Tag Archives: Healthcare

H.R. 2218: Parental Consent Act

Happy Mothers’ Day.

Aside from protecting the rights of parents to raise their kids, this bill attempts to stymie the other type of government “regulation,” the passing of laws which direct your money to a product or service some big soulless company wouldn’t be able to sell in a free market.

“The Bill is new, but the battle by Ron Paul against mandatory Mental Health Screening and the drugs used in our children is not. There are 5 co-sponsors to date. . . .

. . . the speech given by Ron Paul in the House of Representatives, April 30, 2009:

Madam Speaker, I rise to introduce the Parental Consent Act. This bill forbids Federal funds from being used for any universal or mandatory mental-health screening of students without the express, written, voluntary, informed consent of their parents or legal guardians. This bill protects the fundamental right of parents to direct and control the upbringing and education of their children.” (Read more from dailypaul.com)

What to think of Population Control

Today’s theme is population control.

Several months ago, I went to an End the Fed rally in Chicago. A fellow protester wouldn’t stop telling me about how “they” want to reduce the world’s population to a half billion, and will stop at nothing to do so. To be honest, his refusal to change the subject was annoying, though I accept the fact that the most passionate and most paranoid will always be first to protest – against the war, against the Fed, or for any other reason.

The theory about reducing the world’s population is also mentioned during the Alex Jones interview with Dr. Rebecca Carley below. I decided to look it up.

One source of the theory seems to be National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) directive itself, signed in April, 1974, by Henry Kissinger on behalf of President Nixon:

NSSM 200:
IMPLICATIONS OF WORLDWIDE POPULATION GROWTH
FOR U.S. SECURITY AND OVERSEAS INTERESTS

December 10, 1974

CLASSIFIED BY Harry C. Blaney, III
SUBJECT TO GENERAL DECLASSIFICATION SCHEDULE OF
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11652 AUTOMATICALLY DOWN-
GRADED AT TWO YEAR INTERVALS AND DECLASSIFIED
ON DECEMBER 31, 1980.

This document can only be declassified by the White House.

. . . . [I]ntense efforts are required to assure full availability by 1980 of birth control information and means to all fertile individuals, especially in rural areas. . . .

there is a major risk of severe damage to world economic, political, and ecological systems and, as these systems begin to fail, to our humanitarian values. . . .

While specific goals in this area are difficult to state, our aim should be for the world to achieve a replacement level of fertility, (a two-child family on the average), by about the year 2000. . . . Attainment of this goal will require greatly intensified population programs. . . .

The World Population Plan of Action is not self-enforcing and will require vigorous efforts by interested countries, U.N. agencies and other international bodies to make it effective. U.S. leadership is essential. . . .

We recommend increases in AID budget requests to the Congress on the order of $35-50 million annually through FY 1980 (above the $137.5 million requested for FY 1975). This funding would cover both bilateral programs and contributions to multilateral organizations. However, the level of funds needed in the future could change significantly, depending on such factors as major breakthroughs in fertility control technologies and LDC receptivities to population assistance. . . .

No country has reduced its population growth without resorting to abortion.

The idea of cutting the world’s population to 500 million probably does exist theoretically in the heads of some well-educated bureaucrats who want to save to world, but I don’t believe our government is planning a mass extermination. Nevertheless, this study which concludes that population is a security threat to the United States, and suggests government do something about it, is absolutely chilling.

I disagree with, though understand, Dr. Alim Muhammad’s reaction:

(He also mentions The Global 2000 Report, whose wikipedia description seems entirely benign.)

So, what to think about population control?

I love this presentation. From about 1:50 to 5:00 it is absolutely breathtaking:

Though other people have interpreted Hans Rolsing’s talk differently, to me it sounds like when people are in good health – something all people relentlessly strive for, population naturally levels off. So the solutions is . . . leave people alone. Give them nothing but the freedom to pursue their self-interest.

(I don’t mean stop conducting charity. Altruism is great so long as it doesn’t happen at the point of a gun, i.e. with money the government forcibly takes from us.)

Eugenics – Hidden History

Most Americans don’t know our country’s dark history and love affair with Eugenics – the forcible castration or sterilization of citizens deemed undesirable, made possible, of course, by the power of the state.

William Faulkner obliquely railed against these monstrous policies in many of his novels.

“Eugenics attracted the support of prominent Americans. Progressive Theodore Roosevelt summed up eugenicist theory: ‘Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce.’ Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the famous opinion upholding Virginia’s decision to sterilize a woman named Carrie Buck: ‘Three generations of imbeciles,’ he averred, ‘are enough.’

Other supporters were Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, and in Britain, Winston Churchill and Major Leonard Darwin, son of Charles, postulator of evolution. Britain originated the idea of ‘lethal chambers’ for its ‘unfit.’ . . .

Thanks to the Nazis, highly praised by eugenicists here, the movement eventually collapsed. But not before nearly 50,000 Americans were sterilized. . . .

