ObamaCare Is Just a Stepping Stone to Nationalized Health Care
Home Depot joins the list of employers cutting back on medical coverage for their workers as ObamaCare looms. This should not be surprising: It is a logical consequence of the incentives set up by the scheme, just as surely as colleges are now cutting back on the courses they offer, in order to keep more of their faculty from crossing the “full time” threshold and thus triggering greater obligations.
Many people roll their eyes at “those idiots in Washington!” as if these obvious outcomes are somehow a surprise. No, the people in Washington have trained economists on their staffs. They understand incentives, even though their rhetoric suggests that they don’t. Over the coming years, as the delivery of US healthcare suffers and citizens become justifiably outraged, they will be led to demand greater and greater government involvement to thwart the “greedy” insurance companies and “overpriced” hospitals. This is part of the plan, as some glib proponents of ObamaCare have let slip.
For example, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in August was interviewed for a PBS program “Nevada Week in Review” in which the following exchange occurred:
“What we’ve done with Obamacare is have a step in the right direction, but we’re far from having something that’s going to work forever,” Reid said.
When then asked by panelist Steve Sebelius whether he meant ultimately the country would have to have a health care system that abandoned insurance as the means of accessing it, Reid said: “Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes.”
Or consider Paul Krugman, who recently wrote at his NYT blog that the solution for rising health care costs is to have the entire health sector run on the pattern of Medicaid:
Everyone who’s serious about the budget realizes that to the extent we do have a long-run fiscal problem…it’s mainly about health care costs…
Meanwhile, we have ample evidence that we do know how to control health costs. Every other advanced country does it better than we do — and Medicaid does it far better than private insurance, and better than Medicare too. It does it by being willing to say no, which lets it extract lower prices and refuse some low-payoff medical procedures.
…
But the problems of access, such as they are, would largely go away if most of the health insurance system were run like Medicaid, since doctors wouldn’t have so many patients able and willing to pay more.…So, I’m not proposing that we turn the whole system into Medicaid any time soon. But what I take from the data is that if and when we feel the need to make tough choices — really, really make tough choices, not use the rhetoric of tough choices to justify what conservatives wanted to do in any case, namely privatize everything in sight — health cost control won’t turn out to be that hard after all. [Bold added.]
Ludwig von Mises argued that the “mixed economy” was an unstable system, because each new government intervention would lead to undesirable consequences that would then invite further interventions. No one has the right to be surprised when so-called ObamaCare doesn’t work, and sets up calls for a total government takeover of health care. That seems to have been the plan all along.
I think most Obamacare proponents are looking to move towards a nationalized healthcare system.
I think government-hater Morgan Warstler largely agrees with Krugman’s view. Here’s Warstler’s vision for healthcare in the State of Texas:
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=23701#comment-276871
“Travis, yes I think a state should via a $6K deposit yearly to HSA account for the poorest, and less as income increases. It can only be used for medical covered under the plan.
The plan itself would cover out of patent drugs, lots more student doctors, lowest rated doctors, Xrays (not MRIs), scars down the middle of your chest heart surgery, etc.
Basically, the functional utilitarian care you WOULD NOT WANT if you could afford it, unless you are truly motivated by penny pinching.
As I mention over and over we should measure justice based on how quickly new tech evolves, and how quickly the cost of the tech disperses to the poorest and weakest.
I’d do the same thing with Food Stamps and Housing Assistance, there should be a level of quality / luxury you can’t get access, if you are using a single subsidy dollar to get it.
This is actually what I expect Obamacare becomes – already the lowest cost plans are shaping up for long queues with the worst doctors…
Pretty soon a bunch of penny pinching Middle class folks are going to notice the pay more money and don’t get stuff as good as the subsidized poor, and all hell is going to beak loose.”
New rule: if you’re going to respond, at least make it pertinent to the comment that you’re responding to.
That’s weird, how did this comment of mine get over here? I could have sworn that I had made this comment on another post (though I can’t remember which one).
