With the enormous and dangerous implications of Obamacare for American health care, employment, innovation and the economy, understanding the actual track record of existing governmental control and management of health care services is of enormous relevance to what health care nationalization/socialization promises to create.

As a result, the Independent Institute has just released the very important, new Independent Policy Report, Failure to Provide: Healthcare at the Veterans Administration, by Research Fellow Ronald Hamowy.

As the news release for Failure to Provide states:

Before World War I, the federal government was almost entirely uninvolved in providing direct medical care to veterans, although generous pensions comprised 41.5 percent of the federal budget by 1893. After the war, advocates of nationalized health care for veterans argued that it “would constitute the most efficient and least traumatic system for continuing the care veterans had received while on active duty.”

The Veterans Bureau was consequently established in 1921, but was abolished nine years later due to extensive corruption, and replaced by the Veterans Administration. The VA was given responsibility not only for health care—which was extended to include outpatient and psychiatric services, substance abuse treatment, and care for non-service related illnesses—but also for all other veterans affairs. Additional legislation passed after World War II even contained measures such as unemployment compensation and educational allowances.

While the VA’s budget, payroll, and number of facilities expanded rapidly to become “by far the most extensive [medical program] in the country,” its standard of care stagnated, and complaints of inefficiency and negligence mounted. A 1949 commission “uncovered a staggering amount of waste,” a result of the highly political nature of the VA’s health care system.

The VA was raised to a Cabinet department in 1989, although Hamowy argues that there was “not one substantive argument put forward” that justified doing so. The Cabinet position offered no lasting changes to address the extensive waste and inferior care. Conditions further deteriorated as the U.S. began to intervene in Iraq and Afghanistan, “substantially increasing the number of veterans needing medical care” from an already dilapidated system. Hamowy finds that “the lifetime costs of providing disability benefits and medical care to the veterans of these two wars . . . will amount to between $350 and $700 billion.”

The VA has clearly overstepped its original role as a health care provider for veterans with service-related disabilities, a raison d’être that the author believes “was extremely weak to begin with.” As new evidence of the VA’s inefficiency reaches the news daily, such as having to reconsider the Gulf War syndrome cases, Failure to Provide presents a compelling examination of the rationale behind the administration that “paved the way for instituting a national system of socialized medicine.”

FIRST Truman went to war against Korea without Congress,
and I didn’t speak up because the communists had to be stopped.

THEN Clinton passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996,
and I didn’t speak up because innocent people don’t need habeas corpus.

THEN Bush passed the USA PATRIOT Act,
and I didn’t speak up because terrorists don’t deserve trials.

THEN Obama ridiculed the Supreme Court,
and I didn’t speak up because I don’t like corporations.

THEN Obama classified the Constitution as messy rules standing in the way of important ends,
and by that time no one could remember what a root principle is.

With apologies to Pastor Niemöller

Here is a hilarious, prescient, classic skit with Christopher Walken and Tim Meadows from NBC TV’s Saturday Night Live on the “Census Bureau.” The skit originally aired during the previous Census on April 8, 2000.

HT: Paul Theroux

I will be taking a short business trip in a few days, and some time ago I made reservations with a Sheraton Hotel at my destination. Today I received via e-mail a confirmation notice from the hotel, along with a weather forecast and some boilerplate about the hotel’s facilities. Quickly scanning this message, I was struck by something in a section labeled “Your Privacy” that reads as follows:

Please note: For security purposes, you will be asked to provide a valid government or state-issued photo ID at check-in.

I cannot recall ever having  been required to show official identification papers merely to register at a hotel — a credit card, yes, but not a government-issued photo ID. Though offended, I cannot say that I am surprised by this turn of events. I wonder whether some law or regulation now requires the hotels to check their guests’ official papers.

Anyone who has paid the least attention over the years has noticed that more and more businesses and government agencies have required that one show his official — that is, government-issued — identity papers in order to be served or admitted. Airlines, of course, have required such identification for many years, although I can remember a time when they did not do so — indeed, a time when one simply walked, with freinds and relatives if one wished, to the departure gate and boarded the airplane without any interception for security screening at all. Auto rental companies demanded an official driver’s license. Now, even hotels  treat their customers as suspected terrorists.

