My friend and former student Laura Sacher alerted me to this interview by Lawrence O’Donnell of Peter Schiff. After watching it, I sent the following e-mail to Mr. O’Donnell:
Dear Mr. O’Donnell:
I just watched your recent interview with investor Peter Schiff. While I’m no fan of Mr. Schiff – I disagree with him often – I must say that your treatment of him was obnoxious. Especially galling were your countless interruptions of Mr. Schiff’s attempts to answer your questions. Your interruptions were fueled by your puerile presumption that anyone who opposes greater government involvement in health care is either callously loutish or flamingly stupid.
Example: When Mr. Schiff said that he wants government’s role in health care to be diminished, you replied sarcastically “So you want to do nothing?!”
Newsflash Mr. Newsman: government isn’t the only entity that can and does act – it’s not the only agency that does things. By having government do less, space is opened for individuals to do more. Physicians, private insurers, private certifiers, and patients do things every day. Part of the case for a freer health-care market is that these private actors need more freedom to experiment – more space to adjust to each other’s wishes and abilities – than currently exists.
You might legitimately disagree that a freer market will work as its proponents believe. But you cannot legitimately assert that making markets freer reflects a desire to “do nothing.”
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
For those of you who are curious, I disagree with Schiff’s concern about the U.S. trade deficit, as well as with his insistence that U.S. manufacturing is declining (and his implication that declining manufacturing output is necessarily bad).
Share
{ 60 comments }
Hahaha,
What a dick. O’Donnell asks Schiff what he believes, then when Schiff starts to say something, O’Donnell presumes to tell him what he, Schiff, believes. I can’t believe this passes for news reporting.
Schiff cracked me up with the line “obviously I can’t say that”. If it weren’t that there is nobody watching MSNBC to get the joke, SNL could have a field day with that “interview”.
I have to say that Schiff’s good humor and demeanor during that whole farce was exemplary. He may turn out to be a good politician.
“he may turn out to be a good politician”
Exactly what I’m afraid of! Schiff is a natural-born politician, I think he’d fit in very well. I have to say, I wouldn’t miss Dodd a bit – but I wouldn’t exactly be excited about Schiff being in there either.
But Don is dead on – very few interviewers seem to know how to navigate the fine line between being truly aggressive with their interviewee (that’s a very important thing) – and being a jackass. I have no idea why the ones that strike the balance best seem to only have Sunday morning shows – Stephanopoulus, Wallace, guys like that. Replace Glenn Beck with Wallace and Keith Olbermann with Stephanopoulus, and the country will be better for it.
I agree, he seems to be a natural politician. That scares me. I can only hope that he will not be one of the scumbags in D.C, if he ever wins that is. I think, it will be tougher for him to win the republican nomination than to defeat Dodd.
I agree Schiff comes across as very savvy and slick. But I’m not convinced yet that he’s a natural born politician. Remember his father is currently in *jail* for being a tax protestor, he has deep sympathies for his father’s situation. I can’t imagine Schiff suddenly turning into a typical conservative Republican should he actually get elected. You know, even Ron Paul brings home the pork to the people in his congressional district, but at least he takes principled stand on everything, and votes the right way.
Great response. Members of the “media” have narcissistic personality disorders almost at severe as The One. Interviewers are supposed to ask probing questions, not engage in debate and sarcasm.
Is this one of those rude, obnoxious MSNBC hosts? Why even go on such programs?
I have to agree with AS on this one. When I was watching the interview, I kept wondering what the hell Schiff was doing on the Ed show… oh well.. O’Donnell is still a douche bag.
Don, I have a few questions regarding your opposition to Schiff’s views because I don’t think that you are very different at all. I think you miss a few subtle points. First, the trade deficit is a problem because of the fact that it is based upon borrowed money. The US borrows money from overseas to fuel consumption of overseas products. Schiff recognizes that consumption is a consequence of production and not the driver of economic growth. In order for us to consume, we must first produce. This leads into the second point which is although we manufacture a lot, we do not manufacture enough to cover our consumption. If we can only purchase goods because of taking out credit, then obviously we did not receive enough income from our production to purchase the goods flat out. This is the ponzi scheme of our economy and why he does not think things will get any better. Does this clear it up?
