Archive for the ‘myths & fallacies’ Category
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008
A common rationale for compulsory, mandatory insurance is that the uninsured are free-riders, so it's OK to force them to buy insurance. In a previous post I addressed how even if there are free-riders, mandatory insurance does not follow.
Michael Cannon at Cato suggests that they are not free-riders anyway. Some excerpts:
Many uninsured people show ...
Posted in compulsory insurance, myths & fallacies | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 13th, 2008
I often hear this from people who defeind confiscating taxpayer's money without their consent to pay for a government run insurance program for the elderly. They use this argument to justify wanting "Medicare for all." How does a defender of individual respond? Here's a way:
"If government employees can keep administrative ...
Posted in Medicaid/Medicare/SCHIP, myths & fallacies | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008
It's become a mantra that there are "47 million uninsured" Americans, a figure people use to back compulsory "universal" health insurance of some kind. Google found about fifty pages with the phrase on the Denver Post website alone. Democrat Jared Polis has mentioned 45 million, while Democrat Will Shafroth 50 million. Sure, 47 million ...
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Friday, July 11th, 2008
A common rationale for compulsory insurance is that the uninsured get their medical care from emergency rooms for free, and pass on the cost to the insured. I debunked this reasoning in an earlier post. Yet, for those who do not agree with my critique (if you don't agree, please ...
Posted in Medicaid/Medicare/SCHIP, compulsory insurance, myths & fallacies | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, July 8th, 2008
Socialist politician Aneurin Bevan, father of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), has stated that “everyone should be treated alike in the matter of medical care" and that "the essence of a satisfactory health service is that rich and poor are treated alike, that poverty is not a disability and wealth ...
Posted in morality, myths & fallacies | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
The Commonwealth Fund has released a new study claiming that
the number of underinsured U.S. adults—that is, people who have health coverage that does not adequately protect them from high medical expenses—has risen dramatically. ...As of 2007, there were an estimated 25 million underinsured adults in the United States, up 60 ...
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Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
In a previous post I challenged the notion that medical care is like services we receive from the fire department — a flawed analogy to justify politician-controlled single-payer health care. In it I claim that a more accurate analogy is that medical insurance is like homeowners or renters insurance.
Colorado single-payer advocate ...
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Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
Last week I challenged the view that health care should be a government service because it is allegedly like police protection. A similar analogy is to the fire department. Advocating single-payer health care, Michael Moore tells NPR:
That you should not have a private, profit-making insurance company in the middle between ...
Posted in morality, myths & fallacies | 1 Comment »
Thursday, June 12th, 2008
"Profit is a perverse incentive for quality health care: imagine for-profit fire or police protection," writes Michelle Swenson in support of single-payer health care. Louise at Colorado Health Insurance Insider has made the same comparison. Most notably, Michael Moore has also.
In this post I'll address the police analogy. (I address ...
Posted in Single Payer, morality, myths & fallacies | 1 Comment »
Friday, June 6th, 2008
"Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, noted that the United States invests more on health care than any country, but that its health care system ranks 37th." - Denver Post, April 29 2008
A Google search reveals that many people quote this World Health ...
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