That's Not The Point - That IS THE POINT!!

Due to Michigan's proximity to Canada, we are exposed to semi-regular news stories detailing the issues with the Canadian healthcare system that drive Canadians to America to receive needed care.  That is one reason among so many why I remain steadfastly opposed to any further movement toward a nationalized healthcare system in the US.

One of the primary criticisms of healthcare in the US is that healthcare is rationed by virtue of cost.  If you can't pay, then you can't have.

With national healthcare systems such as those in Canada and the UK, healthcare is rationed by virtue of time.  You can't have any until the government approves the procedure.  In some cases, approval takes a very, very long time.  Approaching "never"...or just simply never.

Along comes the case of Jolene Van Alstine, a citizen of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.  She suffers from a rare parathyroid condition.  The solution to the condition is the removal of the parathyroid.  This is a standard procedure that is known to resolve the problem.

So to solve the issue one sets up an appointment with a doctor and has the procedure done.  Spit.  Spot.  Move along.

Except, one must first get a referral to an appropriate doctor to perform the surgery.  No such qualified doctor exists in Saskatchewan.  And their NHS has (thus far) declined to offer a referral outside of Saskatchewan.

Apparently, this condition is quite painful.  Ms. Van Alstine is in sufficient distress that she has begun the process of applying for MAID from the Canadian healthcare system.

MAID stands for Medical Assistance In Dying.  The stated purpose is that a person suffering from an incurable, intractable medical issue can request assistance in committing suicide.

For the record, I think the approach stated above is a sound basis upon which to create assistance in dying.  If a person dying from cancer (or Parkinson's, or nerve damage rendering them a quadriplegic, or...so on)  is faced with the choice between several months of increasing pain or a quick exit at the moment of their choice, then the latter is the most humane and ethical option on the table.

But in this case, the problem persists because their NHS refuses to give permission to a qualified doctor to set up a practice in Saskatchewan.  And they have, thus far, declined to issue a referral to Ms. Van Alstine to visit a qualified doctor outside of Saskatchewan.

You may want to read [one] and [two] articles on this event.

What I find unconscionable is the response from various officials responsible for healthcare in Canada.  From the articles:

Starting with this bit of mealy-mouthed non-responsiveness.

"Due to patient confidentiality, we cannot comment on specifics of an individual’s case and outcomes," the spokesperson said. "The Government of Saskatchewan expresses its sincere sympathy for all patients who are suffering with a difficult health diagnosis.

"The Ministry of Health encourages all patients to continue working with their primary care providers to properly assess and determine the best path forward to ensure they receive timely access to high-quality healthcare."

After an American broadcaster steps into help:

Tom McIntosh, a professor of politics and international studies at the University of Regina who focuses on health policy, says Canadians should not allow political posturing to draw their attention away from the real problems.

“Whatever kind of foolish opportunism that Glenn Beck is demonstrating for his own purposes, we, I think, should try not to be distracted by that,” McIntosh said in an interview on Wednesday.

 And this from the government health ministry:

A Ministry of Health spokesperson confirmed the meeting shortly after and sent CBC a statement.

"Due to patient confidentiality, we cannot comment on specifics of an individual’s case and outcomes," the spokesperson said at the time. "The Government of Saskatchewan expresses its sincere sympathy for all patients who are suffering with a difficult health diagnosis.

"The Ministry of Health encourages all patients to continue working with their primary care providers to properly assess and determine the best path forward to ensure they receive timely access to high-quality healthcare."

The point, from their perspective, is not that their system is broken in a way that leaves people vulnerable to not receiving needed care.  The point is not that they need to take quick action to resolve the issue to keep a person from the alternative; preventable suicide.

Their point seems to be that this is all just an American circus pitching its tent in Canada for fun and profit.

That's not the point.  The point is that nationalized health care systems deny citizens their ability to access needed care.  Nationalized health care systems fail to respond to market pressures because they destroy the market signals that reveal those pressures.

