Sunday, May 1, 2011

Michele Bachmann is No Friend of Free Markets

This morning on FOX News, possible presidential candidate, Michele Bachmann said:
I’m wedded to the idea of efficiencies and cost cuttings and savings in healthcare, but how we get there is open to discussion.
This shows a total lack of understanding of the problem with government involvement in healthcare. It suffocates competition, cuts down on options and creates a decision making structure on treatment that results in the government bureaucracy making treatment choices rather than the individual.

The problem is not a problem of efficiencies and cost cuttings and savings at the government level. The problem is that government management of healthcare can never create the incentives that the free market can. Government involvement only means lower quality healthcare for all of us.

8 comments:

  1. Michele Bachmann is far more neo-con than Sarah and has been so longer.
    No need to listen to her babbling.

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  2. I've always been distrustful of Bachmann myself and I don't care if she does appear on Freedom Watch frequently. She is a statist and one can tell she is uncomfortable with speaking about freedom (properly understood) and the free-market (also properly understood).

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  3. This is the problem with the Tea Party. It's been championed by people like Bachmann and DeMint, traditional conservatives who have seized upon the fiscal issue to pander for votes. Unfortunately, Bachmann is still popular, despite her statist tendencies. She's the kind of person who could (and would) divide the Republican Party, deluded into thinking she can win on a third party ticket.

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  4. Yeah, it's a shame to see people like this lumped together with Ron Paul under the umbrella of "crazy tea party people."

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  5. I hear your anti-goobermint line of thinking, but I do not hear you speak about any concrete examples of how private industry can bring down costs if goobermint will just get out of the way.

    I however can at least present an idea. I challenge you and all posters to do the same. Here's my idea: I do not believe we can afford to try to keep people alive forever the way we attempt to do now. I think we need to provide doctor assisted suicide to each individual who asks for it. This will cut costs of health care drastically for those who elect this option. We are all going to die - those who are clear-minded and who can face reality understand this and will volunteer to go out peacefully and with dignity when they are ready. The cowardly and those whose religious beliefs say they'll go to hell if they volunteer to die with dignity will instead die without dignity and with a lot of tubes in them, wearing crap-filled diapers, costing the taxpayers and perhaps their children a big pile of money. That's one component of my plan - now let's hear yours.

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  6. "I hear your anti-goobermint line of thinking, but I do not hear you speak about any concrete examples of how private industry can bring down costs if goobermint will just get out of the way."

    Probably because the government refuses to get out of the way? How come the healthcare sector as a whole is experiencing rising costs but procedures like Lasik are not? Do you neglect the effect of a) patents in increasing medicine costs b) restriction in the supply of doctors via organisations like the AMA c) the cartelisation of insurance as is the case in the US d) government inability to rationally calculate due to not operating on the loss/profit mechanism e) subsidisation of poor lifestyle choices/frivolous healthcare consumption?

    If so, provide the economics behind this and explan how and why the government actually reduces healthcare costs by delivering efficiencies in production (and not this crap that it has "superior bargaining" i.e. bullying power.)

    " That's one component of my plan - now let's hear yours."

    Abolish government involvement entirely.

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  7. Maybe all that is true of Bachman.
    But she has a lot of guts and she riles up liberal pundits. That alone is worth it.

    Maybe Ron Paul can take her in hand at some point.

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  8. Quote from a libertarian, pro Ron Paul blog:

    "What was not necessarily expected, however, was the extent to which Representative Bachmann publicly supported Paul in some of his isolationist foreign policy views:

    · "Don't go after child health care or the elderly, I say bring all the troops home from Japan, Korea, and Europe."

    · "Whether it's the financial panic, whether it's 9/11, or whether it's getting you psychologically conditioned to start another war, they're always wanting to build up fear. We have to be on guard and we have to be sure that what our government tells us is the truth and we should never go to war if they're telling us a lie about what's happening."

    Paul made a name for himself in the 2008 Republican presidential primaries and debates for being critical of the GOP for how it has changed into a party of runaway spending. Bachmann also supported Paul when he made the following statement:

    · "Unfortunately, even when we finally as Republicans got control of the House, the Senate, and the presidency, sadly, we didn't do a very good job."

    But perhaps the most shocking alliance between Paul and Bachmann was Paul's attack of U.S. (neo-conservative) foreign policy and the protection of its 'interests' around the globe. For example, Bachmann applauded the following critique by Paul regarding America's decision to put anti-ballistic missiles (long, medium, or short) at Russia's doorstep in Eastern Europe, for what he calls the "bogus" Iranian threat.

    · "The idea that we have to use force and intimidation to get along with people is ridiculous. It makes it more difficult. I like the idea of trade. I like the idea of travel. I like the idea of diplomacy. I don't like the idea of intimidation and force and threatening people: 'Do it our way, or we'll bomb you!' 'If you do it our way, we'll give you money. If you don't do it our way, we'll bomb you.'"

    Even Paul's more extreme big-picture libertarian viewpoints did not seem to make Representative Bachmann blush. Paul talked about an impending "major crisis" that he believes is going to hit America, and that like-minded people will be needed to "restart" America in a much better way; Paul added that there will be a "de facto secession" after the crisis hits. All of these statements generated applause from Bachmann:

    · "I believe the crisis will come, because we're going to have a dollar crisis. When the dollar fails, that means the government checks bounce. And when the checks bounce there will be very little reason for people to be dedicated and worrying too much about the federal government. It will almost be like de facto secession because there will be no way they can control what we're doing!"

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