This health care bill is so anti-free market, you know Democrats had to create it. At least we have the Republicans to fight for the free market… or something like that.

The danger for Republicans is that their delay tactics begin to look like political opportunism and they appear to obstruct a bill that contains some popular elements such as restrictions on health insurers.

In the give and take on the Senate floor, where the bill will be debated in December, Republicans hope to drive a wedge among Democrats, potentially peeling off centrists on key issues. Republicans also hope to force attention to their own proposals for changing health care, such as limiting medical-malpractice claims and enhancing the ability of small businesses to buy insurance.

“I think people will be more comfortable with us biting off what we can chew instead of this arrogance, thinking we can fix the whole system all at once,” Mr. Alexander said.

via For GOP, Health Is Only One Battle on Road to ’10 Elections – WSJ.com.

OK, so Republicans aren’t for the free market either, they just aren’t as anti-free market as the Democrats. Limiting medical malpractice should not be something the Federal government does. If anyone should pass tort reform, it should be state legislatures. This would cause competition amongst states for doctors and would ultimately lead to a better solution. States would try out different reforms. They could look at each other’s examples and learn from the mistakes and successes. Instead, Republicans believe in a one size fits all plan.

Also, enhancing the ability of small businesses to buy insurance will not fix the rising health care costs. Having businesses in the health care insurance purchasing business is one reason for the increasing costs. Republicans need to get back to the free market ideas and remove the incentives for businesses to provide insurance. Then consumers would be in charge of their health care. HSAs were the right way to go, and more than likely consumers would move towards HSAs if government would stay out of the business of promoting health insurance.

At least Republicans aren’t looking to take over our health care, but it sure would be nice if someone was fighting for the free market in Washington.

Did you read my post a couple weeks ago about the S&P?

Signs of wariness are appearing in financial markets as investors worry that the end of the year could bring challenging trading conditions.

Last week saw a steep drop off in stock-market trading volume and a surge in demand for short-term government debt, indications that investors and financial institutions are growing cautious and retreating from riskier bets.

via Investors Dial Back Risk as Year-End Nears – WSJ.com.

I sold S&P fund the day I wrote that post. I also sold my other individual stocks, because they were up a lot, and I’m sure they will get hammered when this all comes crashing down. Keep watching! Eventually the Fed will have to turn the spigot off, and it’s going to get ugly.

Would someone please ask the government to stop creating jobs before we are all unemployed? Most of these idiots never even held a real private sector job, and yet they are trying to create jobs. Government can only do one thing. It can take money from private citizens at the point of a gun and give it to other private citizens. That will not create jobs.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said in an interview that “there are two engines to our economic message, two ways to generate jobs. One is small business, the second is energy.” The government could promote hiring in those sectors through expanded tax credits or lending. “It’s not about legislation — it’s about the economy,” he said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week said ideas under discussion in the House included a tax on a variety of financial transactions. Democrats estimate such a tax could raise as much as $150 billion a year, a pool of money that could help offset the cost of a job-growth package.

via Weighing Jobs and Deficit – WSJ.com.

I love these idiots in the White House and Congress. How is small business and energy going to create jobs when you are pillaging both of them, Rahm. Small business  is going to get hammered with all these health care bills. Energy is not allowed to flourish in our country because of special interest groups. The government is pushing cap n trade, while  the sham of global warming has finally come to light with the hacked emails of global warming scientists. Cap n Trade will drive up costs on businesses and families. Congress is also raising taxes for the health care bill, and they are going to let Bush’s tax cuts expire. All of this leads to increased burdens on the private sector, but some how these morons see this as job creating stimulus.

Nancy Pelosi’s solution to job creation is to tax a variety of financial transactions? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. For some reason, she believes you can tax your way to prosperity. Why do we tax cigarettes again? Oh yeah, because we want people to smoke less. You tax something in order to punish it and get less of it. So Nancy Pelosi wants to tax financial transactions. What do you think is going to happen? You are going to get less financial transactions. That sounds like another great job creating idea.

Would someone pull the plug on Washington already. They have no clue how jobs are created. Please make them stop before everyone is out of work, and we’re relying on these morons for the bread lines.

This sure doesn’t sound good, and I’m sure the heath care bill only makes the chances of collapse more likely.

