Fundamental Truth

Another Big Reason why College Tuition has been Soaring is because of Public Sector Unions

College tuition is rising.  With increases greater than the rate of inflation.  With some tuition costs growing greater than costs in health care.  There are many reasons for this.  Unlike private sector business colleges cannot produce more with less.  That is, they cannot use productivity gains to educate more students with fewer professors.  Auto manufacturers can use robots to replace people on the assembly line.  Reducing wage, pension and health care costs.  The biggest costs that go into a car.

Universities are big campuses with lots of buildings that basically do one thing.  Sit students down in front of a professor.  This hasn’t change since the first days of higher education.  The only things that have changed are the buildings are a lot nicer.  And university employees all have better pay, pensions and health care than they used to have.  Which is why tuition costs keep rising.  For universities, unlike auto manufacturers, can’t speed up their assembly lines by using robots instead of people.  But it’s not only the auto manufacturers and the universities that have high labor, pension and health care costs.

Another big reason why university tuition has been soaring is because of public sector unions.  Who have negotiated some extremely generous union contracts.  Cities and states everywhere are drowning under the costs of their labor, pension and health care costs.  Forcing them to cut back spending elsewhere to pay for those generous public sector union contracts.  So they’re cutting back on their subsidies for higher education.  And what the state cuts the universities just tack on to the student’s tuition bill.

Universities lure High School Kids into College with Promises of a Big Paycheck for an Easy Degree

Today’s tuition costs will saddle a student with the kind of debt that can pay for a house.  A very big house.  One of those McMansions.  Depending on where you go to college.  Which is all well and fine if a student gets a high-paying job after graduating.  Sadly, though, a lot aren’t.  A lot are taking jobs that they could have gotten out of high school.  Without that massive student loan debt.  Debt they will be paying for a long, long time.  Making it very difficult for them to buy a house and start a family.  And the reason for this is too many students are taking degrees with no market value in a high-tech economy.

Today’s businesses are looking for people with a strong science and math background.  For this is what businesses in a high-tech economy need.  Not people with degrees in anthropology.  Philosophy.  Women’s studies.  Art history.  Comparative literature.  Communication.  Or a myriad of other degrees that a business just can’t use.  Yet our universities are selling these degrees.  Telling their prospective students who don’t want the heavy math load a science and engineering degree requires that these other degrees are just as good.  And that they, too, can have that big paycheck.  Just like engineers and chemists and doctors and physicists.  All they need is a student loan.  And the world can be their oyster.

So these kids starting their adult lives start that life by making one of the worst decisions of their lives.  Because they really want to go to college.  For the fun.  Universities lure these high school kids into higher education.  Appealing to them as adults.  Who can live away from home out from under the judgmental eyes of their parents.  For on a college campus there is a lot of fun to be had.  Sex.  Drugs.  Alcohol.  And health services.  Such as birth control and access to abortion services.  For all the consequence-free fun a high school graduate could ever ask for.  This is the bait.  And all they have to do to have all of that grownup fun is to borrow enormous sums of money that they will probably never be able to pay back.

Liberals say You should Never Rush to Judgment, Especially if we can’t Blame Conservatives

For the universities, though, it’s not just the money.  For their curriculum is the product of those Sixties’ radicals.  Who tried to overthrow capitalism.  And replace it with communism.  As they were never able to incite the workers’ revolt in the United States they changed tack.  And continued their revolution from the inside.  By becoming college professors.  Who eventually got tenure.  And went on to write the curriculum.  Basically an anti-capitalist, America is responsible for all the world’s problems and an anti-religious/anti-tradition curriculum.  Hence the socially liberal campus where anything goes.  And those college degrees that have no market value.  That advanced a relentless attack on capitalism and business.  And made their students eschew American greatness.

