Deceptive statistics on infant mortality
Opponents of our private health care system often point to the infant mortality rate in U.S. compared to other countries, especially a communist one like Cuba to make their point that our private health care system is somehow deficient.
However, like any argument based in statistics1, there are many, many pitfalls.
The first obvious question to ask is (after seeing that the number is for every X live births), what about stillbirths? Is it possible that in U.S., what might have been stillbirth gets counted as infant mortality because our superior medical technology gets the child through delivery but the child ends up expiring anyway? Well, the statistics in comparison with a few other countries don't quite support that (although this would, of course, vary depending on what counts as stillbirth and what must be reported; and I can't find a quick comparison to Cuban data).
But the death of an infant counts as either stillbirth or infant mortality only if the parents wanted the child to live and gave their best shot at the delivery. Is it possible that in other countries, if the unborn child does not appear healthy (or "desirable"), that he is deliberately ... "given up"? There is some evidence to support this. It depends on which statistics you look at: if you look at the number of abortions per 1,000 women of child-bearing age, then North America has the lowest abortion rate of populated parts of the world, hands down, and all we have to do is explain the discrepancy between us and Canada. If you look at the number of abortions per 100 known pregnancies, then while the U.S. is at the bottom, other developed region, such as Western Europe are on par with the U.S. (this is actually a surprise to me).
Given that abortion rate far outstrips any infant mortality rate (in North America, 26 children are aborted per 100 known pregnancies!), there is a great potential for a general abortion pattern (maybe the poor get more abortions, the way liberals intend) to affect the infant mortality rate. So, once you include all the data, not just the ones that appear to support your argument, the picture is not quite so clear. It's possible that there is something wrong with infant care in U.S. It's possible that there is nothing substantially wrong with it. In any case, the case for "fixing" our system (is it broken in the first place?) is so weak that it does not merit the cost and social upheaval socialization of our health care system would involve.
P.S. I should note that the data I quote above are widely separated in time (the mortality rate including stillbirth is from a blog post in 2006, and the data on abortion is from 1996), so I wouldn't trust them beyond a general overview and trends, if that.
P.S. I think a better birth-related statistics that would be more reflective of the quality of health care is maternal death rate, not infant mortality rate. After all, so much of infant mortality has to do with genetics, as one of the links above gets at. On the other hand, the adult mother had and has the full benefit of the health care system, with serious genetic defects already filtered out by the process of natural selection, so it ought to be a more equitable measure of the health care system. And indeed, even at the highest level of maternal death rate, the maternal death rate in U.S. compares reasonably with the developed world and very favorably against all the developing regions, including Asia. But then, liberals are not known for letting facts get in their line of argument, so they will continue to cite one unfavorable statistic after another, regardless of how deceptive they might be in the things they hide.
- such as one using standardized test scores to argue that U.S. high school students are stupid, which neglects that U.S. score is average of all students while the tests for any other nation is average of top 50% or less, as a good fraction of students go to technical schools where they are not subject to the same academic standards [↩]
The one American exceptionalism I would rather do without
Bill Whittle has a good commentary on American Exceptionalism.
Yes, we are an exceptional country. There has never been an "empire" like us. There has never been a country with the power to completely dominate the world with no one to oppose it with comparable might that spent so much of its own resources defending and feeding others. The Athenian empire certainly wasn't that (it took tributes from member states to support its navy, not the other way around), Roman empire wasn't that, and even the comparably benevolent (see: Commonwealth of Nations) British empire wasn't that. Aside from the fact that we have troops and bases around the world, there is nothing about America which is like any other empire that existed in history.
However, this is one American exceptionalism that I would rather do without. While it sounds virtuous of us to feed the poor and help rebuild the countries we defeated (and they were the aggressors in the first place!), it is economically, and morally, unsound.
