Britain From A to Z: Z

Zeitgeist

I admit that it took me a while to decide what Z topic to talk about. My initial thought was to make the topic Zebra Crossing, which is a striped speed bump seen throughout the UK. I was going to simply show the photo below and leave it at that.

I later decided I wanted a bit more substance, but was having a hard time coming up with a Z word that had any relevance to my Britain trip. Ultimately I settled on Zeitgeist.

For those that don’t know, zeitgeist means “spirit of the age” or “spirit of the time”. It refers to the dominant school of thought that influences the culture of a particular place at a particular time. In this post I will be concentrating on the prevailing British zeitgeist as it relates to freedom.

While traveling across Scotland, England, and Wales, my sense was that I was in a free country. Our tour bus traveled about without governmental checks. We had to show our passports upon our initial entry into the country in Glasgow, Scotland, but I do not recall having to show them ever again, even when crossing borders into England and Wales. We traveled across a lot of rural areas and visited quite a few urban areas. Mostly, I felt about the same as I do when traveling across the United States. The main difference I observed was the accents.

Despite the overall decline of freedom around the world over the last few years, Freedom House still lists the UK and the US as free countries. When it comes to economic freedom, the US has been declining rather quickly. We are now no longer listed among the Free nations. Rather, we are listed as Mostly Free by The Heritage Foundation. Only six countries are listed as free. The US is now at number 12. The UK is slightly less free at number 14. It is sad to me to see countries like Chile and Estonia being ranked higher in economic freedom than the US.

Two social areas of freedom of interest to me are gun control and healthcare.

Here in the US, gun control has been a topic of hot debate for many years. Some would like to outright ban guns for ordinary citizens, only allowing the police and the military to have them. Others point out that criminals would still have guns even if they were all banned. Therefore, as long as the criminals have them, honest citizens need them for protection. From what I have read, Britain is further down the road on banning guns. They are still available, but my understanding is that it is more difficult to get a permit there than in the US as a whole. In fact, when we met Baron Dafydd Wigley in Wales (see my post on Xenophobia), one of the things he said was that the Brits simply don’t understand the US’s lax position on gun control.

Another area where Britain is further along the social trail is healthcare. Publicly funded healthcare has been around for years now. Interestingly, several people I encountered seemed to not like this. They pointed out how those with enough money also bought private insurance because the public system was inadequate in some ways. I think the biggest issue is the waiting time for certain tests and procedures. This is similar to some of the complaints coming out of Canada. While every Canadian I’ve talked to about their healthcare seem to like it, there are those times when Canadians have to travel to the US to get a test sooner than their system allows so that any necessary treatments can begin earlier rather than later.

Let us hope that in the midst of Britain, the US, and other free countries moving more and more down the socialist path, we will love freedom enough to stop before we lose control of our lives as has happened in too many countries around the world. 

Luke, I Am Your Founding Father (Liberty and Healthcare)

The founding fathers of the United States were an amazing group of people. Many of them were wealthy, yet were willing to lay all on the line to extricate themselves from the tyranny of the British crown. (In many ways they are like Luke, Han, Leia, and others trying to rid themselves of the empire.) As they said in the Declaration of Independence: "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

These men had a love of liberty and a deep distrust of government. This distrust came about from personal experience. But they still understood that some level of government was necessary in order to insure freedom. Without a proper level of government oversight, society would descend into chaos and anarchy. They believed there had to be an ultimate authority to protect the country as a whole, create law, try and punish criminals, and act as a final arbiter for settling disputes.

The founders did three major things in an attempt to prevent government from growing too powerful. First, they set in place the idea that the country ultimately belonged to all citizens and that the government only operated at their behest. They backed up this idea by creating a Constitution starting with the words "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." The Articles following these words describe and delimit the powers of the Federal Government.

Second, still being distrustful, they created the Bill of Rights to further define the rights of individuals that could not be taken away by government. The Bill of Rights preamble says, "The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added." And to put a stop to the notion that somehow all of the rights of man had been thought of and included in the Bill of Rights, they said this in the ninth amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Third, they left it for the states and the people themselves to handle any issues that the Federal Government was not authorized to handle. This was stated clearly in the tenth amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

All of these safeguards took foresight. But, after all, it was Thomas Jefferson himself that said in 1788, "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yeild, and government to gain ground." Yet, the Constitution served the citizens well for many years. But somewhere along the line the politicians came to understand the words of Alexis de Tocqueville, "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." In other words, until the day Congress discovers that it can take money away from its citizens by force and then buy their votes by offering some of that money back to them in the form of giveaways and programs.

