Why Are We Moving Toward Socialized Medicine?

By Yaron Brook

Government intervention in medicine is wrecking American health care. Nearly half of all spending on health care in America is already government spending. Yet President Obama’s “reforms” will only expand that intervention.

Prior to the government’s entrance into medicine, health care was regarded as a product to be traded voluntarily on a free market–no different from food, clothing, or any other important good or service. Medical providers competed to provide the best quality services at the lowest possible prices. Virtually all Americans could afford basic health care, while those few who could not were able to rely on abundant private charity.

Had this freedom been allowed to endure, Americans’ rising productivity would have afforded them better and better health care, just as, today, we buy better and more varied food and clothing than people did a century ago. There would be no crisis of affordability, as there isn’t for food or clothing.

But by the time Medicare and Medicaid were enacted in 1965, this view of health care as an economic product–for which each individual must assume responsibility–had given way to a view of health care as a “right,” an unearned “entitlement,” to be provided at others’ expense.

This entitlement mentality fueled the rise of our current third-party-payer system, a blend of government programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, together with government-controlled employer-based health insurance (itself spawned by perverse tax incentives during the wage and price controls of World War II).

The resulting system aimed to relieve the individual of the “burden” of paying for his own health care by coercively imposing its costs on his neighbors. Today, for every dollar’s worth of hospital care a patient consumes, that patient pays only about 3 cents out of pocket; the rest is paid by third-party coverage. And for the health care system as a whole, patients pay only about 14 percent.

Shifting the responsibility for health care costs away from the individuals who accrue them led to an explosion in spending. In a system in which someone else is footing the bill, consumers, encouraged to regard health care as a “right,” demand medical services without having to consider their real price. When, through the 1970s and 1980s, this artificially inflated consumer demand sent expenditures soaring out of control, the government cracked down by enacting further coercive measures: price controls on medical services, cuts to medical benefits, and a crushing burden of regulations on every aspect of the health care system.

As each new intervention further distorted the health care market, driving up costs and lowering quality, belligerent voices demanded still further interventions to preserve the “right” to health care: from regulations mandating various forms of insurance coverage to Bush’s massive prescription drug bill.

The solution to this ongoing crisis is to recognize that the very idea of a “right” to health care is a perversion. There can be no such thing as a “right” to products or services created by the effort of others, and this most definitely includes medical products and services. Rights, as the Founders conceived them, are not claims to economic goods, but to freedoms of action.

You are free to see a doctor and pay him for his services–no one may forcibly prevent you from doing so. But you do not have a “right” to force the doctor to treat you without charge or to force others to pay for your treatment. The rights of some cannot require the coercion and sacrifice of others.

Real and lasting solutions to our health care problems require a rejection of the entitlement mentality in favor of a proper conception of rights. This would provide the moral basis for breaking the regulatory chains stifling the medical industry; for lifting the tax and regulatory incentives fueling our dysfunctional, employer-based insurance system; for inaugurating a gradual phase-out of all government health care programs, especially Medicare and Medicaid; and for restoring a true free market in medical care.

Such sweeping reforms would unleash the power of capitalism in the medical industry. They would provide the freedom for entrepreneurs motivated by profit to compete with each other to offer the best quality medical services at the lowest prices, driving innovation and bringing affordable medical care, once again, into the reach of all Americans.

Diplomacy Encourages North Korea’s Belligerence

Washington, D.C., May 28, 2009–In reaction to North Korea’s explosion of what appears to have been a nuclear device and its launching of long-range missiles, Elan Journo, fellow at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, said America should stop appeasing North Korea’s dictatorial regime and face up to the enormous threat it poses.

“The US should stop rewarding North Korea for its aggression.

“North Korea has become a significant threat precisely because we have appeased it for years with boatloads of oil, food and money.

“The pattern of America’s suicidal diplomacy is clear: the North threatens us, we respond with negotiations, gifts and concessions, and it emerges with even greater belligerence.”

According to Mr. Journo, this cycle of appeasement was made possible by the fact that our political and intellectual leaders cling to the amoral fiction that North Korea shares the basic goal of prosperity and peace. “This fantasy,” said Mr. Journo, “underlies the notion that the right mix of economic aid and military concessions can dissuade North Korea from its nuclear ambition. It evades the fact that the North is a militant dictatorship that acquires and maintains its power by force, looting the wealth of its enslaved citizens and threatening to do the same to its neighbors.

“Years of rewarding a petty dictatorship for its belligerent actions did not disarm it, but helped it become a significant threat to America.

“There is only one solution to the ‘North Korea problem’,” concluded Mr. Journo: “the United States and its allies must abandon the suicidal policy of appeasement.”

