Star Parker on Cavuto
Oct 01 2009
It’s not working in Massachusetts, Mr. President
In his article in Christian Science Monitor, Paul Hsieh discusses Health care in Massachusetts: a warning for America
In his recent speech to Congress, President Obama could have promoted healthcare reforms that tapped the power of a truly free market to lower costs and improve access. Instead, he chose to offer a national version of the failing “Massachusetts plan” based on mandatory health insurance. This is a recipe for disaster.
Three years ago, Massachusetts adopted a plan requiring all residents to purchase health insurance, with state subsidies for lower-income residents. But rather than creating a utopia of high-quality affordable healthcare, the result has been the exact opposite, skyrocketing costs, worsened access, and lower quality care.
Under any system of mandatory insurance, the government must necessarily define what constitutes acceptable insurance. In Massachusetts, this has created a giant magnet for special interest groups seeking to have their own pet benefits included in the required package. Massachusetts residents are thus forced to purchase benefits they may neither need nor want, such as in vitro fertilization, chiropractor services, and autism treatment, raising insurance costs for everyone to reward a few with sufficient political “pull.”
Although similar problems exist in other states, Massachusetts’ system of mandatory insurance delivers the entire state population to the special interests. Since 2006, providers have successfully lobbied to include 16 new benefits in the mandatory package (including lay midwives, orthotics, and drug-abuse treatment), and the state legislature is considering 70 more.
The Massachusetts plan thus violates the individual’s right to spend his own money according to his best judgment for his own benefit. Instead, individuals are forced to choose from a limited set of insurance plans on terms set by lobbyists and bureaucrats, rather than those based on a rational assessment of individual needs.
Because the state-mandated health insurance is so expensive, the government must also subsidize the costs for lower-income residents. In response, the state government has cut payments to doctors and hospitals. With such poor reimbursements, physicians are increasingly reluctant to take on new patients.
Some patients in western Massachusetts must wait more than a year for a routine physical exam. Waiting times for specialists in Boston are longer than in comparable cities in other states and have gotten worse. Some desperate patients have even resorted to “group appointments” where the doctor sees several patients at once (without the privacy necessary to allow the physician to remove the patient’s clothing and perform a proper physical exam). These patients all have “coverage,” but that’s not the same as actual medical care.
The Massachusetts plan is also breaking the state budget. Since 2006, health insurance costs in Massachusetts have risen nearly twice as fast as the national average. The state expects to spend $595 million more in 2009 on its health insurance program than it did in 2006, a 42 percent increase. Those higher health costs help explain why the state faced a $5 billion budget gap this summer. To help close it, lawmakers raised taxes sharply.
Costs have risen so much that a special state commission has recommended eliminating fee-for-service medicine, instead paying physicians and hospitals a single annual fee to cover all of a patient’s needs for that year, in other words, rationing.
Despite raising state taxes, the Massachusetts plan is kept afloat only by hundreds of millions of dollars of financial waivers and assistance from the federal government, i.e., by the taxpayers of the other 49 states. If the Massachusetts plan were adopted at the national level, it’s unlikely that China or Russia would bail out the United States.
Mr. Obama’s plan is based on the faulty premise that the government should guarantee a “right” to healthcare. But healthcare is not a “right.” Rights are freedoms of action (such as the right to free speech), not automatic claims on goods and services that must be produced by another. There is no such thing as a right to a car, or a tonsillectomy.
Individuals do have the right to seek healthcare and health insurance in the free market from any willing providers. The president’s plan would violate this right, for example by forbidding individuals from purchasing low-cost “catastrophic” insurance that only covered unlikely-but-expensive accidents and illnesses.
In his address, Obama stressed the need for choice and competition in health insurance. But his plan would destroy such choice and competition.
Instead of mandatory health insurance, America needs free-market reforms. Some examples include eliminating mandatory insurance benefits, repealing laws that forbid purchasing health insurance across state lines, and allowing individuals to use health savings accounts for routine expenses and low cost, catastrophic-only insurance for major expenses.
Such reforms would respect individual rights, lower costs, and make health insurance available to millions who currently cannot afford it. And only such free-market reforms can provide the choice and competition that the president says he wants.
Now that would be change I could believe in.
I don’t need a legislator telling me what I have to pay for, even though I don’t want it or need it, and even though if I don’t have it, no one else will be harmed or have to buy it for me.
Would you go to restaurant where you were required to buy dessert with lunch, whether you wanted it or not?
That’s what the Left has in mind for our health care system.
Sep 14 2009
911 memorial at Azusa Pacific University
This is the flag memorial put up by a small group of students, funded by a small group of faculty and students, on the campus of Azusa Pacific University, to commemorate the murdered on September 11, 2001, by placing a flag for each murdered person. These few proactive students are to be commended, for bothering to do something public about the memorial.
When you remember these events, and when you talk about them with other people, remember that who did the killing, and why, is an essential part of the memorial.
It makes no sense to remember “the dead” of 9/11, or “the circumstances of 9/11” without also discussing who killed them, and exactly who caused those circumstances to come about. Is it possible to have any kind of reasonable memorial of Pearl Harbor and Dec. 7, 1941, without mentioning Japan, emperor worship, and Japanese imperialism?
