More health care back and forth

A friend wrote to me: "In a free market system there is too much room for deception, as long as profit drives these companies than people will get screwed. People shouldn't have to scramble for their lives when they get sick."

My response:

In a free market system, there is actually very little room for "deception". First of all, if an insurance company violated a contract, the customer should sue. That's what our common law system is designed to take care of. Second, if the insurance company is really deceiving their customers, eventually, those customers will catch on and they will leave to go to a competitor who is providing better value, better service and has made an effort to protect its reputation by doing right by its customers. The company that is deceiving their customers will be put out of business unless they change their ways. That is market discipline. It's incredibly powerful, but has been inhibited in health care because of the government created, cartel-like system we have now.

On the other hand, when the government screws people, there is no accountability. People cannot leave and go elsewhere. People cannot opt out. The government doesn't have to make a profit, and it doesn't have to worry about attracting customers. There is no market discipline. They can just put competitors out of business by charging an artificially low price, by regulating their competitors to death, or by forcing people into their system. They can screw people over and over again without any consequences.

So it's actually the exact opposite. The more we get away from a free market system, the more people will get screwed. The more we have a truly free market system, the more insurance companies and health care providers will have to be responsive to the customer.

Someone finally asks...

...if the President wants competition, why not allow the purchase of health insurance across state lines?


Hats off to Wolf Blitzer for asking the question.

I guess that question didn't make the cut for David Gregory's interview with the President on Sunday, but this one did!

Gregory: Hate to break it to you, but doesn't look so good for your White Sox here. So I want to know who is your pick to win the World Series?

Breitbart hints that next story will be about corruption at the NEA

After skillfully exposing Acorn and the mainstream media with the launch of biggovernment.com, Andrew Breitbart writes this morning:

At the very least, filmmaker James O'Keefe and actress Hannah Giles deserve a Pulitzer Prize for their expose of deep corruption and unspeakable immorality at the ACORN housing division. But more important, I won't rest until they receive a grant to continue their partisan artistry from the National Endowment for the Arts.

That's this week's mission.

Can't wait to see what's next...

[Update]
From www.bighollywood.com:

The government involvement here is what is truly stunning. Not only did the government sponsor a conference call specifically dedicated to recruiting artists to the Obama re-election and political strategy campaign – and not only did they co-sponsor the call with Obama partisan organizations — they list lobbying organizations on their website for United We Serve (Serve.gov). As Dana Loesch of BigGovernment.com reported, ACORN is included in the “non-partisan” organizations listed by Serve.gov, among the other participants like the AARP grassroots advocacy organization (which asks you to “Be a part of a team of grassroots advocates that encourage elected officials to address the issue of health care reform…”).

All of this – particularly the government-sponsored conference call itself – is in blatant violation of the Anti-Lobbying Act (19 U.S. Code §1913), which explicitly provides: “No part of the money appropriated by any enactment of Congress shall, in the absence of express authorization by Congress, be used directly or indirectly to pay for any personal service, advertisement, telegram, telephone, letter, printed or written matter, or other device, intended or designed to influence in any manner a Member of Congress, a jurisdiction, or an official of any government, to favor, adopt, or oppose by vote or otherwise, any legislation, law, ratification, policy, or appropriation, whether before or after the introduction of any bill, measure or resolution proposing such legislation, law, ratification, policy or appropriation …”

Violation of this law, in turn, violates 31 U.S. Code §1352, which bans use of “funds appropriated by any Act [from being] expended by the recipient of a Federal contract, grant, loan, or cooperative agreement to pay any person for influencing or attempting to influence an officer or employee of any agency, a Member of Congress, an officer or employee of Congress, or an employee of a Member of Congress in connection with any Federal action …”

What a marvelous idea!

Let's take an insane killer on a field trip to the county fair! Well, that's exactly what officials in Spokane, Washington did. No way you'll guess what happened next:

Killer escapes on trip to county fair

SPOKANE, Wash. - Authorities have put out a statewide alert for a mentally ill killer who escaped during a hospital field trip to a county fair, leading to fears that he'll become more unstable and potentially dangerous the longer he is on the loose with no medication.

