no third solution

Blogging about liberty, anarchy, economics and politics

Category Archives: Health Care

Health Care Reform Rains on Ski Resorts

April 5th, 2010

There’s going to be a lot of fallout from the health care “reform” that’s recently been forced upon America. For starters, certain plans (i.e., high deductible or catastrophic plans) will be de jure illegal — even though most people who buy these plans do so with eyes wide open and with the financial wherewithal to deal with all but the most catastrophic perils. And it’s going to cause a lot of disruptions for a lot of industries, who are already spending millions of dollars on lobbyists (to fight the laws), lawyers (to analyze and make recommendations) and consultants (for advice on how to deal with the changes).

The snow sports/resorts industry hasn’t been spared, either, according to Vail Daily:

New federal health care reform could cost Vail Resorts and other ski companies a lot of money in 2014, the year a provision goes into effect that fines employers $2,000 for every employee that works more than 120 days per year and isn’t offered health care coverage…

Ski areas often employee seasonal, part-time workers who, under the new law, would qualify for employer heath care coverage even though the employees are not considered full-time employees.

— Vail Resorts Eyes Health Reform Costs (April 2, 2010)

I don’t even know where to begin with this. Of course everyone should be “offered health care coverage” but that kind of misses the mark. Health care reform isn’t asking employers to “offer” health care, it’s requiring that they provide health care. There’s a difference here.

I’ve said it before, that the biggest problem with “health care” in the U.S. is that it is essentially tied to one’s employment, and furthermore that those who happen to be employed receive health care on favorable terms compared to the unemployed or the self-employed due to the unintended consequences of World War II-era price controls, embodied in a tax code which treats employer-provided health care “benefits” differently than personal health care expenditures.

Nothing in the so-called health care “reform” (which was drafted primarily by the health care industry) does anything to address the source of the problem. Requiring people to buy a product from an oligopoly will only solidify their power.

So what will happen if this “reform” really does require resorts to offer provide health care to their seasonal, part-time workers?

Those $90 lift tickets are going to get a bit more expensive, and it’s likely that some people currently employed will become unemployed as the marginal costs of employing them exceeds their value-add. If you’re currently working for $10 an hour and you work 1,000 hours a winter, you’re costing the company $10,000. If, next year, the company has to provide you with $3,000 worth of health care, that’s like giving you a 30% raise. What will happen is that they’ll pay you $7/hour, or they’ll do without you, because nobody, anywhere, ever, gets a 30% raise without sucking serious CEO dick and then blackmailing him for it.

Any political measure which forcibly raises the costs of doing business will be passed on to individual taxpayers. Taxes are (always and everywhere) borne by individuals, and not by “corporations”. These costs may be borne as reduced profits/dividends for shareholders, reduced wages, hours or other benefits for employees, and last-but-not-least, as higher prices for customers.

The end result is that we all suffer, while the force of law underwrites the insurance companies’ profitability.

Can somebody please tell me why we need Health Reform?

February 4th, 2010

My friend Brad posted the following on his facebook today:

Bought health insurance today for $80/month. That’s $20 less than my cable/internet bill and $20 less than a cell phone plan with unlimited talk, text, and web. Can somebody please tell me why we need Health Reform when something so important is cheaper then two non-important items?

Brad and I are for the most part on the same page when it comes to politics. Worst-case, we’re at least reading the same chapter of the same book. So I’d be preaching to the proverbial choir if I were to explain to you in detail the many valid cases reform (and by “reform” I really mean “repeal”). Here’s a short list to get you started:

  1. National Health Care will raise taxes on the middle class. Nobody likes higher taxes. Therefore, nobody should be in favor of national health care. Truth.
  2. Saying that no one should die because they can’t afford health care is the logically brain-dead equivalent of saying “nobody should ever die”. A fundamental, objective fact is that resources are scarce and they need to be allocated in one manner or another. This is basic metaphysics, people.
  3. Speaking of rationing vs. allocation…
  4. And let’s be honest; the “debate” about health care reform isn’t really a debate at all.

With all that out of the way… When Brad says “reform” in this context, he’s clearly addressing a broader population, many of whom are under the impression that the current market for health care and related industries is a wild-west free-for-all of a marketplace that needs reining in, oversight, regulation, and control by the government in order to achieve some nebulously vague form of equity. Straight-talk, he’s using “reform” the way Pelosi et al are using the word “reform”.