Cost approaches to solutions like this are so lame. Imagine if in the early 90s, the government had decided we needed nationalized computer plans. I mean computers were $2,000, making it difficult for many people to afford them.
I imagine the approach would have been to make decisions on what is important on behalf of customers. Obviously, two very expensive components were RAM ($200 for 4 MB at the time) and Hard drive storage ($500 for 500 MB). The “obvious” approach would be to cap the amount of such storage per computer. What shape would our computing lives be in under such a scenario?
That is pretty much the scenario that I hear discussed all the time. Ex: “Too many tests. We need to make sure people really need them.”
What we need to be doing is giving health care some air by reducing regulations. It’s crazy that new drugs often cost $5 billion to develop!
Ken P, you are so spot-on correct that you need to post this comment on every single blog you read, in all-capital letters, and write it as a letter to the editor of every newspaper you can think of.
Thanks, RPLong! I might polish it a little and do something like that.
For starters there would be a lot less bloatware around, and people would have put a lot more time into writing efficient software. Eventually the government would decide to help out the software industry, at which point the price of chisels and stone tablets would sky rocket.
Assuming that govt involvement would have helped the computer industry AT ALL is to ignore the entire Linux ecosystem.
You do know what Linux is, of course, since you feel qualified to talk on the subject of computers.
This is very funny, since you seem to miss not just Tel’s irony and his point but also his perfectly correct deductions, proving you didnt really think about the incentives here.
It is difficult to lump the complex and highly interconnected history of Unix and its intellectual descendants into just a simple single-cause model.
Some government money was involved (generally indirectly through universities, and military contracts) many private individual contributions were involved (too many to list easily, but they can be found if you search) and of course corporate contributions (e.g. SUN which started out as Stanford University Networks then split off into a corporate). Of course Bell Labs was a very peculiar case, where it was nominally private but also part of a government-controlled communications monopoly.
It is interesting how many successful technology products pop up as accidental spin-offs from unrelated enterprises, but almost no new technology comes from a committee given funding and resources to go and create new technology.
What does this have to do with Obamacare? Probably not much… but medicine is a little bit like software in some ways. Doing the very first appendectomy (where you have to make your own tools) is difficult, but getting trained to do an appendectomy with factory made tools after many people have tested and documented the procedure is easy. So the logical trajectory should be from new medicine at high prices, available to only a few people, to the same medicine now commoditized and cheaply available to many people. That’s how the IT industry works.
Somehow the medical industry managed to achieve much higher levels of regulatory capture, and as a consequence prices for very simple operations are still astoundingly high in the USA. These prices would come down if more people could learn medicine and practice medicine, but the protected nature of the industry makes that impossible.
Tel wrote: “It is interesting how many successful technology products pop up as accidental spin-offs from unrelated enterprises, but almost no new technology comes from a committee given funding and resources to go and create new technology.”
Very true, whether that committee is government or private.
“So the logical trajectory should be from new medicine at high prices, available to only a few people, to the same medicine now commoditized and cheaply available to many people.”
I’ve tried to explain that to people, and they say it’s unfair for rich people to get first shot, but the thing is they also take first risk.
Aside from the risk, history proves this is the most effective path. There is something dog in the manger about much of the objections.
mcc in texas under the tutelage of bobby inman was a great example of one of these government-hatched enterprises that came up empty-handed. undoubtedly it boosted the austin housing market a bit.
Great points, Tel. Yes, “experimenting” with tangent possibilities (bloatware) would be discouraged by this approach. Focus would be on software efficiency and eventually subsidized.
That Krugman post is despicable. Is he seriously proposing that the solution is to say “no we won’t pay for that – and we won’t let you, either”. The man is simply insane. Anyone with a THIRD GRADE understanding of economics should be able to see what a colossal fool he is. Which, of course, means Ken B, DK, and “Lord Keynes” will be here shortly to defend him….
More Americans will be heading south of the border for treatments, as some already do.