We held the temporary advantage after WWII and after Cold War, and we used that advantage "for the greater good". Any particular edge, whether it be resource or technology, is always fleeting. While the natural resources of this country is still formidable, it cannot be said that this gives us an edge over all other countries (case in point: we are net oil importer, and even with full development of offshore reserves and Alaskan oil and natural gas, it's likely to stay that way for decades). Technology and knowledge have the habit of getting spread around over time, and unless we continue to innovate, the technological advantage we have right now will dwindle with time.
With these historical, temporary advantage dissipating, I don't think America can afford to be so generous to its allies and enemies any more. America needs to look out for America. American troops should be used for defending American borders and that only (and limited allied interests, when such operations can be proven to be beneficial to our long term interest). And we should let free trade and voluntary, civilian charity replace (or not) whatever "foreign aid" we are sending to African countries to prop up their corrupt government (someone made a good argument that foreign aid to defunct countries actually hurt them because the foreign aid makes the rulers less answerable to the people, because, through this foreign government aid, they have a resource independent from the people).
I am glad that we have been and are a generous nation. But we can no longer afford to be that generous—if I am wrong and if we still can, then we should let people decide on that voluntarily and that means no tax dollars for government charity.
Continued hypocrisy of the Obama administration
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The "pay czar" tasked by the U.S. government with ruling on the eye-popping compensation of some of Wall Street's top earners is far from a stranger to big paychecks and the trappings of wealth.
Kenneth Feinberg made $5.76 million last year as a partner in his Washington law firm, Feinberg Rozen LLP, according to a government ethics filing obtained by Reuters.
And his assets, which include a stake in his law firm, two homes and dozens of investments, are worth anywhere from $11 million to $37 million, according to the filing, which places assets in broad value categories.
His homes are a $1.66 million house in Bethesda, Maryland, near Washington, and a $1.96 million vacation home in West Tisbury, Massachusetts, on Martha's Vineyard.
Strangely, some people are taking solace at this revelation, rather than being disgusted at the hypocrisy:
"If he is successful and he is compensated as a successful person, it certainly gives him a different view on the evaluation of other successful people," said Charles Elson, the director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. He said Feinberg's salary would make him more sympathetic to other high-earners and more likely to enjoy a similar lifestyle.
I am guessing that this optimism is based on the expectation, well, that Mr. Feinberg would not be doing the job he was appointed to do:
"If you asked a citizen who earned considerably less than that to opine on whether payment was excessive or not, they might have a different answer from Kenneth Feinberg," said Paul Hodgson, a compensation expert at independent research firm Corporate Library. "On the other hand, I think what he's supposed to be looking at is not whether payments are excessive in size, but whether they are correctly structured and could encourage excessive risk taking."
So it's the minimum wage situation all over again. The only way minimum wage could avoid hurting our economy is for it to be so low that no one would have been working at or below that wage anyway. The only way a pay czar can avoid hurting our economy is for him to have such a high expectation of executive compensation, that so few executives actually receive that much pay (not for long, anyway). Why do we want either again?
For the record, I have no problem with high (or even unreasonable) executive compensation. If it truly is unreasonable, then his boss (i.e. stockholders) should have stopped that from happening, and if they didn't, they are simply earning the wages of their inaction. I also don't have problem with high fees for lawyers. While I do think the fact that lawyers earn so much represents a facet of a problem in our society, it is not the cause of the problem itself, and in any case, lawyers' fees are established in a competitive marketplace, so by definition it is fair.
What I do have a problem is for someone, like Mr. Feinberg, who has received the high rewards that our capitalistic economy affords to come around with the power of the government to smack everyone else down so that no one else can make that much again. It's just like George Soros or Warren Buffet, the billionaires who feel that they made enough money so they want to make sure that no one else can follow in their footsteps.
There is something that's really unfair.
Why we do not need tort reform in any health care reform
A heckler raids Rep. Moran's town hall with insipid question about including a tort reform in a health care bill (via HotAir.com)
Well, Dr. Dean claims that it's because trial lawyers' lobby is too powerful and no one wants to take them on. That may be true at some level, but that's half truth.
