Thursday, January 20, 2011

How Good Intentions Pave The Road To Hell

Among my Top Five Favorite opinion columns of all time is one called "Good Ideas" by Dr. Walter E. Williams, who is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University. Williams was 73 years old when he wrote in 2009 about his winter exercise regimen and its role in keeping him healthy. He stated that despite exercise being a "good idea", a congressional mandate that all Americans engage in regular exercise is a very bad idea. His main argument was that debating whether regular exercise is a good idea or a bad idea, is irrelevant. The only relevant question should be: is such a mandate permissible under the Constitution?

Williams' hypothetical example is a good one, because most adults living today remember seeing film footage of Chinese or Russian citizens gathered for morning exercises, or sweeping the streets or gathering up the grain harvest. Isn't street sweeping a good idea? Isn't gathering up the harvest a good idea? Clearly, the problem wasn't that aerobic exercise, sweeping or harvesting are "bad". The problem was government coercion. In those examples, the coercion came at the barrel of a gun...while in our current situation the coercion will come first at the hands of an IRS agent, though there be guns behind his plastic smile.

If you have ever been in charge of any group undertaking—in leadership of a voluntary group at church, in your community or even in your extended family, you know how easy it is for a few complainers to derail your plans. Sometimes the opposition of just one person can threaten the entire endeavor. If that situation didn't make you mad or tick you off, then you were either a) already married with grown children, or b) Mother Teresa reincarnate. Think how much good could be done if everybody just did what you want them to do! Democratic Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania recently ran up against this kind of resistance to his good idea to legalize gambling.

Being in charge brings its own impetus to do something. And I have no doubt that the something wanting to be done is a good idea. How else could all these laws have been passed? Should Iowa farmers get a fair price for their corn? Heck yeah, good idea. Should Americans use energy-efficient light bulbs? Great idea. Should public schools be accountable for their students' learning? Excellent idea. And the list goes on and on and on—filling hundreds of thousands of pages in the Code of Federal Regulations. And spending tens of trillions of dollars.

But focusing on the merits of a particular idea is taking your eye off the ball. When government "mandates" something, there is a high, hard fastball coming straight at your head. Fortunately for Americans, our governments are restrained by the Constitution. Unfortunately for Americans, many of those governments have been pulling apart the seams of that constitution—especially the General Welfare Clause and the Commerce Clause—by very un-Constitutional means: by executive fiat, by judicial decree and by deliberate obfuscation. Would that they had the courage to amend it, which is the only proper and legal way to change it.

The current health care debate is not about health care at all. It is about restraining government so you aren't awakened one morning by Ed Rendell holding a broom for you in one hand and aiming a gun at you with the other. Americans must not sweep the road to hell for some bureaucrat's good idea.

11 comments:

  1. Whenever your party’s not in power, it’s “Unconstitutional government coercion!” But when it is, “The people have spoken.” When your party’s in power, it’s “Deficits don’t matter.” But when it isn’t, “Oh my word, look at all this unconscionable spending!” When your party’s in power, it’s “Didn’t these people learn the lesson of the last election?!” When it isn’t, “Our minority must band together and stop the evil majority from getting their way lest they ruin us!”

    No one uses more healthcare than the 65 and older set and we already handle them via Medicare. We gave the private sector a good long try at covering the rest, but it got very expensive and the gaps in coverage became immense. Not surprising, because the incentives were all wrong.

    So, as the NYTimes noted the other day (http://is.gd/r41gd2), “It’s now illegal for insurance companies to deny children coverage because they have pre-existing medical conditions, or to rescind a policy after a person becomes sick, or to cap the amount that insurers will pay for medical care over a lifetime. After 2014, it will be illegal for insurers to set annual limits on the amount they will pay for medical care or deny coverage to adults with pre-existing conditions.

    “Young people are now allowed to remain on their parents’ policies until age 26. And insurers are now required to cover preventive care in new policies without cost-sharing, and to spend at least 80 percent of their premium income on medical care and quality improvements, not profits or administrative costs.”

    That’s hardly Chinese or Russian citizens gathered for morning exercises.

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  2. Many good discussion points in your reply Jeff, but only your very first quote came anywhere close to addressing constitutionality.

    In the current example, more than half the States have taken steps of one sort or another to nullify Obamacare. The debate is now about the limits, if any, of Commerce Clause and the General Welfare Clause. Here's a pertinent section of Virginia federal judge Henry Hudson's ruling on that State's lawsuit against the Obama Mandate:

    "A thorough survey of pertinent constitutional case law has yielded no reported decisions from any federal appellate courts extending the Commerce Clause or General Welfare Clause to encompass regulation of a person’s decision not to purchase a product... The unchecked expansion of congressional power to the limits suggested by the [individual mandate] would invite unbridled exercise of federal police powers."

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  3. Yeah, that’s a thorny one and I don’t love it myself. I would have preferred a simple, “Medicare for all.”

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  4. "Medicare for all" would have been a more honest way to achieve the stated goals of the President. But even Paul Krugman would admit THAT is a clear "government takeover of healthcare".

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  5. Right. Take it over. Own up to it. If it means someone gets her cancer treatment who otherwise would not have, yeah, count me in. Slate did a piece on the mandate issue a couple weeks back: http://is.gd/VF8yN5. Also, the always-compelling Bill George shared some interesting thoughts yesterday on repealing heath care: http://is.gd/7bIOmq.

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  6. I totally agree with the Slate piece, which basically says the issue of single-payer socialized medicine should come out of the shadows and into the sunlight of political debate, where it belongs. Amen.

    Bill George comes off like a command-and-control guy, who has already cut a back room deal with the Feds. He leaps a tall building of logic in a single bound with his opening statement that Obamacare shouldn't be repealed because...why? Because it's not GOING to be repealed. "So now we have to figure out how to make it work better." Everything after that is just a tactical/coping discussion about how to manage 17% of the U.S. economy.

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  7. I can’t imagine professors at Harvard Business School need backroom deals (he hasn’t been with Medtronic for awhile), but what do I know? You are correct about him being very probability-oriented: here we are, now where do we go from here?

    Were I a betting man (and, wow, am I not), I would agree it doesn’t get repealed, even if there’s a forced Senate vote, but the mandate will make it to our very conservative Supreme Court, get bounced, and either a public option will follow or just Medicare for all. But I have no crystal ball; I could be totally wrong.

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  8. I'm with ya all the way up to "our very conservative Supreme Court" bouncing the mandate...after that, I do not think the country has the appetite for yet more grand scheming on health care.

    President Palin will sign into law a few adjustments like interstate health insurance, tort reform and tax-deductibility of premiums for individuals. That''ll hold things for a while.

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  9. Interesting. So how does she fix these dreadful numbers: "Palin’s favorable/unfavorable rating stands at 27-49 percent, with her favorable score tying its lowest-ever point in the survey."

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  10. I don't much care if its President Pawlenty or Pence. Or Bachmann. Or Gingrich. Or Huckabee. Or Daniels. Or Romney. Or Jindal.

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  11. Well, that ups your odds considerably.

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