Had they allowed physicians to open an office where ever the physicians saw an opportunity to serve people (and earn a profit), then this wouldn't have been an issue.  Ms. Van Alstine would have had multiple doctors from which to choose.

Had their system allowed a local doctor to make a referral to ANY qualified doctor in Canada, then this would not have been an issue.

The problem is created by rationing care which is the inevitable result of any nationalized health care system.

Socialists Blink - Again

Venezuela has been mired in a death spiral created by socialist policies for decades.  This is not a rhetorical death spiral.  Socialist policies have taken what was one of the great economic success stories in the world and a beacon for Central and South American nations and turned it into a poverty-ravaged nation.  Malnutrition and poor healthcare have resulted in the deaths of thousands upon thousands of Venezuelans.

This result has always been perfectly predictable.

And now the government of Venezuela is taking a step back.  They are turning towards privatization of their economy to help their nation recover from Chavista politics. Now a change made today can always be unmade in the future.  The future for Venezuela could certainly be bright if they aggressively stepped back towards free markets.

This is just the latest example of how the solution to economic issues is free-market capitalism.  Sweden started the move away from socialist madness in the late 1980s and has been bounding forward ever since.  Lady Thatcher crucially set the UK free from such nonsense back then as well.  France recently tried to tax the super-rich only to watch those folks take their money and their economic activity elsewhere.  

Vietnam is a booming free-market economy even though the communists retain control of the government.  India gradually stepped away from an overly regulated system and towards free-markets.  China has made a similar shift away from a centralized economy over the last few decades.  The result of this global shift towards capitalism has been a reduction in the incidence of extreme poverty.

Nothing has done more to lift people out of poverty than free markets.

Welcome to the club, Venezuealans.  We hope you are here to stay.

How Did We Get Here?

I have been mulling a longer piece on the causes of the 2008 fiscal meltdown, but really haven't been able to motivate myself to get it done.  But this piece in the Washington Examiner lays out a couple of the causes that have been largely neglected in the media.

The media narrative has been that the 2008 meltdown was caused by greed; specifically corporate greed.  I happen to agree that corporate greed played a huge role in the collapse of the housing market.  Companies like Countrywide created mortgages where there was a significantly reduced probability of repayment.  Companies like Goldman Sachs....primarily Goldman Sachs...monetized those loans and then created worthless derivatives based on those loans.  When the fiscal house of cards collapsed, they were left holding all the money.

A nice deal....if you are Goldman Sachs.

I also think that individual greed played a role.  Specifically, the individual desire to have more than you can reasonably justify based on your income.  It isn't enough to just be able to "make the payments".

I can recall discussing mortgages back in the early 2000s with a friend.  Someone in his family had just taken out a mortgage where they would not be required to repay any principle.  They just had to make the interest payments.  We both thought they were nuts.

How did the market develop loans for which there was no expectation that the principle would ever be repaid?

It turns out that there was a program created during the Carter administration called the Community Reinvestment Act.  It was designed to help some folks obtain mortgage financing that might not otherwise be able to do so.   A big deal to those that qualified, but not really a big deal in the larger home finance market.

The Clinton administration took that program and put it on fiscal steroids with his National Homeownership Strategy.  The Bush administration changed the name, but otherwise kept the same program in place.  This program broadened the pool beyond otherwise credit worthy poor people to include people who had no rational expectation of repaying those loans.

I don't have the video, but I do recall seeing Mr. Clinton on TV in the fall of 2008 saying that perhaps his administration had been a little too aggressive when it came to boosting home ownership.

With more people buying homes, the price of homes went up.  Speculative investments were made on speculative investments.  Leveraging of debt occurred.

You would still think that the private risk incurred in creating such debts would cause financial institutions to shy away from the so-called "sub-prime" mortgages.  Here is where the government doubled down on a bad idea.

The amount of private risk was minimized by the federal government.  At the time of the meltdown, the U.S. government was almost the sole purchaser of sub-prime mortgages due to the efforts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Essentially, the government created the mandate for the loans and then created a market that would offer the loans.  The net result is a tale that should have grown old by now; privatized profits and public risk.

