What is it about the subject of the health care system that turns otherwise sensible bloggers into blithering idiots? I’ve been wandering around the blogosphere today and I’ve seen a number of posts about reforming the Medicare system. That’s a discussion we should be having and I’m sincerely glad the discussion is going on.
But whenever there’s the beginning of a discussion of commonsensical cost-control measures there’s an absolute deluge of anarcho-capitalist flapdoodle in praise of free markets and condemning socialized medicine. I’m not just creating a strawman here. Here’s a direct quote from a prominent blogger:
“Well,” the counterargument goes, “The Europeans and Canadians spend a smaller–some much smaller–portion of GDP on health care. That’s because they have all these cost-control mechanisms in place. All we have to do is copy their systems.” Ah, but here’s the rub: They can afford to do that because America still offers such a great scope for medical innovation. That’s why almost every single advancement in medical science comes from the US, and not from Canada or Europe. The Euros get to keep their costs down, and benefit from American led medical innovation. But that’s not a sweetheart deal that would continue if the US clamped down on innovation by implementing European-style price controls.
[…]
Absent the inovations that the free market system provides in the US, the whole world would suffer.
Emphasis mine. I’m not going to link to the post because I don’t want to call a blogger that I otherwise like and admire a blithering idiot in public.
Leaving aside for a moment that he presents absolutely no hard data to support his claims there’s another problem: we don’t have a free market in health care in the United States. Like the rest of the world we have a managed system with enormous subsidies granted to healthcare suppliers in the form of patents, licenses, the prescription drug system and so on that are offset somewhat by more enormous subsidies granted to healthcare consumers in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, etc. I can point you to any number of prominent scholars who attribute the innovation that he’s praising to U. S. patent law. And a patent is a temporary govern-granted monopoly. There’s absolutely nothing natural or free market about it.
You can be a free market enthusiast or you can approve of the patent system in the United States. You can’t do both without cognitive dissonance because they are diametrically opposed.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s a perfectly good social benefit argument for patents. But for goodness sake don’t call your social benefit argument a free market while calling the other guy’s social benefit argument socialized medicine.
Alice Banchini of Alice in Texas has an excellent post on lying. Whenever I want to get the straight skinny on moral conduct I always turn to Aquinas first:
Accordingly if these three things concur, namely, falsehood of what is said, the will to tell a falsehood, and finally the intention to deceive, then there is falsehood—materially, since what is said is false, formally, on account of the will to tell an untruth, and effectively, on account of the will to impart a falsehood.
If you tell the truth thinking it is a lie with the intent to deceive, it is deceit but not a lie. If you tell a falsehood thinking it is the truth, it’s neither deceitful nor a lie.
The Jesuits added some new wrinkles to this kind of thinking that had to do with the consequences of the lie and the person to whom the lie was told. If the consequences of the truth would be to injure someone else, the Jebbies were inclined to excuse the lie. Or if the person asking the question had no right to the truth, the Jebbies also considered a lie excuseable. That’s where the term “equivocating Jesuit” came from. Have I mentioned that I’m Jesuit-educated?
This week’s Carnival of the Liberated, a sampler of some of the best posts of the week from Iraqi bloggers, is now available on Dean’s World. This week it features some Westerners blogging from Iraq. And the Iraqi bloggers have been very, very busy. There are posts on grief, WMD’s, a nuclear physicist,
cultural integration, the high cost of living, an old taxi driver and lots more.
LONDON, England (Reuters) — Cost overruns and political bickering will be set aside Tuesday at Airbus as the Toulouse-based planemaker unveils its mighty A380 double-decker, the biggest airliner ever built.
French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are among more than 5,000 guests invited for a first glimpse of the A380, which some airlines are betting will reshape the industry.
Customers have committed almost $40 billion to buying the 555-seat plane, expecting it to lower operating costs and fatten profits, battered in a slowdown since 2001.
It’s calculated that Airbus needs to sell 248 of these craft to break even and at this point they’ve got commitments for 149. And a lot can happen between a commitment and a delivery.