This curriculum has helped President Obama win reelection despite a horrific economic record.  And a brutal attack on the American mission in Benghazi.  The result of a failed foreign policy that tried to make nice with America’s enemies.  Who have been trying—and at times succeeding—to kill Americans.  The Fort Hood shooting by a radical Islamist.  The underwear bomber (failed Islamist plot).  The Times Square bomber (failed Islamist plot).  As well as other smaller and lesser known incidents.  Both successful and failed Islamist plots.  Then Benghazi.  And the death of 4 Americans.  Despite earlier witnessing an increase of anti-Western violence in the city.  A resurgent al Qaeda.  And an anniversary date holy to radical Islam.  9/11.  The U.S. mission in Benghazi requested additional security.  The Obama administration denied it as it would not fit the 2012 campaign meme.  ‘Osama bin Laden is dead.  And General Motors is alive.’  President Obama had won the War on Terror with the killing of bin Laden.  Therefore, they couldn’t have a terrorist attack in Benghazi before the 2012 election.  So the Obama administration made up the story about an anti-Islamic YouTube video that led to a spontaneous protest in front of the U.S. mission.  A protest that naturally got out of hand when the people pulled RPGs and mortars out of their pockets and started a military assault on the American compound.

The Obama administration then started to disseminate the lie.  They sent Secretary Rice to the Sunday morning television shows with severely edited talking points to downplay any role of radical Islam.  Then President Obama and Secretary Clinton made numerous public statements denouncing that YouTube video.  Even made a video to air in Pakistan.  And the mainstream media, the product of that anti-capitalist, America is responsible for all the world’s problems and anti-religious/anti-tradition curriculum never questioned anything.  They just dutifully carried the administration’s water.  And now that signs of a cover-up are coming out the administration is saying the only reason why they made any edits to those talking points was to prevent anyone from rushing to judgment.  Something they say we should never do.  Especially if we can’t blame conservatives.  Or Christians.  Like they did with the YouTube video that proved to be a red herring.  And as they—and their friends in the mainstream media—have rushed to judgment in the past.  By quickly blaming radical conservatives for every other massacre.  Only to see it turn out to be someone who wasn’t a conservative.  But a radical Islamist(s) instead.  Or someone suffering from mental illness.

Of course this wouldn’t be possible without higher education.  Where college is more about making Democrat voters than giving students marketable skills.  One could even blame those deaths in Benghazi on that anti-capitalist, America is responsible for all the world’s problems and anti-religious/anti-tradition curriculum.  (As well as being the reason why these kids can’t find any high-paying jobs; the vote for anti-business Democrat candidates whose policies discourage economic growth.)  Because protecting Americans in Benghazi would have been bad for the Democrats in 2012.  So perhaps we should be addressing the high cost of higher education.  And follow the example of the automotive industry.  By producing more graduates with fewer professors.  And put an end to the liberal Shangri la of the college campus.  By replacing the bulk of higher education with online studies.  For if a 15-year old girl can make medical decisions about the morning after pill by reading the contents of the packaging without consulting a doctor or parent then she can get her higher education online.  Without all the fun.  Or student loan debt.

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Week in Review

The United Kingdom has national health care.  Which is struggling to meet the demands of an aging population.  And is currently working on cutting their health care spending by £20 billion ($31.8 billion) to help stretch their limited resources meet the demands of their aging population.

Canada has private health care providers but a single-payer system.  So it’s not quite national health care.  But it is somewhat universal.  And something the proponents of Obamacare would settle for if they can’t get national health care.  But like the UK the Canadians are struggling to meet the demands of an aging population (see ‘Future of health care’ hangs on medicare talks posted 5/3/2013 on CBC News).

More than 200 doctors have voted in favour of supporting a lawsuit against the provincial government over medicare cuts, says the head of the New Brunswick Medical Society.

The doctors, who gathered for an emergency meeting in Fredericton on Friday to discuss the matter, were unanimous, other than one abstention, said president Dr. Robert Desjardins…

Desjardins said doctors are still willing to help Health Minister Ted Flemming find ways to cut $20 million from the health budget, but first things first.

“First and foremost importance is respect of the actual signed agreement,” said Desjardins.

“There’s not much of an incentive to discus the future of medicare when there’s no plan on the table and the signed agreement isn’t respected. So from there, what are we talking about?”

In March, the government announced plans to cut funding for doctors who bill medicare for each service by $18.8 million to $425 million and to cap that amount for two years.

The medical society, which represents about 1,700 doctors, contends that violates a fee agreement that expires next March.

Cutting doctors’ Medicare reimbursements?  That’s how Obamacare plans on bringing down health care costs in the United States.  Guess cutting doctors’ Medicare reimbursements isn’t the panacea they thought it would be.  As Canadian doctors actually want pay commensurate with their education, skill and experience.  Imagine that.

