Once again, statist thugs grind on the Achilles’ heel of America’s founding charter - the Interstate Commerce Clause.

“Those who go without health insurance “substantially affect interstate commerce” by shifting health care costs to others, “increasing financial risks to households and medical providers,” causing bankruptcies, increasing insurance premiums and raising administrative expenses, according to the legal filing. [emphasis mine]”

In other words, “Since we’ve decided that healthcare is a right, and care providers are morally obligated to serve the needs of others, the government has the moral authority to force everyone into the system to control costs.”

Which leads to the question which can only be met with snarling condemnation – How could those who go without insurance inflict such an impact on the market if all individuals were merely responsible for only their own care?

Answer: they couldn’t! Their decisions regarding healthcare would essentially affect only themselves. If men weren’t forced to serve others financially, no other man would have to pay for the bad decisions of another.

This notion, of course, is unimaginable to a pragmatic collectivist, who only see this as a case where “just a little more” government control is needed “just to keep things in line” – which is exactly what Medicare proponents claimed 50 years ago when the obliteration of American medicine began.
Like all cases of market intervention and regulation, we see that “just a little” has now escalated to the full socialization of an industry. Such is the recursive nature of economic meddling, which as logic, history and economics indicate, can only result in higher prices, lower quality, and more regulation to come.

The statist argument is that:

1) Because we have (unjust) laws *forcing* healthcare providers to render services to everyone (regardless of their ability to pay) and 2) because we’ve established a welfare state which enslaves productive citizens across 50 states to cover the financial burdens of others, then 3) in order to maintain interstate commerce by controlling costs, government needs to A) force healthcare providers to charge all customers the same rate (as opposed to letting them recoup some of their losses from serving Medicare and Medicaid “customers” by charging self-sufficient customers a higher rate) and B) prohibit consumers from choosing any avenues of care which might enable their escape from, or expose the folly of, the whole system – in other words, one leash requires one neck.

Thus here we see the left’s favorite and most powerful legal wild-card at play - regulation under interstate commerce is virtually unstoppable.

If men are indoctrinated from birth with the morality of altruism, chained to one another in a way that each man’s burden is the responsibility of others, and can live in one of 50 different states, then yes… every breath a man makes will affect interstate commerce.

America has signed a blank check on government tyranny that is beyond containment.

(HT Diana Hsieh)

Dear Senator {Your Senator} –

I am thoroughly disgusted with your vote in favor of the health care bill.

The lives and health of Americans depend on freedom in medicine. We need politicians willing to see that government controls, regulations, and welfare are the source of today’s high-cost, bureaucratic medicine — and brave enough to advocate for repeal.

Instead, we have you and your pork-loving, vote-buying, economic-illiterate, moral-degenerate, freedom-destroying colleagues in the Senate.

Shame on you. You all deserve to be voted out of office as soon as possible.

In Utter Disgust,

{Your Name}

Find your senator here and let ‘em have it.

When government-run “competitors” are funded by tax revenues, and immune to the same economics and regulations that the freer-market is subject to, the real competition is eliminated.

Phase two is much worse.

The remaining “only option” is a dysfunctional charade of entrenched mediocrity immune to the requirement of customer satisfaction - essentially like our “only option” public schools. Except that in the case of health care, financial negligence, social engineering, lowering standards, and stifling innovation (all hallmarks of socialized endeavors) will cause more immediate loss of life instead of the living death imposed by socialized education.

I found noteworthy this passage from Leonard Peikoff’s chapter ‘Medicine: The Death of a Profession’ in The Voice Of Reason:

“The DRG administrator will raise hell if I operate, but the malpractice attorney will have a field day if I don’t—and my rival down the street, who heads the local PRO, favors a CAT scan in these cases, I can’t afford to antagonize him, but the CON boys disagree and they won’t authorize a CAT scanner for our hospital—and besides the FDA prohibits the drug I should be prescribing, even though it is widely used in Europe, and the IRS might not allow the patient a tax deduction for it, anyhow, and I can’t get a specialist’s advice because the latest Medicare rules prohibit a consultation with this diagnosis, and maybe I shouldn’t even take this patient, he’s so sick—after all, some doctors are manipulating their slate of patients, they accept only the healthiest ones, so their average costs are coming in lower than mine, and it looks bad for my staff privileges…”

Meanwhile, the patient (maybe you or your loved one) dies…

This hypothetical, but factually warranted, scenario was from a lecture given back in 1985, so imagine if we adjust the cognitive and ethical nightmare presented above to accommodate an additional 25 years of cancerous government involvement. Consider how much worse it will be when the few remaining slivers of freedom are completely ground into the muck of full government control.

Keep in mind the scenario portrayed above, along with the highlighted acronyms, when you next hear some righteous idiot condemn the “free” health care market.

In a free market of healthcare, the only relevant decisions are amongst the physician and the patient to determine the most appropriate course of action available in accordance with the rational judgment and financial means of both parties. Freedom, efficiency, objectivity and justice are the guiding principles one needs when his life is on the line, not subjective deliberation, bureaucratic pandering, systemic injustice and economic dysfunction.

