Health

Last year, the governor of Alabama proposed and then overwhelmingly lost a bitter referendum to increase taxes and boost revenue, writes Chris Westley.

The body-weight crusaders continue their Quixotic struggle, writes Gard Goldsmith, because they believe in the Marxist myth that the owners of the means of production make people buy things.

Dale Steinreich explains the twin goals of the AMA-shaped medical industry: artificially elevated incomes and worship by patients.

Not even Krugman advocates an economic system akin to what we see in North Korea of the former Soviet Union. Yet, as William Anderson points out, we are now left with a perplexing question: If socialism does not deliver the goods like bread and automobiles in large numbers and in high quality, why does anyone believe that the practice of medicine is an exception?

In 2003, one in 35 million U.S. cattle were confirmed to have mad cow disease. Infected cattle comprised three millionths of one percent of all cattle. So why the mad cow scare? As Christopher Westley tells us, it reflects an implicit consensus among the body politic that the federal overseers of the U.S. beef industry are not capable of stopping the spread of mad cow once the slightest hint of the disease shows itself on U.S. soil.

Canadian law, like U.S. law, bans the buying or selling of human organs, but doesn't specifically address donations by complete strangers, writes Adam Young. The transplant monopoly insists living donors be either family or close friends. The result is a massive shortage which results in needless deaths. A market could so easily fix the problem, so why is this solution rejected?

The government sets price its flu shot at zero and then wonders how to account for shortages. That's just the beginning of the long history of government errors concerning the flu, writes William Anderson. In the flu pandemic of 1918-1919, an estimated 500,000 Americans died of Spanish Influenza. The outbreak coincided with the last days and the immediate post-armistice days of World War I, with government actions guaranteeing that the flu would spread rapidly.

Thanks to the untiring efforts of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Americans have been faced with the greatest expansion of the government into medical care since the 1960s. When these moves are complete, the free market in American medicine will be practically gone. Interventionism will be in complete possession of the field of battle, and the task of the government will be to mop up the remaining opposition.

Gregory Bresiger tells the tale of how he was officially terminated: "How was I killed off at a relatively young age—well, 50 really doesn't seem that old today—and then miraculously raised from the dead by these mail carrying ghouls? Well, how does anything work in the federal government? It's difficult to explain. I'll give it my best shot."
 

Government cannot create something from nothing. But the premise of universal health care is that the government can bestow benefits upon members of society that it had not created for itself. It imposes on the economic body something that did not come from within its own means, or by its own choice, meaning the choices of the many individuals that make up the economy.