Yesterday, South Dakota became the first state in the nation to require that women obtain counseling from a "pregnancy help center" (read: anti-abortion center) before they may legally have an abortion. Apparently women in the state already had to hear the lie that abortion "will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being."
Anti-abortionist Leslee Unruh says, "What are they so afraid of? That women might change their minds?" No. It's not fear. It's indignation and anger that our rights are being trampled upon. As a woman of childbearing age, I don't fear people who want to tell me what to do with my uterus. But I damn well don't want to listen to them (much less pay for gas money to drive to a faraway "help center" and waste hours waiting in line), and in a proper society, I wouldn't have to. The GOP would like me to have to. Hell, what they'd really like is for me to have to carry any pregnancy to term, whether I wanted the child or not.
Memo to Republicans: This is not why we voted for you. We voted for you because there is too much government intrusion into our lives, and we want it cut back. We certainly did not vote for you because we want more government controls. Butt out!
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
If I didn't pay their salaries, I wouldn't care how much they make.
The New York Times points an accusing finger at hospital executives for daring to accept seven-figure salaries in tough economic times, when payments to doctors and hospitals are being cut left and right by cash-strapped states.
Yaron Brook and Don Watkins (and others) have already made the case for why CEOs earn their pay. People with the big-picture vision to lead a company to large gains in value are rare indeed, and they are worth millions of dollars a year. I don't begrudge them that, as many leftists do...
...except when I'm paying their salaries without benefiting from the goods and services their companies produce.
Do I care how much Steve Jobs makes? Hell, no -- he can get paid gobs of cash and stock every year, and I will nod and smile and say thank you to him for leading the company that has produced all kinds of gadgets without which my husband and I would be lost. If I thought his salary made Apple products more expensive than they're worth to me, I could quit buying those products and look for something cheaper that meets my needs. But I don't care that I earn far, far less money in a year than he does. I don't have the vision to run a large company. I don't even desire the responsibility of running a small one! So why would I resent what he earns -- yes, earns?
But let's talk about those hospital executives. As with Steve Jobs, I wouldn't have to care about what they make if it weren't for the fact that I pay tens of thousands of dollars in state, federal, and local taxes every year, and because Medicare, Medicaid, and other health programs are such a huge chunk of that tax burden. So I am helping to pay for these guys' salaries!
Do I benefit from the work of hospital executives? Sort of -- on the rare occasions (exactly twice thus far in my lifetime) that I, a healthy young person, have needed hospital care, I have gotten it, and hospital executives, by knowing where to allocate resources and plan for the future, in part made that possible. But, for the most part, I don't need their services at this point in my life, and in a free market, I wouldn't have to pay their salaries. In fact, hospital executives are probably doing me a disservice because part of their job is to see how they can squeeze more money out of the government -- if an executive successfully lobbies for higher payments from the government, for example, or broader coverage of hospital procedures, he might be awarded a higher salary because he's managed to capture a bigger share of government loot. So no, I don't want to contribute to the high salary of someone who gets that high salary in part because he's good at stealing even more of my money!
That being said, I still don't want the government stepping in and dictating hospital executive pay. As Brook and Watkins put it when Washington was making noise about dictating Wall Street executive pay, this is just an overture to give the government a say in all CEOs' pay, which it should not have. What I want is for the government to get out of medicine -- so that Americans wouldn't have any reason to be upset over how much hospital executives make.
Yaron Brook and Don Watkins (and others) have already made the case for why CEOs earn their pay. People with the big-picture vision to lead a company to large gains in value are rare indeed, and they are worth millions of dollars a year. I don't begrudge them that, as many leftists do...
...except when I'm paying their salaries without benefiting from the goods and services their companies produce.
Do I care how much Steve Jobs makes? Hell, no -- he can get paid gobs of cash and stock every year, and I will nod and smile and say thank you to him for leading the company that has produced all kinds of gadgets without which my husband and I would be lost. If I thought his salary made Apple products more expensive than they're worth to me, I could quit buying those products and look for something cheaper that meets my needs. But I don't care that I earn far, far less money in a year than he does. I don't have the vision to run a large company. I don't even desire the responsibility of running a small one! So why would I resent what he earns -- yes, earns?
But let's talk about those hospital executives. As with Steve Jobs, I wouldn't have to care about what they make if it weren't for the fact that I pay tens of thousands of dollars in state, federal, and local taxes every year, and because Medicare, Medicaid, and other health programs are such a huge chunk of that tax burden. So I am helping to pay for these guys' salaries!
Do I benefit from the work of hospital executives? Sort of -- on the rare occasions (exactly twice thus far in my lifetime) that I, a healthy young person, have needed hospital care, I have gotten it, and hospital executives, by knowing where to allocate resources and plan for the future, in part made that possible. But, for the most part, I don't need their services at this point in my life, and in a free market, I wouldn't have to pay their salaries. In fact, hospital executives are probably doing me a disservice because part of their job is to see how they can squeeze more money out of the government -- if an executive successfully lobbies for higher payments from the government, for example, or broader coverage of hospital procedures, he might be awarded a higher salary because he's managed to capture a bigger share of government loot. So no, I don't want to contribute to the high salary of someone who gets that high salary in part because he's good at stealing even more of my money!
That being said, I still don't want the government stepping in and dictating hospital executive pay. As Brook and Watkins put it when Washington was making noise about dictating Wall Street executive pay, this is just an overture to give the government a say in all CEOs' pay, which it should not have. What I want is for the government to get out of medicine -- so that Americans wouldn't have any reason to be upset over how much hospital executives make.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Unintended, but not unforeseeable
The Wall Street Journal reports that ObamaCare has had all kinds of unintended side effects, one of which is that Americans are now going to their doctors to get prescriptions for aspirin and cough syrup.
