Why Physicians Oppose The Health Care Reform Bill - Forbes.com
Worth a read. My view:
I'd say the real reasons that Doctors oppose BOcare are:
1). They are intelligent
2). Their profession forces them to be reality based. Let's face it, they deal with mankind as it really is, not as some might wish it to be.
Life, intellect and all goods and services are scarce resources. Intelligence is very scarce, one wonders if wisdom even exists any more. The task is to allocate scarce resources, and I think deep down we all know that BOcare is not that way. Since Doctors are the ones closest to that reality on a day to day basis, they are faced with the cruel facts the soonest. Healthy people love government care. Sick people -- and doctors, hate it.
We learned in the '80s that there wasn't any "shortage" of gas in the '70's, only government controls on prices that prevented the market from allocating resources efficiently. The story is old -- the USSR was rife with it. The wrong products at the wrong places and "allocation" done by waiting in line (lowering productivity yet further). A cursory study of rent control shows the facts clearly -- it is often said that the only way to destroy housing faster is by bombing. Sadly, the N Vietnamese admitted that rent control in Hanoi was actually MORE effective at destroying housing than bombing, so liberals will take that as "economists wrong again".
Much like Democracy being really bad, but better than any other form of government (Churchill), we are already finding that while the market may be "bad", it has the saving grace of being better than anything else. One of the saddest aspects that we already see is that since everyone really knows in their gut that scarce resources must be allocated somehow, the knives are already being sharpened. We see that not only will they be allocated politically, but they will be allocated ruthlessly, by "51 votes", or whatever underhanded overbearing trick in the book can be used by the power mad left.
Markets are actually not "heartless" -- they are just a function of the hearts and minds of millions of people. While politicians may seem to be very friendly, they are certainly HEAVILY motivated by votes -- not to mention money, favors, power, greed, and all the other problems of being human. Since we have now decided to allocate one of the dearest scarce resources politically, the logical result is to decrease unity and increase political rancor.
As our government has continued to swell since the '30s, so has nastiness and division. The reason why is very simple. While the market is imperfect, at least we are all in that together. Once we move into political competition, the game becomes zero sum and the "rules" become less and less clear as the constitution, practices like the filibuster in the senate, the role of the supreme court, personal property, freedom of speech, and anything else that seems to stand in the way of the left is plowed down. BO indicated today that he supports congress acting to stop corporate freedom of speech. The issue of the court having the right to override congress was established when John Marshall was chief justice, it is called "Marbury vs Madison".
Being static isn't an option for a nation. I'd argue that we were in a "virtuous cycle" since '80, and in '06 we switched to a "death spiral". We've turned on the most productive among us. We've thrown the idea that we are a country of laws not of men away. The 20% that is driven by what they believe "ought to be" is firmly in control and they are blindly driving on the basis of their perceived ends rather on the basis of the known facts of man, the economy, law, morality, government nor anything else. They firmly believe that their ends justify any means -- but they lack understanding of what the known ends of their headlong rush for some ill defined dream of "equality, plenty, bliss" really are.
We may not survive until November.
Worth a read. My view:
I'd say the real reasons that Doctors oppose BOcare are:
1). They are intelligent
2). Their profession forces them to be reality based. Let's face it, they deal with mankind as it really is, not as some might wish it to be.
Life, intellect and all goods and services are scarce resources. Intelligence is very scarce, one wonders if wisdom even exists any more. The task is to allocate scarce resources, and I think deep down we all know that BOcare is not that way. Since Doctors are the ones closest to that reality on a day to day basis, they are faced with the cruel facts the soonest. Healthy people love government care. Sick people -- and doctors, hate it.
We learned in the '80s that there wasn't any "shortage" of gas in the '70's, only government controls on prices that prevented the market from allocating resources efficiently. The story is old -- the USSR was rife with it. The wrong products at the wrong places and "allocation" done by waiting in line (lowering productivity yet further). A cursory study of rent control shows the facts clearly -- it is often said that the only way to destroy housing faster is by bombing. Sadly, the N Vietnamese admitted that rent control in Hanoi was actually MORE effective at destroying housing than bombing, so liberals will take that as "economists wrong again".
Much like Democracy being really bad, but better than any other form of government (Churchill), we are already finding that while the market may be "bad", it has the saving grace of being better than anything else. One of the saddest aspects that we already see is that since everyone really knows in their gut that scarce resources must be allocated somehow, the knives are already being sharpened. We see that not only will they be allocated politically, but they will be allocated ruthlessly, by "51 votes", or whatever underhanded overbearing trick in the book can be used by the power mad left.
Markets are actually not "heartless" -- they are just a function of the hearts and minds of millions of people. While politicians may seem to be very friendly, they are certainly HEAVILY motivated by votes -- not to mention money, favors, power, greed, and all the other problems of being human. Since we have now decided to allocate one of the dearest scarce resources politically, the logical result is to decrease unity and increase political rancor.
As our government has continued to swell since the '30s, so has nastiness and division. The reason why is very simple. While the market is imperfect, at least we are all in that together. Once we move into political competition, the game becomes zero sum and the "rules" become less and less clear as the constitution, practices like the filibuster in the senate, the role of the supreme court, personal property, freedom of speech, and anything else that seems to stand in the way of the left is plowed down. BO indicated today that he supports congress acting to stop corporate freedom of speech. The issue of the court having the right to override congress was established when John Marshall was chief justice, it is called "Marbury vs Madison".
Being static isn't an option for a nation. I'd argue that we were in a "virtuous cycle" since '80, and in '06 we switched to a "death spiral". We've turned on the most productive among us. We've thrown the idea that we are a country of laws not of men away. The 20% that is driven by what they believe "ought to be" is firmly in control and they are blindly driving on the basis of their perceived ends rather on the basis of the known facts of man, the economy, law, morality, government nor anything else. They firmly believe that their ends justify any means -- but they lack understanding of what the known ends of their headlong rush for some ill defined dream of "equality, plenty, bliss" really are.
We may not survive until November.
No comments:
Post a Comment