Becoming a doctor isn’t easy.  That’s why few people in the population become doctors.  And why countries that don’t pay their doctors well have doctor shortages.  Like they often do in countries with national health care.  Or in countries with a single-payer system.  Who look to break contracts to pay their doctors less.  To help stretch their limited resources meet the demands of their aging population.

Just something to look forward to under Obamacare.  People will at first praise the government for punishing those who choose to make a profit off of other people’s suffering.  But when doctors start leaving the profession and these people have to wait months for an appointment because of the doctor shortage they will long for a return to the old days.  When we had the finest health care system in the world.  And doctors got rich for being the best in the world.  How it once was.  Before Obamacare.

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Week in Review

The whole push for Obamacare was to provide quality care for all Americans.  Not just those who could afford it.  Health care was going to be classless.  There would be true equality.  No one would receive any better care than anyone else.  Because health care is not a privilege.  It’s a right.  Or so the proponents of national health care say.  And why they supported Obamacare.  A waypoint on the path to true universal care.  Where everyone gets the best health care whenever they need it.  Just like in Britain.  Whose National Health Service (NHS) is what those in America want Obamacare to evolve into.  So health care in America will be just as good as health care in Britain (see British women ‘dying quicker of breast cancer than elsewhere’ by Stephen Adams posted 3/1/2013 on The Telegraph).

Academics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found the proportion of women in the UK surviving at least three years after being diagnosed was 87 to 89 percent, which was similar to Denmark.

In Australia, Canada, Norway and Sweden three-year survival was 91 to 94 per cent for the period examined, between 2000 and 2007…

In Britain only 28 per cent made it to three years, but in Sweden 42 per cent did…

Dr Sarah Walters, lead author, said: “We should now investigate whether the treatment of women with later-stage breast cancer meets international standards. There is particular concern that this is not the case, especially for older women”.

Sara Hiom from Cancer Research UK, which helped with the study, said: “We need to investigate the possibility that fewer women with later stage breast cancer in the UK receive the best treatment for their circumstances…”

“The NHS is also working to ensure all patients are treated as individuals and receive care that meets their healthcare needs whatever their age or condition.”

National health care is great.  As long as you’re not old.  For those old people are very costly to treat.  Because they’re living longer into retirement.  Consuming ever more health care dollars (or British pounds) for a few months more of life.  If Britain wants to get their health care costs under control they could save a lot by not treating some of these highest consumers of health care.  Putting some of them, instead, on the Liverpool Care Pathway.  Where doctors can withdraw treatment to let terminal ill patients die with dignity.  While saving precious health care dollars/pounds for use elsewhere.  Cold and callous, yes, but it is happening.

They don’t call the Liverpool Care Pathway a death panel.  But it is one.  Especially when some people are placed on the pathway without consulting with the person’s family first.  Something to look forward to as Obamacare evolves more into a national health care system.  As well as higher death rates for women with breast cancer.  Where there will be more equality.  As we lower the quality of care for everyone by trying to do more with less.  As health care costs soar due to aging populations.  People living longer into retirement.  And tax revenues fall due to aging populations.  Fewer people entering the workforce to pay for those living longer into retirement.  Leaving death panels as one of the few ways for governments to cut costs.

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Week in Review

Believe it or not the rate of health care spending has been falling since 2002.  Thanks to the innovation of free markets (see Health Care Cost Inflation Is Slowing, But Obamacare Could Change That by James Pethokoukis, American Enterprise Institute, posted 2/16/2013 on Business Insider).

The rate of health care spending has been falling since 2002. AEI’s J.D. Kleinke points to some factors which are likely responsible: a) lots of breakthrough drugs from the 1980s and 1990s became widely available in generic form in the 2000s; b) health insurance plans became more diverse, giving consumers more choice, such as health savings accounts; c) the IT and networking revolution has improved disease management.

To sum up: Innovation — both in technology and products and processes — has slowed the rise in health care costs. Is the ACA and its expanded government intrusion into the sector likely to sustain and accelerate innovation or retard it?

Hmmm, does more government intrusion accelerate or retard innovation.  The U.S. Postal Service is going broke.  But UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc., aren’t.  People hate going to the Department of Motor Vehicles to renew their driver’s license as it can take an hour or more.  But you can go into a crowded Starbucks and leave 10 minutes later with a custom-made espresso-based drink.  While having enjoyed pleasant conversation with the baristas while you waited those 10 minutes.  Health savings accounts are bringing down health care costs in the private sector.  While Medicare is headed for bankruptcy.  People are saving for their retirement using things like 401(k)s.  While Social Security is headed for bankruptcy.  Hmmm.

