Real Thought

Since I have posted any thing. What has happened? Well, Senator Barak Obama’s campaign has rejected an endorsement from Louis Farrakan, leader of the Nation of Islam and become mired in a controversy about whether or not the use of the Senator’s middle name, Hussein, is prejudicial to his image. As if the name Barak Obama isn’t odd enough. If the use of the good Senator’s middle name is somehow “unfair”, I would suggest that the problem lies with the Senator and his campaign staff, not anyone else. More importantly, one of my idols has passed away, William F. Buckley Jr. I have been a long time fan of WFB’s. He was truly a towering intellect among conservatives. My condolences go to his son, Christoper and to the rest of his family. I can only say that Mr. Buckley will be missed. There were many times when I looked to Mr. Buckley’s erudite writings for the words to give my thoughts expression. He taught me that sometimes the best weapon in a debate is not a strident shout but a sotto voce comment or a withering look. He, almost single handedly gave conservatism legitimacy in America and pulled it, as a political philosophy, back from being tossed in the dustbin of history. He will be greatly missed. I am sure that he is now with his wife Patricia, having a very nice glass of Bordeaux and wondering what all the fuss is really about.

Requiescat In Pace, Mr. Buckley.

YAWN!!!!!!! The only films in which I was even remotely interested were The Counterfeiters, Katyn, La Vie en Rose and Mongol, none of which are even in English. That’s all folks!

Much has been made this election cycle about some form of universal health care for United States citizens. I am staunchly against any form of universal health care. Why? There are several reasons beginning with the simple fact that the creation of a universal health care system in the United States is unconstitutional. The Constitution clearly enumerates the powers of Congress in Article I, section 8. Nowhere in that section is Congress given the power to provide health care for all Americans. Furthermore, the 10th Amendment clearly states that any powers not granted to Congress are retained by the states or the people. Therefore without a constitutional amendment, any discussion of a Federal universal health care plan should be considered moot.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that I agree that the Federal government has the power to create a universal health care system. I would still be opposed to such a system. Why? Because such a system would be antithetical to freedom. Any time that an individual or group of individuals cedes part of their freedom of choice to the government, that freedom is lost forever. If we allow the government to take control of the health care system in America, we lose the ability to make decisions about our personal health care. The decisions will be made by the entity which pays for the service rendered and, in the case of Federal universal health care, that entity will be the Federal government. Instead of the individual having the ultimate power when it comes to health care decisions, that authority would be transferred to government bureaucrats who would have the power to decide what health care services you deserve. Personally, I do not want the employees of a government bureaucracy to make those decisions for me. Can you imagine the level of health care if the people who work at your local DMV office had to approve your medical treatment? If many Americans are already dissatisfied with HMO’s imagine the poor service if we were all forced into a single, national, government run HMO.

Next, the call for universal health care is simply a method for the thoughtful and fit to subsidize the health care of the careless and unfit. Some 89% of Americans already have access to affordable, high quality health care. Any universal plan would cause those of us who remain healthy and fit and have the forethought to plan for medical care to pay for those who have neither the forethought nor the sense to avoid excessive medical costs. Now, I know that there are those who, by accident or through no fault of their own, end up needing much higher than average medical treatment. Those people should be helped, but I believe that in this day and age, that number is very small, no more than a handful a year at best. Surely some form of catastrophic health care insurance would be a better alternative for those unfortunates than a universal system?

I am also concerned about the costs of a universal system. As we have seen recently with Medicare prescription drug coverage, what was supposed to be a program which would be modest in cost rapidly became a large drain on government resources. Has there been any government program in the last sixty years which has actually lowered costs for the services provided? I cannot think of a single one. Only when an industry or service is privatized and market forces are allowed to act upon said industry or service do real costs decline. Competition is the driving force behind cost containment. Any monopoly will be, by definition, less efficient and more costly than an industry which is open to market forces and competition. Look at the computer industry, the automobile industry or the telecommunications industry. In each of those industries increased competition and government deregulation have succeeded in driving down costs and lowering real prices of the products or services which east of those industries provides as well as expanding consumer choice. Why should the health care industry be any different?