Apparently the country is full of people with a SECOND grade understanding of economics
It’s full of people that don’t know any economics at all, and when presented with it resort to emotional pleas to reject the actual science before them.
Krugman, on the other hand, seems to have forgotten supply and demand in his Keynesian indoctrination classes.
Actually, make that anyone who has ever ran a lemonade stand.
Matt,totally agree, the man is evil.
Furthermore, what I don’t get from Kruggie is that finally we have a sector in the economy with a whole bunch of “aggregate demand”, and he is complaining. Is it not the Keynesians who always bitch about the lack of aggregate demand? Now Krug’s anwser to the “problem” of too much demand is to reduce the demand by denying folks access to treatments that are not deemed worthy for them by the overlords. But how is that supposed to grow their almighty GDP, expressed in federal reserve notes?
What do these guys want?
It seems to me that he should analyze why the market is unable to respond to all this demand. Perhaps there are impediments that don’t allow the supply to respond to all this demand? Lack of bricks to build hospitals and medical schools perhaps? We’re running out of stethoscopes? Gee, what could those impediments be, no, let me think…
What does my five year old do when he runs low on lemonade for his stand? Does he tell “certain” people they can’t have lemonade? Didn’t think so. He just makes more lemonade. Of course, that is if he doesn’t get arrested first for breaking a zoning law or selling foodstuff without a “license”.
They do it in other areas too.
For example, in Australia, government has insisted they have a monopoly on things like water, because you know only government can supply such an important thing (the fact that many households still run purely on rainwater is something everyone is supposed to ignore). At the same time as telling you only government can deliver, they also tel you to minimize your water consumption, take two minute showers, and you will be hunted down if you get caught watering the garden. We have to do that, for the planet or something, all because of climate change, or polar bears.
They also demanded a monopoly over electricity distribution, and once they got that, they cranked the prices. I’m paying more than 25c per kWh, if you check the article below, I’m paying a higher electricity price than most of Africa:
http://www.afdb.org/en/blogs/afdb-championing-inclusive-growth-across-africa/post/the-high-cost-of-electricity-generation-in-africa-11496/
Now they are trying to force you to get energy efficient bulbs (sadly full of Mercury so you cannot legally dispose of the broken bulb anywhere) and trying to stop people from running their air conditioners on a hot day (I’m totally not kidding, the whole Smart Grid thing is designed to turn off people’s appliances when they need them most).
The recipe is the same;
[1] capture a monopoly position
[2] crank prices and throttle supply
[3] pretend to be shocked
[4] control people’s behavior to manage demand
In a nutshell, it’s just a formula to grab power and lord it over people… the exact excuse may vary, but the effect is always the same.
in some silicon valley cities, the local do-gooders have gone so far as to have trash police who rummage through the trash and issue fines to those not in compliance with the new local ordinances.. in southern california, concerned snoops/believers rat on business owners who wash the filthy street sidewalks,des
ite the gum, goo, and deisel dust from buses no one rides.
Buy him a long overcoat with big pockets and a good pair of running shoes. He can skip from street corner to street corner.
“Pssst, buddy! Wanna buy lemonade? I got the good stuff.”
All made in our secret lemonade lab below thelaundry area.
My wife just signed up for her employer’s group plan. They told her it was $100 and she didn’t bother reading any documents.
Reality: $100 per week.
This is more than 2x the amount she was quoted when she considered a plan outside of her employer’s. And now we can’t friggin cancel it b/c of the stupid eligibility rules.
There are stories of people making less in take home pay than their insurance coverage costs.
Now back to obamacare…….. how do these morons in Wa DC explain the absurd cost increases of late? Affordable care act? FOR WHO?
They explain it as a failure of the evil insurance companies.
I have a couple of Facebook friends who are “liberals”, and that is exactly what they are saying. That the insurance companies are ruining the wonderfulness of Obamacare.
thanks
On a positive not: My wife has has back issues for over 20 years. She’s been admitted to hospitals, in traction, all sorts of doctors (“in the plan” doctors, of course!), to no avail.
