Conservatives Are Not Against Big Government

Conservatives just want to distribute income upwards instead of downwards.

[An] example of big government that conservatives support, highly paid professionals e.g. doctors, dentists and lawyers use licensing restrictions to limit both foreign and domestic competition. While the government has been using the banner of “free trade” to drive down the wages of manufacturing workers, it has simultaneously been increasing the protection afforded doctors in order to prevent any similar downward pressure on their wages.

If doctors in the United States were paid the same as doctors in Western Europe, it would save us more than $80 billion a year. The big government subsidy to doctors alone is close to two times the money involved in Bush’s tax cuts to the wealthy.

via Dean Baker: Liberals Working for the Right.

Illegal Immigrant’s Transplant, Cheaper Over Life, Isn’t Covered

This is what happens when xenophobia trumps economics, humanity, and common sense. This operation would pay for itself in about a years and a quarter, but ignorant policy prevails.

[T]he government would pay for a lifetime of dialysis, costing $75,000 a year, but not for the $100,000 transplant that would make it unnecessary.

via Illegal Immigrant’s Transplant, Cheaper Over Life, Isn’t Covered – NYTimes.com.

Single-Payer Health Care: $570 Billion Cheaper

Economist Gerald Friedman has what looks to be the silver bullet against the claim that single-payer health care is infeasible on economic grounds, showing how “Medicare for all” could save billions of dollars while improving millions of lives.

via Single-Payer Health Care: $570 Billion Cheaper – Truthdig.

Healthcare Reform: Rhetoric vs. Reality

Virtually everyone agrees that our healthcare system is unsustainable in its current form. The impact of escalating healthcare costs combined with mediocre value created for each dollar spent has finally entered the national consciousness.

via Healthcare Reform: Rhetoric vs. Reality – Nicole Perlroth – Everything Ventured – Forbes.

Eight Reasons US Healthcare Costs 96% More Than Cuba’s—With the Same Results

Life expectancy of about 78 years of age in Cuba is equivalent to the US. Yet, in 2005, Cuba was spending $193 per person on health care, only 4% of the $4540 being spent in the US. Where could the other 96% of US health care dollars be going?

via Eight Reasons US Healthcare Costs 96% More Than Cuba’s–With the Same Results | | AlterNet.

2008 Nobel Prize Winner — Paul Krugman

I was pleased to hear this morning that Paul Krugman has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. Paul is a professor of economics at Princeton University, syndicated columnist for the New York Times, and the author of Conscience of a Liberal. I highly recommend reading the book, which provides some historical prespective around why the United States has developed the political climate we now live in. His main focus seems to be Universal Healthcare, and he supports his case by linking it to other successfully implemented New Deal policies.