Don, I have a few questions regarding your opposition to Schiff’s views because I don’t think that you are very different at all. I think you miss a few subtle points. First, the trade deficit is a problem because of the fact that it is based upon borrowed money. The US borrows money from overseas to fuel consumption of overseas products. Schiff recognizes that consumption is a consequence of production and not the driver of economic growth. In order for us to consume, we must first produce. This leads into the second point which is although we manufacture a lot, we do not manufacture enough to cover our consumption. If we can only purchase goods because of taking out credit, then obviously we did not receive enough income from our production to purchase the goods flat out. This is the ponzi scheme of our economy and why he does not think things will get any better. Does this clear it up?
Thanks for sending that, Mr. Boudreaux. It echos my thoughts after watching that video exactly.
The two reasons you listed have been allowed to happen while American simultaneously prospers (fake prosper) and consumes (real consumption) is due to the fact that the dollar has been the reserve currency of the world, and there has been a high demand throughout the world for dollars. This has kept the value of dollars artificially high which allows us to print more and create more debt in order to drive our consumer culture which is now the primary driver of our domestic economy.
The problem is going to be when we have to inflate too much to cover our debts and the value of the dollar begins to collapse. This will cause a mass international evacuation of the dollar as a reserve currency and a trading currency. The Euro and other currencies will replace the dollar as most transfers are electronic these days and there is no reason to have a single reserve currency..however the countries holding vast amounts of dollars like China are continuing to attempt to prop up it’s value because they have a stake as well.
When the evacuation happens, prices will go through the roof. We won’t be able to afford to ship manufactured goods in from China, and since we have been getting rid of manufacturing we won’t have the capacity to create enough goods for ourselves and manufactured goods will become scarce and even more expensive.
To clarify, I mean to say the two reasons listed above in your disagreement with Peter Schiff.
Stephen M.: Please go to the “Balance of payments” section of Cafe Hayek (link to the left) and read my stuff. The trade deficit does NOT mean that Americans are borrowing more from abroad.
The issue is not whether Americans are borrowing from abroad, it is whether the Federal Government is, and surly the Federal Government is. This helps the Federal Reserve keep interest rates low, which in turn helps fuel credit bubbles in the US. The foreign credit is there. I don’t see how this can be argued against.
Okay, I just read your article, “A good kind of deficit”. Who could argue with anything so beautifully put.
The problem is I don’t think Schiff would argue with anything you say either, at least in principle. However, he’s arguing that government policy, specifically quasi-government policy via the Fed, is misdirecting everyone. As the trade deficit is a result of this misdirection, it represents a serious problem. He doesn’t argue the trade deficit is a problem in and of itself. So your criticism at *best* is off target.
His argument is the same about the service sector. I mean look at what happened to America’s financial service sector last year. Was any of that real? How about all the foreigners who invested in America’s financial sector? Are they getting a good return on their money now? It doesn’t seem so to me.
You are “no fan of Mr. Schiff?”
Okay, you might disagree with his alarmist trade deficit and declining U.S. manufacturing, and perhaps his forecast of an economic wasteland and collapse of the dollar, but he’s a great voice for free markets. He’s more libertarian than anything else, and you’re no fan of his?
You’ll never agree with someone on everything, but I bet you agree more with Schiff than you do many other people in politics (assuming Peter runs).
If he does win, he’ll be one of the few elected officials with anything resembling a grip on reality.
Precisely the reason for the unlikelihood of his election.
Exactly rationality and politics don’t mix.
I’d much rather have Krugman in the Senate. /sarc
I’m glad you explained your differences with Schiff. I came across many of his videos the other day and find he is a ‘hazlitt-type’ public persona for austrian economics, but yes I held pause at his problems with the trade deficit and and his issues with decline of manufacturing and the great rise of the service sector in U.S.
Anyone who is interested in hearing Schiff giving speech:
Here is a great speech by Peter Schiff at the Nov. 2006 Mortgage Bankers Association conference (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G3Qefbt0n4).