The real truth is that not only is it difficult to prevent malpractice suits, but we should not limit malpractice suits in any way whatsoever because malpractice suits save lives. Trying to limit this beneficial operation would be as horrifying as it is unethical. Just talk to this father whose son came back to life after he won the malpractice suit against the greedy doctors.
Sen. Kennedy’s death and political maneuvers
Sen. Kennedy passed away yesterday.
As a late-comer to politics, I can't say that I know much about the man's work or what he stood for, other than that he was a liberal and that I probably wouldn't have agreed with many of his positions on most issues. Well, regardless of the disagreements, if anyone wants to "put aside our differences for today and respect the great work and achievements of Sen. Kennedy", I have nothing against that. Everyone deserves some respect once they pass away.
But, for those who still remain with us on Earth in this country of ours, I am very glad that Rush Limbaugh anticipated what the left may have done. And it was in March, too.
Now, if the left wants to politicize the death of a man, they now need to work against the backdrop of a prediction made more than 5 months ago. If the left would really stoop to the level of exploiting a man's death for their own agenda (well, even though it was also the late senator's agenda as well), I hope that in the light of the prediction made 5 months ago, the public will see it as the cheap political maneuver that it will be.
Straining ties with our allies
Is this how the Obama administration intends to heal the bruised relations and strained ties with our allies? (via Hot Air)
I cannot believe that this is the same administration that did not want to get involved in the internal affairs of Iran—to the degree that they wouldn't even criticize it, much less impose sanctions!—and the same president that went around the world apologizing to our "allies" in Europe and Middle East about how wrong America has been for the past 8 years.
How hard has it been to handle this Honduran affair correctly? Not hard at all!
Supposing that the administration knows nothing about Honduran constitution and their chain of command (after all, it knows nothing about the U.S. constitution—for example, where in the constitution does it say that the federal government has the power to take over health care, or any other industry comprising 15% of the nation's GDP?), this should not have been a difficult matter to decide or handle, if a firm decision is, once again, above his pay grade.
Ex-Pres. Zelaya has been supported by Chavez and Castro, clear enemies of American interest—in fact, Chavez went as far as to humiliate Mr. Obama himself in the world stage only a few months ago. How difficult is it to judge Mr. Zelaya by his friends? His friends are enemies of America. Wasn't it slightly possible that Mr. Zelaya himself might be an enemy of the United States (although he is apparently friends with some of her politicians)?
No one demands that Mr. Obama order a "targeted killing" against Mr. Zelaya. No one demands that Mr. Obama do anything at all. All that we demand is that Mr. Obama, just as he wisely distanced himself from the internal affairs of Iran, distance himself and his administration from the internal affairs of Honduras. We don't even ask that he do it indefinitely. We only ask that he wait until November, when an election that was to take place anyway had Mr. Zelaya remained president by obeying his country's constitution, and everything will be back to normal (on the other hand, if everything does not come back to normal, one would be justified in re-evaluating this stance).
All that anyone asked of Obama administration was the simple: "Don't just do something, stand there." And that would have been sufficient to remain on good terms with our good ally.
But, for inexplicable reasons of his own, the Obama administration had to not only strain the ties with our allies, as Pres. Bush arguably did, but cut it loose, cross the bridge, and burn the bridge. This extremely frustrating—because as a mere citizen, no matter how strongly I disagree with it, it feels as if I can do nothing for 3 years—decision is yet one more in a mountain of reasons why this administration needs to be ousted as quickly as possible—it's eroding the relations with our vital allies faster in 4 years than we can hope to repair in the ensuing decades.
Why we must resist further government encroachment into health care
Daniel Gross writes for Newsweek:
The same can't be said for the legions of people you hear on television, or read in the op-ed pages, or chat with at weekend barbecues, raging about taxpayer-funded health care as an unworkable, inefficient, Orwellian evil.
