Obama Defends Health Care Plan to Town Hall Skeptic - Political News - FOXNews.com

Obama Defends Health Care Plan to Town Hall Skeptic - Political News - FOXNews.com: "He cited examples in which people have lost their insurance, including when going from job to job and because of pre-existing conditions."

Government regulation promotes the loss of insurance between jobs so why don't they just fix that?
Technically you can't lose insurance because of a pre-existing condition -- it is just more expensive to buy new insurance.

Job Market Could Lag Behind for Years, Study Forecasts - Political News - FOXNews.com

Job Market Could Lag Behind for Years, Study Forecasts - Political News - FOXNews.com: "According to their forecast, the unemployment rate will be at 10 percent through 2011. Three years after that, the jobless rate will have dropped only to 8 percent. And a decade from now, that rate will still be floating above 6 percent.�"

Can the Free Market Wage War? - David Gordon - Mises Institute

Can the Free Market Wage War? - David Gordon - Mises Institute: "Tariffs, and similar measures designed to strengthen the nation, 'should not be considered as measures of production policy.' They aid some citizens at the expense of others; they do not help the economy as a whole."

"The first step which led from the soldiers' war back to total war was the introduction of compulsory military service. … The war was no longer to be only a matter of mercenaries; it was to include everyone who had the necessary physical ability. … But when it is realized that a part of the able-bodied must be used on the industrial front … then there is no reason to differentiate in compulsory service between the able-bodied and the physically unfit. Compulsory military service thus leads to compulsory labor service of all citizens who are able to work, male and female."

"On the basis of such [anticapitalist] reasoning the [Léon] Blum government nationalized the French armament industry. When the war broke out and it became imperative to place the productive power of all French plants into the service of the rearmament effort, the French authorities considered it more important to block war profits than to win the war."

What Health Care "Reform" Would Mean For Montana | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Commentary

What Health Care "Reform" Would Mean For Montana | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Commentary: "First, the legislation making its way through both the House and Senate contains an individual mandate — a requirement that every American buy health insurance. And not just any insurance but insurance that includes all the benefits government thinks you should have. That insurance could be more expensive or include benefits that people don't want, or are morally opposed to such as abortion.

That doesn't just affect those without insurance today. The bills now before Congress say that while you won't be immediately forced to switch from your current insurance to a government-specified plan, you'll have to switch to satisfy the government's requirements if you lose your current insurance or want to change plans. And, for the 70 percent of us who get our insurance through work, those plans will all have to satisfy the government's benefit requirements within five years."

Junk Food, Taxes, and the Market Solution - Sascha Baghestanian - Mises Institute

Junk Food, Taxes, and the Market Solution - Sascha Baghestanian - Mises Institute: "So it seems to be easy to explain why people love fast food: it contains a lot of meat, it is designed to taste well, and it is getting ever cheaper. But how can a good that is potentially hazardous get cheaper and cheaper? Shouldn't the market accommodate for the hazard, so that people who are willing to take the potential risk for the sake of pleasure have to face higher costs in terms of higher insurance premiums?

That's where the public medical plans come into play. Since the government distorts the health insurance markets, it releases the insurance seekers from their own responsibilities.

The standard health insurance premiums for overweight people (and smokers) are certainly below a potential free market price. The most obvious proof for this is the public health deficit — which a profit-oriented insurance company could not run year after year without being outcompeted by other companies. Clearly, on a free market in health insurance, obese persons would have to pay even higher premiums than they do now."

'For the sake of argument, let us also accept the government's assumption that an increase in taxes would affect behavior and reduce the consumption of burgers and pizza.

Who would be the most negatively affected by such a tax hike?'

'In the fast food industry, where 70% of total costs is attributed to labor, it's pretty clear who is going to be affected: the people who are standing behind the counter, asking several-hundred times a day, "For here or to go?"'

'What about the consumer? The government gave him the illusion that the side effects of his actions would be costless. He is certainly not the one who should be blamed for this situation. It is government overregulation that caused this mess and deserves the blame.'

The Case against National School Standards | Andrew J. Coulson | Cato Institute: Commentary

The Case against National School Standards | Andrew J. Coulson | Cato Institute: Commentary: "But averages don't take tests. Kids do. Even if students' average academic potential were the same in Texas and Vermont, the individual children who make up those averages would still be all over the map. To claim that all the children in a single large family could progress through every subject at the same pace is a stretch. To claim this of every child in a whole neighborhood is preposterous. To claim it of every child in a nation of 300 million people is the premise of national standards.

Children are not interchangeable widgets. It does not serve their interests to feed them through learning factories on a single, fixed-pace conveyor belt. Some pick up reading quickly and easily fly through ever more challenging texts. Others find reading a chore, progressing more slowly even when encouraged by supportive families and talented teachers. To demand a single pace for all students in all subjects is to simultaneously tie together the laces of the fleet and kick out the crutches of the slow.

