Apparently, so called green firms are looking toward local coercion to grow their businesses now that the global gun to the head fell through.

Businesses that had banked on global greenhouse-gas limits to spur alternative-energy investments now are looking to national and local policies to get more wind turbines turning and nuclear-power plants humming, after the muddled outcome of the Copenhagen climate summit.

The failure of the United Nations gathering to produce an enforceable accord to cut fossil-fuel emissions leaves the U.S., Europe, China, India and other countries to pursue the energy policies they already had.

In many cases, those policies are aimed more at strategic goals, such as economic development or reducing dependence on Mideast oil, than at threats posed by global warming.

via After Summit, ‘Cleantech’ Firms Reset Strategy – WSJ.com.

“Businesses that had banked on global greenhouse-gas limits” should be considered fascist enterprises. No businesses should be looking to force to public into buying their crap in order to grow their businesses, but unfortunately that is how business works now in America. Look at the health insurance companies. They are going to have millions of new customers thanks to government force.

Also, as stated in the last sentence, so called green tech is not economic development. You don’t develop economically by forcing people to buy something that is more expensive, delivers you less energy, to eventually get back what you already had. I’m not more wealthy for trading in my paid for Ford for a new Mercedes with a car payment.

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/

According to the Wall Street Journal, 10 Senate Democrats have decided the fate for all of us as far as far as health care insurance goes. You will buy what you are told, because after all you live in a democracy (once a republic).

WASHINGTON — Senior Senate Democrats reached tentative agreement Tuesday night to abandon the government-run insurance plan in their health-overhaul bill and to expand Medicare coverage to some people ages 55 to 64, clearing the most significant hurdle so far in getting a bill that can pass Congress.

So Democrats dropped the government-run insurance plan, but expanding a government run insurance plan? Considering our aging population and people living longer (for now anyways), it’s not hard to see that a majority of our country eventually falling under a government plan. Do you think they aren’t going to try to expand this further?

The agreement capped several days of high-stakes negotiations by a group of 10 Democratic senators — five moderates and five liberals. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) had advanced a bill that would have had the government directly operate a health-insurance plan, while giving states the right to opt out.

I love this. In our supposed Republic, we are forcing 1/6th of our economy under government control because of  5 liberals and 5 moderates. Who’s to say they are moderate? I guess they are moderate socialists. Wow, that makes me feel better. Moderate socialists are the ones protecting our liberty, so you can sleep well tonight.

In place of that, the senators embraced a more limited proposal that would empower the government’s Office of Personnel Management to put in place a new low-cost national health plan, congressional aides said. The office already administers plans offered to federal employees and members of Congress. The new national plan would be run by nonprofit entities set up by the private sector, and would be available to the public on the new insurance exchanges that would be created under the bill

If no private insurers sign up with the Office of Personnel Management to offer a national plan, the office would be authorized to implement a direct government-run plan, an unlikely prospect, aides said.

Didn’t they say they got rid of the government option? Instead they are going to have the government setup national plans and have them ran by non-profits? Sure sounds the same to me, except more corruption. Who’s going to pick the non-profits? Hey, isn’t ACORN a non-profit?

So here is where the government run plan comes in. If no private insurers sign up for the government designed national plan, then the government will create the plan itself. Despite what “aides” say, I would say it’s likely that no private insurers will sign up. Look at what working with the government has done with the banks. You sign up with them, you are going to do what you arer told, and what you are told changes at their discretion. How can a private insurance company plan for the future under conditiosn like that? Even if private insurers do sign up, it is no different than other quasi-government institutions like Fannie Mae, Amtrack or the Post Office. They will be ran into the ground, and we’ll be paying for them anyways. The politicians will setup the rules, so they will not be ran as a private institution.

The arrangement is attractive to Democratic centrists who worry about the government’s growing footprint in the private market.

Can this sentence be any more disengenous? So called centrist are worried about the growing government footprint in the private market? They sure have a funny way of showing it. Let’s see, TARP, Government Motors, bailouts, stimulus bills, newspaper bailouts, and oh this massive ass health care takeover.

In a nod to Democratic liberals still intent on expanding coverage, the group agreed to a proposal that would open Medicare, the health-insurance program for the elderly, to Americans ages 55 to 64. The proposal would benefit an estimated two million to three million Americans who have difficulty obtaining coverage elsewhere, including those who have lost their jobs. People in the 55-to-64 group who already get health insurance through their employers would continue to do so under the proposal.

