Thursday, April 26, 2012

Health Care: Right or Resource

“Healthcare is a right, not a business.”


This is a statement I have heard or read repeatedly during the entire debate over Obamacare during the last couple of years. It was the underlying assumption behind the administration’s arguments during the recent Supreme Court case. In talking about the individual mandate, the Solicitor General basic argument was: we have to get healthy people to pony up the money to pay for the sick people. Those sick people are going to need healthcare, and somebody’s got to pay for it.

I think that to argue that healthcare is a right is profoundly incorrect. In my view, healthcare is a resource. Like all resources, it is scarcer than the demand, and must be allocated in some fashion. Advocates of the private sector will argue that price is the appropriate mechanism to allocate healthcare. If you can’t afford the care you need, that’s just too bad. Advocates of a single payer system, such as Britain’s, ration care by use of waiting lists, or by refusal to provide certain procedures or pharmaceuticals. If you die before you can get treatment, that’s just too bad.

There has been a profound shift in the notion of what constitutes a “right” in the last couple of decades. Traditionally, having a right was intended as a limit on government. Freedom of speech means you cannot be arrested for calling for the overthrow of the government. Separation of church and state prohibits the government from using your tax dollars to prop up a religion that you don’t agree with. Rights are concerned with what the government can’t do.

The new version of rights, particularly in the economic sphere, posits responsibilities that government must do. For example, some have proposed a right to housing. And not just housing, but decent housing, whatever that means. This right absolves the individual of responsibility for providing their own housing. If we sign on to this new right, then it is the government’s problem to provide me with lodging. After all, I have a right to it.

The newer view of rights, instead of limiting government power, entails an expansion of government activity and control.

I come down on the other side of the question. In my view, the individual has no more a right to healthcare, than they have a right to health itself.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

The GSA Parties Down!

The scandal concerning the Government Services Administration (GSA) has been getting a lot of airplay recently. In GSA district 9, they had a conference to reward a number of employees for…well, for something. Maybe they were exemplary employees selected from the rank and file. Maybe they were the senior managers, taking advantage of a boondoggle. Anyway, the conference, hosted in Las Vegas, was apparently pretty over the top. They spent about $822,000 for a conference with only a couple of hundred attendees

The GSA’s own internal auditor raised the issue in a report. Then it hit the media. Once the story broke, it picked up steam all on its own. The head of the GSA has now resigned. Congress is investigating. The head of district 9 pleaded the 5th when called in front of a congressional committee. Politicians of both parties are hyperventilating, declaring that they are “shocked, shocked to discover gambling is going on in this establishment.” Oh, sorry, wrong movie.

The politicians are appalled over this waste of government money. The government? Wasting money? How can you tell?

The people who worked at the hotels where the conference attendees stayed don’t think it was a waste of money. The entertainers hired don’t think it was a waste of money. They entertained the hell out of those bureaucrats!

The people whose businesses were supported by the GSA’s largesse don’t think it is a waste of money. They probably think that continuing to support a war in Afghanistan and bribing the Pakistanis to allow supply convoys through their territory is a waste of money. They might think that extending Federal unemployment payments to people who aren’t working is not as good a use of the government money as paying people to actually do a job. Maybe they think that having Medicare pay for medical services for people who die shortly thereafter is a waste of money. But I really doubt whether the folks who provided goods and services for the GSA’s conference thought that they were a waste of money.

Seriously, the government takes in wealth through taxation, and then redistributes that wealth. Some wealth is spread around employees of the government, and most is redistributed among the populace.

In holding this conference, the GSA was redistributing wealth. You could make an argument that they were doing their job.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Off Topic POst: Treyvon Martin

I have been fascinated by the continuing coverage of the Trayvon Martin case down in Sanford Florida. A lot of people, including most of the main stream media, appear to want George Zimmerman's head on a pike. One of the most bizarre features of the news coverage was ABC's report showing the surveilance video of George Zimmerman entering the police station. "Look at the grainy footage of George Zimmerman, shot from a high angle that doesn't show any detail. We can't see any blood on his face. That disproves Zimmerman's story."

When you read the actual police report from the responding officers, you note that they say Zimmerman had a bloody nose, and that he received attention from the paramedics on the scene after Trayvon Martin was pronounced dead. Why not ask the paramedic if Zimmerman had a bloody nose? I would guess that is what the State's Attorney investigating this case is doing. If you are in the media, why put out statements that can be easily proved as false and inflammatory?

Then there are the cries for help. Forensic experts have analyzed the calls for help heard on a witness' 911 call, and have concluded that there is only a 48% chance the voice on the tape is Zimmerman. They cannot prove the voice is Trayvon Martin's, because they do not have a sample of his voice for comparison. So Martin never left a voice mail on his girlfriend's phone? He didn't record a voice mail greeting on his own phone? Really?

I have a particularly hard time accepting the racist executioner scenario in this case. This is the version of events that has Zimmerman confront Martin. Some kind of verbal and/or physical altercation occurs. Then, Zimmerman pulls his gun, and while Trayvon Martin pleads for help, shoots him in the chest. This just doesn't make any sense to me. Zimmerman knows the cops are going to arrive on the scene any moment, because he called the cops. Once he has the drop on Martin, why pull the trigger?

Then having shot a man in cold blood, the racist executioner scenario requires Zimmerman to make up a cover story in the two or three minutes before the cops show up. The scenario also requires almost complete collusion by the police. Now, if it was a white police officer who shot a black teenager, I could believe that the police would close ranks. But the responding officers didn't know Zimmerman from Adam.

One of the interesting aspects of this case is the lack of faith in the police from both sides. Treyvon Martin was on the phone with his girlfriend when he told her he was being followed by a suspicious looking man. She tells him to run. Why didn't she tell him to call 911? Why didn't Treyvon Martin think of that? Apparently it never occurred to him to call the police in a threatening situation.

Zimmerman has a different lack of faith in the police. When requested by the 911 operator not to follow Martin, his comment was "These assholes, they always get away." The motivation of the 911 operator is easy enough: her training is that if the caller pursues the person they are calling about, the odds of a physical confrontation escalate enormously. This is exactly what did happen. Zimmerman's motivation for disregarding this advice (as far as I know, 911 operators do not have the authority to "order" anyone to do squat) was his belief that the person he suspected would disappear by the time the police showed up. The police would then drive around, come back, and tell him that they hadn't found anyone. The neighborhood where Zimmerman lived was subject to a number of break ins during the last year. This has not been a widely covered story, but I'll bet that none of them have been solved. No arrests made.

We may never know all of the details about what happened that night. But I have a hard time seeing a criminal case against George Zimmerman for killing Trayvon Martin making it past a jury of Zimmerman's peers. Now, a Justice Department case against Zimmerman for violating Martin's civil rights? I think a conviction will be pushed through on that side.

Of course, at that point it is not a criminal matter any more. That is more of a political trial.