Richard Salsman’s list of currently established government endeavors leads to a very important question for socialized-medicine advocates.

Considering the following, on what grounds could one suggest that government run health care would achieve any better results?

• Money – The Federal Reserve, which perpetually debases our money, manipulates interest rates, and instigates systemic risk
• Pensions – he Social Security Administration, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. – which are insolvent by multi-trillions of dollars
• Schooling – the “public” (government) schools are a mess, and generate mass illiteracy-innumeracy
• 1st Class Mail – the U.S. Post Office is badly run and a perpetual money-loser
• Passenger Trains – Amtrak is also badly run and always a money-loser
• Residential Mortgages – Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae and the FHA-HUD have lost trillions and have brought ruin to millions

There is no reasonable justification for suggesting they would.

• For a market to be prosperous, both consumers and producers need to be free to act in their best interest. Our current market enables substantial freedom for consumers, but not for producers. Government imposed regulations, controls and mandates have substantially driven up operating costs for producers - increases which are passed directly to consumers. Most Americans sense the freedom they have as consumers, but are ignorant of how, and to what detrimental extent, government regulation and intervention stifles producers. Failure to consider the producer aspect leads them (along the encouragement of statists pining for power) to incorrectly blame the “free market” as faulty and inadequate. They are right to advise doing something, but wrong in the something they condone (increased government intervention). The solution is to free the other essential realm in the market - the producers.
  
  Consumptive Freedom + Productive Freedom = Prosperity
  Consumptive Freedom + Production Regulation = Escalating Costs/Declining Value
  Consumptive Regulation + Production Regulation = Market Stagnation

• Americans have tolerated (and confessedly bought into) the welfare state out of altruistic default. We’ve dealt with more and more wealth being confiscated in countless new ways to fund seemingly endless streams of income redistribution. We can only hope that enough people will sense that this collectivist endeavor is a different beast altogether. Socializing medicine differs in that it moves beyond simply confiscating money through taxation to buy other people’s widgets - it effectively (in time) stifles and stagnates the entire widget market for everyone.
• Until recently, I never imagined a day would come where I’m actually considering which of my physician friends would function as my “Black Market Doctor”.
• The only way a private business gains any kind of immunity to economic forces is through some form of government influence impinging upon it. Without such influence, businesses (regardless of size) are subject to consumer choice. They may have immense capital assets and infrastructure, but they still have to keep the customer happy or in time they’ll go bankrupt. This is the key difference between economic and political power - only the latter, the power of government, can be legally forceful. The only way insurance companies, the most commonly demonized player in this scenario, obtain any power to operate in a manner which may appear to be immune to market forces is as a result of some government distortion of economics. The demand for medical expertise, usually through insurance coverage, is so high that any lack of efficiency or uncompetitive offerings would present an opportunity for other players in the market to seize the chance for expanding their market share. However, if some unnatural force prevents new players from entering the market, or prevents existing competitors from acting upon the opportunity, then the market goes unchecked and prices may rise while quality of service declines. This should sound very familiar.
• Insurance companies are typically condemned for the amount of profit they earn, but this can only be an issue in a mixed-economy, i.e., an unfree market. A producer can increase profits by either raising the market price of their goods to consumers, or lowering their costs of production through efficiency - the high-price method, or the low-cost method. In a free market, competition urges producers to compete on the latter, because competing on high prices would be contrary to the law of supply and demand. This competitive dynamic leads to lower prices, because any savings from the low-cost method can be used to gain a competitive advantage and are transferred directly to consumers. But, when that competitive dynamic is retarded or eliminated by barriers to market entry, or oppressive regulations that stifle competitive pressure, prices tend to trend upwards. This escalating trend that appears immune to supply/demand is what grants certain businesses the facade of power - political power. The only way insurance providers, or any business in any market for that matter, can obtain political power on consumers is when equipped with government assistance.
• When prices in a given market escalate at a higher rate than inflation without a comparable increase in value to the consumer, some force is distorting the economics. That force could be a natural one, e.g., a shortage in some vital resource (labor, materials, etc.), or an unnatural one - which, in a mixed-economy, is most often government intervention in some form or manner.

Here’s my official self-flagging notification for the thugs in Washington.

I’m officially flagging myself as one of those radical Capitalists spreading “fishy” information regarding the socialization of American medicine.