In a report entitled “Worst-case debt scenario”, the bank’s asset team said state rescue packages over the last year have merely transferred private liabilities onto sagging sovereign shoulders, creating a fresh set of problems.

Overall debt is still far too high in almost all rich economies as a share of GDP (350pc in the US), whether public or private. It must be reduced by the hard slog of “deleveraging”, for years.

via Société Générale tells clients how to prepare for ‘global collapse’ – Telegraph.

On Facebook, I got into a debate with Evan Guay. The debate was fun, but I’m afraid the person who started the debate by posting an image may defriend us before it’s over, so I decided to bring it to ProudProfiteer.com.

Evan GuayI’m not sure if you intended to put the question mark at the end of your opening sentence–because you would be arguing with yourself–so I’ll assume a period was intended. Once again, it takes very little effort to find lucid examples supporting my statement that big business and the government are most often one in the same, and that this is nearly always a bad thing for the worker (defined as anyone not in ownership of production). I’m glad that you used the health care debate, as it plays perfectly into explaining how big business interests are what steer the decisions of the government.

The question mark was to highlight that the environment that you advocate, socialism, is what causes companies to lobby congress. If you were for the free market and the constitution, most of the policies the corporations and politicians are pushing today, wouldn’t happen. They would be unconstitutional. Advocating government redistribution does not fix the problem you and I are both complaining about. It increases it.

Also in your previous replies you kept talking about libertarian socialism. That is basically the same thing as anarco-capitalism, but the people are voluntarily socializing. This is fine in my opinion as long as you don’t force others into socialism. I think the problem is, as history has shown, socialism does not work and ultimately leads to force. It is unsustainable and eventually those living under it will decide they need to expand the people under it in order to expand resources available within it. With motivation dissipating, because people aren’t rewarded for merit, it will quickly devolve into economic disaster. Those in charge, will then look to expand.

Also, if you truly are a libertarian socialist, you sure aren’t doing a good job arguing for it. From what I gather, you don’t believe in a state. Yippee! Let’s get started on that, so you can go with your socialist buddies and share your wealth, and I can go with my capitalist buddies and create wealth.

It has been documented that there are 6 health insurance lobbyists for every member of congress, at least 350 of these lobbyists were former staffers, and that the health insurance industry is spending 1.4 million dollars per day on lobbying.

This only highlights my point that if the government is going to pick winners and losers, you are going to send lobbyist to advocate for you to be a winner. The way to fix it is for government to not intervene in the economy at all. This is just one of the unintended consequences you get when you look to the government for everything.

The fact that single payer wasn’t even invited to the debate should tell you something. Also, the fact that only the shareholders, not the stakeholders (providers, patients) were invited to the discussion should shed further light on the validity of the debate.

Again, the result of handing over your freedom. If the debate revolves around insurance, which it does, who do you think is going to be involved? As soon as you hand over your freedom by asking someone else, whether insurance companies or the government, to pay for your care, you then are out of the decision. Ready my blog on root causes of the health care crisis, and you will see what I mean. If you paid for your care yourself, you wouldn’t have these issues. Instead you advocate setting up this third party payer system, and then complain about the fact that the payer has control over your spending.

The fact that medicine has been transformed from a healing art to a business should tell you something about the nature of the beast.

When wasn’t it a business? It’s always been a business. The only thing that change is the introduction of ever expanding insurance and government intervention. Believe it or not, doctors used to voluntarily take care of the poor.

If you follow the belief of Rudolf Virchow that medicine is a social science, there is really no question which is the correct route to take. The fact that the US is the only industrialized country not to have a single-payer or highly regulated system, and the US offers the most expensive care, while providing the 37th best outcomes, makes it impossible to argue against a single-payer plan—unless your goal, along with insurance and pharmaceutical companies, is profit.

More of the we must be like everyone else. For you it seems that if other countries give up their freedoms, we must as well. I don’t care what other countries do. I care about what our country does and preserving the little freedom we have left. If our care is so bad, why do foreign government officials come here. It’s easy to twist facts to make things appear the way you want. Saying that our health care isn’t good because we aren’t socialized is crazy. I could sit here and dig up tons of disaster stories and statistics about these other countries, but I’m not going to waste my time. They will never change your mind. Also, you still have the sustainability question. Our country is going bankrupt, and yet you guys want to spend more and more money. Our resources are not endless, and unfortunately, I think we will soon witness the consequences.

