At a Tucson “tea party” on June 22, Steven Knope, M.D., opened the discussion with the remark that the U.S. just doesn’t have the money for the proposed “change” in American medicine—or anything else.
This is becoming increasingly clear to foreigners, if not to Americans. The U.S. was told “no” when it requested to attend the June 15/16 meeting in Yekaterinburg, Russia, as an observer. The six-nation Shanghai Co-operation Organisation was discussing ways to challenge American economic hegemony.
Member nations are Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Iran, India, Pakistan, and Mongolia have observer status.
“If China, Russian and their allies have their way,” writes Michael Hudson, the “world’s largest debtor” will no longer be able to “live off the savings of others” (Financial Times 6/15/09).
Some believe that the U.S.—or “Wall Street”—has been propping up the dollar by temporarily smashing the prices of commodities such as gold and crude oil. Having been thwarted in its efforts to buy an important stake in Western commodity firms such as Unocal or Rio Tinto, China has been directing its dollar reserves toward hedge funds, writes Jim Willie. He views this as part of an encirclement strategy, which will deprive the U.S. of a key method of supporting the dollar.
“China commands the Great Wall of Money that will eventually cascade onto world markets. That cascade could be more important as a factor in generating U.S. price inflation than the buildup and spillover of the USFed balance sheet” (Goldseek.com 6/18/09).
Chinese students recently laughed at U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner when he told them that Chinese dollar assets were safe. Former Chinese central bank advisor Yu Yongding referred to the Federal Reserve as the “world’s biggest junk investor.”
If one counts private debt, official government debt, off-budget obligations, and internal commitments, America owes 100 times as much as Weimar Germany. And it just keeps borrowing more. In 2009 alone it will borrow $1.3 trillion, “just shy of the debt that sank the Weimar Republic,” writes Bill Bonner (LewRockwell.com 6/22/09).
The Federal Reserve is adding bank reserves at a rate that allows the money supply to expand geometrically, at a rate of 4,500%. Any normal bank that did that would be closed down immediately, Bonner states.
In 1923, Karl Helferich, Chairman, Central Bank of Germany, wrote: “To follow the good counsel of stopping [the inflation machine] would mean…that in a very short time the entire public, factories, mines, railways and post office, national and local government, in short, all national and economic life would be stopped.”
Some argue that hyperinflation will not occur—because the inflation machine simply will not work any more. Deflation is inevitable, they say, because of continuing debt collapse. Open market paper, instead of growing as it had in almost every prior quarter in history, is collapsing at an annual rate of $662.5 billion. The only major player borrowing money in big amounts is the U.S. Treasury, sopping up $1,442.8 billion of the credit available, leaving less than nothing for the private sector, writes Mish Shedlock (Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis 6/24/09).
Would more regulation work? Richard Maybury writes that instead of being restrained by a free market (contracts, courts with informed juries, and competition), all financial entities, no matter how incompetent or dishonest, are now under the same massive regulatory umbrella, so it is impossible to distinguish good guys and bad guys. Regulations are providing camouflage for crooks. Massive malinvestments in the U.S. economy are not being corrected. Huge injections of money are simply not being circulated. (Daily Bell 6/7/09).
The current version of “regulatory reform,” in any event, amounts to handing dictatorial control of the entire U.S. economy over to the Federal Reserve, said Congressman Ron Paul, M.D. (R-TX).
Paul concludes, in his June 22 weekly address, that the apparent goal of the Administration and Congress, with the continuing round of “stimulus” packages, is to bring about the total economic collapse of the United States.
“Bank robbers rob banks because that’s where the money is. Similarly, governments tax producers because that’s where the money is,” observes Robert L. Hale (Reactionary Utopian 5/20/09). Compared with the other five-sixths of the economy, how well off is medicine? Is it likely to be the sink for redistributed money—or the source?
Additional information:
Read Ayn Rand”s chapter “Egalitarinism and Inflation” in her book “Philosophy: Who Needs It?” (widely available) and you will be able to grasp this issue clearly. Keynes was dead wrong. One cannot spend his way out of debt. One will wind up only in more debt and, in fact, have no tool of trade.
It is ludicrous to think that the United States government can fund anything, much less a “government option” in medical care. Isn’t that what Medicare is? Look at the debt Medicare has created. And for what? America, wake up!