Republicans criticized the Democratic negotiations. “What’s becoming abundantly clear is that the majority will make any deal, agree to any terms, sign any dotted line that brings them closer to final passage of this terrible bill,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.).

Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.) said expanding Medicare “is putting more people in a boat that’s already sinking.”

The American Medical Association said it opposes expanding Medicare because doctors face steep pay cuts under the program and many Medicare patients are struggling to find a doctor. Hospitals also said expanding Medicare and Medicaid is a bad idea.

“We want coverage — in the worst way — expanded, but both of these means are problematic for hospitals and physicians,” said Chip Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospitals, which lobbies on behalf of for-profit hospitals. “It’s going to make it difficult to make it work.”

Well, I guess the AMA can go screw themselves now. They had to back the Democrats health care bill before, and what do you know, it’s come back to bite them in the ass. Should have heeded my warning about making a deal with the devil.

The legislation is designed to extend insurance coverage to tens of millions of Americans. It would create new tax subsidies to help low- and middle-income people comply with a mandate to purchase coverage.

It would also bar insurers from engaging in a range of practices, such as denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions, and Senate Democrats were considering adding to those restrictions.

Under discussion among Senate Democrats was a proposal that would require insurance companies to spend no less than 90% of the insurance premiums they take in on health services, effectively limiting how much they can reap in profit. The health bill the House passed last month contains a similar provision, though it sets the minimum at 85%.

Aides cautioned that the accord reached Tuesday could be reopened if the CBO identifies major problems. Moreover, other issues, such as proposals to control the rapid growth of health costs, may still need to be negotiated over the next few days.

But if Mr. Reid has his way, he could begin the process of shutting off debate late this week. That would set the stage for another test on the Senate floor early next week that will demonstrate whether he has 60 votes for the bill. Final passage could come late next week.

via Senators Strike Health Deal – WSJ.com.

The government take over plan is so obvious. Expand, expand and expand the government programs in place. Then restrict, regulate and starve private insurance out of existence. The so called moderates like Joe Lieberman know better. They are just trying to save face when they hand over our liberty.

This bill is going to pass, so I hope we are all ready for it. We can only hold out hope now for public outrage next year to the extent that we elect enough new congress people that will then overturn all these government takeovers. They will need a veto proof majority, which is not going to be easy. Hopefully, insurance premiums adjust quickly and people feel it in their pocketbooks. If insurance premiums reflect the new costs imposed, people will notice it. They will be pissed off, and they will not have the government options until 2013. Hopefully, that will drive enough people to the polls to elect some real politicians who believe in freedom.

In order to appear as if he’s doing something, Obama held the “Jobs Summit” at the White House. Here are some of the ideas that are supposed to help small business.

On Thursday, about 130 small-business owners, financial experts, union leaders, economists and CEOs from across the country convened at the White House to discuss their best ideas for stimulating job growth — and staving off another uptick in the unemployment rate, which climbed to 10.2% in October.

While many small-business owners and advocates welcome the attention being paid to boosting employment, there were plenty of skeptics in attendance. Some complained that sustained economic recovery — not new jobs bills — are needed to kick-start hiring. Others pointed out that job losses have already moderated in recent months, and called into question the necessity of any moves.

I wonder how quickly the guys who questioned the need for any government involvement were thrown out of the room. Maybe we’ll see them on TV today as the Job Summit Crashers.

Work-Share Tax Credit

A jobs-sharing initiative, which already exists in 17 states, has gained traction among several members of Congress. In August, Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D., Conn.) introduced the Keep Americans Working Act, which would allow employers to reduce their employees’ hours in order to hire new workers to pick up the slack. Although employees’ hours would be reduced, their pay would remain the same, as the government would pay the balance. Notably, Paul Krugman, economist and Nobel prize winner, also backed the work-share idea.

They must be looking to Europe’s job market for this idea. Europe has instituted ideas like this in the past and made it illegal to have anyone work over a certain number of hours. This is supposed to spread the hours out among more workers. It’s a stupid idea. It does not take into account all the cost involved. For example, if I have a guy who has been working for several years, he knows how to do his job. I know what his productivity is. If I cut his hours back and hire a new person, that person needs trained, doesn’t know the job, and is less efficient. My company’s productivity will have declined. Not only that, I have to deal with a new person. I know my current employee and his work habits. I know if he’s late, takes days off, has family issues, etc. I have no clue what kind of person I may be bringing in that has to be able to produce as much as my current employee. I also have to deal with another person’s benefits, health-care, etc. Will this person cost me more in health care when government passes health care legislation? Will he drive up my unemployment, because I’m more likely to have to lay him off if the economy declines again? These are all concerns that this does not address.

