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Jewish World Review May 19, 2010/ 6 Sivan 5770 The ‘Unintended Consequences’ of Liberalism By Arnold Ahlert
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The essence of liberal bankruptcy can be reduced to two words: unintended consequences. Quite simply, the unintended consequences of liberalism are the result of people behaving like people actually behave--instead of how liberals believe they should behave. Perhaps the most egregious example of the left's terminal disconnect from reality is health care "reform." Two news stories reveal what happens when common sense loses out to ideological idiocy.
The first story comes from the Congressional newspaper The Hill. Apparently it has dawned on some people that adding 32 million people to the health care rolls--note I said people, as opposed to American citizens--might engender some unintended consequences with regard to their impact on "emergency rooms already crammed beyond capacity, according to experts on healthcare facilities."
"Everybody expected that one of the initial impacts of reform would be less pressure on emergency departments; it's going to be exactly the opposite over the next four to eight years," said Rich Dallam, healthcare partner at NBBJ, an architectural firm which designs healthcare facilities.
Not everybody, Mr. Dallam. Only the clueless liberals in Congress and the White House who foisted this package on the substantial majority of Americans who wanted no part of it.
Yet in the spirit of charity, one could be somewhat forgiving of liberal prognostications if they had been the result of sailing in uncharted waters. But they were not. The state of Massachusetts has been a laboratory for so-called "universal coverage" for the past four years. What did a recent poll by the American College of Emergency Physicians reveal?
Two-thirds of that states' residents say that emergency room waiting times have either "increased or remained the same."
And why are more people headed to emergency rooms? Because even though they now have insurance, they can't find a primary care doctor to treat them--which segues quite nicely into the second story coming out of Texas.
According to the Houston Chronicle, doctors in that state are "opting out of Medicare at alarming rates, frustrated by reimbursement cuts they say make participation in government-funded care of seniors unaffordable." Again, only liberals believe doctors would be willing to lose money in order to make government health care workable. That they won't is another one of those "unintended consequences" that apparently mystify those who consider themselves intellectually superior to the hapless dullards known as ordinary Americans.
"This new data shows the Medicare system is beginning to implode," said Dr. Susan Bailey, president of the Texas Medical Association. "If Congress doesn't fix Medicare soon, there'll be more and more doctors dropping out and Congress' promise to provide medical care to seniors will be broken."
And what would it take to "fix" the problem? Give yourself an honorary membership in Club Liberal if you guessed the inevitable answer: more taxpayer funding. How much more? The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that "eliminating scheduled Medicare payment cuts through 2020 would cost $276 billion."
How's that "the health care bill will be revenue neutral" slogan working for you now, my liberal brethren?
Unintended consequences? More from the Chronicle: "The problem dates back to 1997, when Congress passed a balanced budget law that included a Medicare payment formula aimed at reining in spending. The formula, which assumed low growth rates, (italics mine) called for payment cuts if spending exceeded goals, a scenario that occurred year after year as health care costs grew. The scheduled cuts, expected to be modest, turned out to be large."
Again, ask yourself a question. Who can look at: a) the ready-to-retire Baby Boomer generation, with its outsized population relative to all other age groups; b) medical advances which invariably increase life span; c) and increased life span itself, and come to the conclusion that "low growth rates" can be "assumed?"
Ironically, Texas is one of the better states in the nation when it comes to the availability of doctors, due to the fact that they instituted medical malpractice reform. According to the San Francisco Examiner, "(b)etween 2003 and 2007, the Texas Medical Board licensed about 2,500 more new physicians than it did during the previous four years. In total, more than 7,000 new doctors have come to the state."
That would be the very same medical malpractice reform that never made it onto a single page of the 2700 page health care monstrosity enacted by Democrats. Despite being ideologically clueless about most aspects of human nature, Democrats understand quite well that the Trial Lawyers Association donates millions of dollars to their party. As a result, something which would virtually guarantee a substantial reduction in health care costs for every American was omitted from "comprehensive" health care reform.
How can liberals be so obtuse regarding human nature? Pure arrogance, as in they believe they're smarter than everyone else--which in turn produces stunning ignorance. It is an ignorance that assumes tossing an extra 32 million people into an already-strained system will not further strain the system. It is the ignorance of those who would never dream of taking a pay cut themselves expecting doctors to suck it up out of the goodness of their hearts. It is the terminal ignorance of those for whom unintended consequences are always someone else's fault-- invariably due to the fact that people are simply too stupid to appreciate the "keen insight" of their intellectual betters.
It is the terminal ignorance of people who actually think collectivist, utopian philosophy can triumph over biologically hard-wired human nature, which revolves around one stunningly simple concept: individual self-interest.
Liberals equate self-interest with selfishness. Nothing could be further from the truth. Self-interest in the engine of humankind. Without it genuine ambition and achievement wouldn't exist. It is no accident that every society which has embraced collective interests over those of the individual has either been an economic basket-case--or a human rights-crushing, totalitarian nightmare.
Yet time after time, liberals can look at the historical wreckage produced wherever the ruling class decided government can operate completely at odds with human nature, and insist those failures occurred only because "the wrong people were in charge."
In one sense liberals are absolutely correct: the wrong people are in charge--of America. The Democratically-controlled Congress has one of the lowest approval ratings ever recorded, and the Obama administration's ratings have been in decline since the inauguration. Apparently more and more Americans are coming to the conclusion that "unintended consequences" can destroy the best health care system in the world, and put the nation on the fast track to bankruptcy in the process.
The bet here is a majority of American are going to deliver some seriously intended consequence to liberals next November.
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© 2010, Arnold Ahlert |
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