He totally predicts the recession and housing situation, telling mortgage bankers exactly what they don’t want to hear. Then argues against a dumbo positivist who cits several ‘studies’ to try to argue against Schiff.
I heard the interview replayed on a local radio statio by a host who thought O’ Donnell’s behavior was horrible. At the time, I thought that O’Donnell was afraid to let Schiff speak because what he was saying might make some sense. It seems that the media is running scared.
I love Schiff. I have contributed to his campaign so I’m sure I’m biased.
I’m curious to know who would you rather see in the Senate; a Schiff or a Krugman?
The link to this interview was posted at Reason.tv, but didn’t have a comments sections. Thank you for posting it here. Now I can say what I wanted to at Reason: O’Donnell is a douche bag.
Observation #1: O’Donnell really was rude to his guest.
Observations #2: Despite Schiff having been correct in the past concerning issues ranging from the U.S. trade deficit, the decline in U.S. manufacturing, and the housing bubble, he’s dead wrong about that a “free market” health care system would bring down costs. Reason? There already IS, for all practical reasons, a “free market” health care system in place, and it has failed. Miserably.
Observation #3: There is such thing as a “magic bullet”, and it’s name is single-payer. Much of the rest of the world justifiably shakes its head in astonishment over how perpetually stupid the U.S. is in resisting this obvious solution.
Really where is this “free market” health care unencumbered by heavy government regulations? You are spewing crap.
1) Which law prevents insurance companies from raising rates on policy-holders at any time and for any reason?
2) Which law prevents insurance companies from denying coverage to policy-holders at any time and for any reason — even if the policy-holder has paid for that coverage?
3) Which law requires health-providers to accept Medicaid/Medicare?
Stumped already? I had a feeling you’d be. So here’s the answer:
“NONE”.
Now enlighten all of us here as to precisely which “government regulations” have been “encumbering” the health care system…
Are you suggeting that health insurance companies don’t need to comply with government regulations?
Not any regulations which justify their criminal-like actions, no.
Are you totally disconnected to reality? Not even Obama argues about a “free market” having failed.
How about mandates? Purchasing insurance across state lines? How did employee linked insurance come about?
You’re WAY outta your league here at the Café.
Nevermind the FDA, licensing requirements for medical professionals, etc etc etc…driving up costs by the day.
If you saw my post below, advocating for single-payer, you would have understood that I’m not the biggest Obama fan.
In any case, it’s laughable that you think insurance company malfeasance is due to not being able to sell policies across state lines. The rationale behind across-state-line policy sales is supposedly so that the uninsured would gain greater access to health insurance. And what would it do for those who already have insurance? Not even the insurance companies are unctiously duplicitous enough* to justify decades-long abuse of their own policy-holders on the grounds of “Uh, well, it’s all because we can’t sell across state lines”.
And even the most low-life, brown-nosing, narrow-eyed, pencil-headed, thin-lipped, congenitally ethics-impaired Heritage Foundation or Cato stooge squirms when told to write yet another paper claiming that mandates are the real reason Blue Cross/Shield happily denies life-saving surgery coverage for some 8-year-old who has cancer: how can they reconcile the claim that mandates are the problem when its Big Insurance ITSELF which has been pushing for a requirement that EVERYBODY in the whole damn nation be forced by the government to purchase private health insurance?
Does your league wear uniforms?
(“unctiously duplicitous enough”: a good description to use when describing human-weasels like David Gratzer and any other such oddities)
Who here suggested that the government regulates only insurance part of the healthcare. Have you heard of emergency care for all, regarless of whether somebody has insurance or ability pay out of pocket? Which part of the free market did that come from? How about the lopsided taxbreak for employers on expenses related to employee health insurances. What about
“Guaranteed issue” laws prohibit insurers from denying coverage to applicants based on health status. In the small group market today, all health insurance policies must be sold on a guaranteed-issue basis
Guaranteed renewability laws prohibit insurers from canceling coverage on the basis of medical claims or diagnosis of an illness
States also have developed standards to prevent insurers from circumventing guaranteed issue and renewability requirements. For example, state marketing standards require insurers to actively market policies to all small businesses, not just the ones with a healthy
workforce.