I am, in fact, adamantly opposed on both moral and practical grounds to any and all measures that socialize the field of medicine, or any segment of our economy for that matter. I have, and will continue to, thoroughly, coherently and boldly express my opposition to as many individuals as I can effectively reach.

I am neither a partisan hack, nor an insurance lobbyist. I’m just an honest, productive individual who understands the founding principles of America and loves life, my family and the use of my mind - all of which stand to suffer greatly considering the path down which America is headed.

In the moral context, socialization blatantly contradicts the principle of individual rights on which America was founded. The rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of one’s happiness are incompatible with a system designed to operate on the confiscated wealth, compulsory participation, and involuntary servitude of productive individuals – all in the name of an allegiance to a supposed common good.

The notion of self-sacrifice to the collective is repulsive and irrational. It is a mental illness that served as the philosophical fuel for the bloodiest dictatorships in the history of man. Adding Americans to its list of over 100 million victims in the last century will be an accomplishment unmatched in history. No other country originated with ideals so contrary to those that are now strangling the American spirit. Driving America into utter ruin will indeed be its greatest victory.

In the practical sense, socialization can render a single logical result - stagnant misery. History illustrates that our standard of living increases when humans are left free to think, act and retain the profit from doing so. The human mind, in its natural and appropriate state, yearns for knowledge and achievement, both of which also have tremendous practical value in terms of mans survival. In a specialized economy, man can earn a profit from ideas and productivity. When man is left free to profit from and find joyous fulfillment in his thought, action and productivity – our standard of living benefits.

Socializing medicine negates both of these human needs. It stifles the profit motive by distorting the economics of the market by encroaching on the property rights of drug manufacturers, regulating rates and salaries, and legally eliminating consumption of health services outside of the socialized system in order to control costs. It stifles the freedom to think and act by forcing physicians and patients to abandon their judgment in favor of bureaucratic procedures and conformity to the artificial economics of the system.

In time, services will deteriorate, innovation will stagnate, prices will escalate and every single member forced to use it will suffer. There is no possible way this system will work. It is morally and economically unviable. You should accept this fact now and grant yourself extra time to fabricate palatable excuses.

I do realize that flagging myself may invite a myriad of “unfortunate” circumstances. I know that financial auditing, harassment, abduction, incarceration and elimination are all standard fare for dictatorships, but when compared to the thought of not voicing my opinion while the lives of my children expire in your dream Socialist-cesspool, any of the above seem quite preferable.

Please add me to your list of patriots.

Brad Harper
Statesville, North Carolina

More Related Links:
The Shallowness of a Demagogue: A Fishy Analysis
The Patriots List
Email To The White House
Flag Me

(Updated 08/10/09 @ 5:33PM to add the self-flagging of GVH)

• The Obama Health Care Plan: Hazardous to Your Health
• Put the “Independence” Back in Independence Day
• Reason, Rights, and Science Are What Made America Great

Our country is the final stages of a tremendous mistake - one that will have adverse effects on every person you know. Acting as if human lives are disposable and that economic laws are pliable, so many are willing to give in to consensus and experiment with Government run health care. It can’t hurt to try right?

This is a deadly pragmatic notion that must be rejected. Not even a single right or life is properly available for sacrificial experimentation. Even if dissecting one human being would save the lives of billions, doing so is immoral. If one man’s rights are violated, so all men have suffered injustice.

For America to endure we must return to nothing less than a free-market in health care.

Politicians are masters at muddying the water in order to aid their efforts. The more they obfuscate and complicate the issue, the more likely citizens are to give-up and give in to what appears to be the superior insights and motives of our leaders. Throw in some hollow rhetoric and spike the potion with the moral tint of altruism and consensus will stomp over an endless sea of corpses. However, If one peers through all the emotional fog, the entire conversation is revealed to be senseless. To make the case much clearer, I’ll frame the principles in an analogous market less prone to emotional fraying.

This not-so-hypothetical market is comprised of a fictitious entity called “Technicare” - a taxpayer funded program to assist a segment of the population with their electrical appliance needs - and a retailer, in this example I chose Wal-Mart, arguably the most highly qualified bastion of efficiency and value.

Like all cases of market dysfunction throughout history, the cause is unnatural economic forces. Essentially, the only force capable of wide scale economic influence is Government. Economics is an elegantly simple system governed by principles that endure time and scale. Producers produce goods that consumers consume according to the standards and prices that both parties agree on voluntarily. That’s it. These fundamentals are absolute and unforgiving, and when any component of the preceding summary is acted against, the market becomes dysfunctional. If producers ability to produce is either enhanced or hampered, if consumers ability to consume is enhanced or hampered, or if the voluntary prerogatives of either are restricted to any extent, the result is some degree of market dysfunction.

Our Heath Care market is one that’s clobbered with regulatory assault from every angle. Each of the components prescribed above are unnaturally manipulated by Government. Government meddling inevitably serves to reduce competition, and decrease purchasing power, the two elements that form the lifeblood of a growing and prosperous economic system.

There are far too many instances to cover exhaustively, but fortunately a principled examination of only a few will clearly illustrate the negative impact that is universally achieved by market intervention. We’ll start by considering an element that achieves tremendous competitive detriment and has no logical justification - The Certificate of Need.

From the NCSL site:

Certificate of Need (C.O.N.) programs are aimed at restraining health care facility costs and allowing coordinated planning of new services and construction. Laws authorizing such programs are one mechanism by which state governments seek to reduce overall health and medical costs.

The basic assumption underlying CON regulation is that excess capacity (in the form of facility overbuilding) directly results in health care price inflation. When a hospital cannot fill its beds, fixed costs must be met through higher charges for the beds that are used. Bigger institutions have bigger costs, so CON supporters say it makes sense to limit facilities to building only enough capacity to meet actual needs.

Profit is determined by the difference in revenue from a unit of work in relation to the unit’s associated costs. Profit increases by either charging a higher price per unit to consumers or establishing a lower cost per unit for producers - by higher prices or by lower costs. Competition amongst market players urges them to offer services at the lowest possible price, thus their opportunity to increase profit will be naturally determined by their ability to operate at the lowest possible cost, as opposed to selling at a higher, less competitive price. Competition is a necessity.

By hindering the competitive aspect of the market, the CON hurdle is actually prone to a rise in costs precisely because mitigates (or eliminates) external pressure to compete on price. Additionally, the process is tedious, timely and expensive. For productive endeavors, time is money, and this process equates to an atrociously misdirected waste of capital.

The other fallacy used to justify this process is that investors would risk such vast amounts of money as typically involved without doing the proper market research to justify the expense. Like in so many other cases, and for obvious reasons, bureaucrats just can’t grasp the concept of personal responsibility. Unlike moochers wasting handout money, when an individual is spending his own earned resources, he’d best be, and typically is, mindful of how he does so. Successful investors seeking a profitable avenue for their capital do not need parental guidance.

Let’s consider this absurdity in our fictitious market:

• How would the “Certificate of Need” process and burden, including all the inherent political wrangling, affect an aspiring Wal-Mart store?
• Would the associated cost cause their prices to increase or decrease?
• Would that money be more appropriately invested in real estate, infrastructure and inventory, or as the cost of asking permission to do business when and where they see fit?
• On what logical grounds should they have to ask permission?
• By what right could some authoritative body decline their request?
• By what right does anyone or any entity have such authority in a country founded on individual rights?
• Whose right to what would be in jeopardy of encroachment by a lack of oversight for this new entity?

Consider Technicare’s impact throughout the rest of Wal-mart’s business model:

• Once the tedious CON process is complete and business is booming, how would Wal-Mart compensate for selling televisions to Technicare customers for an amount that’s significantly reduced - possibly below cost?
• Would these customers tend to spend more or less if given a Technicare credit card for which they have no financial responsibility?
• How would this consumption impact the individuals who are liable for the Technicare expenditures?
• How about if Technicare was granted the authority to determine what Wal-Mart could charge non-Technicare customers for televisions, how would this affect these customers if the pricing was at or below cost?
• By what right should Technicare posses such authority?

If Technicare was expanded to include storage media:

• Would this amplify or negate the existing affects of the program on Wal-Mart?
• How about if the storage media market was regulated by Technicare’s parent company GovCo. so that the media could be adequately tested, which led to drastically increased research manufacturing and legal costs and the time to market for a new product was a number of years. Would this impact the cost of storage media for all consumers?
• What if Wal-Mart was also regulated on how much they could charge Technicare customers for storage media?
• What if they had to sell below cost? What would this do to the costs of storage media for non-Technicare customers?

If Wal-Mart were forced by law to give away products at no charge:

• How would the rest of their business model be impacted?
• Would they continue operating at a loss?
• Would this raise or lower costs to the remainder of their customer base?

