Firms to Cut Health Plans as Reform Starts

"Once provisions of the Affordable Care Act start to kick in during 2014, at least three of every 10 employers will probably stop offering health coverage, a survey released Monday shows."

Firms to cut health plans as reform starts: survey - MarketWatch

Waiver Corruption

"I will repeat the same question I’ve been asking since the first health care waiver was granted: If Obamacare is such a great law, why does the White House keep exempting its best friends from it?"

WOLF: Obamacare waiver corruption must stop - Washington Times

Obamacare

A Glimpse of a Future

"Almost five years into his state’s Romneycare plan, it turns out that spending is out of control, threatening public-sector budgets and private-sector wealth generation."

A glimpse of a future with Obamacare - The Washington Post

The Hole Where Doughnuts Used to Be

"The trouble with the state giving your employer a licence to ‘nudge’ is that your employers are not your parents."

The hole where doughnuts used to be, by Vivienne Raper | spiked

Medical Loss Ratio Explained

"Essential Benefits" an Impossible Job, But They're Going to Do It Anyway

"After hours of testimony, the panel's chairman John Ball, seemed to find only one point on which everyone could agree: 'We have an impossible job.'"

'Essential benefits' a complex question in new health-care law

PBS Myths of Cuba

A Radical Obesity Hypothesis

Part One: Where food is hard to get, expensive, and it tastes bad, very few people get fat.

Part Two: Where food is plentiful, affordable, and it tastes good, lots of people get fat.

Buzz Saw

On the fast-fading topic of health care, President Obama said:

"We've gotten pretty far down the road, but I have to admit, we've run into a bit of a buzz saw along the way. The long process of getting things done runs headlong into the special interests, their armies of lobbyists, and partisan politics aimed at exploiting fears instead of getting things done. And the longer it's taken, the uglier the process has looked."

In other words, "Some people dared to disagree."

In business, if the consumer disagrees, you change the product or try another consumer. You do not whine about those who disagree. You do not press them to change their mind in the name of "getting things done."

In fact, business flourishes when consumers disagree. More room for the rest of us, you see. You don't like Starbucks' coffee? How about Seattle's Best, Coffee People, Timothy's, Gloria Jean's, Cafe Altura, Eight O'Clock, Douwe Egberts, Lavazza, Folgers, Jeremiah's Pick, Emeril's, Aloha Island, Gevalia, Wolfgang Puck's, Maxwell House, Yuban, All Day Gourmet, Dunkin Donuts, Peet's, Caribou, Van Houtee...need I go on?

But, if you don't like a particular piece of legislation, you have no choice, nowhere else to go. You have no choice but to resist or accept, and that is hardly a choice. That is the choice of a prisoner or a slave, not the choice of a consumer.

No wonder the President ran into a "buzz saw." We all might breath easier if only there were more of them out there.

Same Old Idea

Coming soon, from the kind of progressive thinking that brought you "the worst car in history."

"Reliable, no-frills health care."

"Health care designed to make new economic sense."

"Everybody needs health care sometime."

and the marketing slogan that says it all...

"Introducing the same old idea."

Honestly, you can't make this stuff up.

As the Economist writes, "The idea of a reliable, no-frills car from an exotic source attracted millions of dollars’ worth of media coverage.

The only flaw was the car itself. Even after strenuous efforts to raise quality control at the Zastava plant, it was still hopelessly unreliable, and obsolete by the standards of the modern auto industry. The verdict of outside commentators was damning and unanimous. For the price of a new Yugo, consumers would find a second-hand car (of almost any kind) better value."

Passed, but Unpopular

Best headline of the day:

"Health Care Bill That Is Hated by Liberals, Conservatives, Libertarians, Socialists, Christians, Feminists, the Media and the American People Passes Senate"

Reason, Hit and Run.

Envelopes and Stethoscopes?

Economist Steven Horowitz writes...

"CNN reports that the US Postal Service lost $3.8 billion last fiscal year. Delivering the mail is pretty easy compared to running the health care system. Why would anyone trust the folks who can't even deliver the mail to run health care?"

Long and Confusing Rules

Now that the House has passed a health care bill that it promises will fix the health care system once and for all, we should stop and think about the proper use of the law before we go any further.

The law was not made to manage the many fine threads of complex human relationships. Trying to fix the health care system with legislation is like trying to fix a spider web with the broad end of a broom.

Properly used, the law should define the general rules of the game, and no more. When it goes beyond that, when it attempts to legislate every contingency, it morphs into a 2,000 page bill which no one will read...until it is too late. Then the 2,000 page bill will spawn 20,000 pages of regulation, and what used to be an individual decision will become a hopelessly public one.

In such a world, life will be a Kafkaesque journey where the rules are so long and confusing that they might just as well be arbitrary. In such a world, more will be lost and destroyed than ever will be saved.

The Government Cable "Option"

Provincial Amateurism

"An example of the provincial amateurism of current White House operations was the way the president's innocuous back-to-school pep talk got sandbagged by imbecilic support materials soliciting students to write fantasy letters to "help" the president (a coercive directive quickly withdrawn under pressure). Even worse, the entire project was stupidly scheduled to conflict with the busy opening days of class this week, when harried teachers already have their hands full. Comically, some major school districts, including New York City, were not even open yet. And this is the gang who wants to revamp national healthcare?"

Camille Paglia writing in Salon

Rationing Health Care

"Virtually all nationalized health systems, neither nourished nor updated by profit-driven private investment, eventually lead to rationing."

Camille Paglia, in Salon.com

Words Without a Language

Trying to control the price of health care without a market is like trying control the definition of words without a language.

Universal Car Care

The Galen Institute of Alexandria, VA describes itself as "a non-profit research organization devoted exclusively to health policy. We work to promote a more informed public debate over ideas that advance individual freedom, consumer choice, and competition in the health sector."

This video won first place in the Institute's "Do No Harm" video contest. View the other winners here.

Dissecting Health Care Plans

Health care reform is in the air again, and this short video from the Cato Institute frames the issue nicely.