begets overinsurance and drives costs upward while creating inequities for the unemployed and self-employed. A regulatory morass limits innovation. And deep flaws in Medicare and Medicaid drive spending without optimizing care.
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whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it. Likewise, nearly all agree that the legislation would do little or nothing to improve quality or change health-care's dysfunctional delivery system.
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17 Nov 09
Jobs 'Saved or Created' in Congressional Districts That Don't Exist
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Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the Web site set up by the Obama administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.
There's one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts.
And ABC News has found many more entries for projects like this in places that are incorrectly identified. -
The recovery.gov Web site was established as part of the stimulus bill "to foster greater accountability and transparency" in the use of the money spent through the stimulus program.
Baldwin County unit to use stimulus funds to nab drug offenders
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The Baldwin County Drug Task Force will use $465,705 in economic stimulus funds to help the unit investigate, arrest and prosecute drug offenders.
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Baldwin County District Attorney Judy Newcomb said the funds will enable the task force to pay overtime for authorities to work on the effort.
Hasan Had a Carry Permit (and Other Irrelevancies)
Jacob Sullum responds to critics of his column, "The Folly of Unilateral Disarmament."
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Next Pennington notes that Hasan qualified for a Virginia
concealed carry permit in 1996, since at that point he had a
clean record. I'm not sure what that's supposed to
prove. Is Pennington suggesting that the lack of
a permit deters mass murderers from carrying
their weapons in public? The general problem with legal
restrictions on gun possession (as I'm sure Pennington has heard)
is that criminals do not obey them, while their law-abiding
victims do. -
"The death
toll from [gun accidents] far outstrips the body counts at
Fort Hood and Virginia Tech," Thomas writes. But this
comparison is meaningless. The total number of fatalities
from gun accidents in 2006, the latest year for which the
CDC
has data, was 642. That is indeed greater than the
fatalities at Fort Hood and Virginia Tech combined, but so
what? The total number of homicides by gun in 2006 was about
12,800*. If arming more victims and bystanders prevented even 1
percent of those deaths, the benefit would far outweigh any
deaths from additional accidents. - 1 more annotations...
13 Nov 09
What Health Reform Will Do to My Insurance
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I'm a registered Democrat living in New York City, and I buy my own health insurance. But now, having seen the health-care reform bill that passed the House, I'm preparing for life without health insurance.
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I will gain one thing, though—an annual fine for losing my insurance. The exact amount of that fine isn't clear yet, but so far it looks like I'll be paying about the same amount—$2,000 a year—for having no insurance as I do now for having it.
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12 Nov 09
Health Care: Let the Games Begin
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Health care reform along the lines being contemplated currently faces too many constraints.
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The result is a Rube Goldberg scheme of penalties and inducements, creating a system that is ripe for gaming.
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Pharma Deal With White House On Course To Net Industry Billions
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The deal struck between the pharmaceutical lobby, the White House and Senate Democrats has drastically improved Big Pharma's expected profits, a private industry report finds.
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that new health reform legislation -- combined with a projected upswing in the economy and other changes in the pharmaceutical industry -- will result in a net gain of more than $137 billion in total market sales over the next four years.
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Unemployment and Health Care
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The debate surrounding the future of health care in the US produces a great deal of uncertainty. Firms who see an even more competitive future in which they will have to be even more cost-conscious might be very hesitant to hire until they have a much clearer sense of what, if anything, will come out of the current debate and what its effects on the costs of hiring will be.
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If the debate should end with the passage of something like what the House passed last weekend, the uncertainty will end but the reality of increased costs on employers might now be fully revealed. If so, we may be stuck with Western European levels of unemployment for a good long time.
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11 Nov 09
The Folly of Unilateral Disarmament: At Fort Hood "more guns" assuredly were "the solution to gun violence."
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Neither Smith nor the other victims of Hasan’s assault had guns
because soldiers on military bases within the United States
generally are
not supposed to carry them. Last week’s shootings, which
killed 13 people and wounded more than 30, demonstrated once
again the folly of “gun-free zones,” which attract and assist
people bent on mass murder instead of deterring them.
09 Nov 09
The Right to Ignore the State (1851)
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Government being simply an agent employed in common by a number of individuals to secure to them certain advantages, the very nature of the connection implies that it is for each to say whether he will employ such an agent or not. If any one of them determines to ignore this mutual-safety confederation, nothing can be said except that he loses all claim to its good offices, and exposes himself to the danger of maltreatment—a thing he is quite at liberty to do if he likes. He cannot be coerced into political combination without a breach of the law of equal freedom; he can withdraw from it without committing any such breach; and he has therefore a right so to withdraw.
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Let men learn that a legislature is not “our God upon earth,” though, by the authority they ascribe to it, and the things they expect from it, they would seem to think it is.
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When Asked Where the Constitution Authorizes Congress to Order Americans To Buy Health Insurance, Pelosi Says: 'Are You Serious?'
I think the lesson here is that even written constitutions are not much of an obstacle to governments doing whatever they want.
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Pelosi then shook her head before taking a question from another reporter. Her press spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, then told CNSNews.com that asking the speaker of the House where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandated that individual Americans buy health insurance as not a "serious question."
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Elshami responded by sending CNSNews.com a Sept. 16 press release from the Speaker’s office entitled, “Health Insurance Reform, Daily Mythbuster: ‘Constitutionality of Health Insurance Reform.’” The press release states that Congress has “broad power to regulate activities that have an effect on interstate commerce. Congress has used this authority to regulate many aspects of American life, from labor relations to education to health care to agricultural production.”
06 Nov 09
New York Fed’s Secret Choice to Pay for Swaps Hits Taxpayers
The Federal Reserve, after conferring in secret with investment banks, agreed to cover all of their losses with taxpayer money. This is how government works in the real world.
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Habayeb, 37, was chief financial officer for the AIG
division that oversaw AIG Financial Products, the unit that had
sold the swaps to the banks. One of his goals was to persuade
the banks to accept discounts of as much as 40 cents on the
dollar, according to people familiar with the matter. -
After less than a week of private negotiations
with the banks, the New York Fed instructed AIG to pay them par,
or 100 cents on the dollar. The content of its deliberations has
never been made public.
The New York Fed’s decision to pay the banks in full cost
AIG -- and thus American taxpayers -- at least $13 billion.
That’s 40 percent of the $32.5 billion AIG paid to retire the
swaps. Under the agreement, the government and its taxpayers
became owners of the dubious CDOs, whose face value was $62
billion and for which AIG paid the market price of $29.6
billion. The CDOs were shunted into a Fed-run entity called
Maiden Lane III. - 1 more annotations...
05 Nov 09
Mandatory Savings? Requiring people to buy medical insurance will fuel health care inflation.
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What industry
wouldn’t welcome a law that forces everyone to buy its product?
But the insurers also argue that a mandate will help
control costs, and the president agrees. Judging from the
experience in Massachusetts, which imposed its own insurance
requirement in 2006, they’re both wrong. -
There are several reasons why mandatory insurance, contrary to
Obama’s promises, has been accompanied by rapidly escalating
costs. First, when you subsidize something, people tend to
consume more of it. - 2 more annotations...
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