Sgt. Dave Reagan of the Spokane County sheriff's office says Phillip Arnold Paul remained at large Friday and officials believe he's headed to Sunnyside, the town

where his parents live. Reagan said anyone spotting him should call 911 and not try to confront him.

Paul was committed after he was acquitted by reason of insanity in the 1987 slaying of an elderly woman in Sunnyside. He soaked the woman's body in gasoline to throw off search dogs and buried the remains in her flower garden. He reportedly said voices in his head told him she was a witch.

He was caught trying to escape four years later, and later knocked a deputy unconscious in the booking area following his detention.

Read the whole thing. Or don't. Regardless, until further notice you may want to put that trip to Spokane on hold.

Nadler Calls Acorn Bill Unconstitutional

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) is claiming that any bill to defund Acorn is unconstitutional because it violates the Constitution’s prohibition against Bills of Attainder.

I am not a Constitutional scholar, but I believe the prohibition against Bills of Attainder is designed to maintain separation of powers between the legislative branch and the judicial branch by preventing Congress from declaring a person or organization guilty and punishing them accordingly.

Just a couple of thoughts:

First of all, this is a spending issue, and according to the Constitution, the Congress is in charge of all spending.

Second, I don't see how taking away a subsidy is a "punishment", at least in the legal sense. Congress is not declaring Acorn guilty, and is not claiming to have any power to put anyone in prison; they are just choosing not to fund Acorn with taxpayer dollars. As far as this Congressional action goes, Acorn is free to continue to operate as long as it can raise funds from other sources.

And where was the talk about Bills of Attainders when Congress was talking about taxing AIG bonuses up to 95%, or when Congress threatens to tax "excessive" profits from the oil companies?

And Now ABC Gets On Board

Over at The Corner, the National Review staff points to this report from ABC news entitled U.S. Taxpayers Fund Empty 'Airports to Nowhere'.

CNN investigates $31 million "stimulus" project

This story may not be nearly as compelling as the James O'Keefe/Hannah Giles Acorn videos, but it may be a sign of things to come. CNN's Drew Griffin investigates why $31 million of stimulus money was allocated to two border crossing facilities that each handle an average of 22 vehicles per day. Griffin asks:

Did politics, rather than security, guide the DHS? Especially when a border town like Laredo, Texas, which sees 66,000 crossings a day, was getting not one dime of the $400 million in DHS border stimulus funds. Montana, in total, was to receive $77 million.

When questioned by CNN, the DHS initially defended the decision, but later changed its tune and suspended the plans until further review.

In business, there is a concept called Activity Based Accounting, where costs are assigned to a product or service based on the activities they require. In this case, the cost is the $31 million, and the activity is vehicles served. With twenty-two cars served per day per facility, times two facilities, these border patrol facilities will service about 16,000 vehicles per year. Assuming the facilities are good for 20 years, that means that the facilities can expect to serve approximately 320,000 vehicles over the course of their useful lives. Therefore, the cost of each vehicle served would be approximately $100/per vehicle. And, this does not include labor costs and other operating expenditures, which might easily add another $25-$50 in cost per vehicle served.

With a $700 billion stimulus bill, there are probably thousands of stories like this one. As Jon Stewart shouted to the mainstream media in his hilarious Acorn report, "Let's get to work people!"

Time Magazine Asks "Is Glenn Beck Bad for America?"

But maybe the more appropriate question is, "is Glenn Beck bad for President Obama"? (Or better yet, "is President Obama bad for America"?)

The article is not completely terrible. Below are some excerpts where they manage to give him some credit.