The US is also the only country where pharmaceutical companies advertise directly to the patient, creating greater than normal demand for drugs that people don’t always need. The argument that these high prices for drugs are warranted is without merit, as pharm companies spend much more each year on advertisements than they do on R&D. Also, drug prices are the highest in the world in the US because price negotiating is illegal.

Who cares if they advertise. You think business is inherently evil, so you think everything they do is evil. Why shouldn’t they be able to advertise in order to inform the public about their product. This is just a silly argument. Why should I think a drug company is evil, and you are not? Drug companies are made up of people too, and many of them are more compassionate about saving lives than you are. Quit besmirching your fellow man because it makes you feel more righteous than they are. You may be able to make other believe you are compassionate, but the end result if we implement all your ideas is people die. You will not have the innovation in the drugs and the medical technology that we now have. If your ideas are so great, the Soviet economy would have been the envy of the world. As we know, it is not. We also know from history that socialism does not work. It didn’t work for the pilgrims, and it has not worked all the way up to current times.

It would be to everyone’s benefit (except the profit of the companies) to be able to order drugs from Canada, Africa, Europe, etc, but big business (read as government) doesn’t allow it.

Hear, Hear! I’m all for it, but this is a free market idea, not a socialist idea. Again, if government couldn’t use force against us at the behest of their corporate cronies, this would happen in a free market.

Other issues that have arisen because of a lust for money in the health care system are doctors having to close their practice because of outrageous malpractice insurance payments, and people being locked in their jobs because insurance comes from their employer, which, strangely enough, are now closing US plants and outsourcing jobs because they don’t have to pay those workers as much, aka higher profit.

Hey, did you read my blog on free market solutions to health care? I made the same argument about people being stuck in their jobs. The solution though isn’t the government. The solution is to allow the consumer to buy their own health care insurance. If they did, they would make wise decisions. Most would buy catastrophic care, and pay for doctors visits out of their pocket. This would prevent them from being attached to a crappy job because of health insurance. It would also free up expenses at companies, resulting in more jobs and higher wages.

As far as malpractice, you are right there as well, but you look at it the wrong way. Because of insurance in general, people no longer have a personal relationship. People assume it’s not big deal, the insurance company will be paying the settlement. This problem has grown as insurance has grown. The solution isn’t a one size fits all tort reform, as Republicans pose. This isn’t fair to patients, who may rightfully have a claim. It should be taken out of the federal government’s hands. States should enact these limits if they want. This would allow competition between states. Also, if insurance was out of the picture, you could have agreements made before hand between doctors and patients. Maybe there is a predetermined payout in the event of something bad happening. I don’t know all the solutions to solve this, because I can’t be expected to be an expert on all areas of the economy. The point is the free market would develop solutions to this if their wasn’t so much government involvement. You didn’t have these issues when the government was less involved.

It is simply logical that if a company is looking for profit, they will do what it takes to increase that profit. This means denying coverage for sick people and certain procedures and charging high premiums.

Again, this didn’t happen at the rate it did back before all the insurance and government intervention. Again, the systems you are advocating are the very systems that create the symptoms you are complaining about. You are also prejudging people motivations without proof. People in general are charitable, and the sick and poor would be taken care of. They were prior to all this government intervention, and they would again. I’m not sure if your a religious man, but you sure do worship the state. The state solves all human ailments based on your logic, and we have never done these things on our own. As I said previously, you create a tragedy of commons on the human level.

The fact that insurance companies have a 31% overhead, while medicare has a 3% overhead should tell you something about the affordability of care.

This is taking fuzzy math to the next level. The overhead would skyrocket if all people were on the government plan. You aren’t looking at who is in both systems. The fact that you have senior citizen as the customer in the medicare system, makes the overhead seem lower.

Example. If you have two patients, one a 30 year old male under private insurance and two a 70 year old male under medicare. Both of them cost $50/year in overhead. The problem is the 70 year old will spend much more money. So if say the 30 year old spends $100 for the year on insurance, his overhead if 50%. On the other hand, if the medicare patient, spends $1,000 for the year, his overhead is only 5%. As we all know, senior citizens spend way more money on health care services, so there is a reason medicare’s overhead appears less. If you add the remaining population into it, you will see that number go up, and it will go up higher than the private sector, who is constantly rooting out waste.

