March — 2010 — VOICES for REASON

Amid the clamorous debate over health care, how much have you heard from the doctors? Very little. Nobody’s particularly interested in what they have to say. It’s taken for granted that they’ll always be there when you need them.

These are the forgotten men and women of American health care. They stand to one side, mostly silent, while self-important politicians noisily debate how to allocate “access” to health care. These legislators hold showy “summit” meetings of “stakeholders,” where doctors are outnumbered by the poor, the uninsured, the already-sick, the health insurers, the drug companies, and big corporations like Walmart. In this political universe of warring pressure groups, no tiny minority can expect to have much influence—even the minority that provides the services everyone is clamoring for.

Since professional organizations like the American Medical Association won’t rise to their members’ defense, it falls to the rest of us—those whose very lives may depend on a physician’s skill and dedication—to consider some pointed questions our leaders won’t ask: Read the rest of this entry »

In today’s Washington Examiner, ARC’s Yaron Brook and I discuss the continuing political war over Toyota.

How many congressmen does it take to identify the cause of a runaway Toyota Prius? No, it’s not a trick question. A congressional panel issued a draft report recently on a case of supposed runaway acceleration in San Diego.

Why wasn’t that left to the objective assessment of the police and courts? The answer to that question was made clear during last month’s congressional hearings on the Toyota recalls.

You can read the whole article here.

Image: flickr

A recent WSJ article provides a stomach-turning play-by-play of the Democrats’ health care coup:

It was dirty deals, open threats, broken promises and disregard for democracy that pulled ObamaCare to this point, and yesterday the same machinations pushed it across the finish line.

And that’s not even the half of it. ObamaCare was the wayward child of every conceivable (and inconceivable) pressure group fighting by any means necessary for whatever short-range benefit it could grab: from health insurance companies looking to gain customers at the point of a gun to businesses looking to foist their health care costs onto taxpayers; from prestige-seeking politicians looking to build an historical legacy to political hucksters who opposed ObamaCare on principle until the price was right. And let’s not forget the largest pressure group behind ObamaCare: those seeking to extract unearned health care from the young, healthy, and rich.

This was pressure group total war.

But pressure groups are only a symptom. The source of pressure group warfare is today’s mixed economy, where the government has expansive power to intervene in the economy. Read the rest of this entry »

According to Nancy Pelosi, the House’s passage of the new health care bill is utterly in keeping with the founding principles of this country. In passing ObamaCare, she said,

we will honor the vows of our founders, who in the Declaration of Independence said that we are ‘endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ This legislation will lead to healthier lives, more liberty to pursue hopes and dreams and happiness for the American people. This is an American proposal that honors the traditions of our country.

I have a question. Speaker Pelosi, if government-provided health care is essential to “the vows of our founders,” then why didn’t they put it in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution–or even discuss putting it there? Did they simply fail to draw out this subtle implication of their theory?

Hardly. The ideal of government-provided health care, aka a “right” to health care, is in complete contradiction to the proper understanding of rights put forward by the Founding Fathers. This is why the acknowledged “father of the Constitution” James Madison said “Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government” and “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re told that ObamaCare aims to make health care more affordable to more people, but in fact it threatens the rights of everyone involved in health care—doctors, patients, and health insurers—and thus the future of the industry.

Before Congress greases up yet another ramp on the already slippery slope toward socialized medicine, let’s pause to identify those endangered rights and some of the destructive consequences.

• Insurance companies are profit-making businesses, not social welfare agencies. They have the right to charge premiums that reflect actual risk. But ObamaCare would force them to cover almost every American—no matter how sick they already are, no matter how bad their health habits, no matter how high the cost of their exotic treatments–and to raise everyone’s premiums accordingly.

• Doctors are morally entitled to regard themselves as profit-making professionals, not public servants. They have the right to charge fees that reflect the value received by all parties to the transaction. But ObamaCare, by driving down permissible fees, will force physicians into a deadly conflict of interest: Either lose money by doing everything necessary to meet patients’ needs, or make money by satisfying some minimum bureaucratic standard.