Today, de Tocqueville's words line the walls of Congress. Not as a reminder of the impending loss of our Republic, but as a reminder of how to get reelected. For many years now, Congress has violated its trust with the public by taking the public's money via taxes, levies, fees, or whatever, and giving it back to certain people in order to assure their votes. This is what I call the politicization of America. But this has happened with the approval of the White House, the Supreme Court, and the citizens themselves in direct opposition to the Constitution. Why? Because we citizens as a whole have bought into the politicians' bribes.

Today, the elephant in the room is national healthcare. It is presently being implemented in the form of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). This is better know as ObamaCare. Bear in mind that PPACA is not a government run healthcare system. It is rather a mandated healthcare system. Private insurers still sell the insurance, but with certain mandates associated with it. Yet, it is still a government controlled healthcare system. So, why be concerned? Two reasons. One is philosophical, the other practical.

Philosophically, we should be concerned with the government controlling anything that is not permitted under the Constitution because that means we the citizens did not authorize it. But didn't the Supreme Court rule that PPACA was Constitutional? Indeed they did. But, I believe they did so using tortured logic, just as they have done with many other government programs over the years. There is no clause in the Constitution or its Amendments that authorizes the Federal Government to be involved in healthcare in any way. The only way you can get that out of it is to greatly stretch the meaning of other clauses. Three commonly stretched clauses are the "general welfare", "regulate commerce", and "lay and collect taxes" clauses. But it seems clear to me that if those clauses can be stretched as far as they have, then there is essentially no need for the Constitution. Just let Congress do what they want. But, as you may have observed, politicians still like having that ole Constitution around. They like to use it to hammer opponents wanting something opposed to it and conveniently ignore it when they want something opposed to it.

Practically, I am skeptical of the long term success of the PPACA. Why? Because of how other government controlled systems have fared over the years. Look at Social Security and Medicare. Both are on the brink of failure. Why? Because, as usual, politicians have overpromised, expanding these programs in order to get elected. In other words, the programs have become politicized. Social Security was put into place at a time when most people didn't even live to see any money out of the system. Yet, even as lifespans increased and the number of children being born decreased, more benefits were added to the Social Security program. Medicare suffers from something similar. As people live longer and new technology keeps adding more medical costs to an aging person's life, fewer children are coming along to pay for it.

So, unless some radical changes are made to SS and Medicare, they will become unsustainable in a few years. Yet, the politicians keep talking about how successful these programs have been. Well, yes, perhaps for a while. But the politicians' meddling and unwillingness to change these systems in crisis will ultimately lead to their failure. What makes us think that the government will handle national healthcare any differently, whether it be government run or just government controlled?

On the other hand, perhaps there is no reason for concern. If we can just jury rig all these government programs so they last until after we die, who cares? We can benefit from these programs during our life and let our children worry about the fallout. Yeah, that's the ticket. Stick it to the younger generation! Well, that's tempting, but I don't roll that way. I believe that each generation should live within its own means and pass on a country that is better than the one it inherited. Call me old fashioned, but that's me.

So, based on the wisdom of the founding fathers and my knowledge of history and how governments operate, I believe that, over the long haul, liberty and charity work much better than all inclusive government programs.

Free Health Care For Everybody

In the January 30, 2012 issue of our local newspaper, the TimesDaily, there was a photo of some graffiti left by an Occupy Oakland participant in California. The graffiti consisted of the exact words I used for the title of this post: “Free Health Care For Everybody.” Now who could disagree with that statement? Everybody likes free stuff, and given how expensive healthcare can be these days, getting it free would be a great money saver.

