Obamacare is the law of the land

I’ve thought all along that Obama was smart – from his viewpoint, that is – to shove the bill through because no one will want to return to the way it was, and the Republicans won’t gain all the seats they’re hoping for. If the Republicans want to clean house this Fall they need to promise to revise the plan, not scrap it, and they will need to emphasize the huge costs and other problems related to Obamacare as it stands now.

There is almost no chance of it being repealed by Congress – even if the Republicans win big in November. First they would need 60 votes in the Senate just to pass the legislation to repeal. After that, they would need 2/3 in both houses to override Obama’s veto of the legislation to repeal.

My local Congressman was on the radio yesterday and his comment was that Republicans could vote to defund certain parts of the bill through the appropriation process but he also noted that most of the law’s provisions do not require funding.

The best chance to get rid of this unconstitutional law is through the courts. However, if the courts use Social Security and Medicare as guides, the law will stand.

Since ObamaCare has a lot of nanny-state health-care sugar candy, in the short-term the Dems will probably score points at the public- relations level, though anyone familiar with the realities of insurance understands that if people can secure health-care insurance unconditionally, then its in their interest to wait until one individually or member of the family becomes seriously ill. According to Holman Jenkins in a WSJ article today the individual mandate is so watered down that healthy people and their families will have a rich incentive to avoid the weak “mandate.” In the long run this will force the insurances companies to drastically up their premiums.

Jenkin writes:

More and more tax money will have to be found to keep the jalopy on the road. More and more administrative controls on medicine will attempt vainly to keep the jalopy from bankrupting the nation.

When all is said and done, with unerring accuracy, ObamaCare has ended up doubling down on the system’s existing perversities. The one thing it doesn’t do (though it would be perfectly consistent with the Democratic goal of universal access) is incentivize a health-care marketplace based on competition in price and quality.

Once the public figures out the myriad of problems created by this bill and that it is yet another fiscally unsustainable “entitlement”, we can hope the voters send a few more honest statesman to Washington to help out the statesmen already there including Paul Ryan and Scott Brown to clean up this entitlement mess.

George Will had an interesting statistic in a recent column. He wrote that over the next two decades, about 10,000 Boomers per day would become eligible for Medicare & Social Security. In Obama’s bill there are hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Medicare cuts that are supposedly going toward deficit reduction. These two things are incompatible, and there is going to be a lot of hate and discontent created as taxes are raised somewhere to deal with this issue.,

How to cover all of the new costs contained in this new legislation? Value Added Tax anyone?

Actually, with the ban on refusing coverage due to pre-existing conditions, insurance premiums are going up significantly already. I looked up a Blue Cross plan today that’s 50% more expensive today than it was a year ago, and that with a significantly higher deductible. Another friend of mine has already seen his premium quadruple. His high deductible plan has essentially been banned.

People that have to pay them are NOT going to like it. Those who lose their jobs because employers can’t pay both premiums and workers are NOT going to like it–one actuarial study has estimated that Corrupto-care will raise the “natural” rate of unemployment from about 5% to 8%.

That’s why the health scheme needs a public option Bike — to set reasonable prices and standards and stabalize the market.

Yeah, I’d have been SO happy to wait 17 weeks to get my inflamed gallbladder removed, like they do in Canada, John, and I would have cheered a TON as the NHS refused Avastin to my mother a few years back, as they do in England.

Sorry, John, but there is an immense amount of evidence telling us exactly why we don’t want a government option, starting with the fact that Medicare’s current budget is about eight times higher than predicted when it was passed, and going on to the results of every government option healthcare system the world knows.

Bub, (1) one of the two key words in ‘public option’ is ‘option.’ Unless I’m mistaken, a public option and nationalized health care are not compatible. (2) what evidence do you have that Canadians with inflamed gall bladders must wait, at minimum, 17 weeks before receiving surgery? (3) how long do you think Americans wait for gall bladder treatment who have no insurance or the means to otherwise pay for medical care? (4) what Medicare budget are you referring to?