After researching on the interwebs, she finally decided to visit a “not in the plan” osteopath. It took the guy literally 10 minutes to diagnose her issue (pelvic torsion as a result of one leg being slightly shorter than the other), and he is treating her with biweekly sessions of old fashioned manual manipulation, for which he charges a buck fifty for one hour. After only 3 sessions she has regained full movement, and for the first time in 25 years (and tens of thousands in wasted insured expenses), she has no pain. The guy is a young doctor operating out of his house, has no receptionist or billing “expert”, just cash or check, thanks. He prescribed nothing, just “take some advil” to remove inflammation. For less than 300 smackers a month, this guy is essentially saving her life.
That is less than what I spend on taking my kids to a Yankee game.
I have recently changed my insurance from the “all you can eat” HMO style “pay 30 bucks and done”, to the high deductible catastrophe plan, augmented with an HSA.
*note*
“Ludwig von Mises argued that the “mixed economy” was an unstable system, because each new government intervention would lead to undesirable consequences that would then invite further interventions.”
Where did he argue that?
On the contrary, in Human Action. The Scholar’s Edition he explicitly denies there is any such thing a “mixed economy”:
There is no mixture of the two systems possible or thinkable; there is no such thing as a mixed economy, a system that would be in part capitalistic and in part socialist. Production is directed by the market or by the decrees of a production tsar or a committee of production tsars.
If within a society based on private ownership by the means of production some of these means are publicly owned and operated—that is, owned and operated by the government or one of its agencies—this does not make for a mixed system which would combine socialism and capitalism. The fact that the state or municipalities own and operate some plants does not alter the characteristic features of the market economy. These publicly owned and operated enterprises are subject to the sovereignty of the market. They must fit themselves, as buyers of raw materials, equipment, and labor, and as sellers of goods and services, into the scheme of the market economy. They are subject to the laws of the market and thereby depend on the consumers who may or may not patronize them. They must strive for profits or, at least, to avoid losses. The government may cover losses of its plants or shops by drawing on public funds. But this neither eliminates nor mitigates the supremacy of the market; it merely shifts it to another sector. For the means for covering the losses must be raised by the imposition of taxes. But this taxation has its effects on the market and influences the economic structure according to the laws of the market. It is the operation of the market, and not the government collecting the taxes, that decides upon whom the incidence of the taxes falls and how they affect production and consumption. Thus the market, not a government bureau, determines the working of these publicly operated enterprises.
Mises, L. 1998. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. The Scholar’s Edition. Mises Institute, Auburn, Ala. pp. 259-260.
According to the logic of this passage, a nationalised healthcare system would not cause the US to have a “mixed economy”.
“On the contrary, in Human Action. The Scholar’s Edition he explicitly denies there is any such thing a “mixed economy”:”
Hence the quotes on “mixed economy”. You really are dense.
Well Bob did put “mixed economy” in parenthesis. Maybe for this reason you bring up here. However I admit I am a bit confused as well why Mises doesn’t like it if you would call a hampered market a mixed economy. Even if the characteristics of how recources are allocated are still the same, there is still someone controlling recourses that are not owned by him but by all and therefore changes the incentives for him comnpared to the situation when it is really privately owned by him.
Especially I would argue the power to tax and cover losses this way provides the possibility for the governmetn bureau to NOT bow to the market sovereignity…
Is there someone who can elaborate on this point, Bob?
Still with the autistic reasoning, huh? U found mixed economy in the index of human action, did you? Too dumb to realize that ur Murphy quote actually said theres no such thing as a mixed economy, but thats ur same logic that reiterates that tendency equals stasis. Also, since i dont think u comprehended the mises quote, not only does this reconfirm u dont understand what tendency toward equilibrium mean, since it uses the same synthetic a priori, universal, laws, but he is now specifically saying government intervention is directed not according to any romantic world spirit emanated from the engineers, but through human action and socratic ignorance. Thats it. In other passages mises does in deed say mixed economies lead to more interventions, and inevitably socialism as its final pursued end. Only he calls it a hampered economy, so the index wont help you there.