This process has everything to do with capitalism because just as Adam Smith made clear, the economy is the controlling factor in government and society. It seems clear to me that your view is no fault of your own, instead the idea has been inculcated so solidly in your head by the media that you actually believe it is what’s best of you and all other US citizens.
“Trying to prevent the polarization of wealth does the exact opposite of what you want to do.” This also couldn’t be further form the truth. If you look at the economic breakdown of the US, it is clear that we are moving nearer and nearer to what is essentially a 3rd world model. The top 5% of the population are proceeding to accumulate a greater piece of the pie, while the rest are left to split the remaining sliver. It’s clear to anyone that looks at it, that this isn’t beneficial to the middle class. In fact, the middle class is slowly disappearing. The middle class is what pays for programs when there are regressive taxes, such as those that currently exist.

Thanks for saying it’s not my fault that I’m so stupid, and you’re so smart. You are arguing that the wealth gap is the result of the free market, when it has been getting worse under government intervention. This is silly. I think we agree on the middle class, but you are wrongly identifying the cause. The biggest cause is the Fed. Devaluing our currency is robbery of the middle class. It also, is central planning. We have one guy at the head of a little over a dozen bozos deciding what the cost of money should be. What you get is the bubble we just had and the bust we are currently in. With all the bailouts, the money has been transferred from the middle class to the rich, who have now recovered. The middle class will not recover what has been taken. The poor never had it in the first place, so they lost nothing. You idea that we need more government is crazy in light of they are the ones causing this gap to get larger.

These regressive taxes were amped up by the conservative icon, Raegen, by implementing outrageous tax-cuts on the wealthy. The trickle down theory doesn’t work. As we know, it takes money to make money.

What in the world are you talking about here? Reagan and Bush cut taxes on all income tax brackets. You are so blinded by your hate of people who have more than  you. It’s nuts. Trickle down does work better than Obama’s “Trickle Up Economics”. The very name describe what is does, and his policies and actions shows how it works. He has taken from the middle class, and given it to his cronies, thus trickling it up to them. Under Reagan, Clinton, and Bush, they cut taxes on the so called rich, and you had jobs created and people growing financially. The problem in the long run was the Fed was punishing us with the inflation tax and the bubbles they were creating. As I said, jobs were created which is what creates wealth for people. The Fed tricked people into going into debt and devalued the money they earned through inflation. If you want to fix the wealth gap, you will end the Fed.

When you keep pumping money into the people that already have it, they keep making more. I agree with you that the Fed devaluing money is a negative. I think you have my stance confused. I’m not arguing that everything that the government does is good. I’m saying that large corporations controlling the government, as they do now, is bad.
I’m very glad you brought up the old safety nets of family, friends, neighbors, etc. The explanation for this disappearance is a little more complex, but generally explainable, nonetheless. I think we can agree that there has been a steady atomization of society since WWII. We see this in nearly any resource we look. People are generally less interested in helping their neighbor and more interested in material goods, reality TV, and whatever other distraction you can think of. This is a direct result of constant competition and capitalism. Capitalism breeds competition, not cooperation. People currently work longer hours and receive less valuable remuneration. The steady barrage of consumerist propaganda has made people care less and less about family, friends, and neighbors, and more and more about cars, TV, sports, etc. Speaking of TV—a key tool in this atomization—it can be separated into two categories, content and filler. Contrary to what you would think, the content is the commercials. This makes sense because it is how the station makes its money (excluding cable and HBO, although most cable shows suck, too). The filler is whatever garbage show is on.

I’m pointing in the wrong direction? Our country was more capitalist and entrepreneurial before WWII than after, but for some reason capitalism gets blamed? People are less interested in helping because they assume they don’t need to. Remember, we have safety nets! As I said, we have a tragedy of commons on the human level. Basically, those people become public property, and everyone assumes someone else will take care of it. Families also used to bring us more happiness, and I would argue that government interference as pushed us apart making us less happy. In order to replace that happiness, we have looked other places, such as TV shows, material items, etc. Believe it or not, there are people who refuse to take government help because of their dignity. I was raised by one of these people, and guess what, they didn’t end up in the streets. Churches, families, friends, etc do step up and help.