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Atlas Shrugged Triples in Sales

Irvine, CA, May 12, 2009 – Reports from trade sources indicate that consumer purchases of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged have tripled in the first four months of 2009 compared to the first four months of 2008.

According to Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, “The tripling in sales of Atlas Shrugged is remarkable, especially considering that in 2008 a new all-time record in annual sales of the novel was established with more than 200,000 copies sold in the United States.”

As Dr. Brook pointed out, “Annual sales of Atlas Shrugged have been increasing for decades to a level not seen in Ayn Rand’s lifetime. Sales of the U.S. paperback editions averaged 74,000 copies a year in the 1980s, 95,000 copies a year in the 1990s and 139,000 copies a year in the current decade. After reaching an all-time high during the novel’s 50th anniversary in 2007, another new high was reached in 2008 and an even higher mark is expected for 2009.”

More than 6,500,000 copies of Atlas Shrugged have been sold to date.

“As America faces a devastating economic crisis fundamentally caused by government policies, it is a hopeful sign for the future that increasing numbers of concerned Americans are turning to Atlas Shrugged and discovering Ayn Rand’s original morality of rational egoism and her uncompromising defense of laissez faire capitalism.”

CO2 Restrictions Threaten Human Life

CO2 Restrictions Threaten Human Life

Washington, D.C., April 30, 2009–The Environmental Protection Agency’s “finding” that carbon dioxide emissions endanger “the health and welfare of current and future generations” is absurd, said Alex Epstein, analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. According to Mr. Epstein, the real danger to Americans’ “health and welfare” is policies designed to fight global warming by throttling energy sources that emit CO2.

“Carbon energy has been and remains vital to the industrial society that has doubled human life-expectancies, and, among a million other benefits, enables us to cope with all manner of changes in climate.

“Right now,” Mr. Epstein pointed out, “carbon-based sources of energy produce the most, cheapest energy, period—while sunshine and wind gusts, despite decades of subsidies and propaganda, produce an expensive 1 percent of our energy.

“If scientists and entrepreneurs can discover and implement superior sources that happen not to emit CO2, at better prices than today’s energy sources, great. But whether that happens or not, we need to recognize that our ‘health and welfare’ depend on free markets producing industrial-scale energy above all else—and that anyone who tries to shut down life-giving coal plants and oil rigs, in the name of avoiding bad weather, is an enemy of humanity.”

 

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Pakistan’s Surrender to the Taliban

Pakistan’s Surrender to the Taliban

Washington, D.C., April 23, 2009–In reaction to the Pakistani government’s decision to give Islamists the power to enforce sharia (Islamic law) in the north of the country, Elan Journo, fellow at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, warned that all of Pakistan is at risk of falling under Islamic rule.

According to Mr. Journo, “Instead of living up to its stated goal of opposing the Islamists, by defeating them militarily, Islamabad has opted for the losing policy of appeasement–a policy that can only strengthen the jihadists.” If the current trend of appeasement continues to unfold, argued Mr. Journo, nuclear-armed Pakistan may soon “look a lot like Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.”

Just like other cases of appeasement, noted Mr. Journo, Pakistan’s surrender “was predicated on willfully ignoring crucial facts about the goals of the Islamists–goals that are well known. For the last three-odd decades, jihadists all over the world have been vocal in asserting their ultimate aim of expanding Allah’s dominion across the face of the earth. Not alongside other forms of government, but in place of them.

“By evading the Islamist movement’s nature,” concluded Mr. Journo, “Pakistan has handed it a signal victory–the Swat Valley today, plausibly the rest of Pakistan tomorrow.”

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How to End Piracy in the High Seas

How to End Piracy in the High Seas

Washington, D.C., April 20, 2009–In a dramatic rescue operation a week ago, U.S. Navy Seals succeeded in freeing Capt. Richard Phillips from captivity by Somali pirates.
 
According to Elan Journo, analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, even though the operation was successful, it did not teach the pirates the appropriate lesson, as evidenced by news of a pirate attack on another American-flagged ship, the Liberty Sun.
 
“The pirates have not been deterred,” said Mr. Journo, “because we have emboldened them for years through an entrenched policy of passivity and accommodation–and the freeing of Capt. Phillips was unfortunately just one halting step in a better direction.
 
“What we need–in response to piracy as well as other foreign threats–is an across-the-board reversal in U.S. policy. When, for example, it became clear more than a year ago that the waters off the coast of Somalia are a playground for pirates, the minimum that Washington should have done was to lay down an ultimatum to the pirates to leave Americans alone or else–and lived up to it.
 