Who’ll do so next — the dry cleaners, the grocery store, the bank, the gas station? Will the gestapo lurk outside my front gate to make sure that I identify myself properly before driving my automobile onto the highway? Will the church demand my papers before administering the Holy Communion?

Most Americans, of course, will take such new impositions in stride, just as they have accepted the outrageous treatment they must suffer at the airports. If you have nothing to hide . . . la, la, la. One who protests or complains will be viewed as paranoid or as a troublemaker.

The slope toward totalitariansim is slippery, indeed, but sometimes the slope is so gradual that one scarcely notices that one is sliding downward. Ask the ordinary Germans who slid down that slope after 1933; heed the voice of those who still recall, with a chill, the horrible sound of those dreaded words, “Papiere Bitte!”

Last week I wrote about Rachel Hoffman’s death as she was being used in a sting operation by the Tallahassee Police Department to try to arrest two men on drug charges.  As I noted last week, the sting operation was more successful than the TPD had originally envisioned, and rather than drug convictions, the two men were convicted of the more serious charge of murder.  The unfortunate side effect was that the murder charges came about because they killed Rachel Hoffman.

I also noted last week that Hoffman’s family filed a civil suit against the City of Tallahassee for damages in this case.  Meanwhile, Ryan Pender, the only TPD officer who lost his job as a result of the case, had appealed his firing and the appeal was being heard by an arbitrator.  The arbitrator has ruled that Pender was unjustly fired, so should be reinstated, and be given back pay and benefits.

Police Chief Dennis Jones stands by his original decision to fire Pender, and is looking into whether the arbitration ruling should be appealed, or whether the TPD should abide by the ruling and reemploy Pender.

One commenter on my earlier post, “Federalist,” suggested that the union that defended Pender should be liable for any civil damages, not the city.  That’s an interesting thought.  Of course, I am well aware that anybody can sue anybody else for civil damages, and the Hoffman family chose to sue the city, not the police union.  But Police Chief Jones, representing the city, says Pender’s actions were the cause of Rachel’s death, and that he did not follow city policy.  Meanwhile, the union defends Pender’s behavior.  In a moral (if not legal) sense, shouldn’t this make the union more responsible than the city for any damages resulting from Pender’s actions?

President Obama is scheduled to be interviewed by Fox News’ Bret Baier on Wednesday. I would really love to seem him confronted with a few tough questions like these:

• Your administration has pointed to recent insurance premium rate increases in California to make the case for the health care bill. Many pieces of the health bill are actually mandates on insurance companies to pay for new things like coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, a cap out of pocket expenses, and paying for people’s children’s insurance up to the age of 26. Aside from whether or not these are good ideas, if you require insurance to pay for new things that they never had to pay for before, won’t the cost inevitably be passed on to consumers in the form of higher, not lower premiums? How can you argue that these reforms will lower premiums?

• If the goal is to lower health care costs, what’s wrong with the Republican idea of allowing the purchase of insurance across state lines? The government-run “exchanges” you have proposed are not the same thing because they impose federal regulations on the details of those plans rather than letting consumers decide for themselves what they want.

• You said on 60 Minutes that once this bill has passed, you will “own” the health care issue for good or bad. If the bill passes and costs to consumers or to the government continue to go up, or if quality goes down, will you promise not to blame the free market?

• Critics have pointed out that the bill achieves the goal of “deficit neutrality” by having 10 years of tax increases, and only 6 years of spending. What is your response to this?

• Doesn’t the $1 trillion price tag of the legislation understate its the true cost by ignoring the much larger cost to the American people of the individual mandate? Isn’t the individual mandate simply a tactic to redistribute wealth without the visibility of large tax increases?

• You have argued that the $500 billion in Medicare cuts are being used both to shore up Medicare and at the same time being used to pay for new spending. Isn’t this double counting?

• A new New England Journal of Medicine study has found that 46% of doctors could leave medicine if Obamacare passes. If you try to cover 30 million additional people with 46% fewer doctors, how will this not lead to higher prices and/or rationing?