Clearly the innovation is in the private sector.  As it appears the less government intrudes the better and more enjoyable things are.  So Obamacare will NOT sustain or accelerate innovation.  But retard it instead.

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Week in Review

Now that we passed Obamacare we’re starting to find out what was in that bill.  Which, according to Nancy Pelosi, was the only way for us to find out what was in it.  By voting blindly for it.  Then wait for them to implement it.  They’re doing that now.  And some of the things that we’re learning are in the bill are a little scary (see Hospitals Face Pressure From Medicare to Avert Readmissions (from the New York Times) by JORDAN RAU posted 11/26/2012 on The New York Times).

Medicare last month began levying financial penalties against 2,217 hospitals it says have had too many readmissions. Of those hospitals, 307 will receive the maximum punishment, a 1 percent reduction in Medicare’s regular payments for every patient over the next year, federal records show.

One of those is Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, which will lose $2 million this year. Dr. John Lynch, the chief medical officer, said Barnes-Jewish could absorb that loss this year, but “over time, if the penalties accumulate, it will probably take resources away from other key patient programs.”

The crackdown on readmissions is at the vanguard of the Affordable Care Act’s effort to eliminate unnecessary care and curb Medicare’s growing spending, which reached $556 billion this year. Hospital inpatient costs make up a quarter of that spending and are projected to grow by more than 4 percent annually in coming years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

There are two ways to look at this.  The government’s way.  Keeping those greedy hospitals from readmitting patients just to bill the government more.  Or the patients’ way.  Seeing Obamacare forcing hospitals not to readmit sick people.  Which would be basically the same as telling them to go and die.  It’s not called a death panel.  But someone in the hospital will have to decide whether to readmit the patient and suffer financial consequences.  Or please the government and not readmit these people.  Which, of course, would be a decision probably resulting in death for these patients.  Not the warm and cuddly Obamacare they told us about.  But it would be the only way the government could reduce health care costs.  Simply refusing to give people medical care.  For death is cheaper in the long run than hospitalization.  Something no doubt the government bureaucrats have factored in their Obamacare.

Medicare’s tough love is not going over well everywhere. Academic medical centers are complaining that the penalties do not take into account the extra challenges posed by extremely sick and low-income patients. For these people, getting medicine and follow-up care can be a struggle…

Various studies, including one commissioned by Medicare, have found that the hospitals with the most poor and African-American patients tended to have higher readmission rates than hospitals with more affluent and Caucasian patients…

Some researchers fear the Medicare penalties are so steep, they will distract hospitals from other pressing issues, like reducing infections and surgical mistakes and ensuring patients’ needs are met promptly. “It should not be our top priority,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health who has studied readmissions. “If you think of all the things in the Affordable Care Act, this is the one that has the biggest penalties, and that’s just crazy.”

Interesting.  Not only does Obamacare use death as a cost-cutting means it also will discriminate against the poor and minorities.  While at the same time making hospitals less safe as money will go to the government in fines instead of combating infections and preventing surgical mistakes.

Death panels and less safe hospitals.  Funny, I don’t recall them telling us this is what they were giving us Obamacare.  Then again, if they told the truth they probably wouldn’t have gotten the votes.  So health care will get incredibly worse.  These policies and our aging population will accelerate our once quality health care system to something akin to what we could find in a third world country.

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Week in Review

People have the misperception that a national health care system provides quality health care to everyone for free.  But health care is not free.  Someone has to pay for it.  In the United Kingdom that’s the taxpayer.  And when they can’t raise enough in taxes to close budget deficits they have to cut costs.  Close hospitals.  And make people travel farther for their health care needs (see Betsi Cadwaladr proposals: Flint and Blaenau Ffestiniog hospitals may shut posted 7/19/2012 on BBC News Wales).

Two community hospitals could close and minor injury accident departments may shut at others under a major health service shake-up in north Wales…

Among the areas under scrutiny are older people’s mental health services, neonatal intensive care and vascular and major arterial surgery.

The board is the first in Wales to outline plans for balancing the books.

It predicts a gap of £64.6m, the second highest in Wales…

Speaking before the meeting at St Asaph, Christine Evans, chair of patient watchdog Betsi Cadwaladr Community Health Council, said: “The local communities will be very upset.”

