How out-of-control insurance warps health-care costs

Jonah Goldberg publish a column that reads, in part:
"...in 1940, 90 percent of Americans were uninsured, but by 1960, that number was down to 25 percent."

It can't be stated enough that there is an enormous difference between "health insurance" and "health care."

Prior to the explosion of insurance as an employment benefit, people paid out-of-pocket for most medical expenses.

The modern insanity of billing even routine events through insurance and the consequent insulation of consumers from the true costs of health care has caused ridiculous spiraling of health care costs.

Tomorrow I take a Belgian mare into the Ohio State University Veterinary Hospital's Equine Opthalmology clinic for removal and treatment of a probably Squamous Cell Carcinoma in her eye.

The worst-case estimate for delicate opthalmological surgery and radiation treatment? About $2500.

Similar treatment for a human would end up costing hundreds of thousands.

It is *not* hundreds of times more expensive to perform the surgery safely and effectively on a human than a horse.

Human healthcare costs are ridiculous because lots of people are profiting on them being ridiculous.

My family doesn't consume as much in health care as even my employee contributions for my employer-provided health in insurance.

It's a huge cash cow for a whole industry, because -- like our payroll tax withholding (another broken system) -- it's money we never really experience in the first place, so we don't feel the pain of losing it.

More health care needs to come out-of-pocket.

Health insurance should be for emergencies, major health crises.

If this were the case, we'd see routine procedures decreasing in price across the board and sanity returning to health care costs as hospitals and doctors, like other businesses had to deal with consumers saying "You want to charge me *what*?"

I had a farm accident last fall that required eight stitches. It cost me almost nothing out of pocket, but the insurance company was charged nearly $800 for the treatment. I didn't even realize it until weeks later when seeing the statement.

My local vet would have stitched the same wound up on one of my animals for a fraction of the real cost, and just as effectively.

Captcha: harp on

Hypocrisy

Accusations of hypocrisy in the political arena seem largely a tool of the left.

The latest is related to the claim that Sarah Palin had a fling with basketball player Glen Rice back in the 80s, before she was married.

Most people on the right that I'm seeing on various comment pages are saying, understandably, "So?"

On the left, responders are saying "See? She's a hypocrite! She's against sex outside of marriage, but she had sex outside of marriage."

It's almost hard for me to discuss accusations like this seriously, because the moral and intellectual childishness of the position is so extreme that to explain it to such an obviously ill-equipped mind seems like a tremendous chore.

The most obvious fact is that history is rife with people who have done something in the past which they regret, and because of that regret have become powerful advocates against the type of wrong they have done. Similarly, there are many people throughout history who have fallen short of the standards they espouse; that doesn't mean that the standard itself is bad.

If we apply the same "hypocrisy" standard being used against Sarah Palin for the alleged affair to other historical figures, here's what we have:

• The apostle Paul could never become a proponent of Christianity, because he used to persecute Christians.
• Martin Luther could never have launched the Protestant revolution at the Catholic Church because he himself was a Catholic Priest.
• Pre U.S. Civil War slave owners who freed their slaves and became anti-slavery advocates could never have done so, because they used to own slaves themselves.

Shall I go on? Many recovering drug addicts and alcoholics have been inspired by their struggles to help others -- most people leading AA and other 12-step programs are recovering addicts themselves. We don't find that controversial.

Is it the "but they aren't hiding the fact that they were addicts" issue? Does anyone really feel that it's incumbent upon either normal people or politicians to make up a sexual disclosure document before they can opine on family values? That's a remarkably intrusive and pointless exercise, and invariably the people condemning others for some past indiscretion are those who oppose the agenda that person is currently espousing, not the past behavior.

Which brings us to the next point. Ideas are independent of the people who promote them. The idea that people should avoid sex outside of marriage remains a good idea (in my opinion) even if many of the idea's advocates had sex outside of marriage (and don't care to document the events to the world). If it were a bad idea, it would remain a bad idea, even if all the proponents had been meticulous their entire lives in adhering to it.