In the long run if we want to stabilize the health-care market, it is necessary to take away the corporate and individual tax breaks for medical insurance, estimated to be worth about $250 billion a year, in which case people would have a more realistic idea of the medical costs. Right now with third-party payers people and doctors have little incentive to curb costs.

Secondly, We need to allow medical insurance companies to develop national markets, especially for catastrophic care policies in order to have real competition among the insurance companies. This coupled with health-savings account for normal medical costs would incentivize people to be more frugal about health care and to take better care of themselves in terms of weight, smoking, drinking, blood pressure, and cholesterol. These reforms together with strict limits on medical tort law would cause competition in price and quality.

JohnC’s suggestion that a government public option would solve this is a pleasant fantasy. A public option would in the long run be about as competitive and efficient as the Post Office or theTSA.

As a proportion of GNP , the US spends twice as much as Australia.
The efficiency of the free market can be an exaggerated. (In OZ you can wait a year for a knee replacement but with the option of topping up with private insurance, you’re in like Flynn)

Leavitt, you overstate JohnC’s point. What do you think a public option is for? My understanding is, a public option serves at least two purposes: to provide insurance for Americans no private insurer will cover, and, by offering Americans a publicly funded alternative to private insurers, to make those insurers more competitive.
The best plan, in my view, is socialized health care. It’s what just about every other industrialized democracy has.

Sam,

1. And Canadians and Englishmen can pay twice to actually get care, too.

2. Canada’s National health service keeps statistics. Anyone who isn’t able to pay twice (= all but the most desperate and rich) waits an average of 17 weeks for routine gallbladder surgery–and longer for other specialty treatments.

3. US: the poor can get in at the emergency room and get it done pretty quickly.

4. THE Medicare budget. Ya know, the one that comes from Congress, vs. the predictions of the original bill that authorized it?

In other words, government ain’t doing so hot at providing health insurance anywhere in the world, which is something that anyone who has ever worked with the Post Office, the TSA, or Amtrak would have guessed.

Put differently, things don’t work out so well when government arrogates to itself the role of setting prices, supplies, and such. You want the same guy who hires TSA airport screeners to be choosing your surgeon?

John C, Paul Ryan cites the example of lasik surgery for eye glasses that is not covered by most insurance plans. He paid $2000 for each eye about four years ago; the cost today for such good quality surgery is $800 per eye.

Holman Jenkins in the article linked to at #3 writes:

A world-class [private] hospital in India does heart surgery the equal of any heart surgery in America, but does so at one-tenth the cost (and increasingly attracts a world-wide clientele). The reason is not what you think: low-paid doctors and nurses. The reason is that competition works in medicine as it does in everything else when the patient cares about getting value for money. This is the great low-hanging fruit of health-care reform. It continues to hang.

Peter’s suggestion @ 10 about what would be effective policy is absolutely correct. But, this bill moved us in exactly the opposite direction, The bill also requires coverage of free preventive care, a very expensive benefit. As a result, in combination with the requirement for coverage of pre-existing conditions which phases in between now and 2014, and the new assigned risk pool, policy premiums are going to rapidly increase. Many employers are, as a result, going to exit the market, and leave employees to purchase their own policies. Actually, I believe the Democrats want this result, because it converts tax-free employee compensation into taxable compensation, and will increase the clamor for single-payer coverage by the tax consumers of society.

In order to keep down apparent costs, the Democrats failed to fund most of the implementation costs necessary to establish the new system. This will give the Republicans leverage to exact changes in the plan after November, otherwise they have the capability to starve the program to death by refusing to fund it in the annual budgets. The legal challenges are interesting, and the battle over whether there is anything left to the founding fathers’ concept of a limited federal government needs to be fought. I hope that the courts would do the right thing, on two counts. First, how can the federal government possibly claim to have any right to mandate the behavior of an individual, regarding the purchase of an insurance plan, on the basis of the interstate commerce clause? If you say that his failure to purchase a plan affects commerce because it might raise costs for others if he gets sick, than my response is that there is absolutely nothing that does not fall within the scope of the interstate commerce clause. And, maybe that’s where we are in our jurisprudence. Second, the new bill provides for doubling the constituency of Medicare, by sharply raising the income limits for eligibility. Medicare is a shared cost between the federal government and states. By raising income limits, the legislation seriously burdens state budgets. The legislation provides for grants to the states to cover that additional cost for a couple of years, but then the grants disappear. Does the federal government have the right to burden the states with such unfunded mandates? Another issue to be litigated.

