Where’s Lumpy?

How many times in the past few months have we heard President Obama stump for the public option for healthcare coverage with the line “if you like your private insurance, you can keep it?”  He may truly believe that. I do not.

When private companies operate at a deficit for long enough, they go out of business.  When elected officials run up tens of trillions in debt, including current unfunded liabilities in Social Security and Medicare, they get re-elected despite (or because of) their arithmetic failures.  How could a private insurer “compete” against the government, when the latter can bleed red ink freely and without consequence?  I can imagine two possibilities:

1. Private insurers won’t be able to compete against the public option, not because they aren’t viable, but because the rules are different for one of the competitors (which is, of course, no competition at all).  One by one, the private insurers fail.  Voila, we get the back-door single-payer system that President Obama used to favor, before it became politically inexpedient.
2. The insurance industry, realizing the danger behind door #1, lobbies Congress to pass what Ayn Rand called an “Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog” act to prevent destructive “competition” by the public option.  The act would enshrine price controls and benefit caps in law, and forbids new competitors from entering the market.  For a few hundred thousand in contributions to campaign funds, it establishes a de jure healthcare cartel – this time with Uncle Sam as a founding member, to get around those pesky anti-trust laws.

These options aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, of course.  Both lead to a single payer system, but because the cartel in the second option can claim some semblance of “choice” between insurers, it scares me more.  It boils the proverbial frog more slowly.

No apologist for the insurance lobby, I would scarcely be surprised if someone documents its rent-seeking shenanigans in Congress.  Such abuses should be brought to light and shamed.  However, to accuse them of being afraid of a little competition – when that competition is anything but fair to them – is disingenuous.  On the other hand, to expect the public option to curb corporate rent-seeking is simply naive.

I sure hope my tax dollars didn’t subsidize this study, which finds that college students don’t get enough sleep, take drugs, skip classes, stay up til 3 AM, and occasionally pull all-nighters:

About 68 percent of college students who were surveyed said that worries about school and life keep them awake, with one-fifth saying this occurs at least once a week. The study, which appears online in the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that less than a third of the 1,125 survey participants get the eight hours of sleep at night that people their age need.

Who knew?

Thank you CNN MSNBC, I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time.  Three observations:

First, the man is holding up a sign that says “It is time to water the tree of liberty.”  This is a reference to what I thought was a pretty well-known Jefferson quote:

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

-Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to William S. Smith, according to this site.

The significance of the quote escapes CNN’s MSNBC’s crack team of analysts.

Second, Carlos Watson’s incredulity is so precious.  Apparently, he’s never heard of open carry laws, or read the second amendment.

Third, and worst of all, note how anxious this bunch is to override the rule of law with arbitrary state action to deprive a citizen of his constitutional rights.  Watson “cannot imagine that there aren’t enough lawyers in New Hampshire that can’t file some kind of emergency injunction.”  Jean Chatzky asks “Why can’t we get rid of him now (i.e., before Obama arrives)?”

Ummmm, maybe because he’s doing nothing illegal?

HT to Sarah for bringing this to my attention via Facebook.

Update:  Further thanks to Sarah for pointing out that this was the MSNBC crew, not CNN as originally reported.  I get them so confused!  I wonder why…

Update #2:  One minute ago, Rachel Maddow reported on the same thing, and made the connection to the full Jefferson quote.  She then snidely compared the armed protester to Timothy McVeigh, who apparently was arrested wearing a shirt bearing Jefferson’s quote.  She then went on to whine about protesters comparing the Democrats pushing this crap to Nazis.  The message?  It’s OK for Maddow to link protesters obeying the law and expressing their views to Timothy McVeigh, but it’s not OK for those same protesters to link socialization of medicine to the programme of the National Socialist party.  One wonders if she’s ever heard of F. A. von Hayek, who did just that in his classic book The Road to Serfdom.

Watch this and be very sad that someone as confused as Rep. Kathy Castor could get elected to Congress.  Here’s a quote from the end of her speech:

You might not have agreed to Medicare, you might not have agreed to giving our veterans benefits, you might not have agreed to [unintelligible], you might not have agreed to Social Security, but these are the foundational moral principles of our great country.

–U.S. Congresswoman Kathy Castor supporting healthcare collectivization at a “town hall” meeting

There you have it: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are out.  The nanny collectivist state is in.

I take heart that the protesters in the back of the room shouted her down.  I also find it helpful that the planted union tough in the front of the room (the one faithfully applauding his comrade’s every spew) wore a t-shirt identifying himself as such.