Not only is it impossible to create a single set of standards that would serve every child equally well, such standards would fail to significantly improve our schools. High external standards have never been the driving force behind human progress.

The tremendous leap in Olympic athletic achievement of the past 40 years was not achieved because the organizing committee told competitors to start swimming faster or jumping higher. It happened because Olympic athletes are competitors.

The same thing is true across every sector of our economy. Cell phone makers have not relentlessly improved their products because of national mandates. They've done it to attract customers away from their competitors. Amazon did not diversify its business and create the Kindle because a consortium of Internet vendors demanded it, but because Amazon sought to beat its competition.

The progress we've seen in one industry after another, just as in athletic pursuits, has been the result of competition - something that our education system has sorely lacked. At the dawn of the 21st century, three quarters of American children are still assigned to schools based on where they live, by bureaucrats who have never met them. Stellar public schools cannot grow and take over less successful ones. Ineffective public schools have little fear of losing students to competitors because they have no real competitors - they enjoy a monopoly on $12,000 per pupil in public spending."

Who Are the Uninsured? | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Commentary

Who Are the Uninsured? | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Only about 30 percent of the uninsured remain so for more than a year, approximately 16 percent for two years, and less than 2.5 percent for three years or longer. About half are uninsured for six months or less. Notably, because health insurance is too often tied to employment, the working poor who cycle in and out of the job market also cycle in and out of health insurance."

Bipartisan Visa Program Could Fix Nation's Illegal Immigration Mess | Daniel Griswold | Cato Institute: Commentary

Bipartisan Visa Program Could Fix Nation's Illegal Immigration Mess | Daniel Griswold | Cato Institute: Commentary: "The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act legalized 2.7 million illegal immigrants and expanded enforcement, but it did nothing to legalize future flow of workers for an expanding economy. The result was predictable failure.

In the early 1950s, Congress and President Eisenhower faced a similar challenge. The U.S. Border Patrol was making 1 million apprehensions a year. Congress and the president responded with more vigorous enforcement, but also a large increase in visas for temporary workers.

The result: Apprehensions at the border fell by 95%. Given the choice, low-skilled immigrants from Mexico chose by the millions to enter legally rather than illegally."

Banana Republics | Doug Bandow | Cato Institute: Commentary

Banana Republics | Doug Bandow | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Who's right? It's hard to say. Philip Giraldi of the American Conservative Defense Alliance may have put it best: 'there is no clear good and bad in what happened in Honduras.'

Without question, the Honduran constitution bars amendment via referendum of eight constitutional provisions, including term limits. However, does that provision apply to an advisory measure which does not directly address presidential tenure? Still, the Supreme Court made a clear and presumptively valid ruling, which bound the president. The National Congress and military should have ensured that the law was respected. Was his forcible removal by the military necessary? Article 239 of the Honduran Constitution states that anyone attempting to change the term limit 'will immediately cease in their functions.' Was it legitimate for the Court to decide that that is what he intended on doing in the future, even if he was not doing so today? If so, presumably he lost his office automatically. That still didn't necessarily warrant the military's bedtime arrest and exile, however.

What were Zelaya's plans? His intentions might have been malign, though Honduras is one of many countries where economic and political elites tend to help each other at the expense of the poor. Moreover, his critics had reason to worry that Zelaya hoped to follow the precedent created by Venezuela's Chavez, who has steadily dismantled legal restraints on presidential power and tenure, and eliminated protections for civil and political liberties. Nevertheless, suspicions alone provide a dubious basis for removing a president. Especially since Zelaya was constrained by the very institutions which removed him from power as well as his lack of popularity. Assume that his ouster was valid. His arrest and exile remain dubious. The latter certainly is extra-constitutional if not expressly illegal."

Long-term Cost Is Steep | Tad DeHaven | Cato Institute: Commentary

Long-term Cost Is Steep | Tad DeHaven | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Unfortunately for proponents of government spending as a panacea, there can be no 'success' without failure. The reason is simple: the government can't spend money without taxing it out of the economy first, or issuing debt, which begets future taxes. When the government taxes something, the result is less of that something. One of the chief rationales politicians give for raising taxes on cigarettes is that it'll result in less smoking. Why would the result be any different for taxes on economic productivity?

In other words, the government can spend billions of dollars 'creating' jobs -- technically a success -- but the cost of those jobs in terms of reduced economic productivity is a failure. And that failure equals lost jobs or jobs not created that otherwise would have been in the absence of the taxes the government needed to 'create' those jobs in the first place."

'As President Barack Obama inadvertently admitted last week, "UPS and FedEx are doing just fine . . . It's the post office that's always having problems."