In short, this thing was hastily drafted, is not well conceived, and is incredibly complex. No one can reasonably predict what turns will be taken over the next few years, though I think it can be regarded as certain that it will never be entirely rolled back.

Manxman (@4), have you thought this through? Really? You’re protesting Medicare cuts? And what do you think the Republican plan is? To maintain our current entitlement spending? Hello?

Bubba (@6) said that he “looked up a Blue Cross plan today that’s 50% more expensive today than it was a year ago, and that with a significantly higher deductible.” Well, golly! That’s never happened before! It must be only because of this legislation! Why, until now, my employer-provided medical insurance has kept on getting cheaper and cheaper, with lower deductibles!

Also, Bubba (@8), you really should get out more. The main people I know that are opposed to Canadian health care are … Americans. The Canadians themselves enjoy their health care system much more than Americans enjoy their own[1]. But, as others have pointed out, there are many factual errors in your inflamed comments that need to be removed.

[1]gallup.com/poll/8056/healthcare-system-ratings-us-great-britain-canada.aspx

Bub, something tells me to question your capacity to speak to the quality of government funded health care the world over, but I do want to ask about this: “3. US: the poor can get in at the emergency room and get it done pretty quickly.” Where?

Bubba said (@13), “government ain’t doing so hot at providing health insurance anywhere in the world, which is something that anyone who has ever worked with the Post Office, the TSA, or Amtrak would have guessed.”

To which my reply, cribbed from someone else’s Facebook post, is:

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating breakfast of US-Department-of-Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time (kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory), I got into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve bank. On the way out the door I put my mail in the mailbox, to be sent via the US Postal Service, and dropped the kids off at the public school.

After work, I drove my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to a house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshall’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then logged on to the internet (developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration) and post on GeneVeith.com about how the government can’t do anything right.

Don (@15), so should I believe you when you say that “this thing … is incredibly complex” and “no one can reasonably predict what turns will be taken over the next few years”? Or should I believe all the predictions you’ve been making?

“What do you think will happen?”

This is already happening.

—————————————
“I’m not sure it’s hyperbole any more to say that we’ve now got a small scale domestic terror campaign going on against members of Congress who voted for Health Care Reform.

“We already noted the handful of incidents over the weekend in the offices of Democratic members of Congress had their offices vandalized in response to their votes in favor of Reform. While that was happening, a Tea Partier in Virginia suggested people “drop by” the home of Rep. Tom Perriello. But they mistakenly provided the address of Periello’s brother.

“Now the FBI is investigating an incident in which someone apparently cut the gas line into Perriello’s brother’s home, thinking it was the congressman’s residence.

–Josh Marshall
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

I don’t think it is surprising that more Americans are becoming frustrated with the status quo of the Republican / Democrat back and forth of Federal Government expansion and intrusion. Everyone assumes third party politics is hopeless. And so the Feds are very reasonably ramping up security in preparation for a backlash. People are frustrated and fearful. Ain’t it so lovely?

Here’s another triumph of the English National Health Service.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,589902,00.html

Gosh, I want this “quality care” for my family.

tODD @ 16 & 19: The Medicare cuts in the health care bill are to funding, not benefits. So they make things worse, actuarily, not better.

My predictions are general in nature, based on application of basic economic theory to what I understand are the main bullet points of the plan. The political predictions are based on what I understand current Republican strategy to be — to restrict funding of the plan in the future to force Obama to the negotiating table, in order to get important changes implemented. But I am definitely not “predicting what turns will be taken in the next few years” as a result of the politics related to this, and how those politics might change as people realize the plan is not all that it was promised to be.

Bubba (@22), in what world is your comment a logical or reasonable reply on this topic?

First of all, the US does not, even now, have anything close to the UK’s system of health care. Most countries with “universal health care” don’t, either. Britain’s model is fairly unique as being truly socialist.

