55 Replies to “A Paul Krugman Poll Goes Horribly Wrong”

  2. The interesting thing is neither Americans nor Canadians always realize that the “Canadian Health Care” system is really a bit of a myth; other than the Canadian Forces medical (and dental) services to its personnel, no such pan-Canadian health care system exists. The provinces all have their own approach.
    To properly mirror the “Canadian Health Care” system, the US would have to have 50 separate state systems.
    What President Obama is pushing, because he is attempting to promote federally what possibly ought to be a state concern, seems more akin to the dreaded British NHS.

  3. He’s probably wondering where all the ringers are that the unions usually send to these events to shout everyone down.

  4. Best comment over on Economist.com concerning their “What went wrong with Economics” article…”Sir, You lost me when you quoted Paul Krugman.” LOL!

  5. We are getting very close to critical mass down here in the land of the free. Once a majority realizes they can receive largess “from the government” paid for by “the rich,” the ball game is over.

  6. Excellent point jjm. Also most Americans assume that cdn government heathcare includes pharmaceuticals when it does not.

  7. Same Krugman who writes all those “high powered” economic articles ? And global warming ?
    Clueless in economics and health care and climate. Probably in everything.
    And yet the NY Slimes gives him lotsa ink. Pathetic.

  8. Mystery Meat, your comment got me thinking. I don’t think that’s it, or at least not all of it.
    [climbs on soapbox]
    Paul Krugman, while he appears to be an annoying little pencil neck, is not an -idiot-. Clearly, he is very clever. So for him to believe something this wrong is interesting. I would say he’s not stupid. He’s willfully blind.
    See, Krugman (and most liberals these days) believes in central planning. He really, really thinks that if someone could just take CONTROL of the whole health system, shake it hard, cut away all the dead wood and streamline things in a logical, thoughtful fashion, that it would obviously work better and be cheaper. And of course you have to have monitors to watch the thing running and MAKE SURE that everybody does it right and doesn’t slack off or screw up the works.
    That is a basic, powerful concept in our culture. Top down streamlining of a system by a trusted, conscientious management is a common theme in business and government. So Krugman’s not stupid for thinking that. Everybody thinks that.
    Problem is, it isn’t TRUE. If there’s one thing we have seen over the last century, it is that central control and planning does not work. In fact it is almost always a catastrophe in business or government, and it makes people subject to it miserable. Or dead.
    Krugman’s problem is he doesn’t believe that. Down deep, he clings to central planning like a holy icon. Seven out of seven Canadians in an unplanned, impromptu poll say their socialized medicine system sucks, and Krugman keeps on believing his idea will still work.
    The problem I have with Krugman is not that he has ideas which are wrong. My problem is he is unshakable. There is no evidence or argument which could deflect him from his pursuit of central planned everything.
    When I started investigating gun control back in the early 1990s, I was shocked by the irrational behavior of anti-gun believers. You can’t talk to them. Its impossible. If you beat them with a 2×4 they still won’t listen. They will argue against things which are self evidently true, like the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
    Krugman is the same with socialized medicine. He actively runs away from evidence that doesn’t agree with his beliefs, and will attack the person who says such things without mercy.
    He’s not just blind, he is willfully blind. That is the hallmark of the liberal mind.

  9. Phantom,
    If that were true, how is it that central planning degenerates into a corrupt power hungry manipulative system? No. I believe it is that way from the start and the lie about it being a superior & less costly is to cover the true intentions.

  10. Paul Frugman is for lack of a better word an “idiot” has been for years since becoming a political hack at the NYT. Read his socialist handbook “The Conscience of a Liberal” for a true examination of his character.
    He lives in a socialist utopia and is rewarded for it by the left who worship at the alter of the NYT. The fun part is he keeps getting proven wrong on economics, energy, climate change and now health care. Over and Over.
    So what does the left do? They give him a Nobel for work he did over 20 years ago, strange group these “liberals”.

  11. I guess Kruggers thinks it is a “bad move” to get new information when formulating policy. That explains a few of his columns.

  12. What the Americans refuse to accept is the basis premise of both systems:
    1. In a for-profit system, every patient is a revenue-generating body. To keep the revenue coming in, they have to treat the patient well and efficiently, else the money will go to another provider.
    2. In a socialized system, every patient is a drain on resources. In order to make the money last to the end of the fiscal, every patient has to be moved through efficiently and with as little effort as possible. If you can’t do that, you ration or refuse.

  13. @Gord Turk
    Health Canada does provide for all pharmaceuticals in a hospital/clinic setting. Each province must provide a public insurance option for drugs based on age, health problems, ability to pay, etc. administered by that province in the way that they see fit – but they cannot deny you insurance. Private insurance – flex coverage – is also available which is purchased by many companies for their employees with extra coverage (better hospital room, eye glasses, dental, better drug subsidies, better family plans, loss of limbs, etc.) but this is still largely subsidized by employees depending on what each employee feels is necessary and how much of these benefits they use.

  14. I should have said, “What the American liberals and socialists refuse…” Pardon the broad brush, Yankee pals.

  15. Neither system, Canadian or American, is perfect. jjm has an excellent point mentioning that all provinces have their own system.
    The Canadian system isn’t perfect; luckily we have our back-up “private plan” across the border if we want to use it. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t want to trade my Albertan health care for another system.
    Whatever system you have, you work with, and try to make the best of it. The framework has developed over many years, and because of that there is (likely) stability.
    The transition costs of moving from one system to another are huge, and the pain would be immense.
    I think this is what the Obamites may not see. Moving from one system to another is difficult, hazardous, and painful, and there will be plenty of misery along the way.

  16. I think Alberta has the best idea but carried a little further. There can be both systems at play at the same time. If healthcare is a government responsibility should there not be competition for the patient? They are responsible for my healthcare. Not the welfare of the unions, managers, consultants et al. The startup would be intense because the demand is there but it takes a smarter person than me to figure forward costs of the ‘money follows the patient’ idea. There is more than one health care worker that is a union member because they have to be. Give them a say on how it should be run would be a big improvement I’m thinkin’.

  17. Mystery Meat what I hope will occur in the US is a process which has already begun in Canada. Doctors going Galt.
    Doctors in Canada do not own wholly for themselves their talent, experience, and education. In other words, they do not own their brains. The system, due to an inability for them to seek free market compensation for their services, makes them a sub class of humans and in effect a quasi slave, or to be more polite, as one doctor friend tells me, just a public employee with an in name only private practice.
    No one else, due to their education, is restricted in Canada for plying their trade and seeking free market compensation like doctors and medical professionals are. Are doctors in the USA willing to surrender so much of their freedom? Is it even constitutionally possible (citing the property rights guarantee in the 5th Amendment) for Obama to force doctors to surrender their private practices to a single source of compensation (knowing full well that private health insurance is to be outlawed in the US as stated in page 16 of the legislation)? Hopefully, it will never get so far in the USA for the majority to be given the opportunity consume the health care providