Healthcare Clearinghouse, Part 2

Arnold Kling is pretty pessimistic about how the policy landscape will unfold in coming years. Based on his predictions, speculative as they may be, libertarians, or the libertarianish, ought to be depressed over the raft of bad ideas that will be foisted on us as law. Punitive taxes on high earners are a problem but we can avoid those pretty easy (see here). Quixotic effrots to 'address climate change' will be annoying and perhaps expensive, but will be far removed from daily life. Healthcare however is another story. Wrecking our current system, imperfect as it is, in favor of some form of collectivist or statist approach would be a serious encroachment into our lives as well as a devastating blow to our personal liberty. Isn't the care and treatment of our own bodies the essence of personal freedom? (At least that's what the pro-choice movement keeps telling us.) Isn't that too important to have some bureaucrat have any say in the matter of whether we get a vitrectomy or lumbar fusion? (If you are a woman, it is clearly not appropriate for a man to tell you what to do with your body. How would the 'progressive movement' feel about government bureaucrat, who could be female, denying me a vasectomy because it was 'elective surgery'? Get your laws off my body, Senator Edwards, I say!)

So what is to be done to avoid the inevitable government bumbling affecting our health? We simply have to get over whatever fear we have and embrace competition as the fundamental basis of healthcare reform for the majority of us. (I have stated that for the chronicly sick and uninsurable, there is an appropriate government role that can be easy and affordable, but we can't let providing for a small minority of people ruin the dynamism and innovativeness of our healthcare system for the rest of us. So I'm adding some new material to the Healthcare Clearinghouse:

- Senator Tom Coburn M.D. on Competition

- Fred Thompson On Healthcare Systems We Shouldn't Copy

- Grace Marie Turner On How We Get There

- Numerous Economists Against Drug Reimportation and Price Controls

- Oh, Oh, It's Magic: The Economist

- Competition Is the Best Rx: Chicago Tribune

- The Healthcare Fix Is Actually Pretty Simple

MORE...

- Who's Really Sicko? (MUST READ BY THE AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK)

- The Choice on Healthcare

- Wait Times Are the Antithesis of Care

Don't miss the first installment of the clearinghouse!