About the same number of people died in auto accidents in the USA in that same month. Because the Islamic terrorist attack was an act of war, and not merely because a few thousand people died, we said, “We will never forget.” But, of course, most of us have.
So, in case you haven’t considered it lately, because of all the obfuscation of the major media and our politicians:
1) About 3000 innocent Americans were murdered on Sept. 11, 2001. The American flags are the correct memorial symbol, because the dead were murdered for being Americans.
2) The killers were Muslims who believed that Allah and his designated representatives had given them both permission and instructions to do this murder. In doing it, they quoted the Koran, and the facts of Mohammed’s life that seemed to them to be both justification for and precursors of their acts. They believed that there are no “innocent people” in the West, particularly America, and that all civilians were legitimate targets, regardless of age, gender, or occupation. They didn’t particularly care exactly who they killed, as long as the dead were mostly Americans. The simultaneous destruction of symbols of American power and success was especially sweet to them.
3) Large parts of the Muslim world were thrilled. Some parts of it yawned. Almost none of it was particularly distressed.
4) The Islamic forces in the world who funded the indoctrination of these killers are still in full operation, with no sign of reducing their activities. They are teaching exactly the same brand of hate around the world, including in the USA. Saudi Arabia is the biggest funding source for the teaching of hatred world-wide. The Saudi government denies official complicity with this, but doesn’t take the steps necessary to end it. In the meantime, the Saudis simply own, outright, enormous numbers of American politicians, former politicians (including presidents!), lobbyists, former bureaucrats, academic departments in universities, think tanks, etc., not to mention the majority of American mosques that are funded by the Saudis. If you’re interested, Iran is number two in funding world wide hatred for the West, possibly because it’s spending a lot of its money on developing nuclear weapons. Between the two of them, despite their putative differences over the Sunni/Shia divide, they make a powerful tag team, the Saudis funding mostly propaganda and “soft power,” and Iran distributing weapons to anyone who will kill Americans or their allies.
5) The war with radical Islam is nowhere near over. Make no mistake: it IS a war, though it is of a new type, and harder to fight than some have been in the past. It is not a failure to communicate. Many Americans have largely forgotten that fact. Our enemies have not.
Sadly, the American public will be reminded. It’s only a matter of time. When that reminder comes, huge numbers of Americans are going to forget their own foolishness, and in looking for someone (else) to blame, they are going to zero in on the government and the media for their failures to think farther ahead than the next election or ratings season.
I often suspect that, as time goes by, George Bush is going to be given very mixed reviews for his presidency, in particular for his prosecution of the war with radical Islam.
The reviews will be mixed because, by then, he is likely to be seen as not having gone far enough in defending America from its radical Islamist enemies, and their enablers.
But even when America finally wakes up, the dead will still be dead.
Do I sound too pessimistic, too doom obsessed?
That’s exactly what some people were saying about those who were predicting such things on Sept 10, 2001.
What has changed since then that would make anyone think it won’t happen again?
Too many of us talk about it as if a tornado just happened to come through New York and take the towers down, as if it were an “act of God.”
Of course, some parties to the day’s events saw it that way, too.
Aug 23 2009
Catch 22
You may be familiar with the notion of a CATCH 22. It has recently appeared in regard to the marketing of a device to make a copy of commercially copy-protected DVDs, which resulted in lawsuits by the film industry to suppress the manufacture and sale of the device.
“The court appreciates Real’s argument that a consumer has a right to make a backup copy of a DVD for their own personal use,” Patel wrote, but noted that “a federal law has nonetheless made it illegal to manufacture or traffic in a device or tool that permits a consumer to make such copies.”
Got that? You have the right to make the copy, but not the right to make or sell a device that allows the copy to be made… which means you don’t have the right to make the copy. The film industry insists on distributing their products in a form that makes it essentially impossible for citizens to access their right to make a backup copy. It would be far more honest for the law to simply say that you have no right to make a backup copy, good luck, better take care of the DVD and don’t play frisbee with it.
The law giveth and the law taketh away…. blessed by the name of the law.
In many places, you have the right to self-defense, but not the right to have a weapon with you, which makes the right to self-defense of marginal usefulness, unless you happen to be a martial arts master, as well as young, strong and healthy…. which those accosting you are likely to be. It would be far more honest for the law to say that the right to self-defense is limited to pleading for your life in the face of force majeure… which seems to be the case in Britain these days.
Another excellent example is the case of nationalized health care, which may be imposed on people based on the notion that “health care is a right,” and which always and everywhere results in the denial of health care for certain people, in certain situations, with certain diseases, at certain stages of life. It would be far more honest to say, “You have the right to as much healthcare as some people who never met you think you might deserve, and if they turn you down, you don’t have the right to get it anywhere else, either.” Of course, “unavoidable delays” are the same thing as denial of care, even though they aren’t called that directly. You can easily die waiting for care that is your “right” to have.
Lady Justice is indeed blind. But she is watching you very closely.