Straw-man comments came in, like: “Some people cannot afford 80 bucks a month!” OK. Is this a means-tested $80 that they can’t afford? Are those people paying for cable TV, beer, a vacation house in Petoskey, waterskis, etc.? Or are they legitimately needy. Let’s cut the crap and call a turd a turd, OK. I want you to always think about how many people “can’t afford” health care (or whatever) and then ask yourself whether they really can’t afford it, or whether they’re choosing not to purchase it in lieu of something else. This is important, it will come up later and it will be on the final exam.

Continuing accusations suggest that the only reason Brad got such favorable premiums is because he’s in very good health (because he does the P90X workout a lot – he’s actually a P90X rockstar!), or that he couldn’t have gotten that rate with a pre-existing condition, etc., culminating in the absolute and total endarkenment of “Too bad for them, I guess they don’t deserve insurance anyways. I guess they will just die.” (cf., point 2, above) Anyone who makes this sort of statement is clearly not interested in discussion (cf., point 4, above).

Let me re-iterate what is probably the single, most important rule of insurance: it’s not “insurance” if you’re buying it after you’re affected. You don’t buy home insurance after your house burns down (or after someone lights it on fire), and if you’re talking about “insurance” in the context of someone who hasn’t taken it upon themselves to get insurance before they get sick or roll off a motorcycle, then you’re talking about welfare. Plain and simple.

Insurance is bought in advance, to protect against the risk that you might eventually fall ill or seriously injure yourself. If you do not buy insurance in advance then you are asking for welfare or charity and you are rolling the dice with your own well-being.

There is simply no justification for making me (or anyone else, for that matter) pay for your gambles.

I’ve talked about solutions to this problem before, but honestly folks, if you refuse to recognize the problem, then I just can’t talk to you any more.

Health Care Reform: There Is No Debate

December 22nd, 2009

There is no meaningful debate, anymore. None.

Not when we’re forced to consider the false dichotomy presented by liars on both sides of the aisle. They’ve successfully silenced opposition by repeating lies often enough that everyone forgot there was some truth out there in the first place.

Not when the desires of millions of Americans are being totally ignored. And we are talking about millions, or tens of millions of people, who really, truly believe that the government has no business telling them that as a condition of citizenship we are now obligated to buy healthcare—from a protected and well-connected oligopoly.

According to Agence France Press, the health care reform might advance on Christmas Eve. Merry fucking Christmas, right? Never missing a chance to editorialize, AFP concludes with two of the biggest lies (the omission of the will of millions of citizens, a lie of omission, notwithstanding) that continue to whitewash the real issues. If you can’t immediately spot them, don’t worry. I’ll deconstruct them below.

Washington spends more than double what Britain, France and Germany do per person on health care, but lags behind other countries in life expectancy and infant mortality, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) —AFP

“Washington” doesn’t spend this money. In America the costs are still largely borne by the people, whether individually or as part of a salary/benefits package nominally “provided” by their employers. But yeah, we spend too much. We get a lot more than they do elsewhere, but we spend too much. This is a serious problem which the health reform bill cannot solve, because the health reform bill is ignorant of economic laws. I’ve talked about this before, too:

Like any subsidy, this is a shell game. Money is taxed from Peter to provide for Paul. It doesn’t actually lower the cost of Paul’s health care (which is likely to increase), it simply lowers his out-of-pocket expenses by taking a portion of them from someone else’s pocket. This is not a viable, long-term solution. It’s a political band-aid, designed to beat the masses into submission.

Atomizing the market, putting responsibility (and privilege) back in the hands of the people will do for health care what it did for airline travel: turn something which was once an expensive luxury, into something which even the masses can afford.

AFP also repeats popular misinformation about infant mortality, life expectancy, etc., which is flat out junk science. Don’t click the link, I’ll tell you again:

America lags in some of these statistics, only because other countries lie about their statistics. Infant mortality is high because in America, the health care system (imperfect as it may be) attempts to save live birth babies which other countries consider “unsalvageable”, stillborn, or miscarried — even though by all objective standards (i.e., heartbeat, breathing, etc.) these are in-fact live births.

And for whatever reason, deaths by other-than-natural causes (i.e., accidents, homicides, etc.) are significantly more frequent in the U.S. than they are elsewhere, a factor which skews our longevity statistics downward, and a factor which anyone who’s passed a statistics class could tell you needs to be corrected for when analyzing the data. When you correct for differences in sample, (which is what you do if you want to conduct and report meaningful research), guess which country has the highest life expectancy?

It’s not fucking France.

no third solution

Blogging about liberty, anarchy, economics and politics