Quote of the Day - Martin Luther King Jr.

Quote of the Day - Martin Luther King Jr.

"I say to you that our goal is freedom, and I believe we are going to get there because however much she strays away from it, the goal of America is freedom."

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968)

Quote of the Day - James Madison

Quote of the Day - James Madison

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse."

James Madison (1751 - 1836)

Quote of the Day - Thomas Jefferson

Quote of the Day - Thomas Jefferson

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Quote of the Day - Peter Boettke

Quote of the Day - Peter Boettke

"If you bound the arms and legs of gold-medal swimmer Michael Phelps, weighed him down with chains, threw him in a pool and he sank, you wouldn’t call it a 'failure of swimming.' So, when markets have been weighted down by inept and excessive regulation, why call this a 'failure of capitalism'?" (Times Online)

Peter Boettke (b. 1960)

Quote of the Day - Jimmy Carter

Quote of the Day - Jimmy Carter

"I think it's inevitable that there will be a lower standard of living than what everybody had always anticipated, there's going to be a downward turning." (Time Magazine)

Jimmy Carter - (born 1924)

Quote of the Day - Samuel Adams

Quote of the Day - Samuel Adams

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands, which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."

Samuel Adams (1722 - 1803)

Quote of the Day - C.S. Lewis

Quote of the Day - C.S. Lewis

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963)

Quote of the day - from J.F.K.

Quote of the day - J.F.K.

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies and competitive values, for a nation that is afraid to let its people judge truth and falsehood in an open market, is a nation that is afraid of its own people.”

John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

WHO says who has the most responsive health care? We do, says WHO!

WHO says who has the most responsive health care? We do, says WHO!

July 10, 2009

It has been widely reported that in a 2000 World Health Organization (WHO) report that the United State ranked 37th in the world in our health care system, behind countries such as Columbia, Greece & Chile. But it turns out that this isn’t so.

The truth is that the WHO survey ranked the United States Number 1 in the world in the Responsiveness of our healthcare system, and we ranked 15 in “Overall Level of Health” (Source: http://www.who.int/whr/2000/en/whr00_annex_en.pdf, pg 196) and a 1% change would place us in the top 5 in overall health in the world.

Much more here.

Health Care Fraud

Health Care Fraud

The entire debate we are having in this country on "Health Care" is fraudulent. The terms do not have plain meanings, because BOTH sides are trying to fool us into supporting their side.

First: Is health care a right? The answer is that is easy - it already is a right. The law demands that any patient who goes to a hospital must be treated. Period. So we debate this - why?

Second: So many are uninsured. Answer - see first. Nobody goes without care in this country. Now some will get stuck with the bill, after they receive the care. That is a problem, but it has nothing to do with insurance. You can't insure your car after the accident, you can't give health insurance to the sick. You can decide to pay for it, but that is not insurance, it is charity, unless it is confiscation by the state to pay for the bills of others.

Third: Prices are out of control. The answer is that anything that you get for free will be overused. More demand drives prices up - always and everywhere. More than that the consumer of health services is not connected in any meaningful way with paying for it. I am one of the few who pays for most of my own health costs, and believe me, many times when you ask what a procedure costs they don't even know, then they don't want to tell you - it is that unusual. Then they usually cave on price, or I go elsewhere and the price is a quarter as much for the same thing. I talked my radiologist into giving me a $2400 MRI scan for $450, in about two minutes.


The democrats and the republicans are only out for themselves, so they are each selling their own brand of lying fraudulent snake oil. Right now the republicans are against the democrat bill which otherwise would become law, so they are on our side, but believe me, if the shoe were on the other foot I would be against them also, and so would be many others.

I could go on and on about this criminal enterprise, but suffice it to say that unless and until the patient is on the line for a proportion of every cent paid for their medical care, prices will keep exploding, and the lines at the emergency room will stay long. Politicians do not want meaningful reform, there is too much money on the line for them to steal. And most people are happy with the situation just the way it is.