States have also passed laws to improve access to health coverage for “special populations.” For instance, most states prohibit insurers from canceling insurance for dependent adult handicapped children who were covered by their parents’ policies as minors.
State policymakers have also enacted coverage continuation laws similar to federal COBRA. These apply to policies purchased by small businesses not subject to federal COBRA. Thirty-eight states have such laws; some offer shorter periods of continuation coverage, while others are more generous than COBRA
States have a wide range of standards that govern the types of conditions and treatments a policy is required to cover (called mandated benefits). For example, in 46 states health insurers are required to either cover (or offer to cover) benefits for diabetes supplies and education.24 Twenty-seven states require insurers to cover cervical cancer screening.25 Fifty states require coverage for mammograms and 32 require coverage for well-baby care (childhood immunizations and visits to pediatricians).26 Mandated benefits also include requirements on insurers to reimburse certain types of medical providers, such as nurse practitioners. The term “mandated benefits” is also used to describe state laws requiring coverage for special populations, e.g., adult handicapped children.
I also suggest that you read ERISA, COBRA, HIPAA federal regulations.
That, I think, will be a good place for you to start.
“There already IS, for all practical reasons, a “free market” health care system in place”
Approximately half of health care in this country is financed through the government–with premiums forcibly confiscated from wages. That is free market?
The government tells people they can deduct their health insurance premiums from their income taxes–but only if they get the insurance through an employer-linked third-party payer. That is free market?
Unlike for nearly all other interstate commerce in this country, a citizen is prevented from purchasing health insurance if it is sold in another state that is not his own. That is free market?
State governments routinely cave-in to pressure groups to mandate that its insured citizens purchase specific insurance coverages? That is free market?
Malpractice attorneys first take down the name of every physician in the medical record and then uncritically accuse them all of incompetence and name them in a lawsuit, knowing some fraction will settle just out of fear. Once settlements are over, the lawyer then decides who to drop from the suit. That is free market?
McCarran Ferguson exemption that protects the business of insurance from antitrust law. That is free market?
American medical residency programs are mostly financed through Medicare. That is free market?
These are not uninfluential factors. I think you need to look up the term “free market”. I’ll give you a hint–one word is “free”. The other word is “market”.
“2) Which law prevents insurance companies from denying coverage to policy-holders at any time and for any reason — even if the policy-holder has paid for that coverage?”
It’s almost as if you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Yes there is such a thing as a “magic bullet”, and in that world, there are Santa Clauses and Easter Bunnies.
There’s also such a thing as Canada, France, Germany, UK, Australia, and plenty of other nations that have excellent health-care systems and (get this…brace yourself for it…) no people made bankrupt due to medical bills.
Define “excellent”.
Quality of health care in those countries is objectively worse than in the US.
Money is fungible. When people go bankrupt, it has to do with not having enough money. When someone goes bankrupt in the UK, it is entirely possibly they could’ve avoided bankruptcy if they could’ve kept the last 15 years of their NHS taxes.
Cost shifting to the taxpayer does not, in spite of what so many free lunch government monopoly activist believe, mean that those costs do not exist.
And the use of non-GAAP government accounting does not mean bankrutcy is not happening. What do you call $30-40 trillion in Medicare unfunded liabilities? Solvency? Do you realize that even the heavily rationed public systems of Europe have costs growing at the same rate as the US? You really think that is solvency?
Wake up.
“There already IS, for all practical reasons, a “free market” health care system in place, and it has failed. Miserably.”
You’re way outta your league here at the Café…
“There already IS, for all practical reasons, a “free market” health care system in place, and it has failed. Miserably.”
You’re WAY outta your league here at the Café…
“There already IS, for all practical reasons, a “free market” health care system in place, and it has failed. Miserably.”
LMAO
Henry, have you ever heard of medicare or medicaid? What about the FDA? And how about people being unable to purchase insurance across state lines? There ISN’T free market health care in this country.