This is a something of a Churchillian moment. Never before have so many known so little about so much. The meme that my Slate colleague Timothy Noah has been tracking about Medicare not being a government program has two sources: ignorance and mendacity. Some people may really not know that Medicare is taxpayer-funded health care. That's ignorance. Many more people know it—and know the degree to which taxpayers are already funding lots of health care for them and their loved ones—and argue otherwise. That's mendacity.
I won't defend those who claim Medicare isn't a government program. They are hypocrites who either don't want to cut the benefits their are eligible for, or, more likely in the case of rich politicians, they will say anything to placate their base, even if it's patently untrue (I'll come back to this later). But, I object to this:
After the stock-research scandals of the 1990s, analysts were required to disclose whether they or their families owned stock in the companies they were talking about. That has since emerged as a key gauge of credibility. I'd like to see something similar for the health care debate. Before they weigh in on the prospects for health care reform, interview subjects—pundits, talking heads, policy wonks, editors, members of Congress—would have to disclose whether they or their family members rely on taxpayer-funded health insurance.
Except for Medicaid (which I think, we can allow to stand for some time, even though it is an evil—but perhaps necessary—government-funded program) and the Indian reservation health care, everyone who is receiving some sort of government health care actually deserve it: they paid into the system in money or blood (VA, which I will leave out because it's an exceptional case where the government is not only empowered but should be obliged to provide). We cannot, while complying with the Fourth Amendment, take these systems away from these people without just compensation (say, reimbursement of all their Medicare and Social Security tax in inflation-adjusted dollars, plus a nominal fee for breaking the "contract"). Nor should they be a target of criticism because they are simply receiving benefits from programs that they themselves paid into.
And this is why we should not allow further government encroachment. We let Social Security stand after FDR instituted it. We let Medicare stand even after LBJ's Great Society programs failed. And now these programs which we are forced to pay for is being used as a brand to label us "hypocrites". Talk about insult upon injury. Expect more of this down the line if we let this ObamaCare stand after Obama's socialist programs fail.
Now, as for what to do with Social Security and Medicare, well, what can we do? They are evil government programs, and it is incumbent on us conservatives to eliminate the necessity for these programs so that they may be allowed to die. The answer to this is probably not too dissimilar to Bush's failed Social Security reform: let people opt out.
I think we need to make a firm stand that people who have already paid into the system will be guaranteed the benefits they would have under the old system (yes, I am taking a page out of Obama playbook, but please bear with me). They can opt to continue to pay into Social Security and Medicare, and they will have the same benefits they would have had without the reform. Given that Social Security and Medicare would be hemorrhaging money soon, this means these programs will run a deficit before they die from lack of subscribers. I think we should pay for these deficits in these programs. Think of it as a down payment for getting the government out of our health and retirement. Think of it as similar to the price our Founding Fathers paid, in blood and war funds, so that the colonists can live freely without the interference from the empire.
If we truly believe in the free market, I think we can believe that a majority of those being forced to pay for Social Security and Medicare would choose to take control of their own funds, either to spend it in the now, or putting it away for retirement in some low-risk funds. And for the small minority who choose to remain in the program, I believe our economy, free of this tax burden, will be strong enough to pay for them, even though these entitlement programs will run deficits, like the USPS or Amtrak. And later we can make the system into an "opt-in" so that this burden will be even less.
But, this is all in the future. I happen to be a proponent of the market in health care and retirement systems. But as all of you may know, we may not get there immediately. Because first, we got to take back the White House, and we got to take back the Senate and the House. For now, before all that, we must resist further government encroachment into health care.
P.S. Now, I know that Social Security and Medicare don't work as they should: as a trust fund. Instead, it does work as a ponzi scheme, where the current beneficiaries are paid for by the current tax payers. But, as long as we are making a moral argument, we shouldn't punish the participants for the defects of the system itself.
Activist judge strikes down a law requiring ultrasound before abortion
As reported by Washington Post:
An Oklahoma judge decided Tuesday that doctors do not need to perform ultrasounds and offer women detailed information about the tests before performing abortions, striking down the strictest such law in the country.