So, how do we start? What plans must we put in place to make this worthwhile venture a success? Well, a good place to start would be to ask doctors to quit charging for their services. Most of the cost of healthcare most likely resides here since millions of people visit doctors of one type or another every day. I suspect that they will object to this and try to convince us of how expensive it was to attend medical school, how much money it takes to rent a space for their practice, and how they must pay for equipment, utilities, malpractice insurance, staff salaries and benefits, and a myriad of other things. Well, don’t be fooled. Healthcare is too important a commodity to be left to the vagaries of a free market with the greedy doctors trying to actually make a profit. But we can expect most if not all doctors to claim that supporting their families is more important to them than helping the rest of us. So, we must be prepared to force them to provide their services without recompense.

The same will have to be applied to hospitals and all the people that work for them. And let’s not forget about all those pharmaceutical companies. We will have to forcefully make it known that we still expect them to spend billions of dollars developing new lifesaving drugs, but provide those drugs at no cost to the public.

We can expect retaliation from all these medical professionals in the form of strongly urging the rest of us to provide our services to them for free also. They’ll probably say something like, “Food is just as important to a person’s health as is medical care. Since we don’t have any money, and we need food to survive, we should have our food provided for free. And while we are at it, we also need housing and transportation. So, give us these things also.” No matter how logical their arguments may be, we must stand strong and insist that they pay us for the goods and services we provide while they continue to provide their services at no cost to us.

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Well, as you can hopefully tell, I’m being facetious. There isn’t any such thing as FREE healthcare. And for that matter, there is no such thing as having any goods or services that cost nothing. What the Occupy Oakland graffiti writer really means is “free healthcare for me at somebody else’s expense.” So, how would that work?

There have been many methods suggested for how to provide universal healthcare within the US. Some methods are already being used in other countries. But the bottom line for all of these methods is that some people pay nothing, some pay less than the cost of the services provided to them, some pay the same as the cost of the services provided to them, and some pay more than the cost of the services provided to them. So, it ends up being a great deal for some and a terrible one for others.

You might ask, “Isn’t that exactly the same result people get when buying insurance?” And indeed, the answer is “Yes.” Insurance is one of those strange commodities that people purchase with the hope of NEVER getting their money back. But, there is one major difference. Insurance is voluntary; a government program is not. There has been a lot of controversy lately about the Constitutionality of an individual mandate for health insurance. In other words, is it Constitutional for the federal government to force all individual citizens to purchase some form of health insurance?

I personally believe that it is extremely UN-Constitutional for the federal government to force its citizens to buy ANYTHING, including health insurance. But even if it were Constitutional, I believe it can ultimately lead to some very bad consequences, such as taking away many of the freedoms we currently enjoy. It may take many years for the problems to manifest themselves to an unacceptable level, just as communism took many years before it failed in the Soviet Union. However, I believe the problems will eventually come.

Suppose we implement a healthcare plan here in the US that provides all people with any medical services they need at any time. Almost immediately all of those expensive procedures that people chose not to have done due to the cost will be scheduled. Over time, as more and more procedures are done, the authorities will begin to see that there is more money being spent than being taken in. Choices will have to be made. Charge everybody more for their “insurance,” or cut costs in some way. Most likely both will occur. They will begin paying doctors and hospitals and drug companies less for their goods and services. This will cause some on the edge to go out of business, and it will most likely affect people in rural areas the most. Eventually, the feds will begin to realize that they cannot cut payments anymore and will try to ration care to cut costs. This will upset many people who will have to forego medical procedures that could help them. Additionally, the feds will also realize that many of the procedures that people are getting relate to bad lifestyle choices. They will begin pushing for regulations on a number of different fronts. Some of these would be: smoking, fat and sugar intake, alcohol consumption, and the amount of exercise people are getting. So, little by little our healthcare will dwindle as our lifestyle choices become more and more regulated. In other words, we will become less free.

When people buy insurance, they do so with the knowledge that certain activities on their part can lead to their insurance costing more than another person’s. For instance, if a person is a smoker, they will pay more. If they are overweight and already have high blood pressure and high glucose levels, they’ll pay more. If they are into extreme sports, they’ll pay more. But the individual’s lifestyle choices remain his or her choice. On the other hand, the tendency for government plans is for the leaders to begin mandating actions rather than charge people differently according to risk.

So, which would you rather have? Freedom or “free” healthcare? I’m afraid the evidence points to a fact that many simply refuse to accept: WE CAN’T HAVE BOTH.