Secondly, the article in question has as its crux the issue of social services, not health care. The child was neglected. But America has social services, too! And many, many children suffer — and die from — neglect and malnutrition here in the US.

Thirdly, the mom neglecting this child “was HIV-positive and her death was thought to be the result of a rare brain condition linked to her illness.” So while this story is indeed sad, it has absolutely nothing to say about the UK’s health care system.

Fourthly, this is the kind of ridiculous anecdote-driven nonsense that more reasonable conservatives have decried. Anecdotes are not analysis! Again, I could cite you many, many thousands of sad stories that actually have to do with health care in the United States and how it has been a bad deal for many. But those stories, of themselves, would not be a sufficient argument for health care reform.

Fifthly, your focus on irrelevant anecdotes completely fails to explain why people in the UK, as evidenced by non-anecdotal polls, seem to like their system at least as much as we do ours, possibly much more (depends on the polls you look at).

So, Bubba, do you really think your comment (@22) is a logical or reasonable reply on this topic?

First of all, the US does not, even now, have anything close to the UK’s system of health care. Most countries with “universal health care” don’t, either. Britain’s model is fairly unique.

Secondly, the article in question has as its crux the issue of social services, not health care. The child was neglected. But America has social services, too! And many, many children suffer — and die from — neglect and malnutrition here in the US.

Thirdly, the mom neglecting this child “was H1V-positive and her death was thought to be the result of a rare brain condition linked to her illness.” So while this story is indeed sad, it has absolutely nothing to say about the UK’s health care system.

Fourthly, this is the kind of anecdote-driven nonsense that more reasonable conservatives have decried. Anecdotes are not analysis! Again, I could cite you many, many thousands of sad stories that actually have to do with health care in the United States and how it has been a bad deal for many. But those stories, of themselves, would not be a sufficient argument for health care reform.

Fifthly, your focus on irrelevant anecdotes completely fails to explain why people in the UK, as evidenced by non-anecdotal polls, seem to like their system at least as much as we do ours, possibly much more (depends on the polls you look at).

The issue that ObamaCare raises is whether government in America is broken. Tony Blankley in an incisive WT article, addresses this as follows:

There is broad agreement (as close to a universal agreement as we have seen on a great issue) that if we don’t get our national debt and deficits to sustainable levels, we may never recover our prosperity – and will then lose our military strength and our great sovereign freedom.

If, as many expect, the Democrats lose effective or actual control of Congress in the November elections, it is likely to be because the public has risen up and rejected the party that has brought us these intolerable multitrillion-dollar deficits with a budget proposal that fails even to propose a path out of the morass.

Although many hard decisions will have to be made, everyone agrees that at the core, we have to reduce vastly the current estimated $50 trillion of unfunded liability that exists in our entitlement programs – Social Security and Medicare particularly.

So, should the election play out as described, 2011 will be the year that will test whether our government is broken, because a pretty good definition of a broken government (or more accurately, a broken polity – a government and its electorate) is one that agrees on a great threat to society, agrees broadly on what needs to be done – and cannot do it.

While many of us have for years complained of our failure to get entitlement costs under control, in fact, only starting in 2011 will the true test of our polity begin. Because only now is there a strong majority that sees the danger.

Blankley is usually a cool customer who understates his views; just now he is thoroughly alarmed at the present direction of the country, as all of us should be.

Also, I have reason to believe that the commenting system doesn’t like the word “s0ci@list” (obscured for obvious reasons), as an earlier version of my comment (@24) is currently hung up in moderation. I removed that word, and my comment went through. FYI. Clearly, the comment-moderating system is a modern Republican, averse even to the mention of the word.

Here is one libertarian’s view of what might happen: http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/23/health-care-2020

Peter (@25), why do you always praise the articles you cite (“Tony Blankley in an incisive WT article”)? It’s clear you approve of them — you’re citing them! I find this habit of yours odd.

Moreover, this Blankley character you assure us “is usually a cool customer who understates his views” — is he the same man who in 2005 penned The West’s Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?, in which he claims that radical Islam poses a greater threat to Western society than the Nazis did during World War II? Because that seems a wee bit incongruous.

