Nathaniel Ward » Health Care

Friday Links: Paul Ryan on Health Care, Making Matthew 26:11 a Reality and Federalism

Nathaniel Ward — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:36:43 +0000

Rep. Paul Ryan has an important article in the New York Times making the case not only for repealing Obamacare but for replacing it. “It is not sufficient,” he argues, “for those of us in the opposition to await a reversal of political fortune months or years from now before we advance action on health care reform.” To build a system that puts patients first, not bureaucrats, he favors “attaching tax benefits to the individual rather than the job” and enabling state-based reforms like risk pools to manage pre-existing conditions.

The government seems determined to enforce Matthew 26:11. A new poverty metric would count as poor not those living in real destitution but those living in relative destitution.

In the Washington Post, Brian Frosh and Jamie Raskin argue that if progressives want to undo the effects of Citizens United—a bad idea, to be sure—they ought to turn to the states, which retain broad regulatory powers. (Full disclosure: Brian is a cousin.)

And last but not least, an amusing video of President George W. Bush wiping his hand on his predecessor:

What I’m Reading — December 23rd

Nathaniel Ward — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:44:19 +0000

Richard Epstein: Harry Reid Turns Insurance Into a Public Utility. “The argument seems to be that price controls alone can force out the waste and inefficiency that are posited to be the hallmark of private markets. By this twisted logic, rent control is the perfect path to efficient competitive markets.”
Creating Incentives for Learning. “Mr. Toby’s main proposal, then, is to require good grades and test scores from those seeking federal student loans. This requirement, he believes, would improve incentives for academic performance and mitigate the inevitable trade-off between widening access to college and maintaining educational standards.”
Exactly Why the Founders Divided the Legislative Branch. E.J. Dionne argues against checks and balances: “In a normal democracy, such majorities would work their will, a law would pass, and champagne corks would pop. But everyone must get it through their heads that thanks to the bizarre habits of the Senate, we are no longer a normal democracy.”
Debunking Conspiracy Theories. “Today no conspiracist publication or Web site wants for the outward flourishes of scholarship. The footnotes are compendious, the sources are seemingly authoritative. It is only when you get in amongst them that you discover what the footnotes actually refer to.”

What I’m Reading — October 26th

Nathaniel Ward — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:49:06 +0000

Robert Samuelson on the Public Option. “The promise of the public plan is a mirage. Its political brilliance is to use free-market rhetoric (more ‘choice’ and ‘competition’) to expand government power.”
Unlearning the Lessons of State Health Reforms. “Despite these state-level failures, President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are pushing forward a slate of similar reforms. Unlike most high-school science fair participants, they seem unaware that the point of doing experiments is to identify what actually works. Instead, they’ve identified what doesn’t—and decided to do it again.”
Just How Relevant Is Political Science?

What I’m Reading — September 14th

Nathaniel Ward — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 05:25:19 +0000

Class Warfare. Responding to hard times, governments around the world decide not to tighten their belts but to increase their revenues through punitive taxes.
Is This Really a Compromise? The Baucus proposal addresses superficial concerns but doesn’t address the principal conservative complaint about the Left’s health care plan: that it vastly increases the size and scope of the federal government.
Norman Podhoretz on Why Jews are Liberals. “[I]n virtually every instance of a clash between Jewish law and contemporary liberalism, it is the liberal creed that prevails for most American Jews. Which is to say that for them, liberalism has become more than a political outlook. It has for all practical purposes superseded Judaism and become a religion in its own right.”
Tyler Cowen on Politics and the Economy. “But we are now injecting politics ever more deeply into the American economy, whether it be in finance or in sectors like health care. Not only have we failed to learn from our mistakes, but also we’re repeating them on an ever-larger scale.”

