Health Care Bill

"Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it—and still less safe, if he... is the sort who doesn't."
~Dr. Hendricks, Altas Shrugged

Going Postal on Health Care?

Why is it that so many people think the government should intervene with health care? Think about it - the same people & system of management that brings us the US Post Office (and DMV, and countless other painful entities to deal with) is supposed to manage that which is responsible for maintaining our health and saving our lives!

I just returned from the Post Office - I had 8 packages and envelopes to send, all packed properly and ready to go. It took me over 45 minutes... one clerk started rudely ("Do you have your customs forms?" "No" "Then you need to step back." - step back? am I now a threat?) - then after said cumbersome forms, the same man was nicer, but a short way into my transaction said that he had to leave for lunch. I was allowed to keep my place in line, and the next man was very pleasant but not overly competent (hunt and peck typing, consistent mistakes and misprints of postage, etc) - so in the end, long lines, rudeness and incompetency - the things we have all come to expect from the government agencies - and I think the Post Offices is one of the better bureaucracies that I've dealt with!

Then I went to the bank. I was greeted pleasantly, the line was almost non-existent (depsite being lunchtime), the service was fast, and I was out the door with a piece of candy and cup of water in hand.

Now, I realize that there are good government employees and bad private sector folks - but all of my experiences have shown that those are the exceptions. Many people I have spoken to seem to have had similar experiences. So why are we pushing for the same system that creates long lines, incompetent service and mind numbing paperwork to be imposed upon our health care system?

I just don't get it...

Comparative Religion

From HolyTaco.com comes this fabulous "comparative religion" flowchart. Solve the question once and for all! Whatdya know... I should be an atheist. Convenient.

The Reason for the Season..

The Onion continues its reign of awesomeness with a quick poke at Creationism. A favorite excerpt...

Members of the earth's earliest known civilization, the Sumerians, looked on in shock and confusion some 6,000 years ago as God, the Lord Almighty, created Heaven and Earth.

According to recently excavated clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform script, thousands of Sumerians—the first humans to establish systems of writing, agriculture, and government—were working on their sophisticated irrigation systems when the Father of All Creation reached down from the ether and blew the divine spirit of life into their thriving civilization.

"I do not understand," reads an ancient line of pictographs depicting the sun, the moon, water, and a Sumerian who appears to be scratching his head. (read rest of article here)

Round Up and Resolutions

Happy New Year everyone!

Rational Jenn just posted the "Best of 2009" Objectivist Round-Up. I'm sure this will be one of the best collections of knowledge, thinking and inspiration ever collected! Check it out.

Alex at the Ayn Rand Institute wrote this great article on the value of New Years resolutions. Enjoy!

Here's wishing everyone a very happy and productive 2010!

Letter to Senator to Oppose Health Care Bill

Here's the letter I sent to our Alaskan democratic senator Begich this morning regarding the health care bill currently in the senate:

Senator Begich,

56% of Americans oppose this bill
only 40% approve
(source: Rasmussen Reports, Dec 14th, 2009)
my observation has been that Alaskans oppose it even more fiercely

Please vote NO on the health care bill - to vote otherwise would be to completely disregard (and unethically represent) your constituents.

I strongly oppose this bill, primarily because claiming a "right" to the goods and services produced by others is immoral, but also because history has shown that government oversight reduces access and quality by miring people and productivity in bureaucracy. Doctors, hospitals, and patients should have the right and the freedom to deal with each other any way they want.

Please vote NO on the health care bill.

Wayne M
McCarthy, AK

Please write your senators as well asking them to help fight this un-ethical, un-American bill.

Is Income Equality Moral?

During a recent conversation, income differences between the rich and the poor was mentioned as a problem. Looking at the US Census Bureau data (table F-1 at this link), from 1947 to 2008 the income of the poorest quintile in the US has increased 108% vs. the income of the richest quintile, which increased 194%. So the questions I ask is: if my income doubles, what does it matter if my neighbors' income triples? Is it really important that everyone’s quality of life rises at the same rate?