And is that the same cool, understated Tony Blankley who penned an article suggesting that we, and I quote, “Repeal the 17th Amendment”? Huh.

And this same cool, understated Blankley, according to his TownHall.com bio, “helped create messages which shook the country” with his “knack for appetizing soundbites”. Ah yes. I see the problem. You must be talking about somebody else.

Todd, you hardly addressed the issue that Blankley raised, namely the vastly unfunded entitlement liabilities that have the potential to bring down the country. ObamaCare will surely add to these liabilities.

I happen to have read Blankley’s book on the clash of civilizations that makes a rather credible case that the radical Islamic threat has the potential to bring down the West. He is an Englishman, well aware of how the ideological Left brought down Britain and could through its isolationism and socialistic tendencies could bring down America. He makes his arguments dispassionately in the best English style, though underneath he is both realistic and quite sad regarding the antics of contemporary liberals, including Obama.

Blankley is well read on the best historian of the Twentieth Century, Toynbee, whose magnum opus on the fragility and inevitable decline of civilizations is likely a classic.

Gone is the USA. We are now R.U.S.S., Republic of United Socialist States. Citizens are making threats to the congressmen that supported this bill. That is the wrong way to go about this. Wait until November, let the courts of the various states do battle for now, then vote them out. Any volunteers interested in moving to San Francisco?

Todd, at #28, you hardly addressed the issue of vastly unfunded that Blankley raised. He, being a Brit, well knows how England fell, largely due to the isolationism and weakness of the left.

Blankley is a student of Toynbee, likely the best of twentieth-century Anglo-American historians, who wrote of the tendency of civilizations to fail to meet challenges and inevitably fall. At present Blankley writes dispassionately of America’s plight, though he doesn’t pull punches about the gravity of our situation.

As to the Seventeenth Amendment, Blankley is quite right. The founders never intended that the Senate be popularly elected. People forget that the classically educated founders of our country, based on the history of ancient Greece and Rome, and the writings of Plato and Aristotle, were well aware of the limitations of democracy.

Pardon me, in the above first sentence I meant to say vastly underfunded entitlement liabilities.

Bike Bubba in Australia where we have Medicare based upon Canada’s system, if a person is admitted to a public hospital Accident and Emergency dept and they say that they have no private health insurance0they pay nothing. But if they are honest then their insurer gets the bill. Unlike USA private health insurance is not part of one’s job , thus we get choice in who we elect to go with. If we do have insurance ,it covers hospital fees and ,ancillary health ,whilst Medicare covers about 60% of doctors fees when we see them in their surgeries (offices),and also for any procedures t . We are taxed for medicare and if we have private health insurance we get 30% rebate on our private health premiums ie the Commonwealth Government pays for it.
Universal health insurance is now an accepted fact on the Australian landscape and even conservative governments would tinker with it at their peril. We have a different attitude to healh care than America but when it comes to social security ,there is a common agreement that those who are lazy ( bludgers we call them) and try to live on Government largesse at the expense of the rest of us,are universally disliked . The belief that it is for the genuine poor and those battling hardship until they get back on their feet again. However there is a lot of generosity which was shown after the terrible Black Saturday bushfires – which my son fought-with 1 billion dollars being raised by public appeal to assist those left devastated .It ‘s called “mateship”

I have a hard time believing people will put up with top down control of healthcare without a good fight. I think this bill will either be repealed or modified so that the mandate to purchase insurance is taken out. At that point, most of the bill will not be implemented.
I believe most people support a government safety net for those who need healthcare and I believe they are willing to be taxed for it, but they still want the freedom to make their own choices with their own medical care.
But the really big thing is, we can’t afford it. We haven’t figured out how to reform Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Why are we adding another hugh entitlement?

tODD #26,

You figured it out. That would explain the problem I had posting yesterday. Now I have to worry if I will be black balled by the “Republican machine.” (My shorthand for your description of the moderating system.)