Over the last few years in the United States the business model for successful airlines has tended to move away from flying large passenger aircraft in favor of more frequent flights by smaller aircraft and shorter distances. This enables an airline to conduct business in a significantly more agile fashion.
The Soviet Union was reknowned for behemoth works projects: the world’s largest aluminum plant, the titanic Yenisei river dam, mammoth rockets, and the enormous Bureisky hydroelectric project. It’s nice to know that the thirst for the gigantic is alive and well and living in the EU. I sincerely wish Airbus well and hope they have all the success in the world with their new craft.
But somehow I wonder if it’s just the wrong product at the wrong time.
I just noticed that, according to Sitemeter, The Glittering Eye has had more than 50,000 visitors as of sometime this afternoon. It’s actually probably quite a bit more than that since for the first several months of operation I didn’t have Sitemeter set up correctly in some important templates. And Webalizer (a host-based usage stats program) tells me that I’ve had almost 140,000 visitors since start-up.
That’s fewer than top bloggers get in a normal day but I’m not in the least jealous of them. I like where I am and what I’m doing and IMNSHO that’s more than enough.
Thanks to all of my blog-friends and readers who visit The Glittering Eye. When you like something you’ve read, please tell other people about it. And y’all come back now.
The excitement is building among ex-patriate Iraqis living in the United States in anticipation of the upcoming election in Iraq:
Abdul Albisherawy says he doesn’t care who wins the upcoming Iraqi elections as long as his homeland isn’t run by a dictator.
“Any leader that gets in, that’s fine as long as the people run the country,” the Chicago cab driver said Monday as he prepared to join thousands of Iraqi expatriates registering to vote in the upcoming Iraqi election.
As the seven-day voter registration period opened Monday in the Chicago area and four other U.S. cities, Albisherawy and others talked with excitement about the opportunity to cast ballots in Iraq’s first independent election in nearly 50 years.
Chicago is one of five cities in the United States which will have polling places for the upcoming election along with Detroit, Nashville, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC.
I live (nearly) within walking distance of a large Assyrian church with a very active community consisting mostly of Iraqis. I may swing by there to see what’s going on. It’s estimated that there are more than 30,000 Iraqi ex-patriates qualified to vote in the Chicago area and more than 80,000 in Detroit for something like 250,000 nationwide. This population is largely Christian and, since most fled Iraq to avoid the persecution of Christian Iraqis under Saddam Hussein, very anti-Saddam.
I’ve just learned that Ruth Warrick (in the center of the picture at the left), the last of the principal players of Citizen Kane, died of pneumonia on January 15. Now only the children in the cast are left.
Ms. Warrick had a substantial career in movies and on television. Most TV viewers probably know her best for her many roles in soap operas, most notably her long, long run in All My Children.
It’s a busy day in the blogosphere. Apparently more people than I thought have some time on their hands this morning. Here’s what’s caught my eye:
Beautiful Atrocities lists the blogola received by right-leaning bloggers
for their endorsements of Bush. As if.
Different River has a great post on Medicare. Forget Social Security reform, folks.
This is the big dog.
Steve Antler of Econopundit directs us to a history of Social Security
that should be required reading if we’re going to have an intelligent discussion of this issue.
Has Sistani endorsed a slate of candidates in the upcoming Iraqi elections? Juan Cole of Informed Comment is skeptical.
At last! Golden Globe fashion blogging from Little Miss Attila.
I haven’t seen nearly as much of this as I expected to.
Matsu of media girl reads the Tarot for the Democratic Party. Really.
And it’s interesting. Remember her predictions. I’ll bet they’re as good as anybody else’s. Or better.
Medpundit comments on her experience with and attitude towards the automation
of medical record keeping.
Who (or more accurately what) dunnit at shrinkette. Read the comments
for the solution.
That’s the lot.
UPDATE: It didn’t take long. Remember what I said about Tigerhawk’sCarnival of the Commies yesterday? The Poor Man has responded with what he calls Wingnut Butter.
I’ve just learned that 
