The Future of Healthcare?

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force made a startling announcement this week, changing guidelines for screening for breast cancer. The group seven years ago recommended that women over 40 years old get mammograms, but have now issued revised guidelines advising women to get mammograms after turning 50.

It is certainly the case that new data can lead to a change in a diagnostic or treatment regimen, so the USPSTF's decision hopefully reflects their best current thinking.

But the worry is that the decision could reflect a desire to keep government health care costs down. Even if that wasn't the motivation for this decision, the mammogram controversy illustrates what may be a common occurrence under government-guided healthcare: to what extent will the advice, guidelines, or requirements be a function of the government's desire to cut costs?

Real Economics

This Wall Street Journal article on the negative impact of political uncertainty on small business activity illustrates the "anti-stimulus" actions that Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress have taken. Healthcare and global warming legislation suggest that businesses costs may increase in unpredictable ways, while the risk of increasing taxes takes money and incentives for businesses to grow.

On February 1, I laid out my own suggestions in this column for a proper plan to promote economic growth: cutting taxes, barriers to trade, and regulations without PR and legal assaults on businessmen. Instead, Obama and the Democrats have pursued the exact opposite strategy, inducing fear and uncertainty among the very businesses and people we need to feel confident to expand their activities and grow the economy.

The Iran-Venezuela Axis

I wrote on September 29 that the growing relationship between Iran and Venezuela had as one of its goals the installation of Iranian nuclear missiles on Venezuelan soil to threaten America.

I'm now not the only on with that view, since recently Warren Kozak in the Wall Street Journal expressed a similar view.

Iran's nuclear problem is not just of concern because of its impact on the Middle East or Israel, as big a problem as that is for Amercia given the multiple wars we have fought in the region since 1991. If left unchecked, it also poses a direct military threat to American cities.

Clean Water

Bjorn Lomborg, a former member of Greenpeace, has done yeoman's work to explain to anyone willing to listen that, of all the problems in the world, global warming is low on the list of priorities to address (and he assumes global warming is a problem).

Lomborg convenes policy makers and economists to develop the Copenhagen Consensus, which represents this group's assessment of what are the truly urgent problems facing the world. Top on the list is access to clean water for the three billion people in the world who lack it.

Lomborg's recent column in the Wall Street Journal discusses the awful conditions that the lack of clean water creates, and why a focus on global warming pales in comparison for the world's poor.

Terrorism in America

Nidal Hasan's shooting rampage at Fort Hood is the worst terrorist attack in America since 9/11.

Naturally the left prefers to think of this as an example of what befalls stressed-out soldiers, but there are lots of soldiers dealing with psychological problems who don't scream "Allahu Akbar" and then proceed to gun down fellow soldiers.

Thankfully, Joe Lieberman is promising an investigation into what the government knew, or didn't know, about Hasan's actions and state of mind before his terror rampage.

The Anti-Stimulus

Johnson & Johnson announced layoffs of 8,200 people. This is just the latest announced job cuts in the pharmaceutical industry, where Pfizer (19,500 job cuts), Merck (15,930), and Eli Lilly (5,500) have recently announced job cuts.

Job reductions are unfortunately a normal part of companies and the economy more broadly reacting to changes in business conditions.

But one such changing condition is the assault being waged by the Obama administration and Democrats on the health care industry through its proposed health care legislation. If profits are tougher to come by, companies will cut jobs and costs to help offset their losses.

J&J went out of its way to say that its job cuts were not related to pending healthcare legislation, and while that may be true, it is certainly possible that they feel the need to say that as the company looks to garner favor with the government.

Think of it as a form of "anti-stimulus", with Obama trying to create public sector and make-work jobs with his "stimulus" bill while high quality private sector jobs in the pharmaceutical industry are lost.

Auo Fiasco

The Wall Street Journal reports that politicians are exerting political pressure on GM to help its constituents, under the premise that since GM took government money, it is like a government agency.

The article highlights a number of efforts by politicians that hurt GM financially, and by extension, the American taxpayer through the government's ownership stake in GM.

This is the face of socialism, where those with political pull get favors to help them economically. And with GM's vast size, there are lots of favors that can be doled out.