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Support for Obama's health care oppression plan continues to collapse. Knowing that, Democrats go behind closed doors and make agreements that get the bill moving again in the House. Some Republicans are compromising in the Senate. Democrats understand the plan will never survive the August recess, so they're pushing for an earlier vote. The president has sent knee-breaker Rahm Emanuel to make it happen. To lower the phony price tag of the bill, another $100 billion in costs were pushed to the states so they would be invisible in the flawed CBO analysis of the bill. Democrats believe the will of the people must be thwarted at all costs so that the aristocrats can have their historic power grab. Leftists are unhappy with the compromise and vow to fight it. Thank goodness. They recognize if they don't grab all the power right now, it might be a long time before they get another opportunity, like it's been a long time since they failed in 1993.

House votes to deny power to allow government to use comparative medical studies to ration and deny health care. This may seem like a big deal, but don't fall for it. It makes the bill more palatable now, which means it's more likely to pass, but as soon as cost skyrocket, which will be immediately, this provision will be passed to control them.

Barney Frank admits the goal of the public option is to usher socialized medicine.

Republicans finally present their "alternative", a big-government health care plan slightly less bad than the Democrat plan. The guy I saw on TV today was proud of all the commonality his plan had with the Democrats' plan. He was proud he spent $200 billion less than Democrats (i.e. his plan is slightly less expensive at $800 billion compared to the Democrats' $1 trillion). These Republicans really are nearly as stupid as Democrats, and they think we'll accept their slightly less terrible plan. The solution to our health problem is to end all government spending on health care. The solution to our health care problem is to cut hundreds of millions in spending from our budget, but Republicans choose to increase spending by $800 billion. This is exactly who the Republicans are. Their strategy is to be slightly less terrible than Democrats and gain power that way. Just like the Democrats PR, it sounds wonderful until you really look at the details.

In 2001 essay on health care Milton Friedman explains one of the fundamental problems of what he calls our partially socialized health care system that seems to be absent from the current debate:

"The high cost and inequitable character of our medical care system are the direct result of our steady movement toward reliance on third-party payment. A cure requires reversing course, reprivatizing medical care by eliminating most third-party payment, and restoring the role of insurance to providing protection against major medical catastrophes."

It's just that simple. A single party payer system is a monopoly third party payer system - the worst possible system. Friedman also explains why the experience of developing health care has been significantly different that with other high tech advances:

"A key difference between medical care and the other technological revolutions is the role of government. In other technological revolutions, the initiative, financing, production, and distribution were primarily private, though government sometimes played a supporting or regulatory role. In medical care, government has come to play a leading role in financing, producing, and delivering medical service. Direct government spending on health care exceeds 75 percent of total health spending for 15 OECD countries. The United States is next to the lowest of the 29 countries, at 46 percent. In addition, some governments indirectly subsidize medical care through favorable tax treatment. For the United States, such subsidization raises the fraction of health spending financed directly or indirectly by government to more than 50 percent."

That last number today is 60 percent. That's why costs have skyrocketed since Friedman wrote this.

"The effect of tax exemption and the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid on rising medical costs from 1946 to now is clear. According to my estimates, the two together accounted for nearly 60 percent of the total increase in cost. Tax exemption alone accounted for one-third of the increase in cost; Medicare and Medicaid, one-quarter.

Now consider a different breakdown of the cost of medical care: between the part paid directly by the government and the part paid privately. Government’s share went from an eighth of the total in 1919 to a quarter in 1965 to nearly half in 1997. The rise in the government’s share has been accompanied by centralization of spending—away from state and local governments to the federal government. We are headed toward completely socialized medicine and are already halfway there, if, in addition to direct costs, we include indirect tax subsidies."

This illustrates how much government increases the cost of health care, and his analysis doesn't even include the cost of government regulation, mandates, bureaucracy and trade barriers between the states (Friedman gets to them later). This is the consequences of that government interference.

"To illustrate, in 1946, seven times as much was spent on food, beverages, and tobacco as on medical care; in 1996, 50 years later, more was spent on medical care than on food, beverages, and tobacco."

