The media is all a buzz about the First Lady. Everything she does seems to have the glamour of a Hollywood premier. What is she up to now? Well, she’s going to tell everyone how to feed their kids.

First lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday plans to unveil a campaign to fight childhood obesity, a cause that is becoming her top policy priority.

The last thing you want to be is someone in the government’s top policy priority.

Her campaign is part of a government effort to reframe the debate about the nation’s expanding waistlines. Top health officials, including Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, say they want to shift the conversation away from achieving a particular weight or dress size and instead emphasize the benefits of good nutrition and physical activity.

Well, that doesn’t sound so bad right. They just want to switch the conversation. Maybe she’ll have her own workout video. Wait, nevermind. If she does, we’d probably all be forced to buy it somehow. Any way, they just want to have a conversation. What’s so bad about that?

The U.S. obesity rate grew rapidly through the 1980s and 1990s, but figures released last month show the increase has slowed. About two-thirds of Americans are counted as either overweight or obese, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

Hmmm, wonder why there was such a rapid increase through the 80s and 90s. Could it be this idiotic food pyramid that was crammed down out throats by who? Oh yeah, that’s right the government wanted to tell all us ignorant peasants how to eat back then, so they created first the four food groups and then the food pyramid. They also said do not eat a lot of fat. So what happened? Everyone thought the FDA had to know what it was talking about. Surely, they just wanted what was best for us. Well, it just so happens everyone got fatter after this advice. People in pursuit of being slim avoided fat, but what replaced fat? Sugar. If you look at this idiotic chart, it tells you to eat breads out the wazzoo. Could this have anything to do with our corn production? Hmm, just so happens we make so much damn corn that we now are forced to use it for fuel (despite lack of benefits), and it just so happens we are told to eat 6 to 11 servings of wheat products. Nah, not our government. They would never. It just so happens, the breads category is the one that makes you fat, but hey what do I know. Government obviously knows best. I mean, they wouldn’t want everyone’s health to get so bad that we’d all come begging for health care reform….would they?

Ms. Obama’s plan has four planks, according to people briefed on it. She wants to improve nutrition and physical education in schools; promote activity such as walking and biking in community planning; make healthy food more available, particularly in poor areas; and make nutrition information on food packages clearer.

Aahhh, there it is. I was wondering when the gun was coming out. The article calls the gun planks. Isn’t that nice?

She wants to improve nutrition and physical education in schools. Lovely. Like our kids aren’t getting a lack of education in the first place. Now we are going to increase physical education, which will help us better compete with China how? Also, does Mrs. Obama realize that government schools are always excluded from these so called food bans like transfat?  I guess the fact that kids spend most of their days at government schools has nothing to do with there health.

Ok, but what’s so bad about promoting walking and biking in community planning? Nothing if it’s just talk. I’m sure we’ll have our money stolen though to fulfill her vision. I’m sure this will be a handout to ACORN and the like to make communities more healthy and socialist.

Lastly, how is she going to make healthy food more available and nutrition information on packages clearer? The only way government knows how. She’s going to use government force.

While I’m sure she feels good about herself taking on obesity for “the children” and the media will make it sound like she’s parting the red sea, surely she should realize that government policy had a lot to do with creating the obesity epidemic. As with all societal ills, she could just repeal government policies. How about the FDA removes their food pyramid and says find your own health information on the internet. How about the FDA gets out of the food production and subsidy business. Maybe we could afford other foods than corn based wheats and high fructose corn syrup based foods. Maybe we could import cheaper vegetables from other nations. We don’t need another nanny. Some please find the first lady a different hobby. How about raising your own kids and teaching them about liberty.

via Michelle Obama Launches Plan to Fight Childhood Obesity – WSJ.com.

Last night I’m watching John Stossel’s new show on Fox Business. His topic was health care. As usual, Stossel was right on blaming health insurance (third party payer) for the rising prices. Of course, the socialists in the audience and in some of the on the street interviews were having none of it. What was to blame? PROFITS! These idiots think that profits drive up the costs. I even debated a socialist on Facebook who said under socialism goods and services would be the cheapest they can be, because there would be no profit. By definition, he thinks removing profit lowers price. His exact words were, “Profit wouldn’t even be considered in a socialist state, so drugs would automatically be at their lowest possible price.”

It’s silly to think that removing profit makes things cheaper. Price is a function of supply and demand, not profit. Socialism always generates more demand while dwindling supply, so there is no reason to think that not having profits would lower price. That is a simple economic fact. The other hazard of removing profit though is lack of innovation. This is where removing profit is deadly.