I’m not sure how you think private roads would improve traffic in major cities. There are so many people travelling that there is no way to get around quickly, safe public transportation (trains). Are you saying a $200 million air port with 3 flights a day is an efficient use of resources? … Read More

I am not saying for sure it would improve congestion, but I do know the free market is more efficient, so I believe there is a chance. I am not going to write it off as you have, just because I’m not imaginative enough to develop the system myself. I do know, if it was ran privately, that roads could be paid for by businesses, developers, etc. After all, you would need to get to your house, fi a developer wanted you to buy it. You would need to get to a business if the business wanted you to work there and wanted customers to come there. Also, I can guarantee you it would be better taken care of as is most driveways and business parking lots. You also wouldn’t have unmotivated road crews standing around watching one guy at a time do work.

I did not say the $200 million air port was efficient. I might have forgot my contraction, n’t. I do that when typing fast. It is inefficient and an example of government waste that would never happen in the free market it. If it did, it would only harm the person paying for it out of his own pocket. It would not be stolen from the middle class tax payer to pay for it.

I don’t want to get into the military budgeting in this post because I’d also say that it’s superfluous and controlled by big business interests, and this message is already ridiculously long.

Haha. I would agree with you, which is more proof that government control is always wasteful and inefficient. The only hard part about this here, is this is about the only thing the government does at this point that is actually in the constitution, and without a military to defend the country, you pretty much don’t have a country.  If you really are an anarco-socialist, I’m sure you’ve read some arguments by the anarcho-capitalist at how the free market would better at this. They make some great arguments, but I’m not totally sold on it.

Continued ….

Evan GuayAbout Katrina, if everyone has to throw some money in a hat to save someone else’s life, I don’t think it’s even debatable. I think there should be social intervention to ensure that the victims have everything they need. There is an interesting article written by an anthropologist at MSU (don’t know the author or title off-hand) saying that it isn’t competition and war that makes humans unique in the animal kingdom, it’s the extent of humans’ ability to empathize, cooperate, and negotiate that makes them unique. I agree with the author, and I think that empathy, cooperation, and negotiations for peace should be maximized. I’m not talking about forcing anyone to give anything up, I’m talking about changing the economic and educational system so people wouldn’t view it as forcing. It should be viewed as sharing superfluous resources. You’re not going to get argument from me saying that Walmart and churches should have been able to help. And please don’t use GWB’s politics to represent my side of the debate on corporate government, as he’s even further than Obama from what I’m advocating.

This sounds like something straight of an Ayn Rand book or 1984. “I’m talking about changing the economic and educational system so people wouldn’t view it as forcing.” Wow, you are talking about brain washing. We aren’t brain washed for the free market. That is human nature. You want to change our nature. This is what leads to the apalling disasters of the Soviet Union and Mao’s China. If you think it’s so great, why do you feel the need to stick a gun to other people’s heads to force them to do it? Brainwashing them into it is no different. If it’s so great, you are able to do it yourself freely. Of course as with all socialist, marxists, etc. that isn’t enough. You have to force all society to do it, which points out that you truly don’t believe in libertarian socialism as well. That was just a ruse to get someone to start buying into socialism.

I have anything but a dim view of my fellow man. I am optimistic to the Nth degree. I think that if given the opportunity, with coercion removed, people would all jump at the opportunity to help one another. I also think that people would like a say in what goes on around them. If anything, you’re the one that doubts people. I have the utmost confidence in people, as I think society should be democratically run. The only way that democracy is horrible is if you think that people having a say in what happens to them/their taxes is a negative. As I said in each post, majority rules, but individual liberties must be protected. And I’m not saying that the poor are more deserving of the water, I’m saying that their needs must be protected. It’s impossible to establish any kind of hierarchy of value upon people or animals, so every person should be accounted for.

You’re view of your fellow man isn’t low? Really? You do not see that all these evil corporations, etc are made up of your fellow man, but for some reason you believe you are more righteous than they. I’ll take a Bill Gates over someone claiming to be righteous any day.

You are arguing around the issue of democracy. I don’t think the form of democracy we had under the constitution is bad. It was a republic. By saying liberties must be protected, you are arguing the same thing I am. The constitution is what protected those liberties. The problem is, as is with pure democracies in general, you only want your liberties protected. If you think someone else’s liberties interferes with your ideals, they don’t count. That is what pure democracy is. Mob rule, and as I said,  you are only free as long as you are in the majority.