This flexible narrative often contains genuinely uncomfortable truths. Some days "they" are the unconfirmed policy "czars" whom Beck fears Obama is using to subvert constitutional government — and he has some radical-sounding sound bites to back it up. Some days "they" are the network of leftist community organizers known as ACORN — and his indictment of the group is looking stronger every day.

and

He is having an impact. Along with St. Louis, Mo., blogger Jim Hoft, whose site is called Gateway Pundit, Beck pushed one of Obama's so-called czars, Van Jones, to resign during Labor Day weekend. ... On Sept. 14 the Senate overwhelmingly voted to cut off all federal funds to ACORN, and the U.S. Census Bureau severed its ties to the organization. This followed Beck's masterly promotion of a series of videos made by two guerrilla filmmakers who posed as a pimp and prostitute while visiting ACORN offices around the country.

Joe Scarborough accused Beck this morning of "selling anger". Well, if he means anger over the fact that Beck, a former disc jockey and self described rodeo clown, has to be the one to break one explosive story after another that the rest of the media ignores, then maybe Scarborough is right.

Jay Nordlinger sums it up

Jay Nordlinger, senior editor at National Review:

I thought Barack Obama would be a poor and troublesome president. Did I think he would yuk it up with Hugo Chávez, smirk with Daniel Ortega about the Bay of Pigs, turn his wrath on a Central American country trying to follow its constitution, denounce President Bush abroad, bow to the king of Saudi Arabia, endorse a radical Middle Eastern view of how Israel came into being, knock Western countries that try to protect Muslim girls from unwanted shrouding, invite the Iranian regime to our Fourth of July parties, stay essentially mute in the face of counterrevolution in Iran, squeeze and panic Israel, cold-shoulder the Cuban democrats in order to warm to the Cuban dictatorship, scrap missile defense in Eastern Europe, and refuse to meet with the Dalai Lama — in addition to his attempts to have government eat great portions of American society? No, I did not. You?

P.S. When President Ford, at the encouragement of Secretary Kissinger, refused to meet with Solzhenitsyn, conservatives thought this was a pretty rotten move and posture. I hope these same conservatives, and their heirs, see what President Obama’s snubbing of the Dalai Lama means today.

P.P.S. When President Obama does something — even a small something — like turn off the "news ticker" outside the American interests section in Havana, he tries to make nice with oppressors. Sometimes in life you have to choose: whether to make nice with the oppressors or with the oppressed. It’s hard to do both.

P.P.P.S. Will Obama’s moves pay off? Will Russia join arms with us against nuclearizing mullahs, or will the Cuban dictatorship reduce its tortures in the prison cells? I’m not sure the ends are really the point, with the Obama crowd at large. I think the main point may be not to upset regimes in power: and therefore show that America can "get along" with the world, unlike under that crude, narrow, swaggering, simplistic rancher from Texas.

Get along or go along.

Nordlinger is a great and faithful rememberer of those who suffer under authoritarian regimes, and writes frequently about political prisoners in places like Cuba and China. I wish someone like him had the President's ear.

And as to his primary point -- Obama's performance in office as compared even to conservatives' low expectations -- I can't help but agree. Obama's work experience (and lack thereof), voting record, and past associations showed that he was a committed liberal and not the centrist he and his supporters claimed him to be. It was clear too that in his thinking Obama would be prone to all of the left-liberal bad habits, including the tendency to see the federal government as the solution to all problems; the impulse to regard international conflict as ultimately the fault of the U.S.; and naivete about the desires of hostile nations. But I held out hope that he had enough political sense to do a little Clintonian triangulation now and then, and to get the easy calls right. Jay's litany suggests that my hope was ill-founded.

Again, it's a good thing the Obama is filled with super-geniuses, or else I'd be worried.

"U.S. Scrapping Bush's European Missile Defense Plan"

The AP reports:

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is shelving an Eastern European missile defense plan that has been a major irritant in relations with Russia, a U.S. ally said Thursday. The Pentagon confirmed a "major adjustment" of the system designed to guard against Iranian missiles.

Jan Fischer, the prime minister of the Czech Republic, told reporters that President Barack Obama phoned him overnight to say the U.S. "is pulling out of plans to build a missile defense radar on Czech territory." The missile defense system, planned under the Bush administration, was being built in the Czech Republic and Poland.

I'm so glad we are now being governed by super-geniuses. What could go wrong?