The biggest profits are generated with the introduction of a new innovation. The innovator has first dibs on the market. They can charge the most to recoup their investment costs. After investment costs are recouped, they generate tons of profit. I know that sounds horrible in the eyes of many socialists, but what happens next is competitors see the huge profits. They then rush in to capture some of the profits for themselves. By jumping on the profit bandwagon, they bring the goods and services to more people. How do they differentiate themselves in order to get a piece of the profits? They either innovate, making the product or service even better, they seek efficiencies, which lowers costs, or they undercut their competitors, seeking less profits in hopes of taking some of the market. This whole process drives down the cost through innovation, efficiencies, and out right price wars.

This competition always drives profit margins down. Anyone who gets in on the early stage of a new technology can tell you “enjoy it while it lasts.” Once the profit margins are driven down so far, you end up with the companies who can deliver the products or services with the best quality and efficiency.

Meanwhile, the innovators are back at it seeking the massive profits that come from new products and services. This is what leads to our ever improving livelihood.

So what does this mean for health care? If we remove the boot of the government, we can have this same process in health care. It does happen inspite of the government now, but there is no doubt that it is hampered and slowed. For instance, moving a drug through the FDA is estimated to cost close to $1 billion dollars and takes 15 years. How many drugs are there that are needed, but can’t produce the profits necessary to overcome the costs imposed by the FDA? How many people die without those drugs?

If you remove profits, you remove innovation. If you remove innovation, people die. New drugs, treatments and cures are not developed.  If you remove profit, you remove competition. It’s competition that brings products and services at ever cheaper prices to the masses. If people can’t get the products and services, people die. While all these socialists scream, “No profits in health care!”, they should be screaming “Let people die, let people die!”

Watch Stossel’s Health Care show here:

http://www.therightscoop.com/watch-%e2%80%98stossel%e2%80%99-from-fox-business-%e2%80%93-december-17-2009/

Another great find thanks to The Daily Paul

Another find thanks to Hot Air

Once again, insurance is the problem. I read an article (don’t remember where) about a primary care physician who will not take clients with insurance, and he is able to charge only $35/visit. He’s able to do this because there is so much extra cost involved when accepting insurance. It sounds like this surgery center works the same way.

The Vice President of News Corp, has a pretty good op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about the Obama administrations belief that they are so smart that they can make big government work. I’m not sure why everyone says they are so smart. Would you consider someone smart who despite all historical examples still believes that socialism or big government works? That seems pretty stupid to me. I would not consider someone smart because they can explain the dynamics of jumping off a cliff and some how despite all the previous deaths from jumping, they think they have figured out how to jump and survive. Even worse, they think they are so smart that they are going to make us all jump.

Some mistakes are so big that only smart people are tempted to make them. One is the faith in Big Government.

Many of the people in the Obama administration, the president included, enjoy all the credentials we associate with the best and the brightest: the right schools, the good grades, the successful careers. Alas, whether it be allocating health care or defining the kind of jobs the economy ought to create, the policies they favor suggest a strong belief that they know what’s best not just for themselves, but for everyone else too.

Of course, the kind of people who are apt to push for government-imposed solutions are those who are also apt to believe they will be the ones imposing decisions, not the ones who have to live with decisions imposed by others. Sometimes that’s because they enjoy the wealth that gives them escape hatches unavailable to the less affluent, such as their ability to ensure that their own children never have to set foot in a public school. Mostly, however, their trust in government reflects their confidence that they have all the answers and that it’s government’s job to enforce them.

Does this sound any different than any king, dictator or General Secretary of the Communist Party? They all believe they know what is best for all of us lower peasants, and they all preclude themselves and their children from the policies they impose.

Detroit is in decline because its automotive giants no longer build the kind of cars Americans want to buy? Let’s have the president sack the CEO of General Motors, and then use the bailout money as leverage to appoint a car czar and get GM and Chrysler to build the kind of cars that Washington wants.

Wall Street execs are getting sweet bonuses at a time when millions of other Americans are unemployed? Well, instead of encouraging these financial concerns to pay back the Troubled Asset Relief Program monies and get the taxpayers off the hook, send in Ken Feinberg to set their salaries.

Health-care spending is inefficient? The answer is obvious: Expand the Department of Health and Human Services and give its secretary more power. Under the bill now before the Senate, for example, Kathleen Sebelius would have the authority to decide what care insurance companies could offer, who could get an abortion under a government-run plan, what prices were fair, and so on.

