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Like Lines? You'll Love National Health Care

Posted by Scott Bowden on Tuesday, June 05, 2007 9:48:14 AM
The intensity of the national debate over health care is heating up with the early start of the 2008 Presidential Campaign season.  Rather than writing pages and pages of commentary and analysis documenting how many Americans do not have health care, I'd like to reduce the debate to its simplest terms.  Great health care is an extremely scarce resource....everyone desires and, in many cases, people faced with illness truly need it.  In a market system we allocate scarce resources through the use of price mechanisms.  The more people want something, the higher the price for that entity which communicates to suppliers to enter the market (more doctors,  nurses, and hospitals), which increases the supply and thus reduces the price to equilibrium.  The other feature of an increased price (driven by demand) is that it reduces demand by making people seeking that good more likely to consider alternatives (over the counter remedies instead of seeking expensive prescription drugs, deciding that one does not need to see a doctor every time one coughs [keeping hypochondriacs out of the system]).

If the government enters this arena and completely removes the market mechanisms, then we put reverse pressures on the supply (people will not want to work in the industry or build new hospitals because they will not be able to recover their investments [expensive education, expensive land and construction for buildings]) and reverse pressures on the demand (since health care is now "free," people will not self-limit their use of this good).  The day that government health care comes online, the lines will be out the door of any facility now offering these free services (think of the DMV except that no one "wants" to go to the DMV).  Doctors will leave the profession or the country because they can earn money in other ways using their talents and expertise.  These long lines will trigger politicians to react which will lead to the dreaded rationing approach, in which people will be told what services they can and can't use.


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Illegal Immigration and Health Care

Posted by Scott Bowden on Monday, June 04, 2007 8:53:39 PM
Stop for a moment and think about the impact to our already fragile health care system of the double tsunami of amnesty for millions of illegal aliens and nationalized health care advocated by the Democrat Party.

Today the millions of illegal aliens are "living in the shadows" and fear seeking medical attention because they fear deportation.  The moment these illegal aliens are given legal resident status in the US, all the pent-up demand for health care will be released and there will be a flood of people seeking out medical care in our already overwhelmed Emergency Rooms.  Even today, sane US citizens who pay taxes and follow all the rules avoid Emergency Rooms like the plague because they are overcrowded, dirty, and we know that it will take hours to receive any kind of reasonable care.  Luckily the free market is responding to this need and providing private emergency clinics. 

However, soon after the Democrat Party takes control over the White House and increases majorities in the 2008 elections, we will see the implementation of a national health care/single payer system and those of us who want to pay for medical care will be unable to do so (it will be criminalized) and we will end up sitting in line behind hundreds of other people just to get a modicum of care.  Our smart doctors will leave for some other country where they can ply their trade without these restrictions.


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Population and Climate Change

Posted by Scott Bowden on Monday, June 04, 2007 1:13:11 PM
I am puzzled by the lack of mention of the expanding 6.6 billion global population and its effect on climate change in the current global warming debate.

If global warming is indeed a crisis, then part of the plan for addressing this challenge should be to focus on limiting the growth of the human population.  Every net additional human on the planet requires additional resources to survive:

-Wood for housing or fuel which increases deforestation and thus reduces the amount of CO2 that is removed from the atmosphere
-Food which requires land for agriculture instead of alternative fuels (ethanol)
-Water which takes away from that used for irrigation which could be used for growing crops of alternative fuels
-Depending on the level of development, an additional net human being means more cars on the road burning more fossil fuels
-Since the majority of the world's population lives near the coasts, and since the coastal regions would be at risk from sea level increases associated with global warming, adding more humans just puts more people at risk which makes global warming seem worse (it's a vicious circle)

I could list impacts for hours, as each person on the planet consumes additional resources and adds his or her small or large carbon footprint to that of the planet overall.

I wonder why population control is not part of the debate?  My assumption is that those who believe that global warming is indeed occurring, is a problem, and needs to be mitigated through changes in human behavior, fear that any argument about population control would brand them as extremists.  However, even if we made changes to our lifestyles (alternative fuels, lower carbon footprints), we'd merely be tinkering with the problem at the margins while millions more humans would enter into the equation further exacerbating the problem.

Any discussion of how we are impacting the planet must take into account population growth.  I recognize that previous scholarly work on the population explosion (Paul and Anne Ehrlich) has been berated, but at some point we as a species need to think about whether we should continue to add more and more people to this already overburdened planet.

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Illegal Immigration

Posted by Scott Bowden on Friday, June 01, 2007 10:31:35 AM
What is the true impact of illegal immigrants working in this country?  Are they really doing "jobs that Americans won't do," or are they simply performing that labor at a rate that is lower than what the market would truly bear?  I acknowledge that some of the work that is typically performed by illegal immigrants, such as picking crops, landscaping, or processing meat or poultry, or construction, is extremely hard work in tough conditions.  However, in all these cases I know that legal American citizens are willing to perform this work, often at the same or only a slightly higher wage than what the illegal workers are paid.  The use of illegal labor merely provides additional compensation for the owners of the businesses who break the law to use these laborers . This is a criminal act and should be prosecuted as strongly as we would prosecute one of those businesses for committing fraud to obtain greater profits.
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Commentary on the Immigration Reform Bill

Posted by Scott Bowden on Friday, June 01, 2007 10:02:26 AM
One angle that has not been discussed in the current Immigration debate is the physical impact of the additional population that will enter this country as a result of the 12 million Z visa illegal immigrants becoming citizens (over the course of several years).  If we assume that each visa recipient will bring into the US (legally or illegally) another 5 family members, then we will have added 60 million more residents in the US.  For anyone living in an urban area coping with traffic, watering restrictions, and fighting crowds to get anything done, this influx of population will make living conditions even worse for many Americans.  
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