Todd @ 18 in your reply to Bubba lamenting about the government not providing very good services:

“This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy (yes, regulated, not run or maintained by the USDOE. I doubt Uncle Sam built or maintains the 17,000 miles of transmission lines that Excel Energy in my locale does. It’s a private company, with stock you can invest in on NYSE) . I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility (good one, I agree, but who laid in all the water lines, sewer lines, etc? Private companies. Who maintains everything to your house and in it if it breaks? And outside of municipalities, the countryside is all privately owned and paid for wells and systems providing water to houses that the govt does not provide). After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels (yes, regulated, but not brought to you by the govt. It’s all privately owned media providing a service, competing against one another. Yes, govt regulated….) to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be (funny, it’s the private media news service around here giving me the local weather using their own doppler radar, bought for and maintained by their private money. Yes, they use the NWS forecast and satellites to help them and use to predict the forecasts in their computer programs paid for by private money, and eventually privatization of satellites will probably overtake the govt control) like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating breakfast of US-Department-of-Agriculture-inspected food (yes, but who invested in it, raised it, harvested it, moved it to a market that produced it, packaged it and put it in the local, private place your purchased it at? It wasn’t the govt) and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration (yes, but who invested in them, researched them, developed them, marketed them, etc ?).

At the appropriate time (kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory), (Sorry, guess I didn’t know govt owned and regulated time also….) I got into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile (great, look at the car and see who built it…I bet it doesn’t say NHTSA in the owners manual…NHTSA may regulate it, but private industry competes against each other to produce a car you want to buy and drive) and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, (sorry, govt doesn’t build roads. Private contractors do who are hired by the govt using our tax money to do it. Govt maintains them, and then ask around here about the maintenance the govt provides on their tax funded roads and the shape they are in…) stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, (again, who invests in, researches, develops, searches for new sources, refines it, moves it to market? Private industry, not govt) using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve bank. On the way out the door I put my mail in the mailbox, to be sent via the US Postal Service, (we’ll see how long this govt entity stays in business due to new technology, and yes, they have for a century provided a great service) and dropped the kids off at the public school. (public schools, there’s a whole week long Veith blog in the making….)

After work, I drove my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, (see above) to a house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshall’s inspection, (yes, regulated with standards but built by private contractors and maintained and improved by private industry) and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department. (God bless our public employees in their vocations).

I then logged on to the internet (developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration) [shoot, and I thought Al Gore had developed this, thanks for setting me straight] and post on GeneVeith.com about how the government can’t do anything right. (Your point is well made, govt can regulate well…not sure about the producing and manufacturing and providing of services though).
GB

I think all the fat-cat Democrat movie stars and politicians will figure out ways around the govt. healthcare system that they crammed down our throats, so they won’t be subject to it.

That’s what big shot totalitarian leftists do, isn’t it?

MDS (@37) and Steve (@38) … um, you guys are aware that the latest health care bill in no way involves the government providing health care, don’t you? Of course, Steve’s comment doesn’t seem designed to be serious, given how much it trades in ridiculous cliche, so I’ll just respond from her out to MDS.

Yes, as you noted, “govt can regulate well”. That’s what this bill largely does, as I understand it. It regulates the health care industry. There is no public option, so the government will not be providing anyone health care. Private companies will continue to do that, just as they do now.

Todd, Government can regulate well?

Such codswallop. America is enmeshed in bureaucratic regulation to the point of strangulation. The best writer on this is Phillip Howard, author of The Death of Common Sense . In a recent WSJ article Washington vs. ‘Common Sense’ We don’t need more laws and bureaucracy to tell us how to do better. including:

Washington is broken. So are most state governments. The reason is the same. Government is out of control, schools are out of control, health-care costs are out of control, lawsuits are out of control—because law has supplanted the responsibility of people needed to keep them in control.

Fixing modern government, Peter Drucker once observed, requires returning to first principles. What’s missing in government is the activating principle of all human accomplishment—individual responsibility. America must shift the goal of reform from desired results—universal health care, effective schools—to a new philosophy that allows people to get things done.

Hey Bubba,

Could you provide the link for where you found the average waiting time to get a gallbladder removed in Canada? I was curious to find similiar statistics on other procedures in Canada, but couldn’t find any stats at all. Thanks!