If Wal-Mart’s prices increased drastically over time due to the mandates of Technicare:

• How would the “Certificate of Need” process and burden, including all the inherent political wrangling, affect an aspiring competitor?
• Would it make market entry easier or more difficult?
• Would this affect lead Wal-Mart to be more or less responsive to its customers?
• Would such market-entry overhead inspire entrepreneurial interest?

Given the above scenario and the obvious answers and established patterns:

• On why logical grounds would some suggest granting Technicare/GovCo drastically increased, if not exhaustive, control of Wal-Mart operations, accounting and pricing?
• What would the expected results entail?
• As non-Technicare customers lose purchasing power as a result from both having to fund Technicare and having to endure higher prices as a result of Technicare, what changes would be more likely to repair the situation?
• What if Technicare decides to restrict all customers from shopping anywhere besides this new WalTech-GovCo?
• By what right could they?
• Wouldn’t this be a coercive monopoly?
• What would that mean?

With “solutions” like these, who needs problems? Is this issue really as complex as so portrayed by the media and politicians?

Socialization proponents consistently offer supposed aspects of the health care market that exempt it from economic laws due to some disadvantage faced by consumers. Regardless of the specifics, for each such claim we should ask “Why is this, and what are the repercussions?”

My point in general is that the “whys” are far more important than their corresponding repercussions. If a patient has a rash it could be a sign of a number of things, such as poison ivy, a food allergy, an infectious disease like measles, or a skin infection. Treating the symptoms without accurately identifying the cause could leave the patient worse off. Making assumptions on faulty or unrefined premises is a recipe for failure.

I’ve yet to hear a valid claim of “market-dysfunction” (if you will) that is actually more in substance than an acknowledgment of reality, e.g., individuals have varying financial means, or an example of a symptom caused by an existing economically unnatural force in the system, e.g., how Medicare rates affect private insurance premiums.

The former family of claims, in the context of “what should be done?” should properly be answered “whatever motivated individuals choose to do with their own resources.” The charge of “not providing unlimited free service to all who’d consume it” is no more valid a charge of dysfunction than criticizing a rock for not spurting pop-tarts on whim. Demanding a breach of reality in the form of non-causal action is irrational.

If the same question is posed in the context of the second category above, the answer should be “identify and remove the source of the issue.” - which arguably is in all cases, Government intervention.

Despite all the attempts to complicate this issue, it really is as simple as the answers above. Unless and until that is, as I mentioned previously, ulterior motives come into consideration. As soon as the rights of producers and consumers to contract freely are inhibited to any extent, the only possible result is a distortion in the market that will exponentially correlate to the extent of the inhibition.

Individuals thrive under, and have a right to, freedom. Innovation, value and efficiency are the result of freedom. Regulations, on the other hand, reduce freedom - which results in inefficiency, shortages, escalating prices and general stagnation. History illustrates this condition quite well.

Patients have the right to choose from whom, for what, and at what price they consume medical services. Likewise, providers have the right to choose from whom, for what, and at what price they provide their expertise.

This is the only moral and practical relationship between patients and providers.

A diligent consideration of any elements of the market that affect these mutual rights, including their cause, will very accurately highlight what needs to change for the market to operate normally. Increase freedom and all the positive dynamics of this and any other market will prevail.

Again, history unequivocally supports this fact.

To concretize - a free-market in health care, just like every other field throughout history - would result in the best service at the lowest price, according to the discretion of the consumers and producers involved.

There’s nothing unique about the health care market that should exempt it from basic economics. Providers gain expertise in medical services that individuals would consume based on supply and demand.

Only third-party involvement by force can disrupt economic laws and patterns. If one detects a flaw or undesirable pattern, prudence suggests one identify any source of unnatural tampering. Any market traits, e.g., “Forty-plus million uninsured”, could either be symptoms of an illegitimate disruption, or merely factual attributes representing reality. If one were to consider the statistic in slightly different terms, say “Forty-plus million individuals can’t own a 42 inch widescreen television”, then the issue becomes less clouded by by emotion. The facts illustrate that five years ago, indeed a large percentage of individuals couldn’t afford a 42″ television. However, the market (a relatively free one) has responded to demand and now a 42″ television is much more affordable. These principles work regardless if the market is for widgets, televisions, mobile phone service, wellness physicals or CT scans. Where the conversation veers drastically off course is when egalitarian politics come into play. If authentic rights are to be subsumed by artificial privileges, some external force must attempt to usurp economic reality. For every ‘yin’ of Government intervention, there’s a corresponding ‘yang’ of market disturbance. These ‘yangs’ reverberate through the system and their effects continue to amplify until very serious results surface. The system we have now is a result of 50+ years of intense ‘yin’ing. What, other than a tremendously distorted market, could we expect? And, exactly why would we propose more intervention as the solution?