What it does do is steal money from tax payers and give it to businesses so one person doesn’t have to work a normal work week. This is just crazy. You take money from people who work full-time to give it to another person who you are taking hours from in order to hire someone who is unproductive. Do they realize wealth is based on what is produced, not jobs.

Jobs Tax Credit

By contrast, jobs tax credits are largely welcomed by small-business advocates and economists. One plan from the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based research organization focused on labor issues, calls for the government to provide refundable tax credits of 10% to 15% against payroll taxes for each new hire over two years.

Isn’t social security and medicare already bankrupt? How does it help long term to take money away from them? I’m all for getting rid of them both, but that isn’t going to happen. Instead, this just leads to more government debt. Also, 15% of a new hire’s payroll tax is not that much incentive. You typically aren’t going to pay a new hire much money, and the company’s share of payroll taxes is 7.5% of their salary. How much incentive is 15% of 7.5% of their salary going to provide? I maybe reading this wrong, but that is how I read this proposal.

If I have this write, here is what it would look like. You hire a new employee and pay him $30,000 a year. You pay $2250 a year in payroll taxes on him. You get a tax credit back in the amount of 15% of his payroll tax, which is $337.50. Wow, let’s start hiring. Even if they are looking at the entire payroll tax, which is around 15%, it still doesn’t provide much incentive. The new hire seems pretty risky in today’s environment, and a few hundred dollars sure isn’t going to change that equation.

‘Cash for Caulkers’

Former President Bill Clinton and others have suggested a cash-for-clunkers style initiative that would task construction workers and contractors with weatherizing homes. By employing unspent stimulus funds, Clinton’s plan, popularly known as “cash for caulkers,” involves weatherizing houses and apartments, as well as commercial and industrial buildings. Depending on how many property owners take up the initiative, the plan could not only provide jobs to the hard-hit construction sector, it would limit carbon emissions and reduce owners’ energy costs.

Does this sounds like money down the drain or what? I can just imagine the scamming that is going to take place by a group of people, that while many are the salt of the earth, many others are about as shady as you can get. Believe me. I’ve worked construction for my dad when I was in high school and when I got laid off in the tech bubble. This is going to lead to scamming old people, the government, and all of society in general. Then again, maybe I’ll start a fake caulking business and make some extra income.

Public Works Projects

Similarly, a range of economists and nonprofits support instituting some form of directed public jobs works programs. Similar to Depression-era New Deal jobs programs, the government could create jobs in targeted places that have high unemployment. The focus would be on rebuilding infrastructure for roads, clean-up or school repair, says Mark A. Price, a labor economist at the Keystone Research Center, a think tank in Harrisburg, Pa.

Can we just admit that the people who want public works all the time are communists. Let’s not act like it’s anything else. There has already been so much wasted money on road projects. They are tearing up and rebuilding roads that don’t even need it. All this does is destroy the wealth of our country by taking money that would otherwise be going into wealth creation and putting it into things that do not increase our wealth. If we have a road before this begins and a road after this begins, but we spent billions, we are not wealthier. While proponents will claim it creates jobs that will lead to personal consumption, they are overlooking that it is taking that money from other consumers. It’s not even a wash, because the government project isn’t as efficient and productive. Government projects never create wealth, unless you are one of the cronies who gets the project and line your pockets with tax payer money.

Payroll Tax Holiday

Leading up to the first stimulus package, small-business advocacy organizations such as the National Federation for Independent Business supported a six-month payroll tax holiday.

I’m all for tax cuts, but I’m getting tired of tax cuts without spending cuts. Also, are you going to hire people for a six-month payroll tax holiday? If you do, there is a chance again, as stated above, that you are going to have to lay the new hires off shortly in the future, leading to increased unemployment insurance. Also, if I’m a small business, I’m going to take savings on payroll taxes to increase my profits. If my clients aren’t demanding more of my goods or services, I’m not going to hire more employees. Also, what is a payroll tax holiday going to do when you have this health care monstrosity hanging over your head?

Capitalizing Community Banks

President Obama has already dispatched calls for giving small companies looking to expand — and, thus, create jobs — greater access to capital by way of community banks. Making it easier for community banks with less than $1 billion in assets to access funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, would give small businesses a greater chance of landing loans, says Obama.

via Small Business: The White House Works It – WSJ.com.

