Initial Thoughts on Universal Health Care
I wanted to write another article before I left on Friday and have been meaning to take this topic on, but kept forgetting. It wasn’t until I saw an inconsequential blog about health care that I remembered this topic. I told a friend, an advocate of universal health care, that I’d get this done for him.
While universal health care sounds like an amazingly good idea (and it certainly is a gracious theory), there are complications with socialized price setting and everyone would eventually wind up losing (last paragraph in the Austrain economics post).
The empathetic complaint does not rest easily on my ears; the complaints that we have to take care of our elderly. It’s true, but universal health care isn’t the answer. In fact, within the past 40 years, doctors gave free care to the elderly, eating the cost of such an endeavor because they knew that they owed it to the elderly. This was, of course, prior to a huge amount of government intervention/medicare/medicaid.
Here’s why health care is so expensive:
HMOs generally charge people a set monthly amount, due to the inability to actually estimate the cost of routine medical visits. Because of this, HMOs want to safely minimize their costs, often denying coverage of various drugs, treatments, and procedures. Similarly, Medicare does the same. Because of this, doctors and patients are not in any negotiable situation, as both now have their hands tied by third parties. Because hospitals have been turned into corporate messes by all of this recent regulation, they now charge the maximum allowed amount, especially in an age dominated by malpractice suits. Before 1965, physicians and hospitals, as competitive, tried to charge the bare minimum to get more business. However, with HMOs/Medicare/Medicaid we now have corporate middlemen denying legitimate treatment due to costs and doctors that overcharge to cover themselves. This is what managed health care has done so far; driving costs up while watering down medical efficiency.
So, what can we do? Medical Savings Accounts. This allows a person to save up pretax dollars in a special account used for medical expenses. If this were the case, patient and physician could once again negotiate on treatment/price and doctors would be paid as the service was rendered, rather than having to wait months for the HMO/insurance provider’s billing cycle. This would, again, cut down on the need to overcharge patients and would drive up competition among physicians, as patients could choose what physician and what treatments they wanted; driving down medical costs.
There’s a doctor operating in Tennessee that opened a low-cost clinic. He will not accept insurance, medicare, or medicaid. Because of this he absolutely destroys overhead (minus the cost of equipment), can negotiate with patients on the fly, and can focus on medicine rather than billing. Some of his uninsured patients have even gone to the emergency room for non-emergency situations because no other doctor would see them. Besides, everyone knows that government clinics offer long waits and inferior treatment.
Paraphrased from The Revolution: A Manifesto
John McCain made a point about our treatment of veterans and how to make health care affordable. Barack Obama talked about making health care affordable and legally required for children. The flaw with both Senator Obama’s and Senator McCain’s position is that neither acknowledge that government subsidization and regulation created this health care catastrophe. Prior to 1965, American health care was the envy of the world. However, when the government decides that it has to get involved, costs go up and efficiency goes down, no matter what you’re talking about. Besides, the universal health care that Senator Obama speaks of is that of the Veterans’ hospitals; if you could even call that “health” care.
If you really want to help the elderly and uninsured, cut costs down and make insurance only for emergency situations (like it used to be). There’s no reason that a routine visit should cost a couple of hundred dollars. In fact, the doctor from TN is able to charge only $35 for a visit. If you’re mad at the current health care system, blame the government for getting involved in the first place and tell them to stay out of the private sector.
The flaw with universal health care, like you’ll hear me talking about a lot, is that it isn’t a solution to any problem, it’s an antibiotic on a deep wound (killing good and bad things in the marketplace, causing the wound temporary relief, but long-term damage). The real problem lies in the fact that there is a third party entity (government) trying to create level ground for patient and physician. The drawback is that, because of this, government will not allow either party to exist outside of itself.
Let’s break that relationship down really quick, because I’m losing faith in my ability to thoroughly explain the problems within the health care system:
Person A (Girl) and Person B (Boy) are at a bar, talking. A and B are getting along great and each motion to their friends to leave. The two of them will most likely be leaving together tonight. However, A’s attempts to have a good time are fouled as her group of friends huddle around a mutual friend, who has fallen to the ground crying about how she (Person C, now) isn’t loved, how ugly she is, and how pretty A is. Being guilted into sympathy, A goes to her friend and has to forfeit her night with B. Both A and B become dissatisfied. Let’s face it, the government is C; the girl that no one wanted to invite to the party, but had to. Otherwise she might have committed suicide and, while no one really cared, no one wanted to admit that they did not care and no one has the audacity to stand up to her over dramatic outlook on life. Government, when it becomes involved in private industry, destroys the relationship between business and consumer and cheapens any attempt at legitimacy.
The Importance of Capital Theory by Bob Murphy
I found a really awesome article about Austrian Capital Theory written by Bob Murphy. I suggest everyone read the whole article but, if you’re not very economically savvy, just stick to the “A Sushi Model of Capital Consumption” and “Conclusion” sections. I don’t think that this link can be forwarded enough, as it simplistically explains and illustrates Capital Theory:
Film Review: Quarantine
I went to see this film last night with a small group of friends and thoroughly enjoyed it. The group consensus by the end of the film was that it was “amazing”.