So long as consumers are left free to consume (by their own means) and producers are left free to offer services (as they see fit), the market will perform and innovate like any other.

The government depriving people of opportunities and choice regarding their livelihood is not the solution to the problem of the government stifling competition with distorted economic forces. The solution is to get the government out of health care altogether.

Supplemental Ammunition:
I highly recommend Paul Hsieh’s work demolishing the case for socialized medicine:

FAQ On Free Market Health Insurance

Health Care Reform vs. Universal Health Care

Moral Health Care vs. Universal Health Care

Mandatory Health Insurance: Wrong for Massachusetts, Wrong for America

My current job lends itself to substantial visibility into any congressional activity pertaining to health care. I see weekly summaries listing all medically related bills. The irrational nonsense they try to pull off is remarkable.

This one is especially evil - Section 3 (a-b):
S. 623

SEC. 3. ELIMINATION OF PRE-EXISTING CONDITION EXCLUSIONS UNDER GROUP HEALTH PLANS.

(a) Application Under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974-

(1) ELIMINATION OF PRE-EXISTING CONDITION EXCLUSIONS- Section 701 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (29 U.S.C. 1181) is amended–

(A) by amending the heading to read as follows: ‘elimination of pre-existing condition exclusions’;

(B) by amending subsection (a) to read as follows:

(a) In General- A group health plan, and a health insurance issuer offering group health insurance coverage, with respect to a participant or beneficiary–

‘(1) may not impose any pre-existing condition exclusion; and

‘(2) in the case of a group health plan that offers medical care through health insurance coverage offered by a health maintenance organization, may not provide for an affiliation period with respect to coverage through the organization.’;

(C) in subsection (b), by striking paragraph (3) and inserting the following:

‘(3) AFFILIATION PERIOD- The term ‘affiliation period’ means a period which, under the terms of the health insurance coverage offered by the health maintenance organization, must expire before the health insurance coverage becomes effective.’;

(D) by striking subsections (c), (d), (e), and (g); and

(E) by redesignating subsection (f) (relating to special enrollment periods) as subsection (c).

(2) CLERICAL AMENDMENT- The item in the table of contents of such Act relating to section 701 is amended to read as follows:

‘Sec. 701. Elimination of pre-existing condition exclusions.’.

How compassionate! They want to to remove pre-existing condition exclusions for group insurance policies. Essentially, insurance companies will be required to cover you regardless of your health. If an insurer is required by force to cover any patient, they are essentially required to provide coverage that might be a guaranteed loss. Of course, they can’t operate at a loss, so they have to recoup the losses from some other avenue. That avenue is the other policy holders.

Just as the result of mandatory ER coverage increases costs, our insurance premiums will skyrocket if this repulsive bill passes. Of course the rise in costs will be attributed to “greedy” insurance companies and used to justify more regulation - typical regulatory recursion, i.e., controls breed controls.

Statists never quit and they’re attacking from every possible angle - a relentless army of irrationality. The attack in the field of medicine is especially deadly. FIRM is the organization offering the only rational mindset that will save American medicine from stagnant rot.

UPDATE: Apparently Insurance companies have see this mandate as inevitable and opted to leverage the statist force as an opportunity to cash-in. Such is the tactic of our valiant mixed-economy barons.

• Insurers offer to start charging healthy people more
• Health Insurance Industry Sells Its Soul to the Devil

Apparently there’s no turning back from America’s suicidal shift into Socialized Medicine. The foundation is laid and the plumbing is on order. The “stimulus” bill has proven to be the ultimate power grabbing utensil.

Republican Senators are questioning whether President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill contains the right mix of tax breaks and cash infusions to jump-start the economy.

Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.

Tragic indeed - that the left and the right are virtually indistinguishable variants of the same poisonous philosophy. Both consider Government as the supreme agent of egalitarian engineering. Both favor the collective over the individual. Both consider self-sacrifice as their moral standard. Both see man as his brother’s keeper. Both are willing to force their moral tenets on citizens. Both are willing to mandate human misery and trample mounds of human corpses if necessary in order achieve their vision.

Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH, pdf version).

They are, in fact, dangerous to our health, but they should be opposed as measures outside the role of a proper government precisely because they require the violation of individual rights on a tremendous scale.

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

What would be beneficial is for individual interaction with the health care market to remain private and determined solely on the voluntary judgment of the involved parties. My medical history is the business of myself and those which I choose to interact with.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

And another bloated, inappropriate and menacing arm of the Government is born. By what right does the Government deem the appropriateness or cost-effectiveness of my private health concerns? America justly discarded such guiding notions in 1865, but collectivist-statism has smuggled them back in. The only moral and practical guide for private decisions is the rational judgment of the individuals involved.

What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment? The vagueness is intentional. In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make.

The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.

Could the threat to our standard of living by Socialization be any more clearly identified than in this sentence?

Diminishing innovation is an inevitable result of socialized medicine that proponents typically dismiss, but here stagnation is explicitly favored over progress in order not to “drive up costs” - a result which history and economics prove as inherent to government intervention in any economic segment. Only in a socialized scheme would experimental treatments drive up cost for anyone other than the patient seeking them. In response, the statist solution to the problem enabled by their unjust system is to prohibit costly medical innovations, which also coincides with their egalitarian notions that no individual should “have access” (earn the right to consume) to better care than others - quite the irrational death-cocktail they’re serving.

The stimulus bill will affect every part of health care, from medical and nursing education, to how patients are treated and how much hospitals get paid. The bill allocates more funding for this bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force combined (90-92, 174-177, 181).

We’ve digressed to a nation which, due to the devastation of altruism, spends more looted wealth on regulating when, where, how and with whom individuals endeavor to raise the quality of their lives - a system of voluntary trade to mutual benefit - than towards the military infrastructure dedicated to the rightful defense of our sovereignty.

Unless we discard self-sacrifice as a virtue, discover the supremacy of the individual, and assume reason as our guide, America has seen her brightest days.

[UPDATED]
Stay on top of the fight against Socialized medicine @ FIRM.

That is the ultimate goal of our anti-conceptual leaders, and to the extent that we’ll let them. As they attempt to work their way towards that goal, our standard of living will suffer in every aspect. One of the most intimidating venues is the socialization of medicine. Those in the medical field are already responding as any individual subjected to the threat of slavery would, resistance and avoidance.

In the last several months there have been reports in medical journals about an impending shortage of primary care physicians. This spring in the health policy journal Health Affairs, researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia and the federal Department of Health and Human Services published a study that projected a generalist physician shortage of 35,000 to 44,000 by the year 2025. The researchers based their figures on current physician usage patterns and did not take into account increases that might occur because of rising access to health care.

The news got worse in September, when The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study showing that just 2 percent of graduating medical students are choosing to enter general internal medicine. The students surveyed were concerned in part by what they perceived to be a more difficult personal and professional lifestyle, compared with other fields. They felt that the paperwork and charting required of primary care physicians were more onerous, and they were not eager to care for the chronically ill in a health care system that focuses on acute care. [emphasis mine]

This phase of typically oppressive red tape at all levels is only the very beginning of the collectivist vision of medicine. Not only are those currently in the field looking to escape, individuals aspiring to work in and around the medical field are considering other options. Pharmaceutical, medical equipment and biotechnology sales are fields that will see less growth as a result of regulatory stagnation.

Nearly half of them said they planned in the next three years to reduce the number of patients they see or to stop practicing altogether. While these doctors rated patient relationships as the most satisfying aspect of practice, over three-quarters felt they were at “full capacity” or “overextended and overworked.” [emphasis mine]

The reasons are simple. It’s in man’s nature to be free. His focus will gravitate towards the arena of return where he can most freely exercise choice. Conversely, short of tremendous potential for return, he’ll shy away from an environment where his volitional capacity is limited. So long as he respects the rights of other men to life, liberty and property, there is virtually no limit to his potential for productive return. Only when man has force initiated upon him do we see stagnation, shortages, depressions, credit crunches, famines, poverty and misery. What else, other than wholesale violation of rights via regulation, could create a shortage of human capital in what are arguably the most highly demanded industries?