The UK, like the US, has an aging population.  And that’s a fact.  There are fewer people entering the workforce than are leaving it.  And those who are leaving the workforce tend to consume most of the health care services.  So you have a huge transfer of wealth from the working young to the retired seniors.  But because there are so many more of those retired seniors it is difficult to tax the working young enough to pay for them.  And if they can’t generate the tax revenue they have little choice but to cut costs.  Such as closing hospitals and minor injury departments.  And there’s probably more to come.

In the U.S. the private health insurers were vigilant in controlling health care costs.  For they were the only ones who were.  Doctors are reluctant to order tests that aren’t absolutely necessary because health insurers may not reimburse them.  And if they have a relationship with their patient, which most of them have, they don’t want their patient to get stuck with the bill.  So they won’t order a test if it’s not absolutely necessary.  Unless the patient insists.  People hate the insurance companies for this.  But one thing the private health insurance companies never did was close hospitals.

This is the future of Obamacare.  Health care will still cost.  Someone will still have to pay for it.  So they will do like they do in the UK.  Raise taxes.  Transfer wealth.  And then close hospitals when all of that fails to close budget deficits.  It’s just the nature of a national health care system treating an aging population.  With about 5 times the population of the UK those budget deficits will probably be about 5 times worse under Obamacare.  With 5 times the hospital closures.  Making the local communities about 5 times as upset.

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Week in Review

This election season we had the war on women.  Added to that in the coming years may very well be the war on seniors.  And unlike the war on women the war on seniors will be real.  Especially if Obamacare isn’t repealed.  Because the rising health care costs of an aging population will force rationing and death panels into the health care equation within the decade.  Or thereabouts (see Medicare trustee report hangs on uncertain assumptions by David Morgan posted 4/24/2012 on Reuters UK).

Medicare, the U.S. healthcare program for the elderly, should be able to stave off insolvency for the next 12 years, depending on a number of financial and political assumptions that may prove unrealistic, officials and other experts said on Monday…

But the outlook is based on assumptions that may be unlikely, including a scheduled 31 percent pay cut for doctors in 2013, which Congress is almost certain to override.

The forecast also assumes that a deficit-reduction agreement to slash Medicare spending by 2 percent a year can be sustained over the coming decade and that the U.S. Supreme Court will not overturn President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform law in June.

Do you know why Congress is almost certain to override that 31% pay cut?  Because that pay cut is already written into law.  So unless they override it doctors will lose 31% of their pay on Medicare patients.  And will probably stop seeing Medicare patients.  Which is why Congress always overrides this pay cut.  Because if all our seniors lose their doctors this very large voting bloc will be very unhappy.  And they will make their unhappiness known at the voting booth.  By throwing every incumbent out of office.

Let’s do a little math.  Let’s say someone is turning 65 this year.  And that they’ve worked since the age of 18.  Which means they’ve paid their Medicare payroll taxes for 47 years.  So they paid into the system for 47 years.  A system that can only pay for 12 years of their retirement.  Which takes them to age 77.  While the average life expectancy is about 79 years.  Which means, on average, those turning 65 this year will not be able to consume any health care services in the last two years of their lives.  Of course the bigger problem is this.  What about those who are 53 this year?  Who spent 35 years paying Medicare payroll taxes?  They’ll get nothing when they turn 65.  Worse, they won’t get a refund for 35 years of ‘premium’ payments.  Which means the money we pay into Medicare is not our money.  They spend it on others long before we even become eligible for benefits.  Which will add generational warfare to class warfare as the politicians spend beyond our means to pay for it.  Pitting one ‘greedy’ group against another.  Until they all finally turn on the ones responsible for our financial mess.  The politicians.

Medicare will fail because the population is aging.  And as people live longer they can have more health problems.  You put the two together and it’s a big problem.  You expand Medicare into Obamacare and you have a train wreck.  A shrinking population of healthy, younger people paying ever higher taxes to pay for an expanding population of older, sicker people.  In a word, unsustainable.  

This isn’t Canada.  Or the UK.  We have more people.  Far more people.  The growth in government spending to pay for Obamacare will require taxes the private sector can’t pay.  This growth of government will cross the Rubicon.  And the U.S. will go the way of the Roman Empire.  Brought down by her own unsustainable government spending.  Throwing much of Western Europe into chaos for a thousand years or so.  And the sad thing is that history repeats.  Chaos is on the rise already in Europe.  As people riot in protest against cuts in unsustainable spending.  Which often happens when you take away benefits from people long accustomed to them.  This is a very dangerous road to be on.  And Obamacare is hastening the U.S. down this road to catch up with the Europeans. 