The film starts out innocently enough as a reporter and her cameraman are shadowing a couple of firefighters. However, when their first call of the night leads them to an apartment complex on reports of “strange screams” the movie takes a turn for the worst. The building falls under strict quarantine, as tenants begin showing signs of aggression and communication degradation. The reporter, Angela, and cameraman, Scott, 
soon find themselves among the ranks of the infected. The virus portrays rabies-like symptoms, of which there is no known cure, and the group of uninfected rush to survive, not only from becoming infected, but from being killed by those already infected.
I can safely say that no other film has had my adrenaline pumping as much as this film did. Personally, I loved Cloverfield and found the first-person P.O.V. to be gorgeous. Quarantine is filmed in the same first-person P.O.V. and, in my opinion, delivers even better than Cloverfield did. I will complain that, for the first 15 minutes of the movie, I felt nauseous and wasn’t sure if it was the shaky camerawork or the fact that I had eaten nearly an entire package of Buncha Crunch. However, given that the feeling subsided, I’m inclined to blame the candy.
Quarantine brings back the creepiest elements of The Blair Witch Project and delivers massive amounts of entertainment. In the theater, one patron even described the film as being as culty as Night of the Living Dead. I agree with him. This film delivers so much, not only to casual moviegoers, but to horror fans all across the board. With just the right amount of gore, amazing camera tricks, and leaving out just the right amount of information, it really draws to viewer in.
The film fed more on suspense and thrill rather than any fear or long-term nightmare inducing memories. I’m prone to nightmares, which was why The Orphanage scared the Hell out of me, but Quarantine did not have any long-term place in my memory of fear. Quarantine is guaranteed to get your adrenaline pumping and delivers more than I would have expected of a remake of a foreign horror film ([●REC] being the original, Spanish film).
I entered the theatre with expectations of disappointment (modern American horror films generally don’t deliver) and left in awe. I have to highly recommend Quarantine to anyone that likes horror, but has a tight enough stomach for shaky camera work. The official site is here.
Austrian Economics, What?
This is in contrast to the Keynesian Economics post.
Austrian economics is far less complicated than Keynesian Economics, especially since it does not deal with numbers/math/formulas/etc. The reason for this is that the Austrian school focuses more on the market and human psychology as opposed to banking statistics. The reason for this style is the belief that economic conditions are decided by human interaction with the market; the bulk of which cannot be isolated and studied under laboratory conditions.
One of the more critical points that Austrian economics drives home is the need for a lack of government regulation in a free-market economy. This is especially evident in the fact that, according to Austrian economics, inflation is not the rise in price of objects but rather the increase in money supply, that raises the nominal value of money and erodes the real value of money (more dollars in circulation = lower buying power per dollar). The central banking system falls under heavy scrutiny because it controls the fluctuation of money by artificially altering interest rates and creating speculative “bubbles” that eventually burst and cause an economic downturn.
The trick here is in paying attention. The government would have you think that inflation is, by definition, the increase of the price of goods and that it, therefore has some pervasive cause that is essentially incurable and happens within any economy. However, inflation is, according to Austrian theorists, the devaluation of currency:
Inflation, as this term was always used everywhere and especially in this country, means increasing the quantity of money and bank notes in circulation and the quantity of bank deposits subject to check. But people today use the term “inflation” to refer to the phenomenon that is an inevitable consequence of inflation, that is the tendency of all prices and wage rates to rise. The result of this deplorable confusion is that there is no term left to signify the cause of this rise in prices and wages. There is no longer any word available to signify the phenomenon that has been, up to now, called inflation. It follows that nobody cares about inflation in the traditional sense of the term. As you cannot talk about something that has no name, you cannot fight it. Those who pretend to fight inflation are in fact only fighting what is the inevitable consequence of inflation, rising prices. Their ventures are doomed to failure because they do not attack the root of the evil. They try to keep prices low while firmly committed to a policy of increasing the quantity of money that must necessarily make them soar. As long as this technological confusion is not entirely wiped out, there cannot be any question of stopping inflation. – Ludwig von Mises
Austrian economics stands in direct opposition to Keynesian economics on the field of regulation because Austrian scholars feel that it is the central bank’s attempt to curve the business cycle and make it less drastic that, in all actuality, causes unexpected, dangerous downturns. It is the actions of the central bank’s artificially lowered interest rates that cause inflation and, as such, the lessened purchasing power of the dollar.
Austrian scholars generally advocate a return to “sound monetary policy” such as the gold standard. Doing such would ensure that the growth of the monetary supply would never spiral out of control and therefore inflation would cease to be a major issue.
Austrian economics also stands strongly against any sort of socialist economic policies, declaring that the market value of goods produced by a socialist country would not be representative of a true economy because all means, resources, and products would be owned by the government, free from exterior competition. As such, no absolute or competitive value could be attributed to any socialist product and socialism, as a standalone economic standard, would fail.
A Little More Housekeeping
So, I took out the photography section until I can get my hands on a DSLR camera. After this week I will hopefully have time to write about Austrian economics the way I did about Keynesian economics. So, keep a look out for that.