• Patients are sovereign individuals, not particles in a social organism. They have the right to buy all the health care they deem necessary and can afford, without apologizing to those who can’t afford it. But under ObamaCare, patients will have the moral status of beggars at a soup kitchen who must uncomplainingly accept whatever gruel from the health-care pot happens to land in their dish.

Let ObamaCare be seen for what it is: yet another offensive in the long-running assault on individual rights in medicine.

Image: WikiMedia Commons

My colleague Onkar Ghate was invited to take part in an online debate hosted by BusinessWeek.com. The question posed:

Public university students should stop protesting tuition increases. Cash-strapped states have no choice but to raise fees, and even with the cost hikes, state schools are a huge bargain compared to their private counterparts. Pro or con?

Onkar takes the “pro” side–but from a unique perspective. Read the whole thing.

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The White house says we “just can’t wait” for its government solution to our health care problems. But today’s health-care problems were created by yesterday’s government “solutions.” Since the 1940s, on the idea that health care is a “right” that others must provide, the government has made a growing number of Americans collectively responsible for each other’s care–through Medicare, Medicaid, and collectivized employer plans. These government programs incentivized people to spend much, much more on health care–since they were spending other people’s money–and warped the market. Without such intervention, we should expect health care to be like laser eye-surgery, which is not covered by Medicare or government insurance laws, but gets better and cheaper all the time.

America “can’t wait”—for the government to get out of health care. Disentangling government from that field is the task of true reform.

Image: SXC: kikashi

Americans are understandably disgusted by all the shenanigans going on in the halls of Congress, as Pelosi races to pass ObamaCare by any means possible. But if you want to know why ObamaCare supporters hardly blush at employing heavy-handed tactics, it’s because they regard the bill’s aim as morally noble–and believe this sanitizes the sordid means by which they hope to achieve it.

As the President put it in a recent health care speech, “we are all in this together.” In America, he said, when “fortunes turn against one of us, others are there to lend a helping hand,” but “sometimes government has to step in to help deliver on that promise.” Obama was echoing the ethical premise he has uttered many times before: you are your brother’s keeper, and his health care needs are your responsibility.

But as ARC’s Yaron Brook and I argued in a recent op-ed, you are not your brother’s health care provider: Read the rest of this entry »

“The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy on behalf of a Supreme Court majority in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. He was referring to the speech bans that since 2002 have muzzled corporations under the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

No more. The Citizens United decision struck down the ban, not only liberating America’s corporations to speak out during campaigns but also unleashing a torrent of commentary, both praising and denouncing the Court’s actions. As the heated debate gets hotter, a timely panel discussion is slated for Tuesday, March 16, in Washington, D.C., hosted by the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights and the Institute for Justice.

“Citizens United and the Future of Campaign Finance Law” will feature a lively debate among three lawyers who filed briefs on opposite sides in the case, and an academic expert on the history of free speech. I’m fortunate enough to be moderating the event, which will review the case in historical context, evaluate its merits, and look to the future. One crucial issue on the table is whether such regulations should survive at all.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the Christian Science Monitor, Don Watkins and Yaron Brook draw on Atlas Shrugged to illuminate a crucial difference between two opposite kinds of businessmen in our economy:

The producers, such as Hank Rearden [a character in Atlas Shrugged], inventor of a new metal stronger and cheaper than steel, work tirelessly to create products that improve human life. The looters are basically pseudobusinessmen, like the incompetent steel executive Orren Boyle, who get unearned riches by getting special favors from politicians. Their business isn’t business, but political pull.

The CSM titled the piece “Apple vs. GM: Ayn Rand knew the difference. Do you?” It’s a good oped that sheds light on how government intervention in the economy distorts the behavior of businessmen.

Read the whole thing.

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