Following the constitution isn’t denying progress. Where you get in trouble is when you start to think that previous generations were inherently more wise/honorable/intelligent

Your whole argument is telling me how horrendous everyone is in the the private sector (oh and they are the same as the public sector). So until I see someone more wise, honorable, and intelligent, I’ll stick with the founders.

than current generations. If you don’t allow laws/systems to evolve with moral philosophy and other advancements, you have unjust/inefficient laws/systems…. Read More

I’m going to avoid the abortion debate in this message for the same reason I avoided the military resources, this message is ridiculously long. But I agree with you that if a state wishes to enact a single-payer plan it should be able to do so. (I had to split this in 2 because it said it was too long to post as 1 message).

Bob Murphy is an awesome free market economist. I’ve learned a ton from his book “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism” and his blog Free Advice. In this video he explains why the Fed is harming the economy instead of helping bring us out of recession.

If you don’t think this health care bill is all about government control, you are very, very naive. The only head way that has been made on addressing rising cost has been the HSA and it’s brethren. These plans have brought the consumer back into the spending decision and allowed the price signals of the free market to work. We should be expanding and encouraging these plans, but low and behold, Harry Reid is trying to destroy them.

Start with its attack on flexible spending accounts that are an important part of many employer plans. Flex accounts let employees set aside some portion of their pre-tax pay for out-of-pocket costs or medical services that their insurance plan doesn’t cover, such as a child’s orthodontics or testing supplies for diabetics. The Reid bill caps these now-unlimited accounts at $2,500 per year and imposes new restrictions on qualifying medical expenses, raising some $5 billion by exposing income above the non-indexed cap to taxes.

Democrats say flex accounts encourage wasteful spending, because an arbitrary “use it or lose it” rule doesn’t allow balances to roll over year to year. But they really hate them because they give consumers a more active role in managing spending, instead of having the government decide.

So let’s cap them because they don’t roll over? What if someone needs them for a child with special needs, and they have $5,000 in yearly expenses. I guess screw you, you greedy parent. If Reid was so worried about wasteful spending because it doesn’t roll over, they are the ones who set that rule. Change the rule so they can roll over.

The Reid bill also assaults health savings accounts, or HSAs, which allow individuals to accumulate tax-free funds for future medical expenses when coupled with low-premium, high-deductible insurance. The Reid bill changes tax provisions to make HSAs less attractive, but the real threat comes via increased regulation.

These insurance products will likely be barred from the insurance “exchanges” that will demolish and supplant today’s individual market. Employers will also find them more difficult if not illegal to offer once the government has new powers to “define the essential health benefits” that all plans must eventually offer. Plans that focus mainly on catastrophic health expenses, instead of routine procedures, aren’t generous enough for Democrats.

HSAs work best because they  focus on catastrophic health expenses, instead of routine procedures. That is what will help drive costs down. They operate the way insurance is supposed to operate.

Liberals claim people who choose these options aren’t helping as much to finance a common pool and may encourage adverse selection if too many young or healthy people opt out. While all insurance involves some degree of risk-sharing, Democrats want to impose true social insurance a la Europe by obliterating the flexibility of insurers to design products that are tailored to suit different individual needs.

So as we now see, this isn’t about fixing health costs at all. It’s about creating a common pool. People’s freedom shouldn’t get in the way of creating a “common pool”. You shouldn’t have a right to decide what is best for you and your family. Government should decide. “Oh, come on ProudProf! This is just another example of the rich trying not to give their fair share.”

In fact, about 40% of tax filers with HSAs earn under $60,000, according to the IRS. The Employee Benefit Research Institute reports that 4% of adults with private insurance have an HSA this year—up from 1% in 2006—and about 9% are enrolled in some form of consumer-directed health plan. It also found that beneficiaries are evenly split between those with health problems and those without.

So 40% earn less than $60k, and HSAs allow the middle class to stretch their money further. They aren’t rich, and cannot afford an expensive health insurance plan to cover some other person’s daily doctor visit. As usual, the middle class is going to be the group who takes the hit, and what will the end result be? The result will be the exact thing Democrats claim to abhor, the spread between the haves and have nots.