Personally, I think Steve Jobs or the Google Guys should make a ton of money for their amazing innovations – as they benefit a lot of people, and those people freely give their money to them in exchange for the benefit they see for their own life. But why do so many of those same people (the ones benefiting from iPods and Google) then want to take a significant percentage of that money back in the form of taxes? What do you think is the moral justification for taking back money that was freely given to someone else that benefited your life?

No one I've spoken to seems comfortable with the idea of directly taking money from another person just because that person has more money than they do. Yet most people seem comfortable with the idea of electing an official, who then takes that money (in the form of taxes) and spends it on their behalf (in the form of public services). Many will argue that it's for "the public good" and that everyone has a vote, but then I think of all the horrific acts (e.g. the Inquisition, Stalin's or Mao's purges, the Holocaust, etc) that were often perpetrated by parties voted into power and most often carried out under the guise of the "public good". It seems to me that the "morality of a society" is just the morality of its participants - which can be reflected in the officials they elect and the acts they condone, either by active participation or silence...

Justice, not Grace

Last year around this time I also posted a link to Craig Biddle's excellent article, "Don't Say Grace, Say Justice". This is a great, positive description of why we should be thankful for those who truly bring a benefit to our lives, rather than a fictional god who deserves no credit. Highly recommended.

Happy Turkey-day everyone. Eat, drink, be merry, and thank those who make your life great.

Hooray for Wayne!

Well, my wonderful hubby finally made his first post on Life On Marrs (see below). I was beginning to think I should change the URL to justgaia.blogspot.com. He's awfully smart, well-spoken and funny too (of course I'm biased), so here's to many more!

Everyday Questions on Health Care

A friend recently asked for my thoughts on health care reform - and here is my casual response:

overall - the overriding moral issue is whether or not health care is a "right" - you know I'm a huge fan of individual rights (the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness (i.e. the right to take actions for your own life) and the right to property (i.e. the right to keep the fruits of your own labor). To claim goods and services as a "right" is immoral, as you have to take away the true rights of some (property) in order for others to make a claim to the goods and services of other (e.g. to say that everyone has a right to cheap health care is to say that doctors and nurses do not have the right to charge what people are willing to pay for their services)

now that we've got the big moral question out of the way, let's move on to some of the politic issues and analysis. to my mind, some key/relevant questions (numbered) with their respective points (lettered) would be:

1) why is health insurance so much more expensive then other insurance (e.g. car or home insurance?)

a) during the Great Depression, hospitals and doctors organized their own insurance groups to promote/sell their services - they pitched it to the government as a "non-profit" that would cover entire communities and charge the same rate for each person - the lobbying paid off and the govt granted them special privileges (tax exempt status and a greatly reduced reserve requirement (i.e. how much money the insurance company must keep available to pay for claims - and this reserve capital is the largest factor for the viability of an insurance company) - who were these dastardly companies using government influence for unfair competitive advantage? The answer: Blue Cross and Blue Shield. Needless to say, the Blues dominated the market within just over a decade. Nothing like government-awarded monopolies to skew pricing! The Blues are only listed as the 44th largest political donor - after bankers, real estate and unions - so is there any mystery why we had the bank bailout, the home buyers credit and the GM bailout before health care? http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php

b) another important factor in health insurance is that during WWII - the govt put a freeze on wage increases but health insurance was exempted (i.e. any health insurance offered by an employer did not count toward the "maximum wage allowance") - so one way that businesses were able to lure workers was to offer the highest wage possible and good health insurance as well. With the dearth of labor available during the war, you can imagine businessmen doing whatever they could to hire good people. This policy led to the "social norm" of employers providing health insurance - but how screwed up is that? Your employer wants to pay as little as possible for your health insurance, but it is to your benefit to use it as much as possible - and you have no motivation to price shop services. Your only concern is co-pay, which for many policies is minimal, so why wouldn't people "use & abuse" such a policy? Imagine if your home owners insurance would cover maintenance items (e.g. mowing your lawn and cleaning your gutters) for a $20 co-pay. Wouldn't you use it all the time? Wouldn't the insurance company need to cover the cost of all the gardeners and maintenance men? Of course - but this is not the role of insurance. It is supposed to be for extreme/rare incidents - but in the case of health care it's been twisted into everyday use, and the person using it has no incentive to even consider the price of the service. Is it any wonder that such a system dysfunctional? Luckily, home owners insurance has not been as heavily manipulated by the government and doesn't cover "little things" - and therefore it is reasonably priced and relatively reliable. I don't understand why more people don't question why other insurance is so good and health insurance so bad...