I like having you around, LK, because it helps me picture what I’m like to Scott Sumner on his blog…
Here’s what I’m talking about. Of course Mises says in many places that one intervention leads to others.
Yes, I’m aware that he says in H.A. that mixed economy is impossible, but I thought the average American reader of today wouldn’t know what I was getting at if I used Mises’ term “interventionism.”
The quotations were to signify the type of economy that others refer to, I didn’t mean to be quoting Mises.
I am well aware that you were probably thinking of Mises’s remarks on the “hampered market economy”:
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2013/09/robert-murphy-should-have-read-his-mises.html
But you’ve totally missed the substantive point I was making: according to the logic of Mises’ passage, a nationalised healthcare system would not even cause the US to have a “mixed economy” or cease to have a market economy, even if it were *a non-profit system and subsidised from taxes.*
The issues that cause the “hampered market economy” are certain oppressive types of taxation, restriction of production, price distortions (such as price controls or minimum wage laws), central banking and credit expansion, confiscation and redistribution of income and total war (Mises 2008: 712–857), not some nationalised industry per se which Mises tells you “eliminates nor mitigates the supremacy of the market.”
Therefore your implication that the US is heading for command economy socialism just because it might have a nationalised health care system is not even supported by a reading of your own source Mises, who does not say that nationalised industries lead to socialism or chaos .
But you’re sweeping this embarrassing fact under the carpet.
And of course the whole idea that interventions lead inevitably to socialism to chaos is just rubbish.
It sounds like some absurd Austrian version of vulgar Marxism with its “historical necessity” and “iron laws” of history but with Mises’s “iron laws” in place of Marx’s .
The real world shows systems of intervention that maintain stability, e.g., the UK in the 19th century even thought it had a central bank and credit expansion, post-WWII mixed economies, the high interventionists states of South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, etc., or systems of intervention that changed in ways that made them more laissez faire without any socialism or chaos, e.g., the transition from mercantilist economies to those with freer trade.
Mises only said that if you do not accept the drawbacks of your interventions you will need more. However as far as you recognize this drawbacks (like his example that you often like to quote about government mandated fire prevention) to be caused by your interventions then you can either except them and stop there or maybe even cancel this intervention if this drawback runs e.g. directly counter your initial reason the intervention was started in the first place (which is very often the case, see rent control to make living more affordable). He of course doesn’t claim if you start with one little intervention there is no going back. People can change their minds. That is not to say that if you are of an interventionist mindset there is certainly a dynamic to further interventions with every new step taken, since you will not blame your interventions for the problems arising. See the way US healthcare is going.
it should be “accept” not “except ” up there..
“Mises only said that if you do not accept the drawbacks of your interventions you will need more.”
The alleged inevitability of this slide into socialism and chaos is stated clearly by Mises:
“Government control of only a part of prices must result in a state of affairs which -— without any exception —everybody considers as absurd and contrary to purpose. Its inevitable result is chaos and social unrest.”
Ludwig Von Mises, Planned Chaos, p. 11.
Mises speaks here specifically of price controls like rent control etc. As far as the government pushes trough non market prices it WILL actually lead to results that run for sure counter any initial intention, don’t you agree?
He only refers here to direct price control. in at least a part of the economy. And as he wrote earlier:
“If the government, faced with this failure of its first intervention, is not prepared to undo its interference
with the market and to return to a free economy, it must add to its first measure more and more
regulations and restrictions.”
He is not speaking here of interventions like a fire code for house building! You know the quote I am referring to here.
Just to make it clear. What do think does Mises mean when he writes “If the government,…, is not prepared to undo its interference”?
It means the government might change its mind, which is possible at every point in time.