Leftists might find it instructive if they could stop seeing conservatives through the lenses of their stereotypes actually looked at how we behave. There wasn't mass condemnation of Bristol Palin because the girl had a baby out of wedlock. No, instead of the fiery, judgmental condemnation all us right-wing haters are supposed to love, what you actually saw most was sympathy and understanding. Plenty of us have been in her shoes or know someone who has --
that's why we know it's a bad idea.

The book of Romans in the New Testament states "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." That's a very popular verse in evangelical circles. It reminds us that none of us is perfect, that we all fall short in some way. But you have to go on standing for what's right, despite your personal failures.

If we silenced all people from advocating good because they have themselves done bad, then there would simply be no advocates for good. Which is, one suspects, exactly what the left wants.

Breaking! Hell Freezes Over: NYT Columnist Admits Palin Said Something Smart!

In the article Some of Sarah Palin's Ideas Cross the Political Divide, columnist Anand Ghiridharadas makes a persuasive case that Sarah Palin's recent speech in Iowa "delivered a devastating indictment of the entire U.S. political establishment — left, right and center — and pointed toward a way of transcending the presently unbridgeable political divide."

He breaks her case down into three interlocking points:

First, that the United States is now governed by a “permanent political class,” drawn from both parties, that is increasingly cut off from the concerns of regular people. Second, that these Republicans and Democrats have allied with big business to mutual advantage to create what she called “corporate crony capitalism.” Third, that the real political divide in the United States may no longer be between friends and foes of Big Government, but between friends and foes of vast, remote, unaccountable institutions (both public and private).

He then goes on to describe how she supports those points in her speech, and adds what I think is a clarifying, non-partisan conclusion that freedom-loving people of many political persuasions can appreciate:

The political conversation in the United States is paralyzed by a simplistic division of labor. Democrats protect that portion of human flourishing that is threatened by big money and enhanced by government action. Republicans protect that portion of human flourishing that is threatened by big government and enhanced by the free market.

What is seldom said is that human flourishing is a complex and delicate thing, and that we needn’t choose whether government or the market jeopardizes it more, because both can threaten it at the same time.

Ms. Palin may be hinting at a new political alignment that would pit a vigorous localism against a kind of national-global institutionalism.

On one side would be those Americans who believe in the power of vast, well-developed institutions like Goldman Sachs, the Teamsters Union, General Electric, Google and the U.S. Department of Education to make the world better. On the other side would be people who believe that power, whether public or private, becomes corrupt and unresponsive the more remote and more anonymous it becomes; they would press to live in self-contained, self-governing enclaves that bear the burden of their own prosperity.

No one knows yet whether Ms. Palin will actually run for president. But she did just get more interesting.

The only nit I'd pick is that I'd disagree with the idea that "we needn't choose whether government or the market jeopardizes it more, because both can threaten it at the same time." Because what we're seeing in action isn't "the market" threatening "human flourishing," it's still government threatening it, by dint of Big Government being used as a tool of Big Business to distort markets and outcomes.

It all comes back to Big Government. Big Business by itself is very limited in the damage it can do without the active collusion of Big Government.

Thomas Sowell has been writing for years that the distorting effect of Big Government on markets through rent controls, subsidies, tax breaks, protectionist regulations and so on, is the real problem, not the actual operation of free markets themselves.

We need to retreat from a Federal government powerful enough and arrogant enough to think it can pick winners and losers with our money (Solyndra, anyone?), and return to Federal government mainly concerned with protecting our rights, our borders and our sovereignty.

Another important point in this article, is that Ghiridharadas essentially admits, in a confused and unintentional way, that everything Palin supporters have said about media bias against her is correct.

On the one hand:

"Let us begin by confessing that, if Sarah Palin surfaced to say something intelligent and wise and fresh about the present American condition, many of us would fail to hear it."

On the other hand:

"The next day, the “lamestream” media, as she calls it, played into her fantasy of it by ignoring the ideas she unfurled and dwelling almost entirely on the will-she-won’t-she question of her presidential ambitions."

Well, you know what? It's not a "fantasy" when a columnist feels the need to open his column by claiming that the idea of Palin saying something "intelligent and wise and fresh" is such a shocking idea that many columnists would fail to hear it.

Palin has always had much to say that is intelligent, wise and fresh. And the "lamestream" media has willfully ignored it in favor of savaging her with lies and distractions at every point.