Tag Archives: markets

Medicare for All

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Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) is beating that drum, again, and has support from some Progressive-Democratic Party Senators.

The health proposal, dubbed Medicare for all, would offer the same suite of medical benefits required for some insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act and eliminate most out-of-pocket costs. Mr Sanders argues that although taxes would likely rise to support the new system, families would save money by no longer needing to purchase health coverage. The government, he says, could also secure lower prices for medical services.

Of course it has the same stuff as Obamacare—it’s the planned evolution of Obamacare into a Federally mandated single-payer system.  Because Government Knows Better, especially one run by Progressive-Democrats and their Social Democrat crony.

“Taxes would likely rise”—yewbetcha, to the tune of an additional $24,000 per family.  Whether we want that “benefit” or not.  Families can save money by not having actually to purchase coverage?  That’s rich: what do these guys think those 24 stacks are, if not coverage purchase costs inflicted on us whether we want or need coverage or not?  Aside from that, lots of folks, my family included, don’t use health care services very much; we don’t need coverage against costs we don’t incur.  That’s for one geezer family.  Those 24 stacks represent no net savings for us at all.  The young families also are healthy, don’t use health care services very much, and so have no need of health coverage.  And as they’re just starting their lives, they don’t have those 24 stacks to begin with.

Government can get lower prices?  That’s, um, rich.  Just like it (doesn’t) get lower prices on so many other “services” it provides, what with requiring contractors to pay prevailing union labor wages, whether the contractors employ union workers or not.

[P]rivate insurers wouldn’t be permitted to compete with the government plan for basic coverage….

This, I suppose, is one way in which Sanders’ government would get lower prices—competition raises prices, after all, in his and his Progressive-Democrat cronies’ fetid imaginations.

The 96-page bill offers no mechanisms to pay for the plan….

Of course not.  Money grows on trees.  Or, as I speculate Sanders will tout in his promised for “tomorrow” white paper on funding, money is in the bottomless wallets of the rich.

State’s Obligations

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These are the flip side of the 10th Amendment States Rights mantra that State government personnel are starting to tout.  And that makes State governors’ and legislators’ objections to the Trump administration’s moves to clip the intrusive wings regarding investment advice to retail investors and who should be permitted/required to give it a bit ridiculous.

[T]he Obama Labor Department’s fiduciary rule requires brokers to act in the best interests of retirement savers rather than sell products that are merely suitable and potentially more lucrative for the brokers.

Never mind that this would tacitly limit a retail investor’s investment options, limiting him to too-conservative alternatives, and price many out of the investment advice market.  Big Brother knows better.

Individual States are fully capable of enacting their own fiduciary rules, as Nevada and Connecticut have done, for better or worse for their citizens, and as New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California are considering doing, as is their right, and obligation to the extent they seriously see such a thing as a public good and not just a shower look good, under the 10th Amendment.

I think such overregulation is idiotic, as well as insulting to American citizens.  We don’t need Government looking over our shoulder or telling us what to do and not to do in every aspect of our lives.  But let’s find out.

Patchwork regulation if the States are left to their own devices?  So what?  Let the 50 laboratories of democracy try out their various ideas.  We Americans can vote with our dollars as well as our feet regarding which experiments work and which don’t.

Republicans and Obamacare

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Too many now are begging for surrender on repeal and replace.

[F]ew congressional Republicans have signaled they are ready to let the health-care market deteriorate while their constituents are still battling higher premiums and fewer insurers to choose from on the individual marketplace.

This means those Republicans are signaling that they don’t have the stomach to repeal Obamacare at all, which would be the ultimate deterioration of it.

This is a betrayal of their constituents along two dimensions: the cynical destruction of their promise to repeal and replace, and their decision to continue inflicting Obamacare with its steadily increasing premiums and fewer insurers to choose from on their constituents.

President Donald Trump’s move to just let Obamacare die on the vine and hope for something better to rise out of the sewage is just as foolish and immoral.  Republicans need to remember what they promised and who sent them to Congress to honor their promise and get back to work on repeal and replace.  On that score, Trump is entirely correct, even if the doable path is stages as originally proposed last winter or via another path proposed by Senators Lindsey Graham (R, SC) and Bill Cassidy (R, LA) whose bill (as an interim step, I say) would “take ACA funding and distribute it to the states through block grants.”

Voters should remember this pending abject failure in the upcoming primary elections.

Sale of a Stock Exchange

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Good idea?

The Chicago Stock Exchange wants to sell itself to Chongqing Casin Enterprise Group, a Chinese conglomerate whose parent is CHX Holdings Inc.  Never mind that this would be a camel’s nose of the People’s Republic of China into our financial system and expose it to PRC hacking, disruption, theft, etc, etc, etc.

Fortunately, a collection of Congressmen persuaded the SEC to indefinitely delay the sale and purchase.  Unfortunately, the deal hasn’t been killed altogether.

Casin…says it is independent of the Chinese government.

Of course it is. In a nation that is increasing its autocratic control over its economy and the businesses in it.  Sure.

Contra such blandishments, there aren’t any businesses in the PRC that aren’t under government control, whether those businesses are owned by the government or the CPC or operate outside formal ownership: mainland Chinese businesses have government apparatchiks, “advisors,” and CPC monitors in their management staffs.

CHX…says its policies will prevent confidential data from being shared with the new Chinese owners.

And we believe them. In a nation that rules by law instead of being a nation under rule of law, a nation that changes its laws for the convenience of those persons in power, CHX would never alter—or simply ignore—”policy;” it would never steal confidential data.

Sure.

No, not a good idea.  Not this time.  Not this buyer.  Not a good idea at all.

My New Book Is Out

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Titled A Conservative’s View of the Conduct of Just Wars, it’s available in Kindle format here.  It presents this Conservative’s view of the proper conduct of a just war: when it’s appropriate to join one, how it should be fought once joined (regardless of how or why it was joined), and importantly, what should be done with the nation that unjustly attacked.

Since St Augustine of Hippo’s exegeses of the early 5th century, Western thinkers have attempted to define Just War in their recognition that war is a part of the human condition. Through this, they hoped to limit the onset and scope of war and its damage to those innocently caught in it.

Many Just War theories center on the idea that human lives are God’s to take. Thus, war as a human endeavor begins inherently immoral and unjust, and it’s the war fighters’ responsibility to make the case that their war—this war, this time—is just and then to fight it justly.  My argument proceeds from that point.

Unfortunately, Just War arguments generally stop short of war’s true completion. The war is entered, it’s fought, it’s won or lost. But then…what? Just War theories until very recently haven’t asked that question, much less essayed an answer.

Is that all there is, though? Is a conflict over just because the enemy has been utterly defeated or a peace treaty signed? No, the conflict simply slides into a post-war recovery effort by the victor which may or may not include the loser.

In truth, peace by itself cannot be a just end of war; mere restoration of quietude is not a proper goal of victory. Nor can mere victory be the goal of war. True victory, victory in a just war must entail the restoration or creation of justice and freedom—of both, since neither can exist without the other.

Given justice in entering the war, the defender then must fight to a conclusion that not only redresses the wrong inflicted by the war’s attacker but also maximizes the probability that the aggressor will not—cannot—aggress again for a reasonably foreseeable future. Notice the implication: this requires the defender to fight to total, unconditioned victory.