Finally, I have been a longtime consumer of “managed health care”. First as a military dependent and then as a public employee. Have I been happy with the quality of health care which I have received? For the most part, yes. But I have not had any really serious health concern. I have been blessed with reasonably good health and I have not had any serious injuries nor chronic diseases. The clinic model has worked for me so far. But the anonymous “doctor on call” model may not work for everyone and I have real concerns that in any “universal” system many needed, but expensive, services will be rationed or denied to those who may most need them in order to contain costs. I would hate to have universal heath care that denies heart surgery to a patient because it may not be “cost effective” or disallows a CAT scan to a patient with a head injury because the necessary scanner is unavailable because it was “too expensive” to purchase one. This seems inhuman and cruel to me and yet that is what is happening in Great Britain and Canada. For these reasons I remain steadfastly opposed to any universal health care plan. In a future post I will outline a plan to bring low cost health care within reach of all Americans without creating a “universal” plan or creating a new and expensive bureaucracy.

These are the first two sentences from a Reuters story on climate change:

“Climate change threatens the human rights of millions of people who are at risk of losing access to housing, food and clean water unless governments intervene early to counter its effects, experts said on Tuesday.  At a conference on climate change and migration, United Nations officials said rising sea levels and intense storms, droughts and floods could force scores of people from their homes and off their lands — some permanently.”

First, who are the so called “experts”?  United Nations officials, none of which are climatologists.  Second, there is the assumption that governmental action can do anything to effect climate change.  The three “experts” quoted in the article are: Gordon Sheppard of the World Wildlife Federation, Michelle Leighton, director of human rights programs at the University of San Francisco’s School of Law and Kyung-wha Kang, UN deputy high commissioner for Human Rights.  Are these three really “experts” in the field of climatology?  I don’t believe so.  Furthermore, how is government intervention going to help?  It has been my experience that when a government, any government, intervenes to correct a perceived environmental crisis the result is more regulation, less freedom for the individual, a lowered standard of living, huge amounts of waste and very little real improvement in the situation.  While I believe that climate change is real, I remain unconvinced that the root cause is human activity and I am extremely skeptical that more governmental intervention and regulation is the answer.  I was once told that those who do not believe that “global warming” is man made have a hidden political and religious agenda.  Well, I do have a political agenda, the belief that government is by its very nature destructive of individual freedom and is therefore something that should be carefully guarded against.  What I find astonishing is that those who spread the “more government is the cure to global warming” message seem to be blind to their agenda, the destruction of individual freedom.  This article is merely an example.  You can read the entire article here.

Fidel Castro has stepped down as President of Cuba after a fifty year rule. The reigns of power have been handed to his younger brother Raul, who has none of Fidel’s charisma and is a much more dogmatic Stalinist. In the short term, I don’t predict that there will be dramatic changes in Cuba, which before Fidel’s revolution was the richest nation in the Caribbean and after fifty years of misrule and mismanagement is now one of the poorest and most heavily regulated. Raul will have to make changes and allow more foreign investment and economic freedom or I believe that he will be deposed in a short time. The problem is that if he allows the Cuban people more economic freedom they will begin to demand more political freedom and if that happens he just may find himself the Mikhail Gorbachev of Cuba. I certainly hope that this happens and only time will tell.

Once again we have come to that holiday in which we celebrate our uniquely American legacy in electing only the best and brightest to the highest of the land.  Today, I choose to honor:

Rutherford B. Hayes, nineteenth President of the United States.  President Hayes was a brevet Major General during the Civil War and was wounded in action.  Among his accomplishments as President were signing a bill that allowed women to plead before the Supreme Court, having the first telephone installed in the White House and being the first President to visit the West Coast.  He is probably most famously remembered for the action of his wife, “Lemonade Lucy” Hayes who refused to serve alcoholic beverages in the White House.

I am finding the presidential race boring, my hockey team is playing poorly and except for the death of Hezbollah’s military head and more hand wringing about “global warming” not much is going on in the world right now.  Sure, there is the war in Iraq which, by all accounts, seems to be going well and Afghanistan, which is all but over.  Sure, the Russians buzzed a US carrier group near Japan and Kosovo has declared independence and the economy is shaky but fundamentally sound.  The dollar is not worth much and shows no signs of strengthening in the near term.  Both Obama and Clinton believe that the answer to all of the United States’ problems is to increase taxes on the “wealthy”, declare the war against Islamic fascism lost, increase the size of the government and the amount of government intrusion into our lives.  Remember, every time the government provides a service, be it Social Security, public schooling or universal health care, you give up part of your freedom.  You surrender the power to make a decision in that area of your life to the government.  You no longer wish to be free.  You become a slave to the state in that area.  That is intolerable and inexcusable.  That, my friends, is the gentle, seductive, slippery slope towards tyranny and totalitarianism.