An irony of this book is that its publisher hails itself as ‘progressive.’ As the late economist and historian Murray Rothbard wrote, ‘Progressivism’ was a movement in New England born of Yankee Pietism in the early 19th century. By the early 20th, it had matured into a Messianic ideology of pervasive social controls to better the world: prohibition of alcohol, statist government regulation of business, even the ‘war to end all wars,’ World War I. And, of course, eugenics was there, too.” (Read more from waragainsttheweak.com)

I’m wary of the over-educated. They’re the ones, when they seize the reins of power, who think the rest of us need to be saved from ourselves, who think they can socially engineer a better world through the power of the state. Freedom works best.

I see eugenics in the same light as obsession with world over-population in the 80’s, or global warming today. Politicians lead very empty lives and need problems to solve, real or imagined. Pseudo science provides an endless source of pseudo crises for which politicians can take money and power and pretend to save the world.

Health Insurance before the Welfare State

“Fraternal organizations and friendly societies provided health insurance for hundreds of thousands of Americans and Britons before the surge of the welfare state. Their rapid disappearance underscores the fragility of voluntary institutions when challenged by government power.”

“At their peak, fraternal organizations and friendly societies provided health insurance for millions of Americans and Britons, mostly lower-middle-class tradesmen and skilled artisans. By 1886, the Independent Order of Oddfellows and the Ancient Order of Foresters each claimed more than 600,000 members worldwide. In the 1920s, roughly every third adult male in the United States belonged to a fraternal organization.

These groups were characterized by independent lodges, democratic governance, a ritual, and mutual aid for members (and often their families). Although camaderie was a leading incentive to join, disability insurance was also an attractive benefit.

Despite their popularity, however, such groups had all but vanished within two decades after being pushed aside by the surge of the welfare state. What accounts for their rise and fall?

The answer, according to Pavel Chalupnicek and Lukas Dvorak (both from the University of Prague), lies in the concept of social capital, and individual’s ability to use his or her network of friends and acquaintances for economic gain. Social capital, they explain, enables many people to function better in society, but its value depreciates rapidly in the presence of certain kinds of government activities.” (Read more from independent.org)

Healthcare and our Ever-Expanding Government

Our government, which already directly employs a seventh a America’s labor force (22 million people), is doing what government does best. It is growing – in size, cost and invasiveness.

Its growth into the healthcare industry is particularly interesting to me because of the enthusiasm with which so many of my liberal friends welcome it.

There exist little-known, little-discussed health rules buried in the recently-passed 1,100-page “stimulus” bill – the one which was forced to a vote in the House twelve hours after it’s midnight release, which not a single Congressman read, and which had been made available to lobbyists, but not Congressional staffers.

There are so many things economically and morally reprehensible about the Obama administration’s attempts at creating wealth from a printing press, one struggles to keep up even with something as important as healthcare.

Bloomberg news recently reported:

“The bill’s health rules will affect ‘every individual in the United States’ (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and ‘guide’ your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). . . . According to [former Senator] Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and ‘learn to operate less like solo practitioners.’ . . .

Hospitals and doctors that are not ‘meaningful users’ of the new system will face penalties. ‘Meaningful user’ isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose ‘more stringent measures of meaningful use over time’ (511, 518, 540-541).”

Central planning doesn’t work. One consequence will be that when centrally-planned healthcare becomes corrupt and ineffective (and it will), we won’t be allowed to quit. Our money will continue to be taken away to support something we don’t want – much like with foreign wars, domestic spying, and all the other ways America’s 22 million federal employees find meaning in their lives.

The best thing government can do is let us keep our money. In a free society, states, neighborhoods, communities, churches, families can socialize or they can not. The effectiveness of different bureaucracies will determine their fate. In Obama’s socialist society, we must all give our wealth to the centrally-planned bureaucracy regardless of whether it serves our needs.

A second consequence will be the rhetorical argument for continued government expansion into our private lives. Once government is paying for our healthcare, regardless of the fact their using our money to do it, they’ll eventually claim dominion over our diets and health-related habits.

Last year, Japan’s government began mandatory tape tests for their subjects . . . er . . . citizens, in the name of controlling healthcare costs. Financial penalties are imposed on local governments and employers who fail to meet the government’s vision of a healthy society.

In the United States, the arguments will be similar. Everything will be blamed – smokers, obesity, greedy businessmen, solar radiation – before the pundits ever cast a scrutinizing eye on government inefficiency.

Here’s another prediction: more government will be proposed as a solution.

(An abbreviated version of this blog entry appears in The Press Citizen)

On Health Care – two perspectives

I thought Michael Moore’s Sicko made a very compelling case for socialized medicine, though it contradicted what I thought I knew about Britain’s health care system.

So, I was very interested to hear the free market perspective on health care from Ron Paul.

Everybody agrees the current system isn’t working. Here’s an LA Times article, which echoes what Sicko demonstrated: Health insurers receive bonuses for dropping sick policyholders.