I’m not a Schiffi either, but that was even worse than I expected.
A trade deficit on its own is not necessarily a bad thing. A trade deficit can be seen as a surplus of capital coming in to our country. The thing about our trade deficit is that it is only sustained because of the dollar’s reserve currency status. The trade deficit is not sustainable, because as Schiff says, we cannot continue to con the world into sending us their goods for our paper money; we have to give them something in return. Sooner or later the rest of the world will smarten up and with our loss of domestic production of consumer’s goods, America’s standard of living will see a decline.
So, in a way, a trade surplus is not necessarily a bad thing( it can be thought of as a surplus of capital inflight to our country), but our case is not built on good economic fundamentals; it is built on our currency’s status in regard to the rest of the world, so it is not sustainable. When economic reality begins to take hold, America will be in trouble because of our lack of production of goods to trade with other countries or to consume ourselves.
To put this in a simple to understand analogy, think of world trade as a basketball game. The American team has a much easier job than the rest of the teams(countries). Our team has a basketball rim that is 4 times as large as the other teams, so it is easy for us to score points. Why would the other teams continue to allow us to have this extra large rim? Sooner or later we will have to play on a level field and we will be in trouble, since we have not had the experience of shooting in a normal net for a long time, we will have a lot of trouble adjusting to the smaller net(no longer being the reserve currency and trade deficit comes back to bite us).
A decline in the U.S. living standard is not a foregone conclusion, but I’m definitely a “show-me” kinda guy, and I’d like to see this debate waged more vigorously here. I’m not interested in more dull repetition of the thesis in your opening sentences. [I understand that you make the points rhetorically to counter them.]
I understand the “investment sink” argument. I’ve understood it for years. I know that a current account deficit need not signal an unsustainable imbalance, because it can signal an unusually attractive investment environment instead, but the question is: does it or not? Does the U.S. deficit at this time specifically signal this investment environment or Schiff’s unsustainable, imperial seigniorage?
I don’t pretend to know. That’s why it’s a question, and “Schiff could be wrong” does not answer the question. He could have been wrong about the real estate market in ’06 too, but he wasn’t, though maybe he overstated the problem. We haven’t actually seen the 50+% decline in real estate prices that he predicted then. Not yet anyway.
So what does China gain by investing so heavily in entitlement to U.S. tax revenue, even at the expense of its own current consumption? That’s a legitimate question. One potential answer is “food for an aging population”. China’s labor force soon peaks, and “soon” means in the coming decade. That’s just a demographic inevitability at this point. China’s population is now relatively young, but it ages even more rapidly than the U.S. population (which also ages rapidly) in coming decades.
China’s rural population probably ages even faster, threatening needed growth in agricultural productivity. Both nations feed themselves, but U.S. agricultural is roughly ten times as productive as Chinese agriculture, i.e. two percent of us work in agricultural while twenty percent of the Chinese work in agriculture, and the U.S. has less than a quarter of China’s population on the same land mass. Our agricultural output is far less constrained.
That’s obviously not a rigorous, quantitative analysis, but it’s a start. I’d like to see more numbers in this forum. That’s what the professionals at the top of the blog are supposed to provide, not just endless repetition of the same theoretical assertions.
So who buys our glut of houses? How about Chinese immigrants? I work in a small, regional office for a large IT services firm. We’ve hired at a fairly rapid pace this year, despite the recession, and Chinese immigrants represent roughly half of the hiring, all recent graduates of U.S. universities. How about Mexican immigrants working in a growing agriculture sector for export?
What worries me is that our economy may not move as far in this direction as it could because we don’t allow market forces to reorganize resources during this recession. We can reorganize to produce a yield that foreign investors want to consume, but will we?
I’m not really sure on how to answer your question and I’m also new at cafehayek so I’m not sure what the typical responses are (I have been getting the emails from Don for quite some time).
However, my point is that trade deficits don’t matter at all and just that a trade deficit all by itself is not a problem. The problem is a running a large, sustained trade deficit that is being financed by debt, especially when the assets you are acquiring with your capital surplus are not sustainable investments but are rather depreciating consumer products.