The Bush administration oversaw one of the most massive increases in federal spending in history. Yet here we are in the midst of the second recession since Bush took office, and a deep one at that. If government spending results in economic growth shouldn't the Bush years have been an economic boom?'

The Era of Big Government Initiatives Is Over | Gene Healy | Cato Institute: Commentary

The Era of Big Government Initiatives Is Over | Gene Healy | Cato Institute: Commentary: "President Lyndon Johnson pushed the Great Society through Congress at a time when three-quarters of Americans told pollsters that they trusted the federal government to do what is right 'most of the time' or 'just about always.' Today, that number's around 30 percent."

When Out of Hope, Feign Change | Michael F. Cannon | Cato Institute: Commentary

When Out of Hope, Feign Change | Michael F. Cannon | Cato Institute: Commentary: "The definition of a cooperative is a health plan governed by its enrollees. Since a government chartered co-op won't have any enrollees at first, it will be governed by — guess who? — the Secretary of Health and Human Services, just like any other government program."

'In June, Sebelius told Bloomberg.com, "You could theoretically design a co-op plan that had the same attributes as a public plan." In July, President Obama himself told Time magazine, "I think in theory you can imagine a co-operative meeting that definition" of a "public option."'

'So even if Democrats promise that someday the new program will become a co-op, what they mean is: "We're going to create that new government health program, just as we intended all along. But we will turn it over to the members in, oh, five years or so. We promise."'

'President Obama keeps saying you'll be able to keep your current health plan, even though the Congressional Budget Office says that isn't true. The president says a new government program wouldn't drive private insurers out of business, even though his allies expect it to do just that. He says he wants choice and competition, yet proposes insurance regulations that would drive most private plans out of existence. He doesn't want the government to take over the health sector, just like he didn't want to take over General Motors. The administration pretends to distance itself from a new government program by embracing...another new government program.'

The Broken Windshield Fallacy | Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar | Cato Institute: Commentary

The Broken Windshield Fallacy | Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar | Cato Institute: Commentary: "The economic argument says that scrapping cars creates artificial scarcity, thus boosting demand for new auto sales in a recession. Leave aside that scrapping clunkers also raises the prices of used cars, thus penalizing poorer consumers. More importantly, there is evidence that the scheme triggered far fewer additional car sales than assumed. Consulting firm Macroeconomic Advisers estimates that in the U.S. 'roughly half of the 250,000 in new sales would have occurred in the months following the conclusion of the program, and the other half would have occurred during the program period anyway.' So all the scheme did was to transfer, rather than create, wealth by unnecessarily bribing people to make long-planned acquisitions.

But even where the subsidies may have caused genuine new sales, more money spent on cars simply means less money is available for other items. The German Retail Federation, for example, complains that the cash-for-clunkers program is 'sucking out spending' as retail sales fell 1.3% in May and 1.8% in June. For the overall economy, therefore, the net result is probably zero. The idea that destroying items of value will boost the economy might be called in this context, the broken windshield fallacy."

"The energy required to manufacture a car accounts for as much as 45% of its lifetime energy consumption. So replacing old cars with new ones requires a big up-front energy investment. And crushing old cars and converting them to steel consumes more energy than exporting them.

What is the Condition of U.S. Savings? - Frank Shostak - Mises Institute

What is the Condition of U.S. Savings? - Frank Shostak - Mises Institute: "For instance, John the baker has produced ten loaves of bread and consumes two loaves. The income in this case is ten loaves of bread, and his savings are eight loaves. Now, he exchanges eight loaves of bread for the products of a toolmaker. John pays with his real savings — eight loaves of bread — for the products of the toolmaker.

One may be tempted to conclude that the overall income is the ten loaves that were produced by the baker, plus the eight loaves that were earned by the toolmaker. In reality, however, only ten loaves of bread were produced — and this is the total income."

"Obviously, then, counting the amount of dollars received by intermediary producers as part of the total national income provides a misleading picture as far as total income is concerned.

Yet this if precisely what the NIPA framework does. Consequently, savings data as calculated by the NIPA is highly questionable."

"Out of a given money income, an individual can do the following: he can exchange part of the money for consumer goods; he can invest; he can lend out the money (i.e., transfer his money to another party in return for interest); he can also keep some of the money (i.e., exercise a demand for money).

At no stage, however, do individuals actually save money.

In its capacity as the medium of exchange, money facilitates the flow of real savings. The baker can now exchange his saved bread for money and then exchange the money for final or intermediary goods and services.

What is commonly called "saving" is nothing more than exercising demand for the medium of exchange (i.e., money). This means that people don't actually save money but rather exercise demand for it. And, when an individual likewise exchanges his real savings for money, he in fact only increases demand for money. The money he receives is not income; it is a medium of exchange that enables the individual to secure goods. In the absence of final consumer goods, all of the money in the world would be of little help to anyone.