Oklahoma County District Judge Vicki L. Robertson ruled that the 2008 law, which included other abortion-related provisions, violated a state constitutional provision that requires laws to address only one subject.
Thirteen states regulate the provision of ultrasounds by abortion providers, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-health think tank. The provisions have been pushed by abortion opponents as a means of deterring women from having the procedures.
Not knowing the Oklahoma constitution, I'll defer to the judge regarding this "single subject" rule. But, at least the way it's presented in the article, it doesn't sound like the judge is, as is her obligation, simply applying the law as it must be applied, regardless of whether it passes the common sense test or the public weal. She sounds gleeful that she found this technicality which allows her to strike down a law that she disagrees with.
Assuming that constitutional technicality issue is valid, I'm not sure if I should be wishing that this decision gets overturned. But I do hope that the lawmakers re-introduce the bill to conform to the rules, because it sounds like a really good idea: let the mother see her child before she decides to kill him/her; the only pressure is that the mother sees her unborn child, not whether she should kill it or not, and the question is between her, her doctor, and God, no one else (unfortunately the baby can't speak yet).
And yet, the anti-life groups pretend that this is somehow privacy issue:
A Tulsa clinic run by Nova Health Systems, represented by the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, filed a lawsuit charging that the law not only violated the state Constitution's "single-subject" rule but also infringed on a woman's right to privacy, violated her dignity and endangered her health.
...
Arizona and Florida require ultrasounds for abortions after the first trimester; Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama mandate ultrasounds for first-trimester abortions. The Guttmacher Institute says that because an ultrasound is not considered medically necessary in the first trimester, when nearly 90 percent of abortions occur, it views such laws as "a veiled attempt to personify the fetus and dissuade a woman from obtaining an abortion."
Er, "personify the fetus"? You cannot personify, outside literature, something that isn't already a person. That's why animal rights movement, which does try to personify a non-sentient being, hasn't gained traction with the general population. Most reasonable people know a person when they see one, and they also know when they are being fed B.S. about lower beings.
If a fetus is truly a non-person, no amount of ultrasound images or doctors' explanations would force a mother to think of that fetus as a person, the way no amount of sophistry can convince an adult that a baby doll is a person, even though it can "speak" and make various noises.
Most of the time, when unnecessary abortions of convenience are performed, the fact is that the mother is in denial. She is in denial that she has been entrusted with the life of a sentient being and, so far as she is able, bears the duty to protect that life. If more information, provided by modern instruments and the doctor's commentary, can help her see past her denial, what's wrong with that?
On the other hand, the law does not require that she see past her denial. The only thing it does, at least the way it seems to me, is that it makes it abundantly clear to God that her decision to terminate her baby was not born of ignorance and haste—and that her act was a willful act of destruction. But then, these anti-life groups don't believe in God anyway, so what are they really afraid of?
DefendGlenn.com
Previously I wrote that I don't think anything harmful will come out of Glenn Beck protest—the way nothing truly harmful comes from a mosquito bite, at least in the civilized world.
But, apparently some fans disagree. This is a fan site, as they say on the website:
DISCLAIMER: DEFENDGLENN.com is a FAN SITE, and is not affiliated with Glenn Beck, the Glenn Beck Program, Fox News Channel, NewsCorp Inc., or Premiere Radio Networks.
And the WHOIS record suggests that this is created directly in response to the Color of Change campaign against Glenn Beck (although it is a fairly quick response: the campaign itself seems to have begun on July 30th and didn't surface even on lefty news outlets (i.e. DailyKos) until Aug. 11 or so—the defendglenn.com site was registered on Aug. 8th.
I still believe Mr. Beck is hurt in no way by the boycott campaign. But, I guess if you believe in this sort of activism (I don't) I guess it couldn't hurt if you let the advertisers know that you are not pleased by their side-taking.