From the article linked above:

"All of us participated in the destructive behavior -- government, lenders, borrowers, the media, rating agencies," said Warren Buffett. "At the core of the folly was the almost universal belief that the value of houses was bound to increase."

There are naturally other elements to the saga.  The influence peddling between members of Congress and companies like Countrywide that prevented the Bush administration from limiting the number of risky mortgages that Fannie and Freddie were snapping up.  The lax enforcement of investment laws by the SEC during the Bush administration.  The gutting of the Glass-Steagall Act (passed by a GOP led congress, signed by a Democrat President) may have also played a role.

It is corporatism...government imposed policies that favor certain corporate interests...writ large.

And the results were unsurprising to anyone that has spent more than a few moments studying American history.

Getting Better All On Our Own

There has been a modest amount of buzz about recent reports that the U.S. has reduced carbon emissions more than any other country.  I think it is important to keep in mind that we lead the world in carbon emissions.

At least until China catches up in a few years.

So it should be the easiest for us to make reductions.  Sort of like when an obese person goes on a diet.  Those first few pounds are pretty easy to lose.

Most of the reductions came due to recent progress in natural gas mining and recovery.  Natural gas produces far less CO2 when compared with other fossil fuels.

Freedom Works....

....each and every time it is tried.

That is particularly true when one considers the impact of freedom...including free market economics...on the percentage of people living in poverty.  A small hint: the more freedom there is, the fewer people living in poverty.

"Nations in the top quartile of economic freedom had an average per-capita GDP of $31,501 in 2009, compared to $4,545 for those nations in the bottom quartile," says Cato. The rate of extreme poverty is 2.7 percent in the top quartile and 41 percent in the bottom one.

Among many people a generation ago -- and among a few today -- free markets and private property were seen as the cause of poverty. But the number of adherents has dwindled in the face of repeated refutation.

The latest cover story in The Economist magazine is: "Cuba hurtles toward capitalism." Cuba! Even communists eventually have to make peace with reality.

Saving The Future - Saving The Past

We all have personal perspectives and interests that motivate our efforts.  One of my personal perspectives is Alzheimer's or old age dementia.  I watched my grandmother disappear before my eyes.  I watched the husk that remained live on for close to five years.

If you can call that living.

I see the early signs of the same thing happening in my dad.  I experience some early-early signs of the same thing in myself.

It is not possible to look forward to the day when long honed perception and perspective disappear in time's grey haze without experiencing an inexorably rising sense of terror.

We do not currently have a cure for dementia.  One of the reasons why I so urgently advocate for a free market for health care is that other health systems stymie research and innovation.  The first costs to be cut in every nationalized health care system are those associated with the research of new technology.  The cost of providing existing technology to existing patients naturally declines over time as patents expire and product efficiencies are identified.

Future patients needing future technologies?  Current patients being maintained by current technology but hoping for a cure?  Lives unborn in need of a cure that does not yet exist?  Nationalized health care systems have a one size fits all response.

Fuck 'em.

Yet I still have reason to hope that our recently enacted plethora of federal boards, committees, directors, chairpersons, and other august personnel of medical wizardry may yet move slowly enough that a cure for my small concern may arrive before the gates of innovation are closed.

Via Glenn Reynold's Instapundit comes word of a recent discovery of a new application for an old anti-cancer drug.  The WSJ has a decent write-up as well.

A widely available cancer drug has shown remarkable success in reversing Alzheimer's disease in mice, raising hope of a breakthrough against incurable dementia in humans, US researchers said Thursday.

Mice treated with the drug, known as bexarotene, became rapidly smarter and the plaque in their brains that was causing their Alzheimer's started to disappear within hours, said the research in the journal Science.

"We were shocked and amazed," lead author Gary Landreth of the Department of Neurosciences at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Ohio told AFP.

"Things like this had never, ever been seen before," he said.

Faster, please.

How To Screw Up A Market In One Easy Lesson

Periodically, 'Diversity Lane' will knock one out of the park.  This be it.