Consider the so-called helicopter money case: the Fed sends every individual a check for one thousand dollars. According to the NIPA accounting, this would be classified as a tremendous increase in personal income. It is commonly held that, for a given consumption expenditure, this would also increase personal savings.

However, we maintain that this has nothing to do with real income and thus with saving. The new money didn't increase total real income."

Veto of the Texas Seed Bill - Grover Cleveland - Mises Institute

Veto of the Texas Seed Bill - Grover Cleveland - Mises Institute: "And yet I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan as proposed by this bill, to indulge a benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds for that purpose.

I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.

The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood."

"It is here suggested that the Commissioner of Agriculture is annually directed to expend a large sum of money for the purchase, propagation, and distribution of seeds and other things of this description, two-thirds of which are, upon the request of senators, representatives, and delegates in Congress, supplied to them for distribution among their constituents.

The appropriation of the current year for this purpose is $100,000, and it will probably be no less in the appropriation for the ensuing year. I understand that a large quantity of grain is furnished for such distribution, and it is supposed that this free apportionment among their neighbors is a privilege which may be waived by our senators and representatives.

If sufficient of them should request the Commissioner of Agriculture to send their shares of the grain thus allowed them, to the suffering farmers of Texas, they might be enabled to sow their crops; the constituents, for whom in theory this grain is intended, could well bear the temporary deprivation, and the donors would experience the satisfaction attending deeds of charity."

Obamacare's Bait & Switch | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Commentary

Obamacare's Bait & Switch | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Obama has stopped talking about 'health-care reform.' The new poll-tested phrase of the day is 'health-insurance reform. Specifically the president says he wants to protect people with 'pre-existing conditions.'"

"But if that's what the president wants, he could already have a bill through Congress, with significant Republican support. In fact, even the insurance companies have agreed to it.

But the 1,017-page bill making its way through the House devotes all of six pages to insurance reform — 30 pages, if you count all the definitions and supporting provisions, still less than 3 percent of the bill."

"prohibiting insurers from charging more to older and sicker customers amounts to a tax on the young and healthy who must pay higher premiums to subsidize their less-healthy counterparts. And letting people buy insurance after they get sick means healthy people have little incentive to buy insurance.

Put the two together and, as the Congressional Budget Office has warned, the young and healthy are much more likely to simply do without insurance.

As the healthy leave the insurance pool, the proportion of sick in the pool grows ever greater, leading to higher premiums — which in turn causes the healthiest remaining individuals to leave in what amounts to an insurance death spiral."

I Am Finally Scared of a White House Administration | Nat Hentoff | Cato Institute: Commentary

I Am Finally Scared of a White House Administration | Nat Hentoff | Cato Institute: Commentary: "President Obama's desired health care reform intends that a federal board (similar to the British model) — as in the Center for Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation in a current Democratic bill — decides whether your quality of life, regardless of your political party, merits government-controlled funds to keep you alive. Watch for that life-decider in the final bill. It's already in the stimulus bill signed into law."

'there is a July 29 Washington Times editorial citing a line from a report written by a key adviser to Obama on cost-efficient health care, prominent bioethicist Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel (brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel).

Emanuel writes about rationing health care for older Americans that "allocation (of medical care) by age is not invidious discrimination." (The Lancet, January 2009) He calls this form of rationing — which is fundamental to Obamacare goals — "the complete lives system." You see, at 65 or older, you've had more life years than a 25-year-old. As such, the latter can be more deserving of cost-efficient health care than older folks.'

'Here is what Obama said in an April 28 New York Times interview (quoted in Washington Times July 9 editorial) in which he describes a government end-of-life services guide for the citizenry as we get to a certain age, or are in a certain grave condition. Our government will undertake, he says, a "very difficult democratic conversation" about how "the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care" costs.'

'As the Washington Post's Charles Lane penetratingly explains (Undue influence," Aug. 8): the government would pay doctors to discuss with Medicare patients explanations of "living wills and durable powers of attorney … and (provide) a list of national and state-specific resources to assist consumers and their families" on making advance-care planning (read end-of-life) decisions.

Significantly, Lane adds that, "The doctor 'shall' (that's an order) explain that Medicare pays for hospice care (hint, hint)."'

'"Remember that legislation itself is only half the problem with Obamacare. Whatever bill passes, hundreds of bureaucrats in the federal agencies will have years to promulgate scores of regulations to govern the details of the law.

"This is where the real mischief could be done because most regulatory actions are effectuated beneath the public radar. It is thus essential, as just one example, that any end-of-life counseling provision in the final bill be specified to be purely voluntary … and that the counseling be required by law to be neutral as to outcome. Otherwise, even if the legislation doesn't push in a specific direction — for instance, THE GOVERNMENT REFUSING TREATMENT — the regulations could." (Emphasis added.)'