US vs Canada on Healthcare

It's hard to believe it has been over a month since my last post. Time sure slips away, especially around the holidays.

I have written recently about different perspectives on Canadian healthcare. Well, a few days ago I ran across an article that summarizes a 2007 study comparing American and Canadian healthcare. The original paper was a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research entitled Health Status, Health Care and Inequality: Canada vs. the U.S. The summary I read can be found in a recent Laissez Faire book catalog. See page 12.

Canadian Healthcare System

A few days ago I sent a link to many friends and family of a story that John Stossel did on 20/20 about government healthcare in Canada. In this story, Stossel paints a pretty grim picture of that country’s healthcare system, with long lines having waits up to 23 hours and delays in getting critical care. I thought it an important message worthy of being viewed by many others, thus the reason for sending the link.

On Saturday night, my family and I went to a party celebrating a friend’s 40th birthday. Some friends of his that live in Canada came down for the event. As people left and the remaining people congregated into one room, I was itching to ask them for their personal perspective of their country’s healthcare. Eventually, someone broached the subject and I took advantage of it. I asked, “What do you think of Canada’s healthcare system?” Immediately one of the visitors threw his hand up into the air with his thumb extended even higher and said, “I give it a thumbs up.”

Over the next hour or so a very interesting conversation ensued and I was able to find out more about the Canadian health system first hand from three residents of that country. All three agreed that their system was working very well. Not perfect, as no system is perfect, but well. They admitted that it had had its problems in the past, but over the last 25 years the system had been tweaked and was now running quite efficiently. I was told that families pay about $108 per month for insurance (yes, insurance companies still exist and the government works with them) and the government kicks in about 12% of the country’s GDP. By way of contrast, the USA is estimated to spend a total of 17% of GDP. One person said that the most she had ever waited to see a doctor was about two hours. Another said he had waited longer, but generally it was not a problem. He did say that the waits might be longer in rural areas where there are limited healthcare facilities. The full cost of any medical care is paid by the insurance; not even a co-pay is required.

The Canadian population is low enough that some newer or more advanced medical tests and treatments are sometimes not available. In these circumstances, the insurance will pay for the patient and his or her family to visit the United States for service.

Knowing that many US citizens are concerned about socialized medicine leading to rationing and a defunding of general research, I inquired about these things. They responded that they had not seen any rationing happening. They further said that much medical research was being conducted in conjunction with universities.

Wow! And double WOW! How is it possible that these personal experiences with the Canadian healthcare system are so radically different than what was reported by John Stossel? Was I being fed a line by brainwashed Canadians? I really don’t think so. They all seemed like good people with sincere stories about how medicine operates in their country. Was Stossel being dishonest in this report? I don’t believe that either. I suspect that Stossel’s stories, to be provocative and entertaining, focused on the worst experiences of our northern neighbors. My friend’s friends were telling the story from the trenches. Let’s just hope that if some form of government-run healthcare passes in the US, it will work reasonably well, not become politicized, and improve over the coming years.

For a report validating much of what I heard from the Canadians, look at this:

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/mythbusting-canadian-health-care-part-i

The Perfect Health Care Plan

The national health care debate at the US Congressional level and across the United States of America has reached fever pitch. People are surrounding this issue from all directions just like a tribe of Native Americans circling a wagon train of pioneers. Well, I don't know about you, but I like the plan outlined by several Representatives and Senators that has these features:

No denials based on preexisting conditions
No cap on medical expenditures each year
No rationing of care
Patients get to pick their providers
A cap on cost of premiums

What I'm hoping for is a really low cap on the premiums, say no more than $5.00 per month. But, if it's more than this I will probably not take any insurance and just jump in whenever I develop a condition expensive enough to justify having the insurance. After all, if I can't be denied coverage based on any preexisting conditions, I should be able to do this. But wait, perhaps there will be some sort of waiting period after signup before the benefits kick in. Oh, it doesn't matter anyway. I just remembered that President Obama said that everyone would be required to have health insurance whether or not they want it or can afford it. I suppose there will be help for those who can't afford it. Although if they can keep the premiums down to $5.00 a month, there shouldn't be too many needing the help.

