TINSTAAFL

My freshman year of college, first semester Economics 101 the professor walked in the very first day of class and wrote that on the blackboard (yes, with chalk). He asked if anyone knew what it meant. No one did. He explained that it is the fundamental principle of all economics. There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Even if you did get your lunch for free, someone somewhere paid for it. Stuff does not materialize out of thin air. Except maybe air, and God provided that. In this current debate over health care, and anything else that the government 'provides' we would be well served to remember TINSTAAFL. The federal government cannot give you anything for free. If they say that they will, remember the family down the street will actually be paying for it out of their milk and bread budget. If someone gets something for nothing then someone else always must get nothing for something. The government cannot give anything that it does not have, and technically speaking it has nothing. It can only take or steal things from those who do have stuff or money. One way is taxation. Or, it can print money, but that just artificially inflates the money supply, decreasing the value of goods and services by the amount of new money, driving up the price and at the end of the day everything is a wash. We can borrow money from China to pay to give you stuff (well, they used to be willing to loan to us), but we still have to tax your neighbor to service the debt: pay the interest and eventually pay back the principal (yeah, right). The old saw goes that a government that has the power to give you everything that you want will also have the power to take everything that you have. Think about it, they must have the power to take everything that you and your neighbors have if they are going to give other people things for free. If they don't have that power and exercise it then they cannot give other people stuff for free. Remember, they don't create stuff or wealth, they only redistribute it. That is the process of socialism and it by necessity results in the equal sharing of poverty. It brings everyone down to the lowest common level of existence. Because it creates a climate of disincentives for business and private wealth creation due to high taxation/confiscation, the amount of overall wealth in a society declines. Over time there is less and less to redistribute. Business is driven off-shore and overseas. Taxes continue to rise as service levels fall. Scarce goods and services now must be rationed. Look around the world. Every country that has tried this has come to ruin or is in decline. By contrast, things such as private health insurance are voluntary agreements between citizens to pool their money and pay for major medical expenses incurred by those in the pool. Participants can drop out at any time and are not forced to participate if they choose not to. You have no constitutional or natural right to the money or stuff that your neighbors have acquired or created. You can provide for yourself or ask your neighbors for a handout, but don't beseech the government to go to your neighbors with a gun and demand that they give you stuff. That's immoral. If people are truly disadvantaged through no fault of their own, we have always and will always help these folks out. But still, it is much more efficient to do that through private charity than government fiat. In this debate we able-bodied Americans must focus not on what we can wrest from our neighbors but on how we can best provide for ourselves and families and then give what we can to help the really needy among us.

Smoker-in-Chief

Now that the Congress has given the F.D.A. authority to regulate tobacco, is the Smoker-in-Chief going to quit??? Hmmmm, maybe this is why he wants nationalized health care so much.

Barry Care

Obama Health Care:

• Scheduling handled by Amtrak
• Billing handled by the I.R.S.
• Medical Records handled by the U.S. Postal Service
• Colonoscopies handled (literally) by Barney Frank!

So bend over and grab your ankles. Here it comes!

Light Up for Life!

Poster Boy for the Obama Socialized Nationalized Health Care System

Prescription for Disaster

The results of your study (59% of doctors support national health care system, Dr. Ronald Ackermann and Dr. Aaron Carroll, University of Indiana School of Medicine, March 31, 2008) reported in the media yesterday are rather intriguing. I find in talking with colleagues that doctors are not so much enamored with a national health care system as they are simply frustrated with the current authorization and reimbursement mess (much of that government created). What they don't realize is that the devil that you know may be better than the devil that you don't know. The simple truth is that the federal government lacks the constitutional power and authority to be enmeshed in any sort of federal health care system or insurance program, including by the way Medicare. I have raised this point with several sitting Congressmen and Senators as well as all of the current Presidential candidates and none have been able to refute the point. The mood seems to be that we'll do whatever we want, hang the Constitution. Without a legal foundation we are headed for anarchy. Doctors are simply unwitting pawns in the overall equation. My experience over the years in things political is that doctors by and large are woefully uninformed and disengaged from that arena. Which is why the liberal-leaning A.M.A represented three-fourths of U.S. physicians 30 years ago but today barely speaks for a third. The current system needs reform, but not the kind that would lead us into the disaster which is evident in all countries with any sort of nationalized health care insurance or delivery system. We must run in the opposite direction. But don't expect doctors to be leading the charge. They know medicine, not business or government. Don't look to them for validation or leadership on the topic. Your study only tells me that 59% of doctors don't know what the heck they are talking about! As Anatole France said, 'If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."