My Stance on Healthcare

Longtime lurker Cheddar (and you're welcome to lurk, I encourage it!), an always good questioner of my rants, asked on this post:

Would health care be so bad if it were provided to only citizens and immigrants (please don't confuse immigrants with aliens).

The short answer is "yes", because we *still* can't afford it.

This isn't about "pre-existing conditions". There are two issues with that:

1. If you as a person were able to get a tax deduction for paying your own healthcare, we wouldn't have the problem where you lose your coverage every time you changed jobs. The Government and its regulations CREATED pre-existing condition issues by only allowing businesses to receive credits for insuring employees' health.


2. You can't wreck your car, and call Allstate the next day and demand insurance can you? Why not? Because the premiums you DID NOT pay over the last 5 years CAN NOT ensure that Allstate can afford your coverage. You understand that what this idiotic law has done is ring the death knell for private health insurance? No one can be profitable in that situation - not without tripling, quadrupling, or MORE the premiums of anyone stupid enough to continue paying for healthcare.

This isn't about who gets it. Ultimately (and Mark Levin has proved a number of times), we're talking about less than 20mil people that "need" healthcare - the rest are foreigners, wealthy folks (making more than $75k a year) that choose not to carry coverage, and also younger folks who are generally healthy and don't feel they need insurance.

This IS about NOT reforming medical tort laws, where Doctors must still pay exorbitant amounts of money to cover frivolous malpractice lawsuits, and order all manner of extra and unnecessary tests to try and prevent same, increasing the costs to insurance companies.

This IS about a Nation that somehow believes that they deserve the latest, most expensive treatment that has a low success rate, even if they can't afford it. I'm sorry, but if you can't pay for a plan that can cover it, you don't deserve the latest in whizbang tests and surgeries.

This IS about not having to wait four or more months for cancer tests, MRIs, etc. This IS about not having to ration care because people overuse the system since...after all, it's free!
This IS about not losing many of your Doctors because, shock, they don't feel like putting up many thousands of dollars only to be told they make too much and should work for peanuts.

Here is basic human behavior as I channel Joe and Jane Everyman:

If my choice (after my company drops my insurance plan because the premiums just doubled - and THEY ALREADY ARE DOUBLING), is to pay $1k a month (or more!) for health insurance (and I have always kept myself covered up until now), or to save $12k up (12 months, $1k saved per month by not enrolling in Obamacare), pay the fine for not having coverage at the end of the year ($2k), and if anything happens in the mean time, fuck it, I'll go DEMAND coverage since they can't turn me down for pre-existing conditions, what do you think I (and 99.5% of the rest of the country) is going to go do?

And when we all drop our plans (after our employers drop them as well), and start showing up demanding coverage all of a sudden when we get cancer, break something, have a heart attack, etc, what's going to happen to Insurance Companies - right, out of business. That'll just leave Uncle Sam to take care of it. Just like they took care of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Post Office, etc. etc. etc.

Please read the articles I've linked. They're not about politics, they're about simple economics, human behavior, and basic math.

Healthcare as it stood before this bill was DEFINITELY broken - no one disputes that. What this new law has done, though, is put Government in charge of the broken system because somehow (and they NEVER EVER EVER EVER HAVE IN THE PAST), they're going to lower costs, increase coverage, and improve services.

That'll be the day.

Stop "Recording Artist Caused" Global Warming!

World celebrities sing to stop global warming

Hey guys, didn't anyone tell you that, apparently, CO2 causes Global Warming? If you really cared, you wouldn't all have started exhaling all that greenhouse gas while you were singing! Not to mention all the energy you were consuming getting to/from the recording studio and whilest recording!

Try a plastic bag over the head and cinch it tight...stop Global Warming today! No fair cheating and taking the bag off now!

It's all a Matter of Control

Free Market Meltdown? Economists Fret Over Return to Price Controls

We all remember how free markets are supposed to work right? With a few regulations geared towards preventing sellers from controlling the supply to an extreme degree, the market sets the price of goods and services based on the amount people are willing to pay to consume the supply of the item that is available for purchase.

The cost of an item can also be affected by outside forces, such as taxes or regulations placed on the manufacturers or suppliers of a product. As I've mentioned before, higher taxes on a corporation are, for the most part, not borne by that corporation. The corporation passes the added business costs on to the people buying their products.

One controversial solution being considered is a move back to price controls. The New York Legislature and the San Francisco City Council are considering expanding rent controls. Some politicians in Vermont are trying to limit the price of milk. And in Alaska, a bill to cap oil prices is pending in the state legislature.

Proponents say the government has an obligation to provide relief for consumers during these trying economic times. But many economists say controlling prices and rents has failed in the past, and it often has bad consequences.

"Economists widely agree that price controls often lead to shortages. There are many examples throughout history, and we have seen more recent demonstrations of this principle of economics in Venezuela and Zimbabwe," said Dr. N. Gregory Mankiw, a Harvard University economics professor and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush.