Listen Lk, Misis was no Anarchist. He was not against any “intervention”. He had a different meaning in mind when he talked of interventionism than any Rothbardian today has.
What he was really against was any attempt by the government to alter (meaningfully!) any market price through direct decrees in the market.
I would argue that the more interventionist a country gets the more it is getting obvious that the remaining (rather increasing in quantitiy and quality) problems do not stem from capitalist system but from bureaucratic interventions, and therefore a pressure builds up to revert many interventions. Of course very often people with a face to lose (who drove the interventions in the past, and don’t dare to admit mistakes now, but are still in control) need to be out of the away before others may be able to start a reform…
“The real world shows systems of intervention that maintain stability”
So stable they collapsed into greater and greater interventions. “Stable” here is not referring to economic crises, but a sequence of events that turns out like this:
Problem A is noted by politicians
Law 1 is passed to fix A
Problem B is caused by 1 (A may not be fixed, either.)
Law 2 is proposed to fix B
And so on, and so on
That pattern repeats through almost all of modern history, at the very least. And if you look at the healthcare industry since its modern advent about 100 years ago, it is DEFINITELY true.
“It sounds like some absurd Austrian version of vulgar Marxism with its “historical necessity” and “iron laws” of history but with Mises’s “iron laws” in place of Marx’s .”
Only to the naive reader who can’t distinguish between historical inevitability, and cause and effect in which the cause is subject to choice, not iron law.
Mises’ argument that middle of the road leads to socialism is based on a continuous application of the very foundation of middle of the road policy to every problem that arises in society.
If the government always acts to solve a social problem, and the government’s response to problems itself causes unintended problems, then logically socialism is the end point.
It is easy to see. Imagine there was a 100% full socialist society, and starting tomorrow, any and all problems will be responded to by purely laissez-faire mechanisms only. If laissez-faire mechanisms have unintended problems, and we continue to apply laissez-faire as the solution, then logically laissez-faire mechanisms will eventually become the only mechanism used everywhere.
“If the government always acts to solve a social problem, and the government’s response to problems itself causes unintended problems, then logically socialism is the end point.”
So you’re saying there is historical necessity?
MF, the Marx of the Austrian world.
LK:
No, I’m not saying that, because I don’t hold government intervention is a historical necessity. People can choose to not do it.
It’s pretty obvious you are unable to distinguish between historical necessity, and contingent phenomena based on human choice.
It’s not an argument to “historical necessity” if one says “If people do A, then B will follow”.
The A is not inevitable.
In typical Lord Eugenics fashion, after he gets his ass handed to him, he completely changes the topic.
“The issues that cause the “hampered market economy” are certain oppressive types of taxation, restriction of production, price distortions (such as price controls or minimum wage laws), central banking and credit expansion, confiscation and redistribution of income and total war”
If you nationalized health care and subsidized it with government funds, you would need to:
(a) increase taxation OR expand credit (likely both)
(b) restrict production indirectly by making it impossible for market competition to survive
(c) institute price controls, as Obamacare does
(d) restrict production by the government entity below levels of demanded service at that price point
(e) redistribute income to the providers of the service from the non-providers
The only thing that doesn’t follow as a consequence in your list is the war. Well, except:
“Interventionism begets economic nationalism. It thus kindles the antagonism resulting in war. An abandonment of economic nationalism is not feasible if nations cling to interference with business. Free trade in international relations requires domestic free trade.” – Ludwig von Mises
By the way:
“We must look to the fact that the public realizes that whenever enterprises are nationalized and municipalized or government otherwise interferes with economic life, financial failure and serious disruption of production and transportation follow instead of the desired consequences.” – Ludwig von Mises
“It sounds like some absurd Austrian version of vulgar Marxism with its “historical necessity” and “iron laws” of history but with Mises’s “iron laws” in place of Marx’s .”
