Chris Navin

Full post here.

Well, some people behind the Affordable Care Act want to get to single payer, that’s no doubt true.

You also need young, usually healthy people (usually without much money) to pay into the system to subsidize the old, the sick and the poor.  Right now, 2.5 million of those young people have been added to their parents’ plans for a longer period of time, but eventually they will be siphoned in.  I believe one of the primary goals of the Affordable Care Act is to fundamentally change the relationship between nearly every American and their government, bending it more toward the progressive political and moral vision of “shared sacrifice” and collectivist principles of organization which require another entitlement program which won’t ever pay for itself.  This is nothing new.

Some will get access to health care who didn’t have access before, and others will pay for them.  Some insurance companies will gain a lot of new customers (but they must play the game right and tithe the overseers and check the political winds more than they do now).  Some reasons for rising healthcare costs will be addressed (longer life spans, technology and prescription drugs) and many other won’t, and new ones will pop up.

The people who make decisions though, and where the money comes from, and where it goes, and what principles govern our politics and lives, our health, health care, and health insurance will change drastically.

Here are a few quotes posted before on this site:

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

‘Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”:

 First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization’

and two quotes from Henry Hazlitt:

“The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.”

and

“The first requisite of a sound monetary system is that it put the least possible power over the quantity or quality of money in the hands of the politicians.”

My two cents.

Related On This Site:  From The New England Journal Of Medicine Via CATO: ‘The Constitutionality of the Individual Mandate’From If-Then Knots: Health Care Is Not A Right…But Then Neither Is Property?… From The New Yorker: Atul Gawande On Health Care-”The Cost Conundrum”…Sally Pipes At Forbes: ‘A Plan That Leads Health Care To Nowhere’…Peter Suderman At The WSJ: ‘Obamacare And The Medicaid Mess’

Reason Via Youtube: ‘A True Tale of Canadian Health Care: ‘Why Some Patients Need To Go To The U.S. For Surgery

Full transcribed lecture here. (updated link)

So are we drifting to a more “European” lifestyle in America?  Should we question…if not resist….such a trend? 

“I have two points to make. First, I will argue that the European model is fundamentally flawed because, despite its material successes, it is not suited to the way that human beings flourish–it does not conduce to Aristotelian happiness. Second, I will argue that twenty-first-century science will prove me right.”

Murray is quite libertarian, and he outlines what he dislikes about the European model on a recent visit to Sweeden:

“In every town was a beautiful Lutheran church, freshly painted, on meticulously tended grounds, all subsidized by the Swedish government. And the churches are empty. Including on Sundays. Scandinavia and Western Europe pride themselves on their “child-friendly” policies, providing generous child allowances, free day-care centers, and long maternity leaves. Those same countries have fertility rates far below replacement and plunging marriage rates. Those same countries are ones in which jobs are most carefully protected by government regulation and mandated benefits are most lavish. And they, with only a few exceptions, are countries where work is most often seen as a necessary evil, least often seen as a vocation, and where the proportions of people who say they love their jobs are the lowest.”

As Murray suggests, the prevailing European secular habit of mind (which shuns overt religious faith) has also transposed a lot of Christian metaphysics (and a lot Marxist/Communist leftist thought) into the modern European state.  Many religious values continue of course, but are also, in part, maintained by that state.  That state, in turn, can limit much dynamism and freedom we take for granted here in the U.S.:

“The problem is this: Every time the government takes some of the trouble out of performing the functions of family, community, vocation, and faith, it also strips those institutions of some of their vitality–it drains some of the life from them.”

This isn’t a bad point to make.  I would also agree with Murray that many many people busy importing such influences to America know not what they do (especially prescient right now, during the economic crisis).  I suppose he’s also implying that despite our depth of religious idealism, our constitution is able to handle it in its pursuit of the negative ideals of life, liberty and happiness.

He also suggests that Europe can’t keep this old model going:

“The European model can’t continue to work much longer. Europe’s catastrophically low birth rates and soaring immigration from cultures with alien values will see to that.”

There are facts here, but they are quite arguable and his statement is full of rightist sentiment.  It remains to be seen what will happen in Europe, mostly by Europeans.

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What I think most animates Murray as a social scientist and thinker is a libertarian political philosophy that finds greater influence in say, the Vienna Circle, and economic thinkers such as Friedrich Hayek and Von Mises than in the standard models of social science.  For this, he should be praised for this independence of mind and contrarianism.  He’s always fighting against the current.

When it comes to (S)cience though, I’m wary of people who claim to have it on their side.  

It took the genius of Galileo and Newton, among others, to overturn the predominantly Aristotelian (excessively defended by the church) scientific models of the day.   So, I don’t think it’s just Aristotle we should strive to model ourselves after…

—though I think Murray’s point really is to wrest happiness from the standard models of social science and current social trends that point Europeward:

“The drift toward the European model can be slowed by piecemeal victories on specific items of legislation, but only slowed. It is going to be stopped only when we are all talking again about why America is exceptional, and why it is so important that America remain exceptional. That requires once again seeing the American project for what it is: a different way for people to live together, unique among the nations of the earth, and immeasurably precious.”

Something to think about, though I’m wary of the doomsaying.

See Also:  Murray has more here in the Washington Post.  He argues that there is a deeper philosophical, but mostly, scientific influence that will change the social sciences in the next 50 years or so, and thus, public policy.

Also On This Site:  Gene Expression On Charles Murray: Does College Really Pay Off?…Charles Murray In The New Criterion: The Age Of Educational Romanticism