You’d think someone by now would have learned this lesson of history.

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Week in Review

Proponents of Obamacare attack the profit-oriented private health insurers, medical device and drug manufacturers and hospitals.  Putting profits before people is wrong and shameful they say.  And just plain wrong.  No, the better way is to do like the Canadians.  And the British.  Adopt a health care system that puts people before profits.  Where everyone can smile and enjoy life.  Content in a perfect world where everyone gets whatever health care they need.  Not just the rich who can afford it.  So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at that health care utopia in the United Kingdom.  And see how wonderfully just, kind and generous their health care truly is (see Elderly dying due to ‘despicable age discrimination in NHS’ by Rebecca Smith posted 3/25/2012 on The Telegraph).

A lack of treatment or insufficient treatment is contributing to 14,000 deaths a year in people over the age of 75, Macmillan Cancer Support has found, in what it called an ‘unacceptable act of discrimination’.

Deaths from cancer are reducing in most age groups but at a slower rate in those aged 74 to 84 and are increasing in people aged 85 and over, the report said.

The report, The Age Old Excuse: the under treatment of older cancer patients, said treatment options are too often recommended on the basis of age rather than how fit the patient is…

Few clinical trials involve older people so clinicians are lacking evidence of how effective drugs may be in elderly people and few cancer specialists have had training in care of older people, the report said.

A survey found six in ten trainee oncologists had not received training in the additional care needs of the elderly such as preventing falls and incontinence management. This is despite half of all cancers occuring in the elderly, the report found…

“The NHS and social care providers must wake up to the specific issues older people face and ensure treatment decisions are based on their overall health not just their date of birth. Writing people off as too old for treatment is utterly shameful.”

This is the future of Obamacare.  This is what happens when the government pays for health care.  The government decides.  They decide who lives.  And who dies.  Who gets treatment.  And who is not worthy of treatment and should consider themselves lucky if they get a pill to dull their pain until they die.  When they finally stop being such an inconvenient and inconsiderate burden to government.

Why is the NHS like this?  Are the British cruel?  No.  It’s just business.  Health care costs continue to rise despite the power of government to stop these costs from rising.  Their population is aging.  And they have a massive budget deficit.  Made up primarily from the budget deficit in the NHS.  Taxes are already high.  And the economy is not doing as well as it once did.  Which means you can’t raise taxes anymore.  Unless you want to crash the economy and reduce tax revenues even further.  And with a massive deficit you can’t borrow anymore.  So if you can’t tax and you can’t borrow and you have an aging population consuming an ever larger share of the health care budget what do you do?  Why, you do what the NHS is doing.  You ration health care.  By making life and death decisions.  And the NHS has made a decision.  Old people over a certain age shall die of cancer.  And they will take that health care and give it to someone else who is more worthy of it.

Bureaucrats making life and death decisions for cost reasons?  Kind of sounds like a death panel, doesn’t it?  Now Obamacare doesn’t include anything called a ‘death panel’ but there will be a death panel.  Because there always is when you ration health care.  Which is what will happen as the government tries to rein in health care costs.  Because that’s the only way they can control costs.  By cutting costs.  And how to you cut costs?  You spend less on life-saving health care services.  And ration these services.  Deciding who has enough value to save.  And who doesn’t and should die.  By authority of the death panel.  The secretary.  Or some other bureaucrat.  Who you hope their life and death decisions are based on costs alone.  And not your politics.

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Week in Review

People distrust rich people.  That’s why they want to tax them more.  Because they have more than enough money.  No matter what they say about earning their money or how they invest their wealth to create jobs.  People don’t want to hear any of this.  For they ‘know’ that these rich fat cats are lying just to keep from having to ‘share’ their wealth.  But whenever a rich guy says ‘tax us rich people more’ everyone hangs on to their every last word.  For if they are talking about raising taxes on the rich then these are not your typical rich.  They’re the good kind.  Like these doctors in Canada (see Tax us more, doctors urge (Are the lawyers listening?) by Michael Babad posted 3/22/2012 on The Globe and Mail).