Analysing the logical consequences of a measure is like the pseudo-theory of Marx? That’s a totally false statement. It’s like saying that your claim that debt deflation would lead to a recession/depression (assuming its right) it’s a “law” or an “historical necessity”. One more time you totally fail to apply your own criteria to you, which demonstrate how arbitrary your “criticism” is.
And mister Lord “there is no tendency toward equilibrium” Keynes should read his Keynes:
“I find myself moved, not for the first time, to remind contemporary economists that the classical teaching embodied some permanent truths of great significance, which we are liable today to overlook because we associate them with other doctrines which we cannot now accept without much qualification. There are in these matters deep undercurrents at work, NATURAL FORCES, one can call them, or even the invisible hand, which are OPERATING TOWARDS EQUILIBRIUM. If it were not so, we could not have got on even so well as we have for many decades past.” Keynes, J. M. (1946) “The Balance of Payments of the United States”
The Keynes quote is talking about balance of payments equilibrium mechanisms, not tendencies to full employment equilibrium, which indeed Keynes argued did not exists in the classical sense.
And even on balance of payments equilibrium Keynes was WRONG.
In contrast to Austrian cultists who think everything Mises said was absolute truth, Post Keynesians do not blindly follow Keynes or think he was infallible.
“In contrast to Austrian cultists who think everything Mises said was absolute truth”
That’s a lie.
I don’t agree with Mises’ assessment of “uneasiness” for why we act.
I don’t agree with Mises’ assessment that the state is valuable.
There are other points which other “Austrians” disagree with Mises as well.
You are a blind follower.
“In contrast to Austrian cultists who think everything Mises said was absolute truth, Post Keynesians do not blindly follow Keynes or think he was infallible.”
This is probably the biggest bullshit statement you’ve ever posted bullshitter. What was that about a cult, LORD KEYNES?
“In contrast to Austrian cultists who think everything Mises said was absolute truth, Post Keynesians do not blindly follow Keynes or think he was infallible.”
An incredibly false statement and very easy to demonstrate.
1) You yourself have cited and used Austrians that were criticising Mises. So you have refuted yourself. Bob Murphy himself has criticised Mises a lot of times.
2) I defy you to name only one respected Austrian that has said he agrees totally 100% with every single word Mises has said.
Hey, notice how i said “pursued end.” Who pursues? People. You cant seriously believe this scarcity wont cause people to think its because healthcare still has the market in it. And single payer isnt nationalized health care. Its tribal healthcare. But ur possessed by ontological speculation, believing itll be too perfect for any further communalizing. But no matter what, this isnt the end, and itll undergo a future metamorphosis, either toward more or less regulations. And that quote you used does say that interventionism is inherent in nationalizing industry, since the partnerships are still subject to economic laws. Either they have to funcion like a private business, or the economy has to be mitigated by interventionism.
Things that are possible in the short term, but impossible in the long term, often fall into the category known as “unstable”.
Yes, we have an economy where some decisions are made privately but many decisions are made either directly by government or indirectly via one oligopoly or another fairly directly connected to government, and yes many people might call this a “mixed economy” but how do we know it will still be here in a few decade’s time?
After all, the number of regulations keeps increasing, the surveillance state is ramping up, and individuals are making less decisions every day… maybe what we are attempting to do here really is impossible?
““Ludwig von Mises argued that the “mixed economy” was an unstable system, because each new government intervention would lead to undesirable consequences that would then invite further interventions.”
“Where did he argue that?”
In his essay “Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Socialism.”
I’ve understood this as self evident for forty years. Further, the process also happens because no “progressive” or interventionist appears able to distinguish between laissez faire and crony capitalism/interventionism. Thus, the problems caused by the last prior intervention are always blamed on the market and require further intervention.
