Daily Archives: 6 December 2019

Seller’s Remorse

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Not because they mistakenly sold, though, rather because they’re being blocked from selling. The People’s Republic of China’s telecom company Huawei is suing over an FCC ruling that prevents American rural wireless telecom companies from using Federal dollars to buy Huawei equipment.

Huawei executives have long hung their hats on this bit as their primary reason for being allowed into our national communications networks:

Huawei has long said that it is owned by its employees, operates independently of Beijing and would never spy on behalf of any government.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.  PRC law requires government-run or -owned and private companies to cooperate in every respect with the PRC government—including government-demanded surveillance.  Even trusting to the sincerity of Huawei executives, they’ll spy if their government tells them to.  They have no choice.

Beyond that, it would be the height of foolishness for us to trust our national security to the good offices of foreign executives and to a foreign government that controls them.  Especially when that foreign government is, at best, a competitor of ours and, more likely, an enemy.

Especially when that foreign government has a history—long and venerable—of hacking our government and our private computers, stealing personal data of our government and military personnel, stealing our negotiation, policy, and military secrets, stealing the proprietary data of our private enterprises.

Especially when that company has been found to have multiple backdoors and other weaknesses in its software, waiting to be exploited.

A proximate example of Huawei’s sincerity is their claim, made by Song Liuping, Chief Legal Officer for Huawei, in the company’s FCC suit:

The FCC should not shut down joint efforts to connect rural communities in the US[.]

This is just straight-up dishonest. Neither the FCC, nor any other Federal entity, is blocking any joint efforts to connect our rural communities.  The only matter here is that Huawei is restricted in its efforts to join in those connections.  Indeed, the only restriction on Huawei in this case is that the company may not use Federal dollars—American citizens’ dollars—to join the connection efforts.

“The Burden of Compliance”

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Hospitals have filed their initial suit to prevent the Trump administration from promulgating a rule that would require hospitals to make public the secret rates they agree with insurers. Their argument centers on this:

The burden of compliance with the rule is enormous, and way out of line with any projected benefits associated with the rule[.]

It’s hard to understand the degree of burden in simply publishing the agreed rates. Paper and ink aren’t expensive, and electrons are even cheaper.  Beyond that, the benefits are enormous: it would allow patients and prospective patients to know which hospital charges what for a given procedure, so the patient could determine—under his own imperatives—which hospital has the most cost effective procedure.

The benefits also include each hospital knowing what its competitors charge, resulting in price competition—also the benefit of patients and prospective patients.  And to the benefit of the insurers, as price competition brings prices obtained in their direction, and seemingly paradoxically, to the benefit of those same hospitals as price competition brings prices paid in their direction, with the two pressures driving prices to an intermediate level optimal for the patients and prospective patients, for consumers.

Health and Human Services has the right of it. Here’s HHS spokesman Caitlin Oakley:

Hospitals should be ashamed that they aren’t willing to provide American patients the cost of a service before they purchase it. President Trump and Secretary [Alex] Azar are committed to providing patients the information they need to make their own informed health-care decisions and will continue to fight for transparency in America’s health-care system.