Friday, April 29, 2011

Another Conservative "Think Tank" Bites the Dust

link here to article

The Cato Institute used to have thoughtful libertarian's who provided useful commentary on government and social policy. This article reflects how it has joined ranks with the less thoughtful non-profits funded by the super-rich to improve the fortunes of the super-rich. It now looks more like the Heritage Foundation, The American Enterprise Institute, The Hoover Institute and others that provide the academic cover for predation and help to sell Ayn Rand novels.

By now, everyone realizes that healthcare price inflation is one of our biggest problems in containing future budget deficits. One of the means by which the Affordable Healthcare Act provides for cost control is by creating a panel of healthcare experts who will evaluate best practices and make decisions on what Medicare will fund and how much it will pay providers. The intent is to limit the role of Congress because those running for office tend to engage in a certain kind of extortion. That is, they will intervene to help out an important campaign contributor when given the opportunity. The affordable healthcare act removes an excellent source of extortion from Congress and it makes the US healthcare system more similar to those of other nations that have less expensive healthcare. They all use some means to affect the price of healthcare services.

So how does Cato respond to this effort to control healthcare price inflation? It brings in F. Hayec who provided the Bible for libertarians such as Margaret Thatcher, and Milton Friedman who sold it to Ronald Ronald Reagan. Cato describes the panel as just another liberal use of top down authority that limits human freedom. Somebody ought to tell Cato about the corporation. Every large corporation is a centralized command and control system. Executives at the top determine strategy, and they delegate authority to others who implement policy. They carefully monitor policy implementation by their delegates, and they reward those who are successful in implementing corporate policy. The majority of output in our free enterprise system is produced by centralized command and controls systems that we call corporations.

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