A popular slogan of the Italian Fascists under Mussolini was, “Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato” (everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state). I recall this expression frequently as I observe the state’s far-reaching penetration of my own society.

What of any consequence remains beyond the state’s reach in the United States today? Not wages, working conditions, or labor-management relations; not health care; not money, banking, or financial services; not personal privacy; not transportation or communication; not education or scientific research; not farming or food supply; not nutrition or food quality; not marriage or divorce; not child care; not provision for retirement; not recreation; not insurance of any kind; not smoking or drinking; not gambling; not political campaign funding or publicity; not real estate development, house construction, or housing finance; not international travel, trade, or finance; not a thousand other areas and aspects of social life.

One might affirm that the state still keeps its hands off religion, but it actually does not. It certifies certain religious organizations as legitimate and condemns others, as many young men discovered to their sorrow when they attempted to claim the status of conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. It assigns members of certain religions, but not members of others, as chaplains in its armed services.

Besides, isn’t statism itself a religion for most Americans? Do they not honor the state above all else, above even the commandments of a conventional religion they may embrace? If their religion tells them “thou shalt not murder,” but the state orders them to murder, then they murder. If the state tells them to rob, to destroy property, and to imprison innocent people, then, notwithstanding any religious strictures, they rob, destroy property, and imprison innocent people, as millions of victims of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and millions of victims of the so-called Drug War in this country will attest. Moreover, in every form of adversity, Americans look to the state for their personal salvation, just as before the twentieth century their ancestors looked to Divine Providence.

When the state produces unworkable or unsatisfactory conditions in any area of life, and therefore elicits complaints and protests, as it has for example in every area related to health care, it responds to these complaints and protests by making “reforms” that heap new laws, regulations, and government bureaus atop the existing mountain of counterproductive interventions. Thus, each new “reform” makes the government more monstrous and destructive than it was before. Citizen, be careful what you wish for; the government just might give it to you good and hard.

The areas of life that remain outside the government’s participation, taxation, subsidization, regulation, surveillance, and other intrusion or control have become so few and so trivial that they scarcely merit mention. We verge ever closer upon the condition in which everything that is not prohibited is required. Yet, the average American will declare loudly that he is a free man and that his country is the freest in the world. Thus, in a country where more and more is for the state, where virtually nothing is outside the State, and where, aside from pointless complaints, nothing against the State is permitted, Americans have become ideal fascist citizens. Like the average German during the years that Hitler ruled Germany, most Americans today, inhabiting one of the most pervasively controlled countries in the history of the world, think they are free.

Drudge linked to news that C-SPAN is making their entire archives available online — this is good stuff, and kudos to Brian Lamb for his outstanding vision. On the other hand, Drudge is not linking or reporting articles about Michael Furlong, the Senior Executive Service guy who has been hiring contractors to go and “do” intelligence outside of regulation and policy. One report of the situation is here. Furlong’s official Air Force biography fails to mention he was fired for the utter incompetence of his Voice of America work in Iraq in the summer of 2003. Furlong did receive a Pentagon award for his work in “strategic influence” as an SAIC contractor — possibly working in the ill-fated fifth floor Office of Strategic Influence. In any case, Furlong is clearly an overpaid hack, and a model case study in how the government does “information.” Old-boy networks, staffed by dummies, with no accountability and unlimited taxpayer and FED-funded budgets — that is the trademark of the state. C-Span may not be a completely market-based enterprise, but I’ll take Brian Lamb’s honest approach anytime.

Good ole Mitt “has urged the Tea Party leaders not to be quite so independent minded”, cautioning them not to mount direct electoral challenges outside the GOP establishment. I guess Romney will be running for President on the Anti-Change platform, against Obama’s “Really, I mean it this time Change” platform. Decisions, decisions.

Here’s John Papola, one of the people behind the Keynes-Hayek Rap. On the Mises Blog, Jeff Tucker discusses Papola’s talk. Roger Garrison’s Austrian Business Cycle Theory lecture–which is the best self-contained discussion of the basics available anywhere–can be found on the Mises Institute’s YouTube Channel, and his slides can be downloaded from his website.