The problem is that we’re spending so much of that capital surplus on overpriced houses and Starbucks coffee and not enough on factories or other sustainable business enterprise. What we’re “selling” in return for this capital is junk paper.
I know that’s what Schiff says, and he might be right, but I’m not sure he’s right, and I’d like to see some quantitative evidence. Neither houses nor Starbucks coffee are imported. Maybe the coffee itself is imported, but that’s a small fraction of the cost of a cup of Starbucks coffee.
We import a lot of lumber and oil from Canada, and we run a trade deficit with Canada, but what’s the rest of the story? Do Canadians really spend most of the surplus on Treasuries and mortgage backed securities, or do they purchase U.S. corporate shares and other direct business investment? Are U.S. houses more expensive, as a fraction of homeowner income say, than Canadian houses?
If we’re really selling junk paper for goods, is that our problem? Maybe it’s unsustainable, but shouldn’t we trade as much junk paper for goods as we can until the suckers stop buying?
Can the purchasers of our paper really impose a cost (an unproductive rent) on us, or can they only realize a return if and only if a real return materializes? If we repay them through higher producitivity, our living standard needn’t fall. Is our productitivity really rising or not?
If foreigners buy U.S. Treasuries and if Congress ultimately imposes higher taxes to pay the interest and principal, that’s a serious problem, but will Congress impose the taxes? Inflating our way out of the debt can be costly to us, but we’ve still traded all of this junk paper for real goods in the meantime. Are we really poorer on balance?
Answers to these questions are not obvious. I don’t presume to know the answers, but I’d like to see more empirical data and quantitative analysis.
Hard to say if I can give any real evidence but as of now it is a known fact that we borrow money from other countries to finance our wars and entitlement benefits. Schiff, being the doomsdayer he is, is predicting that one day we wont be able to borrow money to sustain our livelihood and any trade deficit for that matter. Short-term, I doubt Schiff sees the trade deficit as a problem. However, he is concerned about the long-term value of the dollar and assumes that our currency would be worth a lot less in the future and other countries would eventually wise up, cut their losses and stop accepting our currency.
My belief is that Schiff’s opinion of the trade deficit ultimately comes from a Henry Hazlitt quote.
“The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.”
I’m sooo glad I don’t have cable…
“we’re out of time”
piece of s…
Lawrence O’Donnell is an embarrassment. His behavior on MSNBC and ‘The McLaughlin Group’ concerning Mitt Romney and Mormons was despicable.
Here‘s evidence of a fact I’ve suspected since the start of the housing correction, that a big part of the unsustainable inflation is concentrated in large, upscale homes. The inflation was more uniform across asset classes (affecting all houses and not only larger, more upscale houses) in some regions, but in most markets, the inflation was concentrated in large, upscale homes that now are overbuilt.
Some owners of these homes, and lenders to these owners, will take a bath as prices fall, but other people will buy the homes at bargain basement prices, compared with the cost of construction, and building in this market segment will decline. Bargain hunting in the depressed sector will depress house prices lower down the scale for a while, but the pressure won’t reach the lowest segment to the same degree, so the average home price will fall much more than the median and lower percentiles.
I agree, he seems to be a natural politician. That scares me. I can only hope that he will not be one of the scumbags in D.C, if he ever wins that is. I think, it will be tougher for him to win the republican nomination than to defeat Dodd.
Ah, yes. Those bank-breaking licensing requirements. Probably what’s in the back of some surgeon’s mind during a common procedure: “I just remembered that extra $200 I had to pay 10 years ago when I moved into the state. Note to self: Tell the desk to add another zero to the patients bill.”
“In any case, it’s laughable that you think insurance company malfeasance is due to not being able to sell policies across state lines. The rationale behind across-state-line policy sales is supposedly so that the uninsured would gain greater access to health insurance.”
That’s actually not what I argued, but since you’re putting words in my mouth, I’ll take it you concede the point that what we have now is not, in fact, a “free market” healthcare system.
