More Bureaucracy and Little Else

An excellent article in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/health/07health.html?pagewanted=all) recently pointed out that doctors spend incredible sums of money dealing with insurance companies. Doctors often must hire two office workers just to submit documents and talk to insurance reps. That means they have to make enough money to pay for those workers, meaning they squeeze more patients into thinner time slots. It is impossible to know by how much the quality of care is reduced, but it is certainly significant. One doctor said that by going off the hmo, he was able to see half the patients for twice the time, and was able to offer much more individualized and quality care.

The uselessness and cost of extra bureaucracy is a great argument against government run health care. It is an even better argument against the ludicrous cap and trade bill currently before Congress. Instead of implementing a simple carbon tax and using the revenue exclusively to combat environmental degradation, cap and trade sets up a complex system that will end up doing little to limit carbons but will do plenty to make ordinary Americans suffer.

Even before the bill has been passed, oil companies are already saying that they will be passing off all the new costs to consumers. Even worse, they will not limit production as the plan intends, but simply purchase oil from foreign importers (Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a1ZiIqv3E4QE). Basically, its a triple-threat of bad policy: it will not limit carbons as intended, ordinary Americans will be hit hard in a bad economy, and Americans will lose jobs when oil companies close local plants to save money.

What we're going to get from this bill is an expansion of government and little else. It's bad for the economy, it's bad for the environment, and it's bad for America.