A group of doctors is taking a page from Warren Buffett’s tax-the-rich call, urging the Canadian and Ontario governments to tax higher-income earners more…

Doctors for Fair Taxation plan to announce their scheme in Toronto this afternoon, calling for additional taxes on people earning more than $100,000. You’d be hit with an additional 1 per cent if you earn between $100,000 and $170,000, 2 per cent if you earn up to $640,000, and 3 per cent for up to $1.85-million. Above that it would be 6 per cent.

“We feel that this is a moral argument,” Dr. Michael Rachlis, who founded the group that so far boasts more than 50 physicians, told The Canadian Press.

“We cannot talk about throwing people out of work and cutting needed programs for people,” said Dr. Rachlis, an associate professor at the University of Toronto.

Wow.  Sounds very selfless, doesn’t it?  These rich guys asking to be taxed more to help their country?  At least on the surface it does.  But the question that begs to be asked is what are they spending so much money on that they have to raise taxes?  And when you learn what that is it puts these doctors into a different light.

Here’s an article from 2010.  About two years ago.  Talking about a budget crisis.  Where spending is out of control.  Spending that the Canadians just can’t sustain.  And where is this out of control spending?  Why, it just happens to be in the industry that pays these doctors.  Canada’s single-payer health care system.  Talk about coincidences.  These doctors asking rich people everywhere to help pay the nation’s bills.  Where the biggest bill is the one that pays these doctors (see Soaring costs force Canada to reassess health model by Claire Sibonney posted 3/31/2010 on Reuters).

Pressured by an aging population and the need to rein in budget deficits, Canada’s provinces are taking tough measures to curb healthcare costs, a trend that could erode the principles of the popular state-funded system.

Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, kicked off a fierce battle with drug companies and pharmacies when it said earlier this year it would halve generic drug prices and eliminate “incentive fees” to generic drug manufacturers.

British Columbia is replacing block grants to hospitals with fee-for-procedure payments and Quebec has a new flat health tax and a proposal for payments on each medical visit — an idea that critics say is an illegal user fee.

And a few provinces are also experimenting with private funding for procedures such as hip, knee and cataract surgery.

It’s likely just a start as the provinces, responsible for delivering healthcare, cope with the demands of a retiring baby-boom generation. Official figures show that senior citizens will make up 25 percent of the population by 2036.

Proponents of national health care in America blame the private health insurers, the pharmaceuticals and the hospitals for out of control health care costs.  What they say we need is a system like Canada.  Where they put people before profits.  And yet here they are.  The Canadians.  With a health care system suffering from out of control costs.  Which they are trying to fix with higher taxes.  Additional fees.  Even a little Americanization (that is, privatization).  Makes you wonder why we’re going forward with Obamacare while the Canadians are finding that type of a system is unsustainable.  Especially when our retiring baby boomers outnumber their retiring baby boomers. 

Canada, fretting over budget strains, wants to prune its system, while the United States, worrying about an army of uninsured, aims to create a state-backed safety net.

Healthcare in Canada is delivered through a publicly funded system, which covers all “medically necessary” hospital and physician care and curbs the role of private medicine. It ate up about 40 percent of provincial budgets, or some C$183 billion ($174 billion) last year.

Spending has been rising 6 percent a year under a deal that added C$41.3 billion of federal funding over 10 years.

But that deal ends in 2013, and the federal government is unlikely to be as generous in future, especially for one-off projects.

Wow.  Look at that.  Almost half of provincial budgets pay for the ‘free’ health care of Canadians.  Which is causing budget deficits at the provincial level.  And at the national level.  Well, up until 2013, that is.  When the national government is going to address their budget deficits by cutting their health care payments to the provinces.  Increasing the provincial budget deficits in the process.  Leaving the provincial governments to tax and spend more.  Or ration care and cut spending more.  Including doctor pay.  Could this have anything to do with those selfless physicians asking that their government tax the rich more?  Perhaps.

Brian Golden, a professor at University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Business, said provinces are weighing new sources of funding, including “means-testing” and moving toward evidence-based and pay-for-performance models.

“Why are we paying more or the same for cataract surgery when it costs substantially less today than it did 10 years ago? There’s going to be a finer look at what we’re paying for and, more importantly, what we’re getting for it,” he said.

Other problems include trying to control independently set salaries for top hospital executives and doctors and rein in spiraling costs for new medical technologies and drugs.