Friedman documents the consequences of regulation and bureaucracy:

"From 1946 to 1996, the number of beds per 1,000 population fell by more than 60 percent; the fraction of beds occupied, by more than 20 percent. In sharp contrast, input skyrocketed. Hospital personnel per occupied bed multiplied ninefold, and cost per patient day, adjusted for inflation, an astounding fortyfold, from $30 in 1946 to $1,200 in 1996. A major engine of these changes was the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. A mild rise in input was turned into a meteoric rise; a mild fall in output, into a rapid decline. Hospital days per person per year were cut by two-thirds, from three days in 1946 to an average of less than a day by 1996.
...
Expected longevity went from 47 years in 1900 to 68 years in 1950, a truly remarkable rise. From 1950 on, expected longevity continued to increase but at a much slower rate, reaching 76 years in 1997. For our purposes, it is of fundamental importance that, whatever its source, the increase in longevity did not have any systematic relation to spending on medical care as a fraction of income."

Government interference in health care is stunting our life expectancy growth. Man, I miss Milton Friedman. He writes about economics in policy in such a clear and easy to understand way for everybody. It's also nice to have him confirm everything I've been saying about reforming health care.

Why isn't the media blowing this idea that Obama will force insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions out of the water? How stupid is that. The whole point of insurance is to be prepared when something happens. It's not insurance if you can buy after something happens. Imagine having a car wreck then being able to buy car insurance to pay for it. Imagine having a home fire then being able to buy home owners insurance to pay for the damage. It's just stupid. Why would anybody ever buy insurance until they had a health problem?

China fiscal policy is creating an economic bubble there too.

10,000s of thousands of Iranian protesters clash with security at martyr's memorial. This is similar to what happened before the revolution in 1979.

Obama's plans for an American civilian security force through Americorp are working wonderfully. Obama's policies are designed to put people out of work, but he's dramatically increasing the funding for Americorp. His plan is to seduce huge numbers of workers onto government payrolls so they'll vote Democrat forever and do whatever he wants. The burden will help collapse the economy faster. It's working. Right now there are five applicants on average for every Americorp position in America.

"AmeriCorps pays the members a living stipend of $11,000 to $13,000 a year while also providing them with health care benefits and monetary awards toward a college degree."

This is a huge scam - government indoctrination on a massive scale. Obama's Americorp scandal. There is no greater service a man can do for his fellow man than give him a job creating wealth. This government service crap is bad for everybody. It sucks wealth out of the economy, making us all poorer. The highest calling of a humanitarian is to become an entrepreneur and create jobs that create wealth and make every American richer.

Mises scholar explains that child labor laws are not what they appear to be.

Barney Frank threatens finance companies if they don't save more home owners from foreclosure. Fascism is spreading fast.

The welfare mentality meets health care reality in UK. Democrats want to bring it here ASAP. Why taxpayers pay this woman a dime is beyond me. This is a must read to see how western civilization is committing suicide.

John Stossel explains the consequences of the minimum wage.

States are changing taxes to increase revenue. Hawaii to tax gross winnings in Las Vegas instead of just net winnings.

I love this idea of giving homeless people a one-way ticket to go live with family. Family always has been and always should be the foundation of the safety net.

Asking if home schooling is a right is the wrong question. The right question is does government have the authority to take kids from parents by force for school. What if government wanted to keep them for a week at a time? How is that different than taking them for a day? In America, people are not supposed to have to justify rights. Government has to justify powers. If a state puts it in its Constitution, I'd have a hard time seeing why that wouldn't be legal, though we should never allow that. I'd like to think parents have a natural right to raise their children and therefore home school them, but in the absense of a Federal constitutional amendment, I see no practical way to make that law.

Every time one of these cash for clunkers is destroyed, America gets poorer by the value of the car, which means every American gets poorer. If the destruction of cars could revive our economy, why stop at destroying clunkers? Why not destroy all cars instead? Think of the boom in the car business that would create, but nobody would seriously argue destroying that wealth would be good for America. No honest, thinking person would argue that the cash for clunkers program is good for America either. Its an example of the broken window fallacy. Politicians love programs like this because it's easy to see the new cars purchased and jobs created. What we can't see is the greater number of lost jobs that fund the program. For every $40,000 in cars destroyed, America loses one $40,000 a year job because of the lost wealth. Additionally the misallocation of resources from profitable ventures to the destruction of the cars and the production and sale of new cars cost more in wealth and jobs for the profitable ventures than it creates in the new ones. It's funny that people are surprised it's popular. Who doesn't want seemingly free money?

Wolfram Alpha attempts to expand copyright to the output of software. That would be ugly. Maybe this will backfire and lead to the end of copyright for software.

Take back the beep.

"[T]he "mandatory 15-second voicmail instructions" from AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and others is earning those companies something near a billion dollars a year in charges."

I always wondered why those messages were so long.

Test uses mosquitoes to deliver malaria vaccine. Can you predict the unintended consequences?