Earlier this month, I spoke at a conference in Pittsburgh for the Society for the Education of Physicians and Patients (SEPP). A video of my presentation is now available on YouTube. Note, it is multi-part video. Follow on sections are listed on the side of the YouTube page.

Kaiser​Net​work​.org culls evidence under the banner, “Pharmaceutical Industry Spends More Than $13M on Ads ‘Thanking’ Lawmakers Who Supported SCHIP Legislation.”

Article: “Don’t Expand NATO,” by Benjamin H. Friedman and Justin Logan in World Politics Review

Article: “Nuclear Energy: Risky Business,” by Jerry Taylor in Reason Magazine

Podcast: “Jacob Zuma and the Future of South Africa,” featuring Tony Leon

Op-Ed: “Questions and Answers About Obama’s Health Plan,” by Michael D. Tanner in the McClatchy News Service

Radio Highlight: Adam B. Schaeffer On Education

“Universal Coverage Kills,” by Michael F. Cannon

“In Defense Of Liberty,” by William A. Niskanen

Podcast: Freedom in Africa, featuring Andrew Mwenda

“Rails Won’t Save America,” by Randal O’Toole

Video Highlight: Comparing Today’s Crisis to the Great Depression featuring Jim Powell

The following comes from a recent Health Affairs article by Katherine Baicker and Amitabh Chandra:

Insuring the uninsured will give them access to the sort of health care that everyone else receives: a combination of valuable care, overuse of some costly interventions with little proven benefit, and underuse of some vitally important therapies–care that is sometimes coordinated but often fragmented. This is better than no care, but it highlights the problem of collapsing the entire debate about U.S. health care reform down to the issue of uninsurance: health insurance does not guarantee good health care.

I would have added the added potential for harmful care, but the point is well-made. Read the whole thing.

Members of the Anti-Universal Coverage Club will be interested in my article published today at National Review Online:

McCain, Obama, and the voters would do well to keep in mind what this month — October 2008 — has to say about the quality of medical care when government is in charge.

Federal bureaucrats have announced that, as of this month, the Medicare program will no longer provide financial rewards to doctors and hospitals who harm patients.

That is not a typo. For more than 40 years, Medicare has provided financial rewards to providers when a patient requires follow-up care following a medical error…

It doesn’t have to be this way. More than 60 years ago, markets devised health plans that discourage medical errors by forcing doctors and hospitals to bear the financial costs of all such errors. You know them as plans like Group Health Cooperative and Kaiser Permanente. Doctors and patients who choose those plans tend to like them, and the plans receive high marks for quality, which suggests the financial incentives they use serve patients better.

Why does it take Medicare more than 40 years to take such baby steps? Especially when the market developed a solution to this problem over 60 years ago?

The answer is that Medicare — like all universal-coverage schemes — is operated by the government, and government resists innovation. In this case, resistance to innovation kills.

As for the Church of Universal Coverage … well, they may catch the vapors.

Massachusetts is the only state in the Union that requires individuals to purchase health insurance. Enforcing that “individual mandate” requires state officials to define what counts as health insurance. And so goes residents’ freedom to choose. 

According to yesterday’s Boston Globe:

Starting Jan. 1, residents who do not have health insurance that meets minimum standards set by state regulators could face a hefty tax penalty.…

In general, to meet the test, a plan must offer coverage for prescription drugs, preventive and primary care, hospitalization, mental health and substance abuse services, and emergency services.

Don’t want mental health coverage? Tough. Da gov’ment says you needs to buy it. In a little over a year, the government will add “radiation and chemotherapy; maternity and newborn care; and diagnostic imaging and screening tests” to the list. 

Massachusetts residents might think they are competent to choose their own health plan — but their betters on Beacon Hill think differently.

If you don’t want to pay higher premiums for those services, Beacon Hill has another way to make you pay. Again, the Globe:

All health insurance companies licensed in Massachusetts will be required to notify customers about whether their plans meet state standards. However, the rules put the onus on individuals to make sure their coverage meets the state’s minimum standards, because it will be individuals, and not employers, who are assessed the penalty.

Currently, the state’s universal healthcare law requires most residents to have insurance or face a tax penalty of up to $912 per year. But the rules do not mandate what the coverage must include.

Regulators said yesterday that the penalty in 2009 would probably be higher than $912.

That’s a direct tax on the right to choose one’s health insurance. And it’s only gonna grow.

Unless…