The “chickens” are “coming home to roost” and it isn’t pretty. Unfortunately, it is not because of capitalism that this is happening; rather, it is because capitalism has been all but obliterated in America and is being blamed for every ill that has been created by statism, the government control of the economy.
The only hope for mankind is capitalism in politics as the proper social system. It’s not too late. Fight for reason, self-interest, capitalism, freedom. If you do that, America is safe, and so is American medicine.
Mark A. Hurt, MD
314-991-3014
Given the current administration’s approval ratings, and the fact that the financial information is available for those who care to look for it, one must conlude that the American public wants the current economic plan to remain in place. The current situation is akin to the hot potato and when the music stops it will be the American public that is left holding the hot potato and will consequently get burned. We seem to be on the train barreling ahead at full steam toward the cliff that everyone sees but is unwilling or afraid to jump off. Medicare and Social Security will be bankrupt in 5 years. What is the government solution, borrow massively more. The current situation is untenable and will continue. No one in government has the honesty or courage to stand up and say that what we really need is a different plan. Anyone who has studied basic economics understands that we have unlimited wants and desires, but a limited means to fulfill them, leading private citizens to make choices. We would like to provide healthcare to all who need it, but we cannot afford it. The actual cost based on some numbers published is $4trillion dollars to provide everyone in the US with healthcare. We may want it, for all, but we who are paying for it cannot afford it. The same is true for every other social program that we cannot afford. We have promised people more than what we can pay. We may want to provide everything for the poor and down trodden. We simply cannot afford to pay for it. We are not unfeeling. We are economic realists. As a result of all of the uncontrolled spendin, in the short term, perhaps as little as 5 years, our entire economic system is going to collapse. We need a politician who will say this out loud, and then proceed to a plan where we drastically cut government spending and limit government to what the founding fathers intended. This politician would also need to agree that the US in order to restore its economic prosperity, would need to repay 10% of its debt each year for the next ten years. Once that is done, we can go forward as a country with our future assured, and with proper spending controls and a balanced budget amendment in place. Unless that happens we will never recover as a first rate power. Are we up to the challenge as a people? I hope so.
The government has more control over you than you think. Not only can they make any of their schemes function, but also they can mandate your participation.
I was drafted into military service as an MD, assigned to where they wanted me to go, and assigned duties. That amounted to Federal Licensure. They could easily mandate the same again for Medicare, Medicaid providers. Medical services became politicized since all providers were paid equally, it eventually became
” what is the least you can do.”
The higher the rank, the more services, attention, and promptness. Can you imagine a general sitting in a waiting room all day to be seen?
I expect a similar scenario if Federal legislation comes in. The state in which I was stationed had licensure by county so they could direct physician practice location. Naturally the larger cities were premium and hard to get licensure.
I expect a similar outcome unless enough of public taxpayers and voters support independence of the profession, as an alternative to low cost medical care. Good luck . Medical administration was a good deal; watching doctors work up to their quota.
Agree entirely. The process is incremental and relentless and in place now over 50 years. (“War is too important to be left to the Generals”)
Oppose Government Medicine on moral grounds. It is the most powerful method!
The moral life is lived in pursuing one’s own happiness by creating the values one’s life requires. The moral man is not a beggar, a moocher or a theif. He is a trader. Read Ayn Rand’s “The Virtue Of Selfishness”
The moral government defends Individual Rights. Read “Man’s Rights” and “The Nature Of Government” by Ayn Rand.
Just love seeing a bunch of greedy doctors whine about government control of health care, begging for freedom. Hows about we get rid of all government control of health care and abolish any ties that the AMA has to government. Separation of Medicine and State. Let anyone who wishes to do so practice medicine regardless of whether they are part of the old boys and girls club.
You greedy good for nothings should pack up and move to a different country to practice your graft.
We don’t need you and your 12 years of school to hand out scripts for antibiotics.
I believe NotAdoctor may just get his wish. Good luck, NotAdoctor, applying the priniciples of medicine without a mind to guide their application. No “cookbook” will help you when you need a mind knowledgable to practice it rationally.
As Ayn Rand stated:
—–
‘Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything–except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the “welfare” of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter, was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only “to serve.” . . . I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind–yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands?’
—–
This is what is a stake in medicine, and only freedom can save it.