• Obama Cronies vs. American Citizens: Whose Medical Decisions?: Part I
  

  There was a time when rushing a thousand-page bill through Congress so fast that no one has time to read it would have provoked public outrage. But now, this has been attempted twice in the first 6 months of a new administration.
  The fact that they got away with it before, with the “stimulus” bill, may have led them to believe that they could get away with it again. But the first bill simply spent hundreds of billions of dollars.

  The current “health care” bill threatens to take life-and-death decisions out of the hands of individuals and their doctors, transferring those decisions to Washington bureaucrats.

  People are taking that personally– as they should. Your life and death, and that of your loved ones, is as personal as it gets.

• Obamacare’s Phony Arguments: Whose Medical Decisions?: Part II
  

  The logic of their collectivist thinking– and the actual practice in some other countries with government-controlled health care– is that you cannot even pay for some medical treatments with your own money, if the powers that be decide that “society” cannot let its resources be used that way, or that it would not be “social justice” for some people to have medical treatments that others cannot get, just because some people “happen to have money.”

• Obama’s “Bait and Switch”: Whose Medical Decisions?: Part III
  

  Despite incessant repetition of the fact that millions of Americans do not have medical insurance, hardy souls who have actually read the mammoth medical care legislation being rushed through Congress have discovered all sorts of things there that have nothing whatever to do with insuring the uninsured– and everything to do with taking medical decisions out of the hands of doctors and their patients, and transferring those decisions to Washington bureaucrats.

Richard Salsman’s list of currently established government endeavors leads to a very important question for socialized-medicine advocates.

Considering the following, on what grounds could one suggest that government run health care would achieve any better results?

• Money – The Federal Reserve, which perpetually debases our money, manipulates interest rates, and instigates systemic risk
• Pensions – he Social Security Administration, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. – which are insolvent by multi-trillions of dollars
• Schooling – the “public” (government) schools are a mess, and generate mass illiteracy-innumeracy
• 1st Class Mail – the U.S. Post Office is badly run and a perpetual money-loser
• Passenger Trains – Amtrak is also badly run and always a money-loser
• Residential Mortgages – Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae and the FHA-HUD have lost trillions and have brought ruin to millions

There is no reasonable justification for suggesting they would.

• For a market to be prosperous, both consumers and producers need to be free to act in their best interest. Our current market enables substantial freedom for consumers, but not for producers. Government imposed regulations, controls and mandates have substantially driven up operating costs for producers - increases which are passed directly to consumers. Most Americans sense the freedom they have as consumers, but are ignorant of how, and to what detrimental extent, government regulation and intervention stifles producers. Failure to consider the producer aspect leads them (along the encouragement of statists pining for power) to incorrectly blame the “free market” as faulty and inadequate. They are right to advise doing something, but wrong in the something they condone (increased government intervention). The solution is to free the other essential realm in the market - the producers.
  
  Consumptive Freedom + Productive Freedom = Prosperity
  Consumptive Freedom + Production Regulation = Escalating Costs/Declining Value
  Consumptive Regulation + Production Regulation = Market Stagnation

• Americans have tolerated (and confessedly bought into) the welfare state out of altruistic default. We’ve dealt with more and more wealth being confiscated in countless new ways to fund seemingly endless streams of income redistribution. We can only hope that enough people will sense that this collectivist endeavor is a different beast altogether. Socializing medicine differs in that it moves beyond simply confiscating money through taxation to buy other people’s widgets - it effectively (in time) stifles and stagnates the entire widget market for everyone.
• Until recently, I never imagined a day would come where I’m actually considering which of my physician friends would function as my “Black Market Doctor”.
• The only way a private business gains any kind of immunity to economic forces is through some form of government influence impinging upon it. Without such influence, businesses (regardless of size) are subject to consumer choice. They may have immense capital assets and infrastructure, but they still have to keep the customer happy or in time they’ll go bankrupt. This is the key difference between economic and political power - only the latter, the power of government, can be legally forceful. The only way insurance companies, the most commonly demonized player in this scenario, obtain any power to operate in a manner which may appear to be immune to market forces is as a result of some government distortion of economics. The demand for medical expertise, usually through insurance coverage, is so high that any lack of efficiency or uncompetitive offerings would present an opportunity for other players in the market to seize the chance for expanding their market share. However, if some unnatural force prevents new players from entering the market, or prevents existing competitors from acting upon the opportunity, then the market goes unchecked and prices may rise while quality of service declines. This should sound very familiar.
• Insurance companies are typically condemned for the amount of profit they earn, but this can only be an issue in a mixed-economy, i.e., an unfree market. A producer can increase profits by either raising the market price of their goods to consumers, or lowering their costs of production through efficiency - the high-price method, or the low-cost method. In a free market, competition urges producers to compete on the latter, because competing on high prices would be contrary to the law of supply and demand. This competitive dynamic leads to lower prices, because any savings from the low-cost method can be used to gain a competitive advantage and are transferred directly to consumers. But, when that competitive dynamic is retarded or eliminated by barriers to market entry, or oppressive regulations that stifle competitive pressure, prices tend to trend upwards. This escalating trend that appears immune to supply/demand is what grants certain businesses the facade of power - political power. The only way insurance providers, or any business in any market for that matter, can obtain political power on consumers is when equipped with government assistance.
• When prices in a given market escalate at a higher rate than inflation without a comparable increase in value to the consumer, some force is distorting the economics. That force could be a natural one, e.g., a shortage in some vital resource (labor, materials, etc.), or an unnatural one - which, in a mixed-economy, is most often government intervention in some form or manner.