Why is that? Well, Washington used to give us a tax break on over-the-counter medications -- if you wanted to, you could set aside money, tax-free, in a health spending account to cover over-the-counter expenses such as pain relievers and diaper rash cream. As part of ObamaCare, the Democrats decided they wanted to "curb wasteful healthcare spending" by removing that tax exemption.
It never ceases to amaze me how politicians think they can just slap a new tax down and that people will go on behaving as they always have, thereby producing more money for the government, or else change their behavior in ways that politicians want them to. It never occurs to them that taxes spur tax-avoidance behaviors. Man wants to be free to do as he chooses. So when a new tax makes it harder for him to do that, he doesn't stop doing what the politician doesn't want him to, or keep doing it the same way and paying taxes on it. He tries to find a way to keep doing what he was doing without paying the extra tax!
In this case, the tax-avoidance behavior that ObamaCare has produced is that cost-conscious Americans are going to their doctors to get prescriptions for medications that don't require a prescription! That means: Even the nanny state agrees that these medications are safe enough that Americans should be allowed to make their own decisions about whether or not to take them, without being chained by the requirement of a prescription...but now Americans have to waste their doctors' already scarce time getting prescriptions so they can save on their tax bills!
We already have a physician shortage (and it's going to get far worse as the population ages). When was the last time you saw a doctor and didn't have to sit in the waiting room? And now we're going to exacerbate that by placing extra pressure on doctors to fill out even more paperwork (that's on top of the rest of the extra paperwork imposed by ObamaCare's myriad regulations and requirements) just so that patients can buy the same drugs they were buying already without needing to ask a doctor first? Effing brilliant, Washington!
Why is that? Well, Washington used to give us a tax break on over-the-counter medications -- if you wanted to, you could set aside money, tax-free, in a health spending account to cover over-the-counter expenses such as pain relievers and diaper rash cream. As part of ObamaCare, the Democrats decided they wanted to "curb wasteful healthcare spending" by removing that tax exemption.
It never ceases to amaze me how politicians think they can just slap a new tax down and that people will go on behaving as they always have, thereby producing more money for the government, or else change their behavior in ways that politicians want them to. It never occurs to them that taxes spur tax-avoidance behaviors. Man wants to be free to do as he chooses. So when a new tax makes it harder for him to do that, he doesn't stop doing what the politician doesn't want him to, or keep doing it the same way and paying taxes on it. He tries to find a way to keep doing what he was doing without paying the extra tax!
In this case, the tax-avoidance behavior that ObamaCare has produced is that cost-conscious Americans are going to their doctors to get prescriptions for medications that don't require a prescription! That means: Even the nanny state agrees that these medications are safe enough that Americans should be allowed to make their own decisions about whether or not to take them, without being chained by the requirement of a prescription...but now Americans have to waste their doctors' already scarce time getting prescriptions so they can save on their tax bills!
We already have a physician shortage (and it's going to get far worse as the population ages). When was the last time you saw a doctor and didn't have to sit in the waiting room? And now we're going to exacerbate that by placing extra pressure on doctors to fill out even more paperwork (that's on top of the rest of the extra paperwork imposed by ObamaCare's myriad regulations and requirements) just so that patients can buy the same drugs they were buying already without needing to ask a doctor first? Effing brilliant, Washington!
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Unrealistic optimism means...what?
Pauline Chen writes in the New York Times that patients, particularly those with cancer, who participate in clinical trials are often unrealistic about what their participation actually means. Although many experimental drugs fail to benefit patients -- Chen's estimate is that less than 5% of patients who participate in early-stage trials (as against later-phase trials, which test drugs that have shown promise in early-stage trials) benefit from their treatment. Furthermore, patients who experience no benefit often experience the downsides of treatment in the form of serious, sometimes life-threatening side effects. Yet patients with cancer often assume that they will be the ones who beat the odds -- the so-called "Lake Wobegon" phenomenon ("where everyone is above average").
Chen's argument is often used by supporters of the FDA to say that, thank goodness we have a regulatory agency to make sure that evil pharmaceutical companies won't prey on the hopes of dying patients, and that only drugs that have thoroughly proven, to a regulator's standards, that they work can be given to Americans as a whole.
No.
Yes, it is true that people make mistakes -- and dying people, clinging to any hope they can, may make the mistake of placing more trust in an experimental drug than is warranted. But isn't that their right? A patient who has advanced cancer knows that death -- perhaps even a drawn-out, painful death -- awaits him if he does nothing. Can trying something new and unproven be any worse than that? Even if it can, is it not his body, his life, and his choice to make -- not the choice of some little Washington bureaucrat who doesn't care how many patients die while he waits for the evidence to be presented to his liking?
Chen's argument is often used by supporters of the FDA to say that, thank goodness we have a regulatory agency to make sure that evil pharmaceutical companies won't prey on the hopes of dying patients, and that only drugs that have thoroughly proven, to a regulator's standards, that they work can be given to Americans as a whole.
No.
Yes, it is true that people make mistakes -- and dying people, clinging to any hope they can, may make the mistake of placing more trust in an experimental drug than is warranted. But isn't that their right? A patient who has advanced cancer knows that death -- perhaps even a drawn-out, painful death -- awaits him if he does nothing. Can trying something new and unproven be any worse than that? Even if it can, is it not his body, his life, and his choice to make -- not the choice of some little Washington bureaucrat who doesn't care how many patients die while he waits for the evidence to be presented to his liking?
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