But wait just a minute! I just had an epiphany. How can the government possibly provide or expect insurance companies to provide unlimited health care with no preexisting conditions exemptions and no rationing using premiums that are capped. I am having a hard time seeing how that will work without changing the laws of mathematics. If Congress could just make $2 plus $2 equal $1,000,000, I believe their plan just might work. But I don't know how to make those numbers work. I know they don't work at the casinos. But perhaps our noble politicians have a trick up their sleeves.

One trick I've heard is to fund some of the health care plan by cutting fraud out of Medicare. Nice! But if it is possible to cut X number of dollars of fraud from the Medicare system at a cost of less than X number of dollars, why haven't they already done this? Is cutting wasteful spending out of the budget only important when we're in an economic crisis or we're wanting to start another spending plan? Also, I have heard that Medicare is drowning in debt, having trillions of dollars in unfunded future obligations. Won't all the fraud savings have to be put towards those obligations to help keep Medicare afloat? And won't that still not be enough to salvage it?

It's beginning to look like the only way to make ends meet with the proposed health care plan is to simply limit the payout to doctors and drug companies to the amount that is taken in from premiums. But if the premiums are too low, the payouts will be too low, and there will not be much incentive for these people, especially the doctors, to put themselves through 8-10 years of college and intern hell and accumulate hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. That means fewer doctors, which means more patients per doctor, which means the average visit time will have to drop from about 10 minutes per patient to perhaps 5 minutes. There's already people complaining that 10 minutes is insufficient time to consult with a doctor. They'll be yelling if it drops to 5. Oh well, I guess we can always get the government to force the doctors to work 24/7 under threat of imprisonment. I'm not sure who will treat them when they keel over from exhaustion.

I don't think there is any decent person who wants to see another human being go without needed health care. I certainly don't. But the harsh reality of this cold, uncaring Universe is that some things are just impossible. This may be one of those things. One thing seems certain to me. The only way we have any hope of paying for unlimited health care for everyone is to unfetter economic activity and allow productivity to increase tremendously. The increase in wealth, and the resulting increase in tax revenue may just be able to fund unlimited health care, although I am still skeptical. Feel free to comment if you believe I am missing something.

Disturbing Things: Awards and Healthcare

Did you watch the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards on September 13? Even if you didn't, you have probably heard about Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift's acceptance speech for Best Female Video to announce that Beyoncé had made one of the best videos of all times. Yes, that was disturbing to a lot of people. West later apologized to Swift, and Beyoncé graciously allowed Swift to finish her speech during her acceptance for Video of the Year. I guess West was correct about Beyoncé having one of the best videos of all time. He just wasn’t willing to wait and see if she won the big one.

Equally disturbing was a statement made by that British chap, Russell Brand, who hosted the show. He implied that the US leaves people on the streets to die. He said that Britain did not do that since they had free healthcare. FREE healthcare?!? How can this be? Does the motherland have healthcare growing wild on trees in such abundance that there is plenty for everyone. I can visualize the barker near the grove yelling, “Get your free healthcare here. You pick it; you keep it.” I say we need to introduce that tree variety here in the US. Perhaps it can replace all those American Chestnut trees lost to blight in the Smoky Mountains. But wait! I have always heard that money doesn’t grow on trees. So, since healthcare has a certain equivalent monetary value, perhaps it doesn’t grow on trees either. I know! It’s probably a root plant like potatoes and carrots. Everyone knows that that’s how money grows since everyone is always saying that money is the root of all evil. (Actually, the Bible says it is the love of money that is the root of all evil, but what’s a couple of extra words between friends.)

Before I go further, let me clarify something. There may be a few Brits getting free healthcare. For those whose income is such that they never pay taxes, healthcare, for them, is free. But still, the cost of the care has to be paid. It’s just that other people pay for it. So, while a few are getting their healthcare at no cost to them, others end up paying many times over what their own healthcare would have cost. Those in the middle may end up paying about the same as what their care would have cost. But in the end, the healthcare must be paid for. You’ve heard it said that There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch (pronounced TANSTAAFL for all you acronymic types out there). Well, There Ain’t No Such Thing As Free Healthcare (TANSTAFH).

Government may have the power to do a lot of things, but as yet they have not been able to rescind the laws of physics or the laws of economics. But not to worry, they are working on it!