Tag Archives: regulation

Guild Monopolies

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They live on in France, especially in the medical profession.

It seems that Thomas Mesnier, a La République En Marche! National Assemblyman, has committed the unpardonable sin of proposing that pharmacies(!—not even establishments like grocery stores) be allowed to sell over-the-counter medicines without the buyer first consulting a doctor and getting a prescription.  The medications Mesnier has proposed be salable without prescription include such dangerous drugs as paracetamol (the French version of acetaminophen), ibuprofen, non-codeine-containing cough medicines, cold medicines, allergy medicines, and the like.

The horror.

Here’s Guild Master National Order of Physicians President, Patrick Bouet:

We are not improving the health system by taking skills away from physicians and giving them to professionals who do not have their training. There comes a time when things have to stop.

No, what improves the health system is no longer wasting time and resources of guild members doctors on minor ailments that half the developed world considers their citizens smart enough and capable enough to deal with on their own, including purchasing minor medicaments for those minor ailments.  What improves the health system is leaving those otherwise wasted time and resources free to deal with the truly sick.  What improves the health system is no longer wasting time and money of those citizens—directly or through tax dollars—on consulting doctors in order to get access to minor medicaments for minor ailments.

What improves the useless sense of self-importance is the reservation of such trivial decisions to doctors.

Work…Works

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Sam Adolphsen, Foundation for Government Accountability’s Vice President of Executive Affairs, writing for Fox Business, commented on that in a piece about Medicaid’s work requirement in Arkansas—about which Progressive-Democrats in Congress are in an uproar.

Those Progressive-Democrats have complained that work requirements

“threaten[]” Americans…work [is] a “restrictive condition.”

These politicians of the Left ignore two things. One is the trivial one: no one is forcing anyone to work; the only “restriction” is that, in order to get any of Arkansas’ OPM, recipients must go to work in Arkansas or make a good faith effort to do so.

The other thing is the critical item in the affair.

Since the requirement was implemented, thousands of adults have left the welfare program.
…
…when people go back to work after work requirements are implemented, their incomes double or triple in just a year or two.

And this fallout from that second thing:

Getting these able-bodied adults back to work also frees up resources for the truly needy—the very people that the Medicaid program was designed to help.

It also increases Arkansas’ tax collections that go to the State’s Medicaid program.

Here’s where Adolphsen missed the mark, though.  He wrote

Why are Democrats so against work?
…
It’s an indication of how out of touch these progressive leaders are with everyday Americans.

No, Progressive-Democrats are the smartest kids on the block—just ask them.  They know what they’re doing with their objections to imposing a measure of personal responsibility on welfare recipients, personal responsibility that brings with it personal prosperity.

Those folks getting work and raising their standard of living aren’t actual human beings; they’re just votes spilling out of the Progressive-Democrats’ welfare box.

Metaphors R’nt Us

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President Donald Trump, speaking about the dangers of fentanyl and the risks of open borders letting stuff like this (among other things and thugs) pour in, said,

A little tiny spoonful can wipe out a state. It’s hard to believe. It can wipe out an entire state, a spoonful of this stuff[.]

The Associated Press will have none of this.  They “corrected” him:

A teaspoon of illegally made fentanyl could conceivably kill 3,000 people, by one measure. The state with the smallest population, Wyoming, has about 578,000 people. It would take close to 200 teaspoons to kill a population of that size.

Ooh. 200 teaspoons is a skosh over 4 cups (excuse my imprecision).  A drop in the ocean of fentanyl flooding our cities.

It couldn’t possibly be that Trump was speaking metaphorically.  Nope, can’t be that.

It couldn’t possibly be that Trump was exaggerating to emphasize a point.  Nope, not that either.

Buncha petty quibblers, AP is.

Amy Klobuchar the Progressive

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Senator Amy Klobuchar (D, MN) and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential primary candidate is proud to declare herself Progressive, for all that her mouth keeps saying words of centrism, highlighting her work bridging the political divide.

I think [voters] should see me as a progressive because I believe in progress and I have worked towards progress my whole life.

Here’s Herb Croly, one of the founders of the modern Progressive movement.  I’ve cited him on other occasions; this should be a familiar quote.

[A]ny increase in centralized power and responsibility, expedient or inexpedient, is injurious to certain aspects of traditional American democracy.  But the fault in that case lies with the democratic tradition; and the erroneous and misleading tradition must yield before the march of constructive national democracy….  [T]he average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.

The necessity for increased centralization of government power that’s claimed by the Progressive-Democratic Party is illustrated by the attempted nationalization of our health care coverage industry that is Obamacare (which we weren’t allowed to know anything about until the bill was passed, recall).  It’s illustrated by the Progressive-Democratic Party’s incessant demand for ever higher taxes and ever higher spending.  It’s Illustrated by Progressive-Democrats’ crowing over having “successfully” driven Amazon out of Long Island City before it even arrived (a withdrawal with which I agreed, but not for Party reasons).  It’s illustrated by the Progressive-Democratic Party’s, and nearly all of its declared and not-yet-declared candidates for President’s enthusiastic endorsement of the Green New Deal, which seeks to nationalize our energy, auto, construction industries—virtually our entire economy—and get it done within 10 years.

Today’s Progressives’ contempt for Americans, echoing Croly’s, is illustrated by ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) dismissal of tens of millions of us as bitter Bible-clingers and gun-toters living in flyover country.  Today’s Progressives’ contempt for Americans is illustrated by the Progressive-Democratic Party’s just prior Presidential candidate dismissing tens of millions of Americans as irredeemably deplorable racist, misogynistic homophobes.  Today’s Progressives’ contempt for Americans is illustrated by their dismissal of the need to secure our borders and the need to control who we let into our country.

Progressive, indeed.  There’s nothing moderate about Progressivism, and Klobuchar is proud—insistent—to be known as a Progressive.

Argument by Non Sequitur

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Kentucky’s State House of Representatives passed, by a large margin (69-20) a bill that would outlaw most abortions, contingent on the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade.

If passed by the State’s Senate (expected) and signed by the Governor (also expected), it’ll have legal problems, though.  Major ones will be what constitutes “overturning,” how an actual overturn would be discriminated from serious modification of Roe‘s ruling, and since Roe is medical technology oriented, a restatement of the threshold for viability.

Still, though, the arguments for and against the bill are instructive.

State Congressman James Tipton (R), speaking for the bill, put the matter starkly:

Not one of us, man or woman, has the moral authority to take the life of an unborn.  There is no other medical procedure that I know of that the goal is to intentionally take the life of an unborn child.

On the other hand, State Congresswoman Mary Lou Marzian (D) insisted that this sort of bill (indeed, any bill that limits abortion) constitutes an unacceptable intrusion into the private medical decisions of women.  But she was unable to answer—or chose to avoid—questions about the unborn baby’s right to life or about the medical decisions, private or otherwise, of those representing the unborn baby’s interests.

And these objections by Marzian to Kentucky’s bill are just cynically irrelevant:

If you want to go have a colonoscopy, should we get ourselves involved in that? If you want to take Viagra, should we get ourselves involved in that?

No life is in the wind in those procedures, though.  Only one life even is involved in these utterly non-lethal procedures.  Marzian, et al., know this.