TARP should be called To Anyone Requesting Program. It was passed against the will of the public for a specific purpose, and then the government decided on its own that it will do whatever it pleases with it. One of the best things they could do is announce the end of TARP. That would signal that they believe the crisis is coming to an end. Of course they won’t because they love the power that they can exercise with all the TARP money. Look at the power they have exercised over banks, automotive, etc. Last thing I would want is my community bank being at the end of the government’s leash. We’ve already seen how they change the terms of the agreement after the fact.

While all of these would probably produce some jobs, they ignore the negative consequences of each one. They ignore the jobs that will be harmed now and in the long term. They also ignore the economic consequences for the future with more government debt. Worst of all they presume that the government can fix the economy, create wealth, and is needed for economic growth. This is disasterous for the long term psyche of our country. Ronald Reagan had it right when he said, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Apparently, this has been forgotten.

While I don’t think tax payers should be subsidizing other people’s home purchases, this is what happens when the government’s games catch up with them. They are trying to prop up the housing market from the mess they created, but at the same time they are looking at contradictory policies that will harm the housing market.

Shaun Donovan, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, plans to ask Congress on Wednesday to raise the cap on the annual insurance premium that the FHA can charge borrowers. In testimony before a congressional panel, he will also outline steps the agency is considering to set minimum credit scores, to require home buyers to put more money down, and to make lenders more accountable for loans that the agency insures.

Those measures are designed to begin rebuilding the agency’s depleted capital reserves. An independent audit last month said that the estimated value of those reserves had dropped to $3.6 billion, or about 0.5% of the $685 billion in loans the FHA has insured.

But any sharp crackdown could limit the pool of potential home buyers. Many rely on FHA-backed home loans.

“We have to replenish the reserves and we have to be prepared for a market outcome that may not be as favorable” as one that was forecast by the auditor, said David Stevens, the FHA’s commissioner, in an interview Monday. The audit estimated that the agency wouldn’t need any funds from the U.S. Treasury next year.

Raising insurance premiums could help avert the need for a taxpayer bailout of the agency, but the move would raise borrowing costs for home buyers. The FHA charges an upfront insurance premium of 1.75% of the loan amount. Borrowers pay additional annual premiums of either 0.5% or 0.55%.

The FHA will also limit the amount of money that sellers can provide for closing costs on home sales to 3% of the home price, from the current level of 6%. The agency is also finalizing plans to set a minimum credit score for borrowers, possibly by requiring those making small down payments to have higher credit scores.

via FHA Considers Ways to Boost Its Reserves – WSJ.com.

Many people are calling for a second decline in housing. It’s not hard to figure out why. FHA is looking to make it harder to get an FHA insured loan. Also, come April of next year, the tax rebate will expire and those who were going to buy will have already done so. There will be a decline at that point in buyers. The government should have just stayed out of the housing decline in the first place. The decline would have been quicker, and it would have stabilized leaving a bottom to build on. Instead, it is doing as it always does. It’s delaying the bottoming and leading to a new decline shortly in the future. So, it won’t prevent the eventual bottoming, and it leaves us with massive debt as a reminder of their failed policies.

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.

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.

Here are some great excerpts from a Wall Street Journal article this morning. I’m so frustated, I don’t even have comments on it. Just take notice of the bold areas.

Since regular mammography became standard practice in the early 1990s, mortality from breast cancer—the second leading cause of cancer death among American women—has dropped by about 30%, after remaining constant for the prior half-century. But this week the 16-member task force ruled that patients under 50 or over 75 without special risk factors no longer need screening.

So what changed? Nothing substantial in the clinical evidence. But the panel—which includes no oncologists and radiologists, who best know the medical literature—did decide to re-analyze the data with health-care spending as a core concern.

The task force concedes that the benefits of early detection are the same for all women. But according to its review, because there are fewer cases of breast cancer in younger women, it takes 1,904 screenings of women in their 40s to save one life and only 1,339 screenings to do the same among women in their 50s. It therefore concludes that the tests for the first group aren’t valuable, while also noting that screening younger women results in more false positives that lead to unnecessary (but only in retrospect) follow-up tests or biopsies.

Of course, this calculation doesn’t consider that at least 40% of the patient years of life saved by screening are among women under 50. That’s a lot of women, even by the terms of the panel’s own statistical abstractions. To put it another way, 665 additional mammograms are more expensive in the aggregate. But at the individual level they are immeasurably valuable, especially if you happen to be the woman whose life is saved.