2) why is health care itself so expensive? (i.e. does not seem to follow normal supply & demand cycles)
a) primarily, I think it's insurance debacle described above that has created the disconnect between the one providing the service, the one receiving the service and the one paying for the service that has skewed pricing so badly, but there are other important factors.
b) current tort law through a variety of precedent cases has made the onus of medical knowledge for medical professionals completely unreasonable. some of the cases that I've looked into seem to imply the standard as an ultra-genius doctor familiar with all aspects of medicine that also never makes a mistake. It's easy enough to imagine juror's that think they are serving justice by hitting insurance companies with outrageous settlements for patients that have had problems - but the cost is astronomical. And it is also true that doctors that make significant errors in judgment should pay - and that they should be insured for when they make errors - but there needs to be a reasonable expectation of what a doctor can know and how difficult medical diagnosis can be.
c) the law that requires ER's treat anyone, regardless of their ability to pay, is ridiculous. Combine that with the low reimbursement rates offered by Medicare and Medicaid and you have another recipe for disaster. These low reimb rates make it difficult for people on Medicare/caid to get a primary physician - but they know they can see a doctor if they go to the ER, so many do. In the eight years following EMTALA (the law that required ER's to see any patient, passed in 1985), ER visits went up 27%, and in that same time 14% of ER's closed down. Is it any wonder?
d) finally, the FDA is such a gigantic and unwieldy bureaucracy that only the largest pharmaceutical companies can have the apparatus required to negotiate the labyrinth to "approval". Because of that, competition is all but eliminated, and guess what...

AND ABOVE ALL - MASSACHUSETTS HAS A SIMILAR PLAN TO WHAT CONGRESS IS CONSIDERING - AND IT LOOKS LIKE A TERRIBLE DISASTER!!!

so, with all those points, you can imagine my amazement that people are calling for more government involvement - when as far as I can tell, it is government involvement that screwed the whole thing up in the first place

kinda like everyone turning to the gov after the credit crash, but no one ever questioned the fed's role in handing out the cheap money that caused the housing bubble to begin with...

NYT headlines of the day

NYT Headline #1: "G.M., Citing Progress, Reports Loss of $1.15 Billion". Apparently this is a small loss compared to the past, and is allowing GM to begin paying back its government debt.

NYT Headline #2: "Drug Makers Raise Prices in Face of Health Care Reform". Basically, the new health care bill is going to limit price increases in the coming years, so everyone is trying to give themselves a buffer by raising their prices before the legislation becomes effective. Go buy your cheap drugs now!

Do people not look at these headlines and notice that something is fundamentally flawed? Amazing the world we live in...

Venn Jesus

Courtesy of Diana Hsieh at Noodlefood, from an unknown original source on Twitter, comes this amazing diagram. Enjoy.

Principles of a Free Society

Rational Jenn posted a link to this new site by the Ayn Rand institute, "Principles of a Free Society". I haven't perused in detail yet, but it looks like a simply layout of the basic principles for a society based on reason and individual rights. It lays out three main areas: Limited Government, Objective Laws, and Individual Rights. It also goes into detail about four important "separations", Separation of Church and State, Economics and State, Science and State, and Education and State. Good stuff and fairly simple to understand.

