The ObamaCare scam

The Daily Camera asked its editorial advisory board members their view of ObamaCare, formally HR 3590. My response was published in the March 27 edition:

ObamaCare is a scam. It further empowers politicians to dictate how you seek medical care and support charities. Politicians should protect, rather than violate, your right to make these choices. The bill is not reform. Rather, it spreads a disease that masquerades as its own cure: authoritarian politically-controlled medicine.

The alleged “right” to health care gives this phony reform a moral facade. In practice, the “right” to health care means government decides when it’s “right” for you to get it.

More fundamentally, health care is not a right. Rights are freedoms to act, not entitlements to what others produce. Say you break your arm and cannot afford treatment. It’s admirable for doctors to voluntarily donate their time or for charities to help you pay.

A government-fabricated “right” to health care is compulsory charity, which violates actual rights. Government would either force doctors to mend your arm, or force others to pay. ObamaCare’s compulsory charity includes explicit taxes and taxes hidden in legislation that inflates insurance premiums.

We need authentic reform. Political controls have wedged insurers between patients and doctors, and employers between patients and insurers.  Legislation shields insurers from competition and outlaws affordable insurance. Patients are rarely the paying customer, so no one has incentive to please them.

ObamaCare exacerbates these problems by expanding Massachusetts’ phony reform nationally. Expect similar outcomes as its controls pile on: higher insurance premiums and poor access to doctors. New taxes will also stifle medical innovation and economic growth.

For real, effective, and moral reform, see healthcare.cato.org.

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Thanks to Ari Armstrong and Paul Hsieh for their edits and suggestions.

Judge Sotomayor on property rights

Judge Sotomayor’s respect for property rights disturbs me. In Didden v. Village of Port Chester she ruled against a private citizen and in favor of a local government. “The case involved about as naked an abuse of government power as could be imagined,” wrote law professor Richard Epstein in his recent Forbes column.

There’s also her controversial quote. In deciding court cases, Judge Sotomayor said she would “hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Paraphrasing Thomas Sowell, what if a Supreme Court nominee hoped for the opposite? That is, that a wise white man with “rich experiences” would more often than not reach a better judicial conclusion than a Latina female, who had led a different life? Why would this be any more or less objectionable than Judge Sotomayor’s hope?

I prefer the view often attributed (perhaps erroneously) to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, that “a wise old man and a wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases.”

The above was published in the Daily Camera (Boulder) on May 30, 2009.

420, marijuana legalization, and your rights

Printed in the Daily Camera, April 18:

Would you argue against government’s banning a book by citing the positive outcomes of free speech? Of course not. This concedes that free speech takes a back seat to whatever authorities consider to be “good for society.” Free speech derives from our individual rights: our freedom to take action and pursue our goals through the voluntary and peaceful cooperation of others.

Drug prohibition is unjust because it violates these rights. Don’t be distracted by arguments about prison overcrowding and marijuana’s medicinal benefits. These are important issues, but do not concede your rights. Pregnancy aside, you have the right to ingest, inhale, or inject whatever you want.

Legitimate law enforcement is a response to aggression — like restraining a violent drunk from further pummeling someone. We properly celebrate civilians who do so. But we should condemn civilians who forcibly interfere with someone’s selling, buying, or smoking politically-incorrect plant. Such interference is not a response to aggression; it is aggression. Sensibly, civilians who favor drug prohibition do not partake in such aggression themselves; they delegate it to government employees.

Yes, some people will ruin their lives by abusing drugs, whether they are banned or not. If this concerns you, consider supporting drug rehab charities instead of destructive prohibitions that violate our rights.

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For a great video on marijuana legalization by Drew Carey, and one with John Stossel on ABC News, and other resources (20/20), see here.

The piece in the Daily Camera was in answer to this week’s question:

A pro-pot student group is holding a three-day symposium in Boulder starting this weekend, leading up to the annual 4/20 campus “smoke out” session on Monday. The talks and event are aimed at the decriminalization of marijuana, which many people think is a drug that should remain illegal. What do you think?

Colorado Amendment 48: Fertilized eggs are not people

From the Colorado-based Coalition for Secular Government:

Colorado’s proposed Amendment 48 — the ballot measure that would grant full legal rights to fertilized eggs — would usher in disastrous government controls on abortion, birth control, medical research, and in vitro fertilization. It would violate the rights of real men and women — based on the faith-based fiction that a fertilized egg is a person with the same moral standing as a born infant. Yet the biological facts of pregnancy show that the embryo/fetus becomes a human person with rights only when born.

Find out more by reading a new CSG issue paper by Ari Armstrong and Diana Hsieh:
Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters That a Fertilized Egg Is Not a Person