What I’m Reading — September 5th

Nathaniel Ward — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 00:59:22 +0000

Health Care Reform, Meet the Law of Supply and Demand. “Even without an influx of new patients, doctors are likely to be in increasingly short supply nationwide in the coming years. The Association of American Medical Colleges projects a shortage of 124,000 physicians by 2025. Universal health coverage would increase the shortfall by 25 percent, according to the organization.”
Inline Validation in Web Forms. Testing the best ways to provide feedback to users.
George Will Wonders What We’re Still Doing In Iraq.

What I’m Reading — August 30th

Nathaniel Ward — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 04:50:14 +0000

100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Man’s Library.
How Consumer-Based Reforms Can Fix What Ails Health Care. David Goldhill on how the current system fails us and what to do about it. “The most important single step we can take toward truly reforming our system is to move away from comprehensive health insurance as the single model for financing care. And a guiding principle of any reform should be to put the consumer, not the insurer or the government, at the center of the system.”
Is Conservatism Dead? “Like the liberal writers of the 1950s, Tanenhaus wants to see a conservative movement that accommodates rather than opposes liberalism, and thus one that will accept its role as subordinate to the dominant liberal tradition in American life.”
Should the NEA Promote the Obama Agenda? “Do you think it is the place of the NEA to encourage the art community to address issues currently under legislative consideration?”

What I’m Reading — August 20th

Nathaniel Ward — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 19:39:56 +0000

Obama Contradicts Himself on Health Care. “So the health-care status quo needs top-to-bottom reform, except for the parts that “you” happen to like. Government won’t interfere with patients and their physicians, considering that the new panel of experts who will make decisions intended to reduce tests and treatments doesn’t count as government. But Medicare shows that government involvement isn’t so bad, aside from the fact that spending is out of control—and that program needs top-to-bottom reform too.”
Another ‘Public Option.’ How government “competition” is wrecking the private student loan industry.
Market Rationing Isn’t Government Rationing. “Using the government’s coercive power to decide the price of something, or who ought to get it, is qualitatively different from the same outcome arising out of voluntary actions in the marketplace.”

What I’m Reading — July 8th

Nathaniel Ward — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:26:10 +0000

Does More Prevention Mean Lower Cost? Not necessarily, argues Mark Steyn.
How Facebook is Gunning for Google (And Killing SEO)
Echoes of Herbert Croly’s Promise of American Life. “For nearly a century, California offered ordinary people better lives than they could lead perhaps anywhere else in the world. Today, reflecting our intensely stratified, increasingly mobile society, California affords the Good Life only to the most gifted and ambitious, regardless of their background. That’s a deeply undemocratic betrayal of California’s dream—and of the promise of American life.”

What I’m Reading — July 2nd

Nathaniel Ward — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:53:22 +0000

Congressmen Living High on the Taxpayer Dime.
An Economist’s Take on Big-Government Health Care. “What is curious is that this rise in education costs is deemed by the liberal establishment smart and farsighted while the rise in health-care costs is a curse to be stopped at any cost. What is curiouser still is that in education, where they always advocate more ‘investment,’ past increases have gone hand-in-hand with demonstrably deteriorating outcomes. The rising cost in health care has been accompanied by clearly superior results. Thus we would shift dollars from where they do a lot of good to an area where they don’t.”
Conservatives and Support Public Transportation “The most important thing that a liberal needs to know in talking to conservatives about public transportation is not to use liberal arguments. You can’t argue for transit on the basis that the poor need it.”

What I’m Reading — June 20th

Nathaniel Ward — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 19:33:25 +0000

How Iran Is Not Poland. The differences between 1981 Poland and 2009 Iran and what that means for American policy.
Daniel Henninger on the ‘Public Option.’ Can we really believe what proponents of a government insurance plan have to say?
Larison on the Iranian Election. “How much of the Mousavi voters’ outrage is of the 1972 ‘no one I know voted for Nixon’ variety? What if Iran’s so-called ‘silent majority’ is not opposed to the regime as it currently exists as most observers seem to assume?”