Why Journalists Should Never Teach Logic
This piece ran in The Independent from London:
They came in their thousands, queuing through the night to secure one of the coveted wristbands offering entry into a strange parallel universe where medical care is a free and basic right and not an expensive luxury. Some of these Americans had walked miles simply to have their blood pressure checked, some had slept in their cars in the hope of getting an eye-test or a mammogram, others had brought their children for immunisations that could end up saving their life.
In the week that Britain’s National Health Service was held aloft by Republicans as an “evil and Orwellian” example of everything that is wrong with free healthcare, these extraordinary scenes in Inglewood, California yesterday provided a sobering reminder of exactly why President Barack Obama is trying to reform the US system.
The LA Forum, the arena that once hosted sell-out Madonna concerts, has been transformed – for eight days only – into a vast field hospital. In America, the offer of free healthcare is so rare, that news of the magical medical kingdom spread rapidly and long lines of prospective patients snaked around the venue for the chance of getting everyday treatments that many British people take for granted.
So, the mere fact that people will line up for something that is free is somehow proof that it ought to be publicly paid for?
Let’s think about this for a second.
If I set up shop in the LA Forum for a week offering free automobiles, how many people would come from hours away? Would the teeming throngs constitute “proof” that we should socialize transportation?
If I set up in the LA Forum for a week offering free steaks and beer, how many people would show up? Would the numbers arriving be prima facie evidence that the government ought to pay for everyone’s lunch?
If there were a gun show in the LA Forum sometime in the near future, and vendors started offering free ammunition, I wonder what Guy Adams would write…
It’s the Market, Stupid
From Reason:
The New York Times calls it “possibly the most complex legislation in modern history.” The health care “reform” currently being hammered out by the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives already clocks in at $1 trillion and 1,000 pages—and it’s nowhere near done. But one thing is clear: the legislation attempts to substitute top-down mandates from a centralized bureaucracy for the distributed decisions made by millions of consumers, physicians, and insurers acting in a marketplace. This will fail.
While I agree that the legislation will fail — in the sense that it will ultimately produce worse health outcomes at higher cost than our current system — I am quite concerned that the legislation will not fail to pass.
It’s embarrassing — and should be offensive to anyone who has ever taken a civics or US History class — that a piece of legislation this big and complex, that affects a huge portion of our economy, could be rushed through without being read, in an attempt to create yet another “entitlement” that will be nearly impossible to take away.
Read the article for a great summary of what a true market in healthcare might look like…
Calling John Q Public
…to stand up against Dr. Utopia’s “ISM”.
While parts of this cartoon are dated, the message isn’t.
Is there a Socialist in the House?
Alabama Congressman Spencer Bachus thinks so. He thinks there are 17, but didn’t name names.
Here is the article, and the comment thread provides its own degree of entertainment and amusement.