Aug 16 2009
President Obama, meet Rev. J. Wright
No, no, no, I meant the OTHER Rev. J. Wright, Rev. Joe Wright, who prayed this prayer to open a session of the Kansas legislature in 1996. Wrongly attributed in a circulating email to Billy Graham, this appears to have been borrowed from a 1995 Kentucky Prayer Breakfast, where it was prayed by Bob Russell.
Heavenly Father,
We come before you today to ask your forgiveness and seek your direction and guidance.
We know your Word says, “Woe to those who call evil good,” but that’s exactly what we’ve done.
We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and inverted our values.
We confess that we have ridiculed the absolute truth of your Word and called it moral pluralism.
We have worshipped other gods and called it multi-culturalism.
We have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle.
We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.
We have neglected the needy and called it self-preservation.
We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.
We have killed our unborn and called it choice.
We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.
We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building esteem.
We have abused power and called it political savvy.
We have coveted our neighbors’ possessions and called it ambition.
We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.
We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.
Search us O God and know our hearts today; try us and see if there be some wicked way in us; cleanse us from every sin and set us free.
Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent here by the people of Kansas, and who have been ordained by you, to govern this great state.
Grant them your wisdom to rule and may their decisions direct us to the center of your will.
I ask it in the name of your son, the living Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
It would, of course, be lovely to hope that such a prayer might ever have been prayed Rev. Jeremiah Wright, not just Rev. Joe Wright.
What’s sad is that this is not a partisan prayer. Some of the items in it might easily be applied to the Right as well as the Left. But in it’s Kansas legislature appearance, it was Democrats who got up and walked out.
Alas.
Aug 10 2009
Only evil speech permitted
CURE | Root of nation’s economic crisis is moral crisis (much more at the link, all worth reading)
A travesty of justice has occurred in Oakland, California. But realities surrounding this local issue point to how the economic crisis in our nation is symptomatic of and flows from a deeper fundamental moral crisis.
A black pastor awaits sentencing, which could amount to two years in prison and $4,000 in fines, for standing outside an inner city abortion clinic holding a sign saying “Jesus Loves You & Your Baby, Let Us Help You,” and offering pro-life literature.
Walter Hoye, founder and chairman of the Issues4Life Foundation, was found guilty of “unlawful approach” under the “Access to Reproductive Health Care Facilities Ordinance” enacted in Oakland in 2008.
Under the ordinance, it is prohibited, within 100 feet of the entrance to a “reproductive health facility,” to approach within eight feet of a client “for the purpose of counseling, harassing, or interfering” with that person.
Imagine if a black “minister” like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton had been standing in the same place holding a sign that said, “Abortion is a civil right! God Bless you for having the courage to do it!” Does anyone reading this think they would have been arrested, detained, or even talked to by law enforcement? This is simply a case of law in the service of evil, and giving permission for evil speech (the real “hate speech”), while denying the gentle expression of simple truth.
We all need to pray for Walter Hoye, for him to have courage and the support he needs to pursue his appeals. A donation might be in order, too.
And we need to pray for America, which has simply lost its way.
Aug 03 2009
In their own words, #2
Barney Frank: Public Option is Best Way to Single Payer
Yet more proof emerges that the so-called public option in the Democrats’ healthcare legislation is designed to clear the way for the U.S. government to impose total monopoly control of the nation’s healthcare system.
Go to the link, read it, watch the videos… and believe Barney this time, because this time he’s telling the truth.
Jul 22 2009
Woulda coulda shoulda
We’ve commented here before about the necessity of research and development, and the fact that some programs of R and D are so huge that only governments have the resources and long-term commitment to fund them. And now, here is an article about where we would have been if Apollo had not been cancelled, and NASA had been fully funded to continue lunar and planetary exploration and colonization.
What if things had been different that summer? Suppose Congress had granted NASA’s wish, then fast-forward 40-odd years…
It’s a fascinating read, admittedly conjectural, but essentially believable, about where we would be today. And it would be better if we were.
In the meantime, Obama and nationalized healthcare are about to defund the huge bulk of medical and pharmaceutical research now under way, by the very simple mechanism of sucking the profit out of it, by adopting the European model of health care that’s killed the bulk of medical research there.
When I was 15, I was sure that by this time in my life, we’d be on Mars already. That just seemed to be the direction things were going, and indeed we landed on the moon just three years later. I find myself looking back with regret on the years we wasted, knowing that it’s entirely possible that I will not even live to see a Mars landing.
In forty years, will 57 yr olds of that year be saying, “When I was a kid, I thought by now we’d have personalized gene therapy that would cure cancer and most inherited diseases, replacement organs grown from stem cells, and significant life extension therapies…. but then Congress decided we should have nationalized health care, which quickly became health care rationing, and research just sort of really, really slowed down.”?
That decision may well be made in the next few weeks. If you care about your own prospects, or those of your kids and grand-kids, I suggest you tell your congressman to OPPOSE the total takeover of healthcare by the federal government, and specifically, to OPPOSE the so-called “public option,” which is guaranteed to provide the incentive for most employers to cancel their own insurance programs, and dump their employees into the public system.
Just as it will also remove the profit motive as an incentive for the bulk of pharmaceutical and medical research.
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