Eventually the talented, the exceptional, the type of individual and mind one wants their life to depend on if needed, will be noticeably absent from the field of medicine. An independent and competent mind won’t submit to force, the type of mind that will won’t provide the quality of care that people demand. The result will be an abysmal circus of incompetency and regulation going through the motions of medicine while corpses pile up and citizens become desperate for other options. A black market for routine care will inevitably develop and many of us will have to choose to criminally act towards our survival or become a statistic in the collectivist death machine affectionately known as Universal Health Care.

All this because we’ve deluded ourselves into the poison that we are our “brother’s keepers”, and are willing to condone and implement force to sacrifice any individual for construction that deadly ideal.

An excellent post by GVH explores the next ring in the chain of America’s tyrannical noose. Staying true to the cause of trampling rights, specifically the right of Employers to set their own terms with Employees, our Dictators strive to restrict Hospitals from taking disciplinary action against workers who refuse to participate in any procedure they find morally objectionable. Since morality is subjective and arbitrary for a large percentage of people, virtually any action can be refused on moral grounds - and Hospitals can’t take any punitive measures! Because there probably won’t be any repercussions for such negligence starting in the near future, we can only hope in the event of a medical need that the ER attending can’t imagine any arbitrary reason to object to our aid on moral grounds.

Two areas of interest here: the broad offense of mingling religion and Government, and the interference by Government in the private terms between two individuals (employer and employee) - both violations of rights by the supposed protector of rights. The first represents a blatant protest for why this country was founded, and the second, which underlies a tremendous record of economic strangling, has become so mainstream that most people don’t even question it.

Employers and employees are individuals acting in voluntary agreement. So long as no force is involved, either party is able to abandon the relationship on any grounds they deem appropriate. If an employee wants the job, they’ll concede to the terms of the employer. If the employer allows duty exemptions based on personal moral objections, they do - if they don’t they don’t. It’s their right as the property owning agent to set their terms as they see fit. For Government to intervene by trumping such terms is a violation of their rights to life, liberty and property. The employer’s livelihood depends on their ability to remain profitable by conducting their business in a way that consumers pay them for services. In order to scale their business, they must hire competent individuals that add at least as much value as they cost. To achieve such gains, the employer has the right to set the terms of employment lend themselves accordingly. They also have the right to dictate the terms for another individuals presence on their property.

When Government interferes with the Employer’s rightful discretion regarding employment terms, not only are they violating property rights by negating the employers ability to set the terms for another individuals presence on their property, they are also interfering with their ability to manage their employees, a violation of their right to act freely in their best interest which effectively limits their ability to scale their business, which directly affects their livelihood.

Whether we’re talking about forcing an employer to pay wages based on metrics other than they choose, forcing them to allow individuals on their property with firearms regardless of their discretion, or forcing them to make exemptions in their terms of employment based on arbitrary religious whims - all are violating the employers rights.

People that condone such intrusive power by Government usually fail to think beyond the concrete terms relating to their specific moral compass. Never mind the fact that a proper Government doesn’t initiate force, many Christians are fine with injecting religion into Law (or education), but fail to consider (by abstraction) the threat which such authority would impose if any other religion or standard of morality were plugged into the same power template. Likewise, collectivists are fine with the idea of trumping rights as long as it’s their moral code which is the guiding agent. Once a Government has the overall authority to force, the restricting stipulations will vary with consensus. Those who don’t hesitate to use Government to force their beliefs on others, in doing so they’re also establishing the precedent and plumbing for such force to be diverted to a cause they wouldn’t dare condone. They don’t mind giving the key to their front door to a neighbor for purposes they approve, but in doing so they’ve granted him the means to betray their terms. Now that he has it, he may come in at will and wreak any havoc he chooses, or copy the key a thousand times so every thug in town can also help themselves. Such is the risk of failure to abstract.

As stated by Gus…

If leftists really didn’t want to be under the knife of fundamentalist doctors, they would support freeing all medical care from government control, and then take advantage of that freedom to boycott such physicians. Likewise, if conservatives really valued freedom of conscience for physicians, they, too, would begin working to get the government out of medicine. They could have whole hospitals that didn’t practice abortion! (But then, they would have to give up on their dream of forcing everyone else to abide by their arbitrary dicta.)

Our freedom is eroding from both sides of the isle because both fail to properly regard the individual. Not only must we abandon any law that tramples an employers right to set their own terms with employees, so we must abolish any legal tenet that violates an individuals rights to life, liberty or property.