My letter to Paul Krugman

Below is my letter to Paul Krugman in response to his op-ed "Free to Die" on September 15.


In your op-ed piece titled "Free to Die" on September 15th you mischaracterized Dr. Ron Paul's position when you said that he "... basically tried to evade the question, asserting that warm-hearted doctors and charitable individuals would always make sure that people received the care they needed..." When pressed by Mr. Blitzer about the question that society should just let people die, Dr. Paul responded in the negative. No was the first word Dr. Paul said. He did elaborate that private charities and the compassion of physicians would cover the gaps in the absence of government welfare. He responded this way because he has first hand experience in providing free health care as a physician, and seeing other charities pay for it as well.

Your editorial goes on to argue the point that the right wing populace of the country has rejected compassion. In fact, you say that "... compassion is out of fashion — indeed, lack of compassion has become a matter of principle, at least among the G.O.P.’s base." I would argue that you suffer from the same lack of compassion as well seeing as how you cannot give up a few hours of your time to ensure that the Food Bank for New York City can get a donation of $65,000. I'm of course referring to the debate that Dr. Robert Murphy has offered to participate in against you. This money has already been pledged and the only thing that is preventing the credit cards from being charged and the food pantry from filling up is your unwillingness to give up a few hours of your time. Think of the children.

Man on the Street Interviews

I've been doing a few interviews to get the average Joe's opinion on a few matters. Here are the first two:

Rationed Health Care

Branwen Jeffreys of BBC news posted his alarming story about the UK's health care mess yesterday, in which he reports how waiting times have increased for routine surgeries. This should come as a warning to those in the US who call for more governmental control over the health care apparatus, as it is on track to also becoming a doomed single payer system.


Medicine and health care are both scarce resources that must be limited in a world of finite goods and services, just like cell phones, chicken noodle soup, and professional bowlers. History has shown us that the most efficient way for humanity to allocate finite goods in a world of infinite demand is through the price system. Market forces work to balance producer supply with consumer demand to give us an appropriate amount of whatever it is we desire.


Here in the United States, health care has come to be seen as right rather than another service to be left to the capable hands of entrepreneurs. With health insurers paying a majority of the costs incurred by patients, rather than the patients themselves, demand has steadily increased. If the US were to move completely to a nationalized system whereby the government payed for every citizen to receive treatment, demand would increase exponentially, given that the price restrictions would be removed. The scales of the market would be thrown off balance and completely destroyed.


When price is removed as the limiting factor in deciding who receives health care and who doesn't, other ways of rationing must be imposed instead. Waiting times will necessarily increase when anyone can get access to a physician or a clinic, rather than only those who are willing to pay for the service. Bureaucrats will play an ever increasing role in deciding not only who gets care, but what kind of care they will receive. Quality will decline as providers will have no incentive to please their customers since they will have no other options for care.


What solutions can be implemented here in the US so that we can avoid becoming an over sized VA hospital? Here are a few ideas:


1. Make all health care spending tax deductible, including health insurance premiums.
2. Repeal all laws mandating what insurers must cover. Individuals and companies should be able to craft policies that best fit the needs of both, rather than forcing companies to cover hair loss treatments or erectile dysfunction medications. Health insurance should cover only catastrophic illnesses or injuries, not routine office visits. Imagine how much more your auto insurance would cost if the company had to pay for tires and oil changes.
3. Eliminate government licensing of medical schools, physicians, and hospitals. The AMA is nothing more than a trade guild that was designed to limit the number of physicians, keeping their numbers artificially low in order to command higher salaries. Nurse practitioners, physicians assistants, RNs, LVNs, and anyone else should be free to set up shop and treat patients. Private firms such as Underwriters Laboratories will do a much better job at providing certifications than any government board.
4. Abolish the FDA. Too much money is wasted in getting FDA approval on potentially life saving medicines. Private companies have every incentive to make safe products, since killing customers is usually a flawed business model.


I don't foresee the federal government enacting any of these measures in the near future. I fear that we are headed for a single payer system like Canada or Britain. The only way it doesn't happen is if the dollar and government collapse first, which seems to be a greater possibility by the day.

Newsweek finds that most Americans are ignorant of civics, but does it really matter?

Newsweek's Andrew Romano wrote this piece deriding civics knowledge of the average American. I took the test and missed three of the questions, but I can certainly understand how most people would miss others if the test were taken by using common sense and not the yardstick of the standard classroom text that we remember from high school. Following are a few of the questions taken from the quiz.


What happened at the Constitutional Convention? ANSWER: The Constitution was written or the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution. Of course not mentioned in the answer was that the Articles of Confederation were to be amended at the Philadelphia Convention. Instead, the attendees discarded the old system of government where the states retained their sovereignty and replaced it with the current system , which has lead to the the leviathan we have in Washington.


Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the federal government. What is one power of the federal government? ANSWER: To print money, to declare war, to create an army, or to make treaties. You've got to be kidding me. Name one power that the federal government hasn't taken for itself. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution provides for just a handful of powers for the legislature. I'm not saying that the average American (or member of Congress) knows what those enumerated powers are, but it's not like the federal government limits itself to them anyways. The power to declare war is clearly assigned to Congress, yet the U.S. is now embroiled in three wars that have yet to be officially declared. Congress wasn't even consulted when Obama decided to start launching Tomahawk missiles into Tripoli. There is no power to print money, but rather to coin it and regulate its value. The coin is implied to be silver and gold, since that is what the states are limited to in Section 10. We now have Federal Reserve Notes that have lost over ninety percent of their purchasing power since they have been put into circulation.


What is the supreme law of the land? I can certainly understand why only thirty percent of Americans got the "right" answer on this one. The Constitution? Really? Ask the folks being held at Guantanamo Bay how they feel about their 5th, 6th, and 8th Amendment "rights". Ask Susette Kelo how well the 5th Amendment and the Supreme Court did in upholding the law which states that private property shall not be taken for public use (which apparently can be a private real estate developer) without just compensation.


What is the economic system of the United States? ANSWER Capitalist or market economy. I almost spit my Coke onto the computer screen I was laughing so hard when I read this. Fascism, mercantilism, or corporatism would all have been acceptable answers in my opinion. In a true capitalist or market economy, the government does not bail out corporations that make exceedingly poor decisions with their investors' money simply because they donated millions of dollars to the campaign of the president. Governments of a true market economy don't prohibit successful companies such as UPS and FedEx from competing with the USPS. 


While I can certainly sympathize with Mr. Romano's frustration about the lack of historical knowledge that the people of the U.S. have, the simple fact is that it really doesn't matter anyways. When the government that is supposed to be bound in its duties and functions by the chains of the Constitution has thrown off those shackles and has shown itself to be omnipotent, what good does that knowledge do? The knowledge that the people should arm themselves with is how to maintain their wealth when the dollar collapses, and how to protect that wealth with force of arms when the parasites come to take it.