Abortion Is Only the Tip of the Iceberg
Today POLITICO Arena asks:
Given the push by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) to deny all federal funding to Planned Parenthood, are we seeing the revival of abortion as a major fault line in American politics?
My response:
Opponents of the push to deny federal funding to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers will try to inflame the debate by characterizing the push as an attack on the Supreme Court’s discovery of a right to abortion. But the issue goes much deeper and is perfectly generalizable: it’s a push to get government out of one more controversial area of life.
Most modern liberals fail to grasp — or ignore — a fundamental principle of political theory, namely, that the more we do collectively, the more liberty is restricted and passions are inflamed. That’s why classical liberals asked government to provide only “public goods” like national defense, law enforcement, and clean air. Abortions are private goods (for some). Under current law, women are free to seek them from willing providers. And others are free to assist those who cannot afford an abortion. But no one should be compelled to provide or pay for another’s abortion. It’s a matter, quite simply, of freedom.
My Overdue Response to Jesse Larner
Back in August of 2007, I issued a challenge to Jesse Larner, who blogs at HuffingtonPost. One week later, Larner took up my challenge in a post that I’ve just finished reading.
Larner very graciously admitted to a couple of misstatements, and I must reciprocate. I wrote, “I challenge Larner to show where a Cato scholar … describes America’s as a ‘free-enterprise system of health care.’” Sure enough, Larner found an oped where one of my colleagues wrote, “I live in a country with a free-market health-care system.” Obviously, I disagree with that claim. But Larner was right, and I will have to look into this.
A few remaining areas of disagreement:
- I wrote that Larner “claims that people don’t die on waiting lists in Canada’s health care system.” Larner responds: “Actually, that’s not what I claimed. I claimed that people don’t often die on waiting lists.” Canada’s Supreme Court writes that “in some serious cases, patients die as a result of waiting lists for public health care.” Is some as many as often? I hope not.
- Larner: “the Canadian system has problems … [but] it worked better before a series of conservative provincial governments began to de-fund it.” This isn’t the first time that advocates of socialized medicine have blamed its shortcomings on politicians who (supposedly) oppose socialized medicine. But it is an inherent feature of such systems that they will inevitably fall into the hands of whatever viable political parties exist in that nation. As I explained to Paul Krugman, “Unless you have a plan to abolish Republicans, they’re part of your plan.”
- Larner writes: “a public health care plan is a public good.” Public good is an economic term with a specific meaning. A public health care plan is not a public good.
- Larner: “is Cannon saying that we do not have rationing in the US?” Hardly.
- Larner: “In a free-market system, what mechanisms would prevent insurers from cherry-picking their customers, and denying coverage to those who are likely to require expensive treatment?” The question presumes that insurance should do something that insurance cannot do: insure the uninsurable. In this chapter of the Cato Handbook on Policy, I explain the (amazing) things that health insurance can accomplish, and why “health insurance markets are completely justified in not covering preexisting conditions.”
- “So here’s my challenge to Cannon: show me a way that a true free-market system can provide decent coverage to everyone, regardless of ability to pay, without rationing.” Elsewhere in his post, Larner acknowledges this is an impossible task. In this magazine article, I explain that there is no way to reform health care that can guarantee that no patients will fall through the cracks. In this Cato paper, I explain how a free market would minimize the number of people who do.
- “Cannon is not in favor of universal coverage as a social right.” True, that. “As a libertarian, he doesn’t even recognize the concept of social rights.” I believe it was Friedrich Hayek who said there’s no better way to strip a word of its meaning than to place the word “social” in front of it. Try it yourself . I suggest using words like security, contract, justice, responsibility…
Does MedPAC Think Markets Produce Zero Public Goods?
I just came across this doozy in a 2009 report by MedPAC, the government agency that advises Congress on how to adjust Medicare’s price and exchange controls:
In broad terms, we must … invest in better information on the effectiveness of treatment options so it might guide the decisions of patients, health care providers, and public and private insurers. Our nation spends over $2 trillion on health care, yet we know far too little about the comparative effectiveness of alternative treatments. Such information is a public good, which has not—and will not—be [sic] spontaneously produced by the private market.
Except: the private market has spontaneously produced comparative-effectiveness information, as I documented in this study released one month prior to the MedPAC report. I also explain why the argument for government provision of public goods is shaky.
Ironically, MedPAC disables the “copy” function in the reports it posts online, so I had to type out the above excerpt by hand. Why is that ironic? It’s an example of the sort of innovation that enables markets to overcome the public-good problem. (But since my tax dollars paid for that report, it seems to be an innovation that maybe MedPAC could abandon.)
Week in Review: Stimulus, Sarah Palin and a Political Conflict in Honduras
Obama Considering Another Round of Stimulus
With unemployment continuing to climb and the economy struggling along, some lawmakers and pundits are raising the possibility of a second stimulus package at some point in the future. The Cato Institute was strongly opposed to the $787 billion package passed earlier this year, and would oppose additional stimulus packages on the same grounds.
“Once government expands beyond the level of providing core public goods such as the rule of law, there tends to be an inverse relationship between the size of government and economic growth,” argues Cato scholar Daniel J. Mitchell. “Doing more of a bad thing is not a recipe for growth.”
Mitchell narrated a video in January that punctures the myth that bigger government “stimulates” the economy. In short, the stimulus, and all big-spending programs are good for government, but will have negative effects on the economy.
Writing in Forbes, Cato scholar Alan Reynolds weighs in on the failures of stimulus packages at home and abroad:
In reality, the so-called stimulus package was actually just a deferred tax increase of $787 billion plus interest.
Whether we are talking about India, Japan or the U.S., all such unaffordable spending packages have repeatedly been shown to be effective only in severely depressing the value of stocks and bonds (private wealth). To call that result a “stimulus” is semantic double talk, and would be merely silly were it not so dangerous.
In case you’re keeping score, Cato scholars have opposed government spending to boost the economy without regard to the party in power.
For more of Cato’s research on government spending, visit Cato.org/FiscalReality.
The Healthcare Economist on Comparative-Effectiveness Research
Jason Shafrin agrees with me that the public-goods case for government-funded comparative-effectiveness research is weak, though he argues that political constraints make my proposed solutions difficult.
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