Don’t Blame Obama for High Gas Prices
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Why have gasoline prices increased since the start of the year? The simplest explanation is that the price of crude oil has increased. Specifically, the spot price for Brent (North Sea) crude has increased $16 a barrel since January. Given that there are 42 gallons to a barrel, that works out to a 38 cent increase in the price of a gallon of oil. Spot prices for gasoline trade in New York have increased about 41 cents per gallon over the same time frame. So there you go.
How Doctors Are Trapped, Part II
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What is the common denominator for all of these problems? Unlike other professionals, doctors are not free to repackage and reprice their services in customer pleasing ways. The way their services are packaged is dictated by third-party-payer bureaucracies. The prices they are paid are similarly dictated. Doctors are the least free of any professional we deal with. Yet these un-free actors are directing one-fifth of all consumer spending!
Government Is Not Society
If I was going to sum up my political philosophy as succinctly as possible, I think this is how I’d do it.
Perhaps the difference that most fundamentally separates true liberals and libertarians from others is that, to one degree or another, true liberals and libertarians are, unlike non-liberals and non-libertarians, dutiful sons and …
Barney Frank Wants to Kill Fannie and Freddie?!?
Be still my beating heart. No, wait. Start beating, my stilled heart. Barney Frank just recommended killing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
”As I believe this committee will be recommending, abolishing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in their present form and coming up with a new whole system of housing finance [is in order],” …
Senate Bill Will Increase Healthcare Premiums
At the request of BlueCross BlueShield, Oliver Wyman did a study of the Senate health care bill. Unsurprisingly, this study estimates that the bill will cost consumers quite a bit more than the CBO estimated.
John Goodman summarized the findings this way:
Premiums for individuals and families purchasing coverage on their own will go up …
Health care is not a human right
This morning I saw a new Facebook poll: ”Is Health Care a Human Right?”. I voted no.
Do you have a right to health care? Yes. And no. My answer ultimately depends on what you mean by a ”right” to health care.
Rights come in two varieties: negative and positive. A negative right can be thought of …
Private health care insurance growing world wide
The National Center for Policy Analysis published a press release from the HealthPlanWire today, showing the grow in private insurance world wide.
HPW follows health insurance markets globally, and is projecting that total covered lives will exceed one billion by 2012. Single-payer systems are declining world-wide because they are primarily based in countries which …
The problem with health insurance "exchanges"
In today’s New York Times, David Leonhardt talks about the problem of health care choice. Specifically, the fact that most people don’t have any choice. He starts out making a lot of sense.
Health insurers often act like monopolies — like a cable company or the Department of Motor Vehicles — because they resemble …
Health care without bureaucrats
Any bureaucracy — public or private — is going to make pointless decisions and complicate your life. This applies to health ”insurance” as much as it applies to anything else. It’s easy to find stories of people who were heartlessly treated by their health bureaucracy. In Britain, the bureaucracy is the government run NHS. In …
The Blessings of Used Book Sellers
It seems that some people get annoyed when used book sellers visit library book sales.
Book dealers armed with handheld ISBN scanners are threatening to take over the used book sales run by volunteer fundraising groups for the Madison Public Library system, Morris said.
The scanners tell them how many copies …