Obamas Healthcare

I glanced briefly at Obamas plan for healthcare tonight. Here are some of the highlights of the plan followed by my thoughts.

1. Invest in IT: Wow invest 10 billion and save 77 billion. I'm sure that hospitals have never thought of that or done a cost benefit analysis. But I'm sure Obama's people know more than the hospital administrators about how to run a hospital.
2. A. Support Disease Management program, B. Ensure Quality Care: A. Wait you mean that I am going to have to pay for some fat dudes gym membership? B. I'm sure the constant threat of litigation and ridiculous legal awards are not incentive enough for doctors and hospitals to do everything in their power to ensure quality.
   
3. Lower costs by taking on anti competitive action in the drug industry: Do you mean ignore their patents? By all means get us lower prices now at the cost of future advances. Brilliant. Also he wants to increase competition. If your ultimate goal is a single payer system where is the competition.
   
4. Reduce cost of catastrophic illness for employees and employers: His plan is to pay employers who have an employee with a catastrophic illness. And this money is going to come from...?
5. Lastly, affordable and accessible health care for all: And you wonder why I think he's a communist.

Lastly if you want to know why health care is so expensive it is pretty simple, it is the best in the world. I know, I know. You thought Cuba had a better health care system. Well try this little test. You are seriously ill and need an operation. You can go anywhere in the world, even Cuba, and money is not an option. Where do you go?
It reminds me of a sign I saw in a barber shop once. You can get a hair cut: Fast, Good, Cheap. Pick two.

The Law

I just finished reading The Law by Frederic Bastiat. Its pretty dang good. It clearly illustrates what the limits of government should be.
I was pretty intrigued with his idea of false philanthropy. This false philanthropy is essentially forced charity where one group is forced to provide for another group. I have always thought it would be far better to replace things like Social Security, Medicaid, and other welfare type programs with churches and other charitable organizations. I imagine that if I received a 15.4% raise, by eliminating just social security and medicare taxes, I could contribute far more to my church. They then could use this money to help the poor and the needy. I would also argue that they could operate it far more efficiently and with far less waste then the current bureaucracy operates.

Happy Holidays Fred Thompson Style

Farm Subsidies in Your Area

This website is pretty interesting. Its kind of like the opensecrets.org of farm subsidies.

Keynesianism Stinks

A 7 minute video on why government spending doesn't help the economy.

Green Jobs a Benefit?

Hussein Obama wants to create 5 million green collar jobs. If this sounds like a win win to you you should read about the broken window fallacy.

Better Late Than Never?

Proposition 8 in California has been causing quite a ruckus lately. Many people are surprised that with all my other libertarian ideas that I would be in favor of banning gay marriage so this will be my effort to try and explain it coherently. First and foremost my church is strongly opposed to it and I learned long ago that our Heavenly Father is smarter than me and not to question him.
From a more libertarian perspective I look back to the history of marriage. For thousands of years churches were the ones who kept records of births, marriages, etc. States really didn't care all that much whether a person was married or not. People were married by their church in order to avoid the sin of fornication. Now I think you would have a hard time arguing that gay people are trying to avoid the sin of fornication when they really don't give a crap about the sin of homosexuality. Therefore I think marriage is a religious thing and that the government has no business in even issuing licenses. That is a right of churches that has been taken away to a large degree. Remember we have the freedom of religion not from religion.
The second reason gays would want to be married is to be entitled to the benefits that the government gives to married couples. Libertarians generally view any special interest treatment as bad so this doesn't really apply. Besides they can already get most of the benefits just by becoming a domestic partnership in California I believe.
The third reason gays would want to get married is to make homosexuality more main stream. This is simply an advertising campaign and has nothing to do with their rights (unless they believe they have the right to not be offended like so many others).
I hope this explains it better. If you have any questions or comments or think I am psycho please leave me a comment and I will try to explain it better.