What do you do when you are making a widget, and someone strolls in and without even looking at your balance sheet tells you that you're charging too much for your widget and that you will have the price you can sell the widget for reduced and regulated by an authority? In a capitalist market, given adequate competition, the price is what it is for a very specific reason. That price is rarely capriciously high, for if it is too high, and everyone is playing fairly, it is inevitable that a competitor will slash their price, or a new player will enter the market with a lower price and steal customers away. So when someone tells you "your product is now worth this and that is what you will sell it for", you very often will just stop selling that product to the affected market. You may even leave the country you're operating in and, after firing all of your local workers, make and sell your product outside the country.

So what happens when you own a building and you get told that you must rent it for an unsustainable price? You certainly can't sell it - nobody in their right mind would buy a losing proposition. In defeat, you either let the bank have the worthless place, or you torch it for the insurance.

And what of those who were living in it? They're out on the street.

Rent control represents a collectivist fantasy. The People deserve your units at a price that is not sustainable in reality. If you don't let The People live there at the price we demand of you, we will put you in jail.

This is not what our ancestors came across oceans for. These kinds of controls are not good for America. This is just one more attempt by our "betters" to put us more under their control, impoverish us, and make us more reliant on their handouts.

The Art of Liberal Communication

We have all seen the steps a Liberal uses to communicate a point:

1. Make an unfounded statement.
2. When challenged with facts on that statement, change the subject.
3. When the subject can't be changed, insult the person counter arguing.
4. If that fails, attempt to get the Police or Authorities involved, or stamp off in a huff.

I had wondered where all of these people were getting their playbook from. Now I know.

Paula Anderson teaches "Communications" at Central Connecticut State University. Recently, when she assigned her class to make a reasoned argument regarding current events, John Wahlberg, one of her students, used that platform to make a reasoned argument for Licensed Concealed Carry (of Firearms) on Campus. I'm sure he didn't say he wanted to shoot students on campus, I know he didn't say he wanted to commit violence on anyone, he just stated that he wanted to be able to defend himself on campus, just like he can everywhere else in town.

Paula's response? Lodge a complaint with the Campus Police. Great Communications eh? David Codrea over at War on Guns has given us an assignment of our own. Let the Stasi calling Ms. Anderson know what we think about her little Marxist tendencies. I'll post her University contact information below. Feel free to drop her a line, I ask that you keep your discourse with her reasoned and civil.

Name: Anderson, Paula
Phone Number: 8322690
Job Title: Lecturer
Department: Communication
Location: R C Vance Acad Ctr 317
Email: andersonpau@ccsu.edu

My email to her is copied below:

I read with great dismay the harassment and degradation you visited upon John Wahlberg, simply because he was making a reasoned argument on current events, as assigned, in your classroom.

While we are all entitled to our own views, this country was founded upon tenets including personal freedom and accountability. That you would feign to teach "communications", and then call the authorities upon students with whom you had a disagreement of principles speaks volumes about your personal cowardice and complete lack of abilities in the subject you are supposed to teach.

What you have now demonstrated to your students is that they must submit to the status quo; that to believe differently than those with authority over you should be a crime. You have ensured that students who would think for themselves, that would speak up and ask simply "why" when they are in disagreement with what is being presented to them, will now fear the midnight call from the Stasi, that soft knock upon the door (or in this case, that evening phonecall from the Police); the harbinger of oppression.

I have sincere hopes that for your abuse of authority, you will see sanctions in some form. With any luck, the student you wrong will see fit to file suit for harassment. At best, I hope you lose your job over this.

While I have never subscribed to the statement "those who can't, teach", in this case, I believe it very apt.

Congratulations on successfully bullying someone with whom you disagreed, simply because you were unable to stand up and openly and logically refute their arguments.

I will be posting this at http://tyrannyunleashed.blogspot.com along with your University contact information. You are welcome to respond there, or by replying to this email address, that is, if you actually want to attempt to defend your craven actions.

--
Garry Morris
Tyranny Unleashed

As you can see, I have invited her over here to discuss her actions. I doubt she'll show.

While you're at it, head on over to the Campus Newspaper and dive into the fray in the comments section on their article.

To Mr. Wahlberg, I recommend you seek legal counsel and see what your options are to ensure other students won't be harrassed the way that you were. Thank you for your attempts to educate the Marxists at your school about what true Liberty involves, and I hope that you won't be dissuaded from continued efforts along this line. That they called the Police on you is the highest form of compliment - it means they didn't have any other way to refute your arguments or shut you down except to call for Daddy to come save them.

Congratulations Sir. If there is anything the pro-rights community can do for you, please let us know.

H/T to David and JD

More Great Reasons to Close Guantanamo

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hZfIcWnHqBz4kQR90lC_pXaHeW4Q

Yup, I'm sure just letting 'em all loose will be a great idea.