Ontario says healthcare could eat up 70 percent of its budget in 12 years, if all these costs are left unchecked…

The province has introduced legislation that ties hospital chief executive pay with the quality of patient care and says it wants to put more physicians on salary to save money.

In a report released last week, TD Bank said Ontario should consider other proposals to help cut costs, including scaling back drug coverage for affluent seniors and paying doctors according to quality and efficiency of care.

So the power of government inserted into the health care system has done nothing to lower the cost of medical procedures in Canada.  Makes you scratch your head, doesn’t it?  Because the proponents of Obamacare say that’s exactly what the power of government can do.  But in practice it has failed to do what these theorists say it can do.  Cut costs.  Through bureaucratic management.  And ‘turning of the screws’ on the medical device and drug manufacturers.  Despite this very practice NOT working in Canada.  Which means that the proponents of Obamacare think the Canadian bureaucrats simply aren’t smart enough to make their health care system work efficiently.  That the system of government-managed health care is a flawed system when it comes to costs and efficiency.  Or that government-managed health care is not about costs or efficiency.  But about the bureaucracy itself.  The control and power it offers the politicians.  And the votes it can buy them.

“Many of the advances in healthcare and life expectancy are due to the pharmaceutical industry so we should never demonize them,” said U of T’s Golden. “We need to ensure that they maintain a profitable business but our ability to make it very very profitable is constrained right now.”

Scotia Capital’s Webb said one cost-saving idea may be to make patients aware of how much it costs each time they visit a healthcare professional. “(The public) will use the services more wisely if they know how much it’s costing,” she said.

Wait a minute.  To fix the government-managed system they need to make the patients aware of the costs so they can choose wisely?  There’s a name for such a system.  We call it capitalism.  The very thing missing from government-managed health care.  And the very reason why government-managed systems (the Canadian health care system, the American Medicare/Medicaid programs, the UK’s National Health Service, etc.) fail to control costs.  And why Obamacare will fail to control costs.  Because they exclude the one thing that controls costs best from government-managed systems.  Capitalism.  Where people make spending decisions based on cost.  Which will never happen when someone other than the patient pays for the costs for the medical services a patient receives.  For no one ever asks ‘how much’ when they’re not paying the bill.

So when a rich doctor says to tax the rich more is this selfless?  Or selfish?  You decide.

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Week in Review

There is a struggle in Britain about power and money in the National Health Service (NHS).  Health care costs are rising.  Services are being rationed.  And the current government is trying to fix these problems by decentralizing the NHS.  By transferring budgets and decision making to the general practitioners (GPs) at the local level.  The front-line doctors.  Making the GPs responsible for their budgets.  And their patients’ care.  At the local level where doctors treat patients.  Making the practice of medicine once again an intimate relationship between doctor and patient.  But others see this as a heinous plot to introduce market forces into health care (see NHS ‘in peril’ if health reforms fail, warn GPs by Stephen Adams posted 1/27/2012 on The Telegraph).

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, the heads of more than 50 new doctors’ groups argue that the British Medical Association’s policy of “blanket opposition” to the Health and Social Care Bill fails to represent GPs’ views.

They warn that previous reforms have not gone far enough and have consequently “paid the price of disengaging the frontline staff most needed to modernise the NHS”…

The letter has been signed by 56 GPs who are helping set up clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) across England. Under the Bill these will effectively replace primary care trusts (PCTs) and be handed their budgets.

Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, has consistently argued that the central thrust of the Bill is to give doctors a greater say, and key to this is giving them more responsibility for commissioning health services…

However, many believe the real motive is to open up the NHS for greater private sector involvement.

Last November the BMA moved to a position of total opposition to the Bill, and since the New Year the Royal College of Nurses and the Royal College of Midwives have followed suit. The Royal College of GPs is deeply sceptical, although not yet publicly in total opposition.

The inefficiencies of national health care have resulted in medical rationing.  Which has lowered the quality of health care for the patient.  So why would anyone oppose reforms to improve the quality of health care for the patient?  Because it will introduce market forces into health care.  Which will reduce costs and improve efficiency.  Which could also impact pay, benefits and pensions of health care providers.  The most expensive part of national health care.

This is the danger of national health care.  It destroys the quality of health care.  But it also creates a very vocal and powerful health care bureaucracy.  That takes on a life of its own.  And makes reform nearly impossible.  It’s happening in Britain.  And will happen in the U.S. if Obamacare is not repealed.

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