ObamaCare

Any number of economists will tell you that medicine just has to be different from other goods and services provided on the market. They will offer elaborate theories to explain, for instance, why competitive markets won’t work for health care, and why more government is necessary, and why, in fact, today’s hospitals don’t publish their prices.

I see this mainstream “explanation” as mere apologetics, designed to justify evermore government. The truth is that medicine is “different” because legislation — at local, state, and federal levels — has made the industry different. It’s an accident of history, not something “natural” to this particular market.

But, as Obamacare further consolidates medicine under the government rubric, there appear some daring examples of non-compliance. The latest is from Dr. Michael Ciampi, of South Portland, Maine, whose family practice group has stopped accepting insurance payments of any kind, public or private.

Posting its prices on the Web, Ciampi Family Practice claims to offer substantial savings over other providers. And other benefits, too, including house calls:

Because we no longer contract with insurance companies, Medicare or Medicaid, we can be more flexible and innovative. We use technology when it helps us take better care of patients, but we refuse to use it for technology’s sake. We will not spend our visit staring at a computer screen instead of looking at you. We can also spend more time with patients than the typical provider in a “big box” medical practice. . . . We do not have physician assistants or nurse practitioners.

Ciampi is not the only (or biggest) provider to do this.

Could competition just erupt without a government-provided “solution”? Could “the market” provide the leadership medicine needs now?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Senator Lamar Alexander compares the latest Obama administration scandal to Iran-Contra . . . he says it’s “even bigger.”

One hates to continually harp on the president and his scandals, but he and his big government keep producing them. So here we go again!

Obamacare was supposed to save money. It hasn’t. And it should be no shock to learn that the plan has already overshot its budget. Its implementation budget. And Congress balked at throwing more money at the “Affordable Care Act,” perhaps on the grounds that  we can’t afford it.

So Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius passed around the hat to the major players in the managed medical insurance industry — the folks previously demonized by Democrats as the greedy bloodsuckers who singlehandedly caused industry price inflation — to push the plan through on a “shoestring budget.”

Trouble is, it’s not obvious that this is legal. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch called Sebelius’s private fundraising effort “absurd,” and promised to inquire about conflicts of interest.

It’s easy to see why the Republicans in the House and Senate are suspicious. Such a move rubs up against the grain of what a republic is. But I’m sure Democrats are shrugging. It is just another business-government partnership, after all.

Well, it’s not “just another.” It might end up being the biggest ever. And you have to draw the line somewhere. Ancient Romans drew the line to protect their republic at the Rubicon — which Caesar crossed, ushering in empire.

It’s not just armies that cross important boundaries.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Former friends of Obamacare keep discovering that the law treats them as enemies.

Three years after Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, Kinsey Robinson, president of United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers International, says that many provisions “were not fully conceived, resulting in unintended consequences . . . inconsistent with the promise that those who were satisfied with their employer-sponsored coverage could keep it.”

Robinson worries that members who now enjoy multi-employer health plans through the union will lose both benefits and employment as Obamacare goes into effect. Small contractors not required to offer insurance coverage under the law will enjoy an unfair bidding advantage. So he now calls for “repeal or complete reform” of Obamacare. (Let’s do the repeal, then restart with the right reforms.)

I’m no fan of unions, which have too often acted to quash competition in the labor market. But as long as unions exist, if they’re going to oppose something, let Obamacare top the list until it is gone.

No doubt many more expressions of shock and dismay await us as people discover the consequences of the law. In 2010, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that the health care bill had to be passed so we could learn what was in it; after which, free of the fog of partisan debate, we’d all come to understand at last that lumbering Big Brother is indeed our very best friend.

We’re finding out alright, we’re discovering that with friends like BB, and Pelosi, who needs fiends?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Monday, I lamented our deeply-indebted federal government’s policy towards the states: Bribery.

It busily borrows more and more money to entice our more fiscally sound state governments into dramatically expanding Medicaid spending to ever less sustainable levels. I also noted that several Republican Governors who were long opposed to Obamacare are now taking the bribes.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker isn’t one of them, but he appeared on Fox News Sunday to speak with host Chris Wallace, who said:

“As you well know, seven Republican governors have agreed to the expansion of [Medicaid] to 133 percent of the poverty [line] . . . And they say they’re doing it because of, if you will, free money. . . . [C]ritics say that your decision is, one, going to cost your state millions of dollars and, two, going to mean a lot of people in Wisconsin are uninsured.”

“In our case,” explained Walker, “we actually reduced the number of uninsured, we reduced the number of people on Medicaid and we actually saved a little bit of money.”

Wallace then asked if he feared Congress wasn’t going to live up to its end of the bargain.

“No doubt about it,” Walker responded. “Just for my cost to continue Medicaid in the state of Wisconsin, without any expansion, it cost me $644 million more in this budget. Thirty-nine percent of that is because the federal government under the Affordable Care Act and other provisions is pulling back on their previous commitments. That’s today. That’s without the expansion. . . . If Congress can’t fulfill the commitments they’ve made, I’m concerned about where they’re going to be in the future.”

Wallace then asked Governor Markell (D-Delaware), “why is it that he doesn’t trust Washington and you do?”

That question went unanswered.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

When in the fight for liberty should one give up?

Never. Contrary to deterministic notions of social change, there’s nothing inevitable or permanent about any loss of our freedom.

What then should we make of the words of Daily Debate scrivener Robert Tracinski? Noting criticism of Florida Governor Rick Scott for reversing his stand against the Democrats’ health care reform package, Tracinski, also a foe of Obamacare, asserts that the battle to either repeal or block it “was effectively over with November’s election, when Democrats retained the presidency and control of the Senate.”

A bad blow is not a permanent conquest, however.

Scott’s opposition was central to his 2010 campaign for governor. As governor, he led a lawsuit against Obamacare. After the Supreme Court’s anti-constitutional decision upholding it, he said he would keep fighting by declining federal funds to expand Medicaid.

Alas, Scott has now thrown in the towel. (We don’t know yet whether state lawmakers, whose acquiescence is also required, will similarly discard their drenched terrycloth.) Proponents of greater government hegemony over the medical industry crow that all other hitherto recalcitrant governors will, in the words of David Firestone, “soon knuckle under and do exactly the same thing. . . . By investing a relatively small amount of their own money to cover the poor, states get a huge increase in federal Medicaid funds.”

You see how the bribe to the states is made. Cave in to a usurpation, and some of the apparent increased burdens will be borne not at the state level, but by the already insolvent, debt-ridden, deficit-addicted federal government.

It’s a sick system. And I’m not talking about just Obamacare.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.