v The political class isn’t smart enough even if they were good enough. Let us make the naïve assumption that everyone in the
political class is altruistic. Assume they don’t romance about euthanasia, nor
dream about population control. Let us assume that politicians are neither self-serving
nor duplicitous, but instead they are noble. If the political class consisted
of only those with the purest intentions, would they be able to manage the
health care system? The answer is emphatically no! This critique was pioneered by
the “Austrian School of Economics”. Austrian economists dispute the government’s
capability of controlling an economy because of the exponentially explosive
amount of possibilities that bureaucratic wizards-of-smart have to consider. The
free-market, meanwhile, discovers these answers automatically.v
v Proof of the wizard-of-smart failing:
Example: The Soviet Union relied on “cybernetics” applied computer science to
provide information. The USSR’s pioneering computer scientist were heavily
involved, include genius Nobel Prize winner Leonid Kantorovich. Kevin D. Williamson “The Politically
Incorrect Guide to Socialism” p38
Example: The USSR was the largest producer of shoes in the world. “The USSR had
three pairs of shoes for each citizen, but people had to wait to buy shoes. The
problem was the available shoe did not reflect consumer’s taste: the shoes were
made to fulfill a government plan.” James Dorn Cato scholar
Example: “The tale of Soviet-era production misalignment would be comical if they
had not exacted such a high price in human blood. There would be huge surpluses
of, say pesticides … but acute shortages of sugar, flour, shoes and other
common items. Toilet paper was used as filler in sausage until toilet paper
itself went into short supply.” Kevin D. Williamson “The Politically Incorrect Guide to
Socialism” p267
Example: America’s political class did everything it could to circumvent the
free-market to increase home ownership. They gave home owners favorable tax
status. They lowered interest rates. President Clinton’s Attorney General
threatened to sue banks if they didn’t loan to those with bad credit. Community
organizer Barack Obama and ACORN browbeat banks with protests that labeled them
racists if they didn’t submit to giving loans out to risky recipients.
Government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac gave banks an
escape by buying up risky loans. Banks came up with their own solution by
bundling mortgages and selling them to Wall Street. Wall Street bought the
loans because they trusted that the loans were backed by the taxpayers because
most of the loans were backed by the GSEs Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Wall
Street was right. Thus the
Wizards-of-Smart set in motion the house-building collapse, the current
recession, the stock market collapse, and the Wall St./Fannie and Freddie
bailouts which by some estimates cost more than we spent for World War II
(adjusted for inflation!). http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/what_really_happened_in_the_mo.html , Mark Levin Liberty and Tryanny
v “they wanted
demand to rise with rising prices rather than fall as prices went higher –
which is to say they wanted magical pixies to plant unicorn trees and fertilize
them with pixie dust.” .” Kevin D. Williamson “The Politically Incorrect Guide to
Socialism” p267 Using the
same arrogant hubris, the wizards-of-smart
command insurance companies use “community rating” for prices and force
them to serve those with pre-existing conditions. This time they want prices to
fall as demand increases.
v Strangely, The federal government controls the amount of
operating rooms there are. Sec. 6001 PPACA (Consolidated) 62212y 100 PERCENT
INCREASE LIMITATION The
Affordable Care Act has other similar limitations that include “procedure”
rooms, giving power to the Secretary of Health and Human Services to grant exemptions. (and many other powers)
v
For sake of this exercise, we need to leave aside the likelihood that
exemptions will be granted to the most lucrative campaign donors…to turf
invaders like Walgreens and CVS’s clinics or turf defenders like the current
hospitals. How does the Health and Human Service Secretary know the correct
amount of procedure rooms? Will she use some new form of Cybernetics combining
the Deep Blue Chess program and Jeopardy!’s Watson computer? Take Deep Blue for instance. Some have argued there are as many
possible chess moves as there are atoms in the universe. Humans, who created
chess, ipso facto, must be more complicated than chess. Even if that assertion
is disputed, the human brain, its behavior, the human body and its health care
is still extraordinarily complex. The complexity of human behavior is
compounded exponentially by the fact that there are millions of us acting and
reacting in real time simultaneously. Human health care is complicated, and
predicting the appropriate amount of procedural rooms isn’t possible for a
central brain in Health and Human Services. Get a bunch of brainiacs and
brainiac wannabes, give them a super computer and they will still be at
disadvantage over the market. For instance, will the young healthy formerly
uninsured now start frequenting healthcare providers more often now that they
must buy insurance? Will the fear of rationing cause elderly to schedule as
many appointments as possible to get to the head of line should there be a
problem? There will be pandemics, drug use spikes, health fads, population
shifts that some mythical central brain must grasp. The market provides and
army of thinking rational Kasparovs and Holts (tied Deep Blue, beat Watson) at
every perspective. Few are as smart as
them, but they are likely as smart as the Health and Human Service Secretary.
When a hospital or clinic decides how many rooms to have, for instance, they
are blessed with on-hand perspective and possess honed skills for a specialized
task. They are also blessed with institutional knowledge of past mistakes and
triumphs. And, they have money as instant feedback whether they made the right
decision.
This is the calculus of consent: in the free-market a business gets 100% consent of 100% of its customers. Any other remuneration is because of fraud or politics or both, but that isn’t the “free-market.” With Democratic Socialism politicians receive consent of at least 51% of people who vote, which is always less than 51% of the people. Decisions to buy happen every second, but elections occur every two, four, or six years. The feed-back loop for business is direct and constant. The feed-back loop for politics is tenuous, diluted, and infrequent. Consent nearly vanishes with the purposeful quarantine of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which under the Affordable Care Act decides reimbursement rates that can only be thwarted by a congressional super-majority. (Ironically installed with just a simple majority)
The ungraspable complexity of healthcare is proven by the ungraspable complexity ovf the bill. Key proponents of the Affordable Care Act admitted they didn’t read the bill, such as John Conyers and Max Baucus. I don’t think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the health care bill. You know why? It’s statutory language,” Baucus said. http://americaswatchtower.com/2010/08/25/max-baucus-wrote-the-healthcare-bill-but-did-not-read-it/
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