There is a well known hoax known as Keynesianism which falsely identified the problems caused by intervention in the 1930s as being caused by “laissez faire” and thus there was an alleged need for even more massive intervention. This happens over and over and over and even in our own recent past, like the problems in 2008.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bob_roddis/9966332893/
I think the only difference is that the majority of supporters (sure, maybe some policy makers and some of those with economic backgrounds think otherwise though) think Obamacare will be “good” i.e. have a desirable outcome where the healthcare industry is in fact improved. Meanwhile, the Misesian view is that government intervention in the healthcare industry will make the industry worse. But both views can be consistent with seeing Obamacare as a stepping stone for further intervention.
“Ludwig von Mises argued that the “mixed economy” was an unstable system, because each new government intervention would lead to undesirable consequences that would then invite further interventions. ”
Think the actual quote you are referring to actually came from Ayn Rand, who likely got the general idea from Mises.
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/mixed_economy.html
Obamacare is the Heritage Foundation’s alternative to a single payer system (govt sells health insurance). The people quoted in the article support a single payer system. That does not mean Obamacare was designed to fail and create popular support for a single payer system. Is a single payer system nationalized health care? No since the doctors are not employed by the govt any more than the doctors are employed by health insurance companies today.
Also, hard to see how marginal utility can set prices for non-elective surgery since non-elective means the supplier of goods and services is dictating demand. Austrian school seems to fall apart here and have no answers.
” Is a single payer system nationalized health care? No since the doctors are not employed by the govt any more than the doctors are employed by health insurance companies today.”
If you only get paid from one source, then that would be an employment relation. Doctors are not employed by insurance companies today precisely because they are not paid by one.
“Also, hard to see how marginal utility can set prices for non-elective surgery”
All surgery is technically elective. Pain and death are a part of life, and it is the individuals choice as to when they can bear this.
“since non-elective means the supplier of goods and services is dictating demand”
Uh, no. “Non-elective” is a term used to indicate that the alternatives are very severe, possibly even death. Which simply means that demand will be roughly equivalent to desire (people will put high value on these services). Which would make them expensive, and under a free market for entry (eliminated by government decades ago), supply would increase as a result causing prices to fall until the cost of providing the service (including training) and labor becomes the price, with an adjustment for some small rate of return.
So, would I be correct in summarizing that the reason Paul Krugman thinks Medicaid works so much better (in his mind) is because it more closely mimics the actions an individual would take in a free market when making choices on their medical care? Namely, a person would look at the cost of the procedure and the benefit and decide based on that whether or not it was worth paying for it or seeking an alternative or forgoing altogether?
You can tell a proponent of government intervention is confused when they promote the intervention on the basis that the market doesn’t provide access to enough people, and then decide to control costs by limiting access to fewer people. That’s self-contradictory and self-defeating.
You have just described health care in Ontario.
Have to agree with you on this one, Bob. While there is lots of stupidity and incompetence at all levels in the government, the state is more evil than stupid on this one.
Amusing (at least to me) fact when comparing this to the situation in my country (universal health care, mixture of non-optional state/private health insurance and medical provision). The most libertarianish party (freshly voted out of the parliament) wanted to reform the system to something simlilar to ObamaCare which naturally was met with accusations of turbo-capitalism while in the US ObamaCare is met with accusations of socialism. Oh how the perspectives differ.
Quote from PK bolded in Bob’s post: ” and refuse some low-payoff medical procedures. ”
Scary!
But remember, there are no death panels or anything. Just a panel… that will decide when treatment is too expensive for the “payoff” and you should die instead.
Totally different!
Beyond the current Obamacare debate, the reason that the medical field has failed (at all) so many so often is due to prior (unmentionable) interventions that have distorted the market. Again, the narrative of the “progressives” is that the market has failed and requires STRONGER intervention. Things I quickly and easily understood in 1974 are denied by Lord “Fixprice” Keynes today.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bob_roddis/9966332893/
Invariably, “progressives” and interventionists will not and/or cannot see or admit that it is prior interventions and not the failure of “laissez faire” or “the free market” that has invariably caused our economics problems when they argue for further interventions.
It is for others to argue about the deep philosophical nature of that observable, recurring and apparently inevitable phenomenon in our non-ergodic galaxy.