Paul M. Jones

Apparently "yes", when you control for car crashes and homicides.

One big reason our life expectancy lags is that Americans have an unusual tendency to perish in homicides or accidents. We are 12 times more likely than the Japanese to be murdered and nearly twice as likely to be killed in auto wrecks.

In their 2006 book, The Business of Health, economists Robert L. Ohsfeldt and John E. Schneider set out to determine where the U.S. would rank in life span among developed nations if homicides and accidents are factored out. Their answer? First place.

via The Agitator » Blog Archive » Life Expectancy.

Not sure what this says about US rates of homicide and auto fatalities, but I'm pretty sure it says that the "Americans spend more on health care but don't live as long" trope is misleading at best.

via Hot Air » Blog Archive » Video: Marine goes nuclear on Democrat over ObamaCare.

Right now, the U.S. does not have a national market for health insurance. It has 50 separate state markets. Erecting walls around each state means less competition and higher prices for consumers. There's not even one market for the Chicago area. If you live in South Holland or Calumet City, your insurance options could be completely different from your Indiana neighbors in Hammond or Merrillville. What sense does that make?

The easiest way to see how insurance competition benefits consumers is to look at auto insurance. That's a huge, nationwide market and companies compete intensively for a share of it. Some stress their low prices, others customer service, whatever gives them an edge in the marketplace. Geico and Progressive have been especially aggressive in touting cost savings. State Farm and Allstate certainly compete on price, but they stress service after an accident. That's why Allstate says "you're in good hands," and State Farm says it will be there "like a good neighbor." Other companies, like SafeAuto, focus on drivers who want only minimum coverage to meet state license requirements. In short, auto insurance companies compete vigorously to provide what different consumers want, and they tell them so in national advertisements. Life insurance companies do the same thing. There are even companies that specialize in comparing policies for customers. Competition drives down excess profits and means better, cheaper options for consumers.

Ever see an ad touting health insurance? They are rare because the markets are small and companies don't need to compete aggressively on price or service. Introducing such competition would be good for consumers, wouldn't require another Washington bureaucracy and could be done quickly.

via Let insurance companies compete across U.S. -- chicagotribune.com. (All emphasis mine.)

Rose Friedman has passed away.. Rest in peace.

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, posts The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare at the WSJ.

The 8 things he lists are:

1. Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs).
2. Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits.
3. Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines.
4. Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover.
5. Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
6. Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost.
7. Enact Medicare reform.
8. Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren't covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Go read the whole thing; below, I have some notes of my own.

Point 1 (HSAs) is near and dear to me; I have an HSA and it's great. I get to keep all the money I don't spend; it's mine all mine. That makes me very cost-conscious, and I could be even more cost-conscious if point 6 (cost transparency) was available.

Points 2 (federal tax law), 3 (state law), and 4 (mandated coverage) should be educational to anyone who thinks we already have a free market in health care. We don't. These point out only a few of the kinds of federal and state regulation that reduce the effectiveness of markets.

Not sure how I feel about point 5 (tort reform). I'm definitely in favor of the reform that says "loser pays" but I'm betting that's not what most of the tort reform crowd has in mind.

Point 7 (Medicare reform) is a little vague.

Point 8 (donations to those without insurance) makes for actual *charity*, with all the moral and emotional benefits that confers upon the charitable giver, and not merely confiscation by the government.

Speaking of Obama's scare tactics, that 46 million is a very dubious statistic, the kind Mark Twain had in mind when he talked about lies and damned lies. Here's a chart from a GOP Senator (based on U.S. Census data) that explains who those 46 million actually are.

...

So what we actually have is about 12 million American citizens of income less than $75K who have no access to insurance or government programs. That's about 4% of the population. Many of those are young, healthy people who don't particularly need insurance, and those at incomes of $40-$50K or above can probably afford to borrow and repay medical bills over time; half seems a reasonable estimate of the two combined. So we have 2% of the country that really has a need for this reform.

via Classical Values :: Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Health Care Crisis?.

via http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/08/01/obama-joker-poster-popping-los-angeles.

File this under "dissent is the highest form of patriotism." ;-)

UPDATE (Mon 07 Aug):

“Want to know where I got these cars?”

via Pajamas Media » Is Obama Really Like the Joker?.

When every benefit is received as a right, there is no place for good manners, let alone gratitude.

...

In the welfare state, mere survival is not the achievement that it is, say, in the cities of Africa, and therefore it cannot confer the self-respect that is the precondition of self-improvement.

...

...a system of welfare that makes no moral judgments in allocating economic rewards promotes antisocial egotism.

via Theodore Dalrymple:
What is Poverty?.

Apollo was not a methodical space program; it was an anomalous race in the Cold War in which anything could be wasted but time. It turned out to be unsustainable and unaffordable, which is why it boggles the mind that over three decades later--during which time there were huge technology advances--Apollo was chosen as a model for a program that was supposed to be affordable and sustainable.

The shuttle program didn’t demonstrate that reusable vehicles don’t work. In fact, the one reusable part of the shuttle--the airplane-like orbiter--was the only part that didn’t kill crew (the solid rocket booster was responsible for the Challenger accident, and the external fuel tank’s foam was responsible for the Columbia accident). Moreover, the shuttle program tells us nothing at all about reusable space transports that are designed to reasonable requirements and high flight rates--particularly fully reusable ones that don’t shed hardware each flight.

Neither does the shuttle experience prove that we shouldn’t mix crew and cargo. All it tells us is that if we are going to build a reusable vehicle, it has to be sufficiently reliable to safely carry either crew or valuable cargo (just as airplanes are), because space transports cost too much to lose, regardless of their payloads. When Columbia was lost, we lost seven astronauts, yes. But we also lost a quarter of our orbiters. That is simply unaffordable. Cheap bulk cargo could reasonably be launched on less expensive, less reliable vehicles, but when we do develop practical space transports, the notion of throwing rockets away will make no more sense than burning a 747 on the runway after it lands with a load of cut flowers.

Likewise, the space station doesn’t teach that we must avoid assembling things in orbit; if anything, it shows that orbital assembly can be very effective when building something large out of many smaller pieces. That it took so long and cost so much is attributable to the constraints of the shuttle (and of the co-opting of the station for diplomatic ends). For that matter, the several repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope, various satellite repair missions, and the first Skylab mission back in 1973 show how even complicated and dangerous repair and servicing operations can be successfully conducted in orbit.

via The New Atlantis » A Space Program for the Rest of Us.

It's crazy for a group of mere mortals to try to design 15 percent of the U.S. economy. It's even crazier to do it by August.

Yet that is what some members of Congress presume to do. They intend, as the New York Times puts it, "to reinvent the nation's health care system."

Let that sink in. A handful of people who probably never even ran a small business actually think they can reinvent the health care system.

Politicians and bureaucrats clearly have no idea how complicated markets are. Every day people make countless tradeoffs, in all areas of life, based on subjective value judgments and personal information as they delicately balance their interests, needs and wants. Who is in a better position than they to tailor those choices to best serve their purposes? Yet the politicians believe they can plan the medical market the way you plan a birthday party.

via The Arrogance of Health Care Reform: Why do politicians with no business experience think they can run 15 percent of the economy? - Reason Magazine.