“Blue Cross/Shield happily denies life-saving surgery coverage for some 8-year-old who has cancer”
Insurance companies deny care because in our system, they are the point of cost control. Replace them with the government, and the government will take that role.
Since prices cannot grow without bound, cost control must exist with everything. It is whoever pays the bill who is left with that responsibility. In a direct pay free market system, the patient takes that responsibility. In most of our private third-party financing system it is the insurance companies. In our public third-party financing system it is the government.
With the free market, the patient has choices of different levels and kinds of care and insurance coverage at different prices. He can choose if and who to pay, and always has litigation as a backup for wrongdoing.
With our private third-party financing system, the patient has a choice of…employer. He can choose if and who to sell his labor to, but always has litigation as a backup for wrongdoing.
With a government third-party financing system, the patient has a choice of…casting a vote?…leaving the country?…entering the black market?. Nonpayment of taxes is not an option. There is no litigation. Try writing your Congressman if it makes you feel better. I’m sure that will have more influence than the hospital, nursing, physician, medical device, trial lawyer, pharmaceutical, and countless other paying lobbies.
“how can they reconcile the claim that mandates are the problem when its Big Insurance ITSELF which has been pushing for a requirement that EVERYBODY in the whole damn nation be forced by the government to purchase private health insurance?”
Being ignorant of facts is one thing, but this is just a plain old non sequitur. I think your rational faculties need some emergency care.
Of course insurance companies–at least the biggest few insurance companies–want people to have to buy their products. Shocking.
But that is a DECREASE in choice, by prohibiting the choice of not buying any insurance. Opening interstate commerce to health insurance is, on the other hand, an INCREASE in choice.
The former is a RESTRICTION upon individuals freedom.
The latter is REMOVING RESTRICTIONS upon individuals freedom by not forcing insured individuals to buy coverage they don’t want.
Now Cato and Heritage typically advocate individual freedom. Meaning they advocate INCREASING individual choices and NOT DECREASING those choices. They advocate REMOVING RESTRICTIONS upon freedom not adding them.
So at least in this one case, Cato and Heritage are CONSISTENT. Not ABSURD, like you.
The problem with healthcare is that while in nominal terms government involvement is not as signfificant, the net effect is actually more disasterous than it would be if the government ran it directly. Essentially, the current system creates private for-profit monopolies, protected by entry barriers that make the Great Wall look like a picket fence, insurance mandates that smaller firms cannot compete with, and a third-party system that essentially protects insurance providers from customer choice (as changing your insurance essentially makes you have to change your job). In addition, the FDA’s approval process jacks up prices of drugs and procedures, and medical licensing systems create more entry barriers in order to maintain salaries (all licensing systems should be voluntary within the industry, otherwise it becomes a government-supported cartel). Unlike with other goods, healthcare essentially forces you to buy premium, instead of paying less for a possibly less quality version of the service. It doesn’t help that insurance plans refuse to deny coverage for routine visits – covering routine visits is utterly insane. Let’s have car insurance companies cover routine tuneups, and homeowner’s insurance cover plumbing. It is a complete distortion of how insurance is supposed to work
“$200 I had to pay 10 years ago”
I guess you’re not a physician. State license renewals are typically every year or every two years, and they are often a lot more than $200. And if you are licensed in multiple states, well…
But you are right that the pain of one or two state license renewals is dwarfed by the administrative nightmare and bureaucratic farce of obtaining the licenses in the first place.
Overall professional expenses for a physician are quite high compared to other professions, though not all due directly to government. CME requirements (which are imposed both by private credentialing boards and state medical boards) keep growing which can cost thousands/year in direct costs, not to mention time-off expenses. Additionally many states mandate specific CME requirements like ethics, pain management, etc.
Professional society memberships, of which most physicians have multiple, can add thousands more to that. And good standing in a society is most certainly an act of defensive medicine. Juries love to hear how a physician is a member of this or that.
And malpractice insurance…well…let’s just say that it is not one of a physician’s smaller business expenses. And the current tort system has turned medical malpractice into a lottery system for bad outcomes, regardless of any medical mistakes.
Just thought you might be interested one day in knowing what you are talking about.