The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, whose members dominate the HSA market, says that enrollees are more likely than those with traditional insurance to be better consumers. They’re more likely to track expenses (63% to 43%), save for the future (47% to 18%), and search for information on physician quality (20% to 14%). They’re also more likely to participate and see results from wellness programs like weight loss, fitness and smoking cessation. This makes intuitive sense: They’ve got skin directly in the game.

David Goldhill, a media executive, recently wrote in the Atlantic Monthly that if a 22-year-old starts at his company today earning $30,000 and health costs grow at 3%, by the time he retires he’ll have paid out $1.77 million in premiums, lower wages, out-of-pocket costs and both sides of the Medicare payroll tax.

via Harry Reid’s Health-Care Bill Attacks HSAs – WSJ.com.

As with all government, the plan does nothing but destroy wealth and create waste. Young people will spend more on health insurance than they will ever use. Sounds like social security, which no young person believes they will even get.

The Wall Street Journal has a great article about a surgeon from India who is revolutionizing heart surgery through specialization and volume.

BANGALORE — Hair tucked into a surgical cap, eyes hidden behind thick-framed magnifying glasses, Devi Shetty leans over the sawed open chest of an 11-year-old boy, using bright blue thread to sew an artificial aorta onto his stopped heart.

As Dr. Shetty pulls the thread tight with scissors, an assistant reads aloud a proposed agreement for him to build a new hospital in the Cayman Islands that would primarily serve Americans in search of lower-cost medical care. The agreement is inked a few days later, pending approval of the Cayman parliament.

Dr. Shetty, who entered the limelight in the early 1990s as Mother Teresa’s cardiac surgeon, offers cutting-edge medical care in India at a fraction of what it costs elsewhere in the world. His flagship heart hospital charges $2,000, on average, for open-heart surgery, compared with hospitals in the U.S. that are paid between $20,000 and $100,000, depending on the complexity of the surgery.

Then there are the Cayman Islands, where he plans to build and run a 2,000-bed general hospital an hour’s plane ride from Miami. Procedures, both elective and necessary, will be priced at least 50% lower than what they cost in the U.S., says Dr. Shetty, who hopes to draw Americans who are uninsured or need surgery their plans don’t cover.

via The Henry Ford of Heart Surgery – WSJ.com.

What our politicians hate and don’t understand is you cannot control the free market and you can only harm yourself by attempting to do so. As you can see, Dr. Shetty will be opening a hospital in the Cayman Islands hoping to capture some of the US market. While our government continues to drive up our health care costs, foreign doctors see a profit opportunity. I’m guessing you will see a huge trend in this direction. If he can do surgery for a few thousand dollars, you will see people flocking. People spend more on insurance in a few months than it would cost for heart surgery at this hospital. Expand this model to other forms of medical care, and you will see global health care eat away at the US market.

The free market will create more an more services to help Americans get to these places. You will see medical transport services helping Americans to get to these places. You could see American doctors leaving to work in these places. How about American doctors being able to work from the US via some video stream? They’d be able to work outside the US restrictions from his US location. Thanks to our politicians,  you will see the economic power of the US moving away from the US. Say goodbye to our long term dominance.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this morning, Republican reps Jeb Hensarling and Pau Ryan layout why economic expectations are so low.

Why all the pessimism? The source appears to be a growing fear that the federal government is retreating from the free-market economic principles of the last half-century, and in particular the strong growth policies that began under Ronald Reagan. A review of the economic policies instituted by President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress lends credibility to this concern.

Exhibit A is the economic stimulus package signed into law by President Barack Obama in February. Even among previous stimulus efforts, the 2009 stimulus stands out for its ineffective targeting and sheer size. With interest, it is $1.1 trillion, double the size of Roosevelt’s New Deal spending as a percentage of GDP.

Exhibit B is tax policy going forward. It is a near certainty that Democratic-controlled Congress will allow most of the tax cuts of 2001-2003 to expire on Dec. 31, 2010.

Exhibit C is the administration’s intervention in the GM and Chrysler reorganizations. Upsetting decades of accepted bankruptcy law, the administration leveraged TARP funds to place unsecured and lower priority creditors like the United Auto Workers union in front of secured and higher priority creditors.

Health care, the administration’s signature issue, is Exhibit D. Disregarding its impact on quality and access, its plan will surely cost well over $1 trillion over the next decade. The House-passed version includes an 8% “pay or play” payroll tax and a half-trillion dollar surtax on incomes over $500,000, much of which will strike small business. Both taxes will tend to depress investment and the creation of new jobs.