My current job lends itself to substantial visibility into any congressional activity pertaining to health care. I see weekly summaries listing all medically related bills. The irrational nonsense they try to pull off is remarkable.

This one is especially evil - Section 3 (a-b):
S. 623

SEC. 3. ELIMINATION OF PRE-EXISTING CONDITION EXCLUSIONS UNDER GROUP HEALTH PLANS.

(a) Application Under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974-

(1) ELIMINATION OF PRE-EXISTING CONDITION EXCLUSIONS- Section 701 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (29 U.S.C. 1181) is amended–

(A) by amending the heading to read as follows: ‘elimination of pre-existing condition exclusions’;

(B) by amending subsection (a) to read as follows:

(a) In General- A group health plan, and a health insurance issuer offering group health insurance coverage, with respect to a participant or beneficiary–

‘(1) may not impose any pre-existing condition exclusion; and

‘(2) in the case of a group health plan that offers medical care through health insurance coverage offered by a health maintenance organization, may not provide for an affiliation period with respect to coverage through the organization.’;

(C) in subsection (b), by striking paragraph (3) and inserting the following:

‘(3) AFFILIATION PERIOD- The term ‘affiliation period’ means a period which, under the terms of the health insurance coverage offered by the health maintenance organization, must expire before the health insurance coverage becomes effective.’;

(D) by striking subsections (c), (d), (e), and (g); and

(E) by redesignating subsection (f) (relating to special enrollment periods) as subsection (c).

(2) CLERICAL AMENDMENT- The item in the table of contents of such Act relating to section 701 is amended to read as follows:

‘Sec. 701. Elimination of pre-existing condition exclusions.’.

How compassionate! They want to to remove pre-existing condition exclusions for group insurance policies. Essentially, insurance companies will be required to cover you regardless of your health. If an insurer is required by force to cover any patient, they are essentially required to provide coverage that might be a guaranteed loss. Of course, they can’t operate at a loss, so they have to recoup the losses from some other avenue. That avenue is the other policy holders.

Just as the result of mandatory ER coverage increases costs, our insurance premiums will skyrocket if this repulsive bill passes. Of course the rise in costs will be attributed to “greedy” insurance companies and used to justify more regulation - typical regulatory recursion, i.e., controls breed controls.

Statists never quit and they’re attacking from every possible angle - a relentless army of irrationality. The attack in the field of medicine is especially deadly. FIRM is the organization offering the only rational mindset that will save American medicine from stagnant rot.

UPDATE: Apparently Insurance companies have see this mandate as inevitable and opted to leverage the statist force as an opportunity to cash-in. Such is the tactic of our valiant mixed-economy barons.

• Insurers offer to start charging healthy people more
• Health Insurance Industry Sells Its Soul to the Devil

From Tito:

The body that does this is called NICE (National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence) - it has the job of deciding which drugs are available on the NHS.

Ask your average welfare-statist whether or not NICE should approve a life saving drug that costs £0.01 for one years treatment: “Of course!” he will reply. Then ask him whether or not it should approve a drug that costs £100 for a years treatment, he will probably agree again but with less enthusiasm. Now ask him £1000, £100,000 - ask him if its worth 4 times GDP. Eventually he will say no, he will dismiss it as impractical.

Where is this mystery line drawn? What is the intrinsic value of a human life?

Step forth the first immoral politician that dares admit where the line is drawn: something tells me he will be quite unpopular.

For we must check our premises. All value is objective, not intrinsic. Value presupposes the question “Of what value, and to whom?”

As always, the only way out of this swamp of contradiction is to remove the aspect of force. This means a free market in healthcare, a market where a man is free to purchase any treatment he wishes, where he can take any advice he chooses - and where there are no legal limits to the maximum amount of healthcare he can consume in order to survive.

It won’t be long at all before questions like these hit much closer to home. Socialized medicine is an indefensible collaboration of tyrannical notions. In any matter, especially ones where life and death are literally on the line, to harness a man’s ability to make decisions based on his own rational judgment, and according to his own financial means, is the epitome of evil - yet this is precisely the fundamental tenet crucial to any form of socialized medicine.

Of all collectivist schemes, tampering in the field of medicine is the most sinister.