Daily Archives: 20 June 2012

But It’s the Wrong Problem

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Ron Williams, a former Chairman and CEO of Aetna Inc, in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, described his evolution toward opposition of Obamacare’s Individual Mandate, which he had supported initially.  He then offered a couple of alternatives to the Individual Mandate; however his alternative solutions are as erroneous as the Individual Mandate is an overreach of Federal government power.  The reason for his error is that he’s pursuing the wrong problem.

Williams says

As a society, we have a moral obligation to ensure everyone has access to affordable health care.  We must find a way to cover those who are no longer healthy but need care.

No.  There is a difference between health care and health insurance; the two are conflated far too often—sometimes cynically and deliberately, sometimes out of genuine ignorance, and sometimes just out of careless thought.  People who are no longer healthy do not need health insurance; they need health care.  We must find a way to help them to get that care.  Moreover, this social obligation is not at all a government obligation, or even a legitimate government task.  Society is not our government—it is us.

When government butts out of our affairs, when it leaves our money in our hands, it becomes a lot easier for us as individuals to see to our obligations ourselves, and in our own way.  Then we can do more of what we need to do—directly, or through our local communities, or through our churches and private charities, or some combination of these.  Government legitimately comes into play only as a last resort, not the first resort—or only resort, as some would have it—and the Federal government must be last among these.  New York’s tax funds, to the extent they’re involved at all, should go first to New York’s poor, not first into a general national pile from which, for instance, Illinois or California might draw ad lib.

On top of that, competitively sold health insurances policies, sold nationwide rather than within 50 different state jurisdictions, would be a powerful market solution that would potentiate our ability as a society to act on this imperative.

Free Speech and the UN

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There is a carefully sub rosa international attack on free speech in progress, and unless our government takes a more active role than it has been, that attack is going to have very serious negative repercussions right here at home.  Gordon Crovitz described this in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed.

The UN’s International Telecommunications Union is hosting a World Conference on International Telecommunications this December, which will be attended by all 193 of the UN member nations, including the US.  This meeting has been utterly devoid of publicity, and any knowledge we have about the agenda and goals have come to us only through leaks.  But here’s what we know, according to Crovitz.

A 200+ page “planning document” indicates the UN’s goals for the conference, and Eli Dourado, a George Mason University researcher, summarized the document’s contents thusly:

These proposals show that many ITU member states want to use international agreements to regulate the Internet by crowding out bottom-up institutions, imposing charges for international communication, and controlling the content that consumers can access online.

The proposals include the following:

  • give countries authority over “the information and communication infrastructure within their state”
  • require that online companies “operating in their territory” use the Internet “in a rational way”

Since these proposals come from the People’s Republic of China, this means government authorities and government definitions of “rational way.”

Other proposals would actually let the UN regulate Internet content:

  • “protect” against computer malware or spam
  • inspect private communications
  • measure Internet traffic along national borders and bill the originator of the traffic
  • give the UN authority over allocating Internet addresses, replacing ICANN, the self-regulating body that presently ensures the stability of the Internet

These proposals come from Russia and Iran; although amazingly, Europe supports the billing drive (perhaps not so amazingly considering the penchant for government controls that EU member nations have).

So far, our government’s reaction to this assault on free speech—and on American free speech—has been…muted.  The best the Obama administration has been able to do is to mumble about

“unnecessary and beyond the appropriate scope” of UN regulation

and

the text [of the planning document] suggests that the ITU has a role in content-related issues.  We do not believe it does.

This is a far cry from the bolder response we took took when the UN’s UNESCO became too ideological and not enough concerned with science and education: we cut off funding to the organization.

This administration needs to become a whole lot more forceful in opposing this attempt to grab the Internet and to use that control to stifle free speech.