{"id":1289,"date":"2009-05-15T06:30:26","date_gmt":"2009-05-15T14:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/?p=1289"},"modified":"2009-05-16T06:38:12","modified_gmt":"2009-05-16T14:38:12","slug":"orszag-forgot-one-thing-its-kind-of-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/orszag-forgot-one-thing-its-kind-of-important\/","title":{"rendered":"Orszag forgot one thing. It’s kind of important."},"content":{"rendered":"

Peter Orszag, White House OMB director, published an editorial<\/a> about the importance of containing health care costs, and how to do it.\u00a0 The portion of our health care that is nationalized, i.e., Medicare and Medicaid, indeed threatens to bankrupt the country.\u00a0 From this, Mr. Orszag concludes that “we” are in big fiscal trouble and “we” need to do something about it, “we” being code for “the government.”<\/p>\n

Mr. Orszag is optimistic about what “we” can do:<\/p>\n

Representatives from some of the most important parts of the health-care sector — doctors, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, insurers and medical-device manufacturers — confirmed that major efficiency improvements in health-care are possible. They met with the president and pledged to take aggressive steps to cut the currently projected growth rate of national health-care spending by an average of 1.5 percentage points in each of the next 10 years. By making this pledge, the providers and insurers made clear that they agreed the system could remove significant costs without harming quality.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This kind of reminds me of Stalin’s optimism<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A Bolshevik’s word is his bond. Bolsheviks are in the habit of fulfilling promises made by them. But what does the pledge to fulfil the control figures for 1931 mean? It means ensuring a total increase of industrial output by 45 per cent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Like Stalin’s central planners, Orszag is using this faith in government-led change to make us all into guinea pigs of centrally planned reform.\u00a0 Orszag ignores the 800 lb. gorilla standing next to the guinea pig, i.e., the virtue of competition.<\/p>\n

When one casually looks at the areas of our economy, they can judge the relative availability, variety, quality, and cost of different parts:<\/p>\n

More competitive … <\/strong> More regulated\/socialized<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Private\/Charter schools\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Public schools<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

UPS, FedEx\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Post Office<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Private railroads\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Amtrak<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Phone service post-1984 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Phone service pre-1984<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anything pop out?<\/p>\n

Imagine what restaurants would look like if their menus, prices, and policies were dictated by central planners.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Never mind what they would look like if they were actually owned and operated by the government.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, most people can’t visualize a free market in health care because they’ve been told, and appear to believe, that our current health care system is “free market<\/a>.”\u00a0 To others of us, it appears as if the government is heavily involved <\/a>in nearly all areas of health care, especially insurance<\/a>, and that the more it has gotten involved, the worse things have gotten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peter Orszag, White House OMB director, published an editorial about the importance of containing health care costs, and how to do it.\u00a0 The portion of our health care that is nationalized, i.e., Medicare and Medicaid, indeed threatens to bankrupt the country.\u00a0 From this, Mr. Orszag concludes that “we” are in big fiscal trouble and “we” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-patterns-without-intention","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1289"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1291,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions\/1291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}