The recommendation to cut off all screening in women over 75 is equally as myopic. The committee notes that the benefits of screening “occur only several years after the actual screening test, whereas the percentage of women who survive long enough to benefit decreases with age.” It adds that “women of this age are at much greater risk for dying of other conditions that would not be affected by breast cancer screening.” In other words, grandma is probably going to die anyway, so why waste the money to reduce the chances that she dies of a leading cause of death among elderly women?

…every Democratic version of ObamaCare makes this task force an arbiter of the benefits that private insurers will be required to cover as they are converted into government contractors. What are now merely recommendations will become de facto rules, and under national health care these kinds of cost analyses will inevitably become more common as government decides where finite tax dollars are allowed to go.

More spending on “prevention” has long been the cry of health reformers, and President Obama has been especially forceful. In his health speech to Congress in September, the President made a point of emphasizing “routine checkups and preventative care, like mammograms and colonoscopies—because there’s no reason we shouldn’t be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse.”

It turns out that there is, in fact, a reason: Screening for breast cancer will cost the government too much money, even if it saves lives.

via Mammograms Provide Preview of ObamaCare – WSJ.com.

Here’s an article from the Wall Street Journal this morning about the rationing commission.

Like most of Europe, the various health bills stipulate that Congress will arbitrarily decide how much to spend on health care for seniors every year—and then invest an unelected board with extraordinary powers to dictate what is covered and how it will be paid for. White House budget director Peter Orszag calls this Medicare commission “critical to our fiscal future” and “one of the most potent reforms.”

On that last score, he’s right. Prominent health economist Alain Enthoven has likened a global budget to “bombing from 35,000 feet, where you don’t see the faces of the people you kill.”

As envisioned by the Senate Finance Committee, the commission—all 15 members appointed by the President—would have to meet certain budget targets each year. Starting in 2015, Medicare could not grow more rapidly on a per capita basis than by a measure of inflation. After 2019, it could only grow at the same rate as GDP, plus one percentage point.

……

Worse, it makes little room for medical innovations. The commission is mandated to go after “sources of excess cost growth,” meaning treatments that are too expensive or whose coverage will boost spending. If researchers find a pricey treatment for Alzheimer’s in 2020, that might be banned because it would add new costs and bust the global budget. Or it might decide that “Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller,” as President Obama put it in June.

In other words, the Medicare commission would come to function much like the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which rations care in England. Or a similar Washington state board created in 2003 to control costs. Its handiwork isn’t pretty.

The Washington commission, called the Health Technology Assessment, is manned by 11 bureaucrats, including a chiropractor and a “naturopath” who focuses on alternative, er, remedies like herbs and massage therapy. They consider the clinical effectiveness but above all the cost of medical procedures and technologies. If they decide something isn’t worth the money, then Olympia won’t cover it for some 750,000 Medicaid patients, public employees and prisoners.

So far, the commission has banned knee arthroscopy for osteoarthritis, discography for chronic back pain, and implantable infusion pumps for pain not related to cancer. This year, it is targeting such frivolous luxuries as knee replacements, spinal cord stimulation, a specialized autism therapy and MRIs of the abdomen, pelvis or breasts for cancer. It will also rule on routine ultrasounds for pregnancy, which have a “high” efficacy but also a “high” cost.

Currently, the commission is pushing through the most restrictive payment policy in the nation for drug-eluting cardiac stents—simply because bare metal stents are cheaper, even as they result in worse outcomes. If a patient is wheeled into the operating room with chest pains in an emergency, doctors will first have to determine if he’s covered by a state plan, then the diameter of his blood vessels and his diabetic condition to decide on the appropriate stent. If they don’t, Washington will not reimburse them for “inappropriate care.”

via The Health Care Rationing Commission – WSJ.com.

Here is more of the government deciding that if not everyone can have the expensive medical procedures, then no one will.  If this is the way you encourage growth and innovation, I must have missed it in my Econ 101 class. I said this in a previous blog, and I’ll say it again. Jealousy of the rich, who have more health care options, does not help the middle class or the poor. It’s the rich who pay for the innovations at first, and once companies begin recouping their R&D cost and run out of rich people (there aren’t that many of them), then prices begin to decline bringing the new technology to the masses.

While the government would argue that these limits are only on government plans, we all know that eventually we are going to fall under a national health care plan with government health care for all. Government never stops once a program is implemented. It only gets bigger. Government programs have to grow and get more people dependent on them. They are similar in this respect to private companies, except private companies have to grow by you voluntarily deciding to use them. Government just changes it’s rules and forces you to abide by them.