Democrats on Health Care

Doesn't it seem like the democrats are extremely self-righteous and self-congratulatory with this whole health-care thing (and every other issue for that matter)? I think if they could look outside their individual bubbles of political negotiations and deals and see what is really going on, they would have to say, "Oh shit - half of Americans don't want this! Something must be wrong!" But no... I think those individuals truly believe that they are somehow superior and therefore should have the ability to make decisions for everyone else. And of course it doesn't help that we have an apathetic populous in a society that often actively avoids reason. At this rate, we're totally screwed.

Hobbit Beach

I know I haven't been posting much of substance lately, but it will come! For now, here's a shot from our trip to the Oregon Coast this week...

First Solo Flight

I may start shopping at "Whole Paycheck"

On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal published this article as a follow-up to John Mackey's August editorial that caused a lot of backlash towards himself and his company, Whole Foods. You can read the original editorial here.

Although some of his language is not quite ideal in my mind (he talks about companies having a "deeper purpose" and being "good citizens", which could be interpreted as meaning that they have a duty of some sort to society), overall I am a huge fan of his perspective.

For one, he does a great job of pointing out that most companies aren't started solely for the purpose of making tons of money for their owners or shareholders. While I personally believe there is nothing wrong with working hard for the primary purpose of making a profit, given the negative reputation that "profit" has in our society today, it is an important first step for folks to realize that money often isn't the primary motivator for "those evil capitalists". As Mackey points out, "I've met a lot of successful entrepreneurs. They all started their businesses not to maximize shareholder value or money but because they were pursuing a dream." This is certainly true in my experience.

Another great point he makes is regarding the attitude so prevalent today that someone else out there is more capable of making decisions for an individual than that individual himself. He says, "The assumption behind that is that people don't care about their own health, and that somebody else has to—a nanny or somebody—has to take care of me because people are too stupid to make these decisions themselves. That's not been our experience. We find our team members [employees], not surprisingly, seem to care a whole lot about their health." Of course they do.

Finally (for this post), I am encouraged by his activism. "Mr. Mackey's latest crusade involves traveling to college campuses across the country, trying to persuade young people that business, profits and capitalism aren't forces of evil." Go John Mackey! I'll see you in the cheese isle... (I love cheese).

Paulina Lake, Newbury Caldera

Super Dukie!

Lessons on Managing

Diana Hsieh at NoodleFood posted about an interview with Steve Jobs of Apple. She quotes several parts of the interview, but my favorite paragraph is her own description of the difference between a bureaucratic company and a healthy one:

"A bureaucratic company is a company that doesn't trust its employees to make good decisions. The result is stagnation and incompetence. If a company can't trust its employees to exercise good judgment in doing their jobs, then it needs to fire them and hire better employees. Or it needs to learn to trust them to do what they're capable of doing, including learning from mistakes. Bureaucratic focus on "process" and "policy" will drive away the most productive and capable employees -- or crush them. It's not a mode of business appropriate to rational, productive people."

This really rings true for me as I reflect on the last four years of practicing hiring, managing and, yes, firing employees. Here are a few lessons we've learned that relate to Diana's quote above (in no particular order):

1. Demonstrate the "company culture" you want and then trust your employees to make good decisions within that framework.
2. Create jobs for individuals rather than hiring individuals for jobs (ie. play to employees strengths rather than forcing them to do jobs they aren't good at).
3. Problem employees, whether due to lack of judgment or being poor community members (dramatic, etc - we deal with this one a lot) aren't worth it, no matter how much experience or other great traits they have. Fire 'em.
4. Delegate, delegate, delegate. Assign tasks, train employees and let them complete them with supervision appropriate to their ability - not more, not less.
5. Explain the reasons behind your decisions, especially early on in your relationship with an employee. This lets them know that you think things through and leads to respect and loyalty.

I am still working on all of these and probably will be for the rest of my career! Who ever said being the boss was easy?!

Principled Government and Fall-time in the Wrangells

Amit is on an editorial roll. Here is his most recent acticle: "We Need a Return to Principled Government".

We are enroute from our summer home in rural Alaska back to Bend for the winter. I hope to be posting more regularly as we wind down from the summer. Here's a taste of fall in the Wrangells...