If one substitutes the Blue Chip Economic Forecast’s interest-rate forecast for that of the administration, deficits will increase by an additional $1.2 trillion over the administration’s projected deficits. If the next decade’s interest rates climb to match those of the 1980s, then the deficit would increase another $5.3 trillion. If higher interest rates then slow economic growth, the impact on the deficit would be much worse.

via Jeb Hensarling and Paul Ryan: Why No One Expects a Strong Recovery – WSJ.com.

While I agree with all these, I think the reps believes that government is the solution, and the problem is their solution is not being implemented. This is what happens when you believe the government is the solution to our problems. Whoever lies the best and gets control of the government sets the policies. I’d love to see these guys calling for the government to quit tinkering with the economy.

The free market works, and will handle slow downs much better than politics. This recession would have hit us fast and moved on already without the tinkering. Can you imagine a doctor giving you a shot and saying I don’t want to inflict the pain, so let me put the needle in slowly? When you get a shot, you want it fast and quick. You know it’s going to hurt. Just get it over with. The economy is the same way. If we are going to go through some economic pain, take the brunt of it and get it over with. Instead we have these idiots trying to avoid any pain, and all they do is prolong it. The Fed caused the damn pain, and then says their role is minimize the pain and prevent it going forward. Really? Good job jackasses. Maybe we should try to control the weather so we don’t have any natural disasters.

If you want expectations to pick up, go back to the constitution. Quit tinkering. Tinkering only causes people to speculate on what the tinkering will be, and because our current tinkerers are bigger socialists than the previous tinkerers, they don’t feel good about the tinkering. Remove the tinkering ,and you remove the speculation and the negative expectations.

Was Bush, Obama and Geithner really “bailing out Wall Street in order to bail out Main Street”? It sure not looking like it.

TARP Inspector General Neil Barofsky keeps committing flagrant acts of political transparency, which if nothing else ought to inform the debate going forward over financial reform. In his latest bombshell, the IG discloses that the New York Federal Reserve did not believe that AIG’s credit-default swap (CDS) counterparties posed a systemic financial risk.

Hello?

For the last year, the entire Beltway theory of the financial panic has been based on the claim that the “opaque,” unregulated CDS market had forced the Fed to take over AIG and pay off its counterparties, lest the system collapse. Yet we now learn from Mr. Barofsky that saving the counterparties was not the reason for the bailout.

In the fall of 2008 the New York Fed drove a baby-soft bargain with AIG’s credit-default-swap counterparties. The Fed’s taxpayer-funded vehicle, Maiden Lane III, bought out the counterparties’ mortgage-backed securities at 100 cents on the dollar, effectively canceling out the CDS contracts. This was miles above what those assets could have fetched in the market at that time, if they could have been sold at all.

The New York Fed president at the time was none other than Timothy Geithner, the current Treasury Secretary, and Mr. Geithner now tells Mr. Barofsky that in deciding to make the counterparties whole, “the financial condition of the counterparties was not a relevant factor.”

This is startling. In April we noted in these columns that Goldman Sachs, a major AIG counterparty, would certainly have suffered from an AIG failure. And in his latest report, Mr. Barofsky comes to the same conclusion. But if Mr. Geithner now says the AIG bailout wasn’t driven by a need to rescue CDS counterparties, then what was the point? Why pay Goldman and even foreign banks like Societe Generale billions of tax dollars to make them whole?

Who was Treasury Secretary and worked hand in hand with Geithner to bail out Goldman Sachs, I mean AIG? Henry Paulson. Where did Henry Paulson work prior to becoming Treasury Secretary? What do you know, Goldman Sachs. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. I’m sure one man couldn’t force the spending of billions of tax payer dollars to bail out the company he ran. Wonder if there are any other politicians that are involved with Goldman. Let’s see!

• Robert Rubin, Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, and one of Obama’s go to guys
• Joshua Bolten, White House Chief of Staff under Bush
• Jon Corzine, who just lost his Governorship even after Obama stumped like hell for him
• George Herbert Walker IV, a Bush family member
• Robert Zoellick, Deputy Secretary of State under Bush
• Oh, and there’s more, but I’m beginning to throw up in my mouth a little. You get the point.