Of course we shouldn’t draw any conclusions from an advisory task force that recently created a stir when it suggested women get fewer mammograms—and Ms. Sebelius’s disavowal in the face of public heat. She pointed out that the task force does not set government policy. But at some point some government task force will—and there will be fewer ways around it.

Is there any difference between Obama and the King of Dubai? The King thought he was visionary (so did the media), and he was doing what is best for his people. Instead of letting the free market develop his country, he issued dictates from his palace.

That’s government by the smart. The good news is that it doesn’t seem to be selling. According to a recent poll, 57% of Americans believe government is doing things that should be left to business and individuals. Not only do most Americans object, Gallup says the opposition is the “highest such reading in more than a decade.”

via William McGurn: My Big Fat Government Takeover – WSJ.com.

This may be true, but that won’t stop anyone. Health care is about to be jammed down our throats even though 85% of people like their current plans. It does not matter what the people want when the “king” decides he is a visionary, when he’s going to “fundamentally transform the country”, or when the media repeatedly tells him he’s the smartest President in history. Obama thinks he knows what is best for all of us, and he’s going to use government force to make us comply to his vision. There used to be a word for rulers like this that no one seems to use anymore. That word is TYRANT.

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.

Popular Science just released it’s Best Of What’s New 2009 list with 100 innovations. With a small glimse of the the winners, you will see the ingenuity of the human mind. There is no crisis (ie Health Care) that cannot be solved by unleashing human innovation, which is best driven by the self interested entreprenuer. While innovation is possible with government intervention, the innovation is in spite of the intervention not the result of it. If government encouraged innovation, the Soviet Union would have been the most innovative nation on earth.

Take some time to look at some of the innovations, and then tell me the unleashed innovation of the free human mind can’t solve the government created health care “crisis”.

The standards by which we judge the year’s greatest innovations are simple. The objects don’t necessarily need to be beautiful (although some, like the all-glass TKTS building in Times Square, certainly are). They don’t have to be eco-friendly (although the packaging made of biodegradable fungus certainly is). They don’t even have to be difficult to build (with all due respect to the telescope designed to find Earth-like planets).

They just have to push past what we thought was possible just twelve months ago. And the following 100 innovations have all blown us away, beginning with the headliner, our product of the year: something so simple yet so smart, with the ability to improve countless lives.

via Best Of What’s New 2009 | Popular Science.

As usual, our government finds it wise to punish good behavior. If you are a small growing business, you better not hire anyone once payroll reaches $499,999. Once you cross over that line, you are in the cross hairs of government regulators who decide how you must treat your employees. If you don’t do what they say, you will pay more taxes.

The House bill mandates that employers with payrolls above $500,000 must contribute — for each full-time employee — 72.5% of the premium cost for single coverage and 65% of the premium cost for family coverage. The penalty for failing to do so is a 2%-to-6% tax on employers with payrolls between $500,000 and $750,000 and an 8% tax for employers with payrolls above $750,000.

via Small Business Crunches Numbers – WSJ.com.

So how does this promote job growth? Business aren’t in the business of charity. If they must spend more on health care or even worse send money to Washington, they are not going to have that money to grow and to create jobs. Those employees will get less pay, because businesses figure out the overall cost of employees. If they budget X for a certain position, the person will get X minus health care, minus taxes, minus social security, minus unemployment insurance, minus workers comp, minus other benefits, and minus any other business cost associated with that employee.

If an employee takes care of themselves and their employer didn’t pay for their health insurance, they would have more money in their pocket. The employer would be able to pay more for the position without the extra costs.  Shopping for themselves, the employee would get better rates and maybe buy a low premium, high deductible insurance plan. This would increase their income substantially. Because businesses are forced into buying health insurance for all regardless to health conditions of each individual, their plans are more expensive and eats more money out of the healthy worker’s pocket. This lowers the standard of living for all workers, and is more punishment for doing the right things.

In an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, Dr. Pardes, president and CEO of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, talks about the coming doctor shortage.

It is important to note that the shortage the country will soon face isn’t just of primary-care physicians. It is true that there aren’t enough primary-care doctors and nurse practitioners. But it is also true that we need more cardiologists, neurologists, general surgeons, pediatric subspecialists, urologists and other highly trained specialists.