“The substance of that warning: if any American vessel is captured by pirates, we will use military force to destroy every last pirate base in Somalia. When such a threat of retaliation is made fully credible, it can be sufficient to deter would-be aggressors. If any dare test us, then we must unapologetically respond with force.
 
“When America has once again earned a reputation as a power that none dare cross,” Mr. Journo concluded, “we won’t have to worry about pirates.”

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Obama Evades Government’s Role in the Crisis

Obama Evades Government’s Role in the Crisis

Washington, D.C., April 10, 2009–In an op-ed published this week by Canada’s Financial Post, Alex Epstein, analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, argued that “In calling for a massive increase in government control over the economy,” Obama “has evaded the mountain of evidence implicating the government.”
 
The primary cause of the current crisis, explained Mr. Epstein, was “drastic attempts by the government to control the housing and financial markets–via a Federal Reserve that cut interest rates to all-time lows, and via a gigantic increase in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s size and influence.” Through these entities, Epstein pointed out, “the government sought to ‘stimulate the economy’ and promote homeownership by artificially extending cheap credit to home-buyers.”
 
But, Mr. Epstein noted, Obama did not mention the Fed, Fannie, or Freddie even once, during his recent 52-minute speech to Congress. “Not once did he suggest that government manipulation of markets could have any possible role in the present crisis. He just went full steam ahead and called for more spending, more intervention, and more government housing programs as the solution.”
 
But the “fundamental solution to our problems,” said Epstein, is “to disentangle the government from the markets to prevent future manipulation.” To achieve that, Epstein concluded, we need to consider “pro-free-market remedies such as letting banks foreclose, letting prices reach market levels, letting bad banks fail, dismantling Fannie and Freddie, ending bailout promises, and getting rid of the Fed’s power to manipulate interest rates.”

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National Service Is Un-American

Washington, D.C. – By a wide (79-19) margin, the Senate approved a bill, the Serve America Act, last week that will massively expand so-called community service programs. Boosters have gushed that “This legislation represents the best of America’s ideals,” but according to Elan Journo, fellow at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, “the Serve America Act represents a repudiation of the best of America’s ideals.”

“What made America unique in history,” said Journo in the Voices for Reason blog, “was its foundational political-moral recognition that each individual has a right to live for his own sake and pursue his own happiness, and that he has no duty to subordinate his time or effort to any allegedly higher good-neither his neighbor, nor the community, nor the government.”

Mr. Journo warned us to “not believe that pushers of ‘national service’ want it to remain voluntary,” and recalled that “past initiatives of this kind made receiving a high school diploma contingent on fulfilling a service requirement. They’ve now succeeded in expanding the gambit. What’s the end game? Compulsory service as a requirement of maintaining citizenship? There’s now good reason to believe that could become a reality.”

To learn more about the Ayn Rand Center’s opposition to “national service” initiatives, read the following two articles, one released during the Clinton administration, the other released during G.W. Bush’s administration.

Britain Should Start "Easing" Government Stranglehold on the Economy

By Alex Epstein (Sunday Telegraph, March 8, 2009)

Responding to a crisis caused by the inflationary policies of central banks, the Bank of England has decided to generate still more inflation, just in a different form: “quantitative easing.” And so Britain, along with the rest of the world, continues to fight fire with petrol.

If Britain really wants to solve its financial crisis, why doesn’t it start “easing” the government stranglehold on the economy that caused this mess? What about stripping away housing restrictions that prevented supply from keeping up with demand? What about slashing the massive government spending that crowds out private ventures? What about ending the policy of propping up insolvent financial institutions, a policy that only freezes taxpayers’ capital?

And what about calling for an international free banking system and gold standard that would make a credit crisis like today’s impossible?

“Earth Hour” Symbolizes the Renunciation of Industrial Civilization

Washington, DC, March 26, 2009–On Saturday, March 28, cities around the world will turn off their lights to observe “Earth Hour.” Iconic landmarks from the Sydney Opera House to Manhattan’s skyscrapers will be darkened to encourage reduced energy use and signal a commitment to fighting climate change.

But according to a recently released op-ed by Dr. Keith Lockitch, resident fellow of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, “The symbolic message that Earth Hour sends is deceptive and destructive.”

“Cutting off our carbon emissions would be a global catastrophe. Carbon-based energy is a life-and-death necessity in today’s world. A truly massive reduction in carbon emissions means a massive reduction in our energy use and would cause significant harm.

“The lights of our cities and monuments are a symbol of human achievement, of what mankind has accomplished in rising from the cave to the skyscraper. Earth Hour presents the disturbing spectacle of people celebrating those lights being extinguished. Its call for people to renounce energy and to rejoice at darkened skyscrapers makes its real meaning unmistakably clear: Earth Hour symbolizes the renunciation of industrial civilization.”

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