Nonetheless, the few ideas to address the coming doctor shortages that were briefly considered in Washington treated the problem merely as a shortfall of primary-care doctors. One idea is to shift unused federal training funds to hospitals that need more positions, but only if those funds are used for primary care. Another is to move primary-care physician training out of hospitals and into federally qualified health centers. A third idea is to take training dollars away from doctors and instead use it to train nurses and other professionals.

None of these ideas would actually increase the number of doctors. At most the first two ideas would increase the number of primary-care doctors at the expense of the number of specialists.

But that’s not likely to happen either. The fundamental reason why medical students are not entering primary care on their own is that they can’t afford it. Medical-school tuition can cost a student as much as $50,000 a year. Some doctors start out owing hundreds of thousands of dollars before they are even able to open a practice. Going to medical school is a little like taking out a mortgage, only without getting a house in return.

Once doctors do start treating patients, they are squeezed between what they earn from government programs and insurance companies on one side and escalating malpractice insurance rates on the other. Meanwhile, specialists can often charge more and pay less in other costs than primary-care doctors. The reality is that many physicians cannot afford to go into primary care.

To address the shortage of doctors and the incentives that compel young doctors to eschew primary care, Congress needs to think about how to increase doctor pay, institute malpractice reform, and provide subsidies to reduce the amount of debt doctors have to take on. Residency caps should also be raised so teaching hospitals can train more doctors. Without these actions new doctors would be foolish to enter primary care, and thankfully our medical schools do not recruit foolish people.

via Herbert Pardes: The Coming Shortage of Doctors – WSJ.com.

Unfortunately, the doctor seems to suffer from what most commentators and policy wonks suffer from. They believe that you can cure an illness by increasing the causes of the illness. It would be like telling an alcoholic to drink a different alcohol to cure his liver disease. The government creates the shortage by manipulating the free market. When the government implements price controls via program reimbursement rates, you end up effecting supply negatively.  The doctor also doesn’t seem to realize that part of the reason education is so expensive is there is a massive amount of government money chasing after education services. The more dollars chasing a good or service, the higher the price rises.

The doctors has many bad assumptions here that undermine his stated goal. He says that the cost of education is extremely high. He compares it to taking out a mortgage without getting a house. This is in my opinion economically silly. Tuition is in investment like any other investment. Actually, if you pick the right major, it can be a very high yielding investment. With the high cost of medical school, one would expect a high return on that investment. In the free market that would be the case. As I’ve already said, tuition has climbed year after year because of all the government money in education. Remove government, and you will lower cost. On top of that, the doctor says government programs squeeze doctors with government reimbursement rates. This alters the return on investment analysis as well. If your investment continues to grow larger because of government, and your return is “squeezed” by government, of course you are going to begin to see shortages. This is what government always does.

Unfortunately, he then argues the government should do more. He says Congress should be looking at ways to raise doctor pay. Are you serious? Government is the reason your pay is decreasing. Get the government out of health care, and you will begin to see salaries increase.  In the free market, if there is a shortage in supply, prices increase. Seeing the increase in price (or pay in this case), competitors enter the market (in this case doctors).

Also, as price is driven up, entrepreneurs will look for alternate solutions to doctors. An real world example of this are the clinics at many local pharmacies.

Government on the other hand will just hold prices against the will of the market. As Austrian economists will tell you, “You can control price or supply, but you can’t control both.” Because government is controlling price, they will drive down supply. This will ultimately lead in the opposite outcome that the doctor claims to want. Even if the government funnels money in to subsidize doctors, they are taking that money from another area of the economy. While they may be able to falsely increase the supply of doctors, they’d end up producing a shortage in another area. This is why we defeated the Soviet Union. Central planning never works. Government always gets it wrong. The free market does this on its own by the decisions of millions of people. While I appreciate the doctors concern, I wish he’d drop his assumption that government can fix this. They have never been able to fix a problem in the economy without creating multiple new and worse problems.

I picked this up from Hotair, and in my opinion this is why Romney has no chance in 2012, and why I’m glad he didn’t get the nomination in 2008. Don’t claim to be a free market conservative when you implemented one of the country’s only state run health insurance programs that is now blowing up in their face. Now he’s claiming it wasn’t meant to bring down cost. Well, if you were a free market guy, you would have realized providing insurance to all only drives up costs, and the costs are what make complain about health care.

This election I will have a litmus test. Do you believe in the free market, as in no government intervention at all, or do you believe government should intervene and so called protect “the people”. If you answer the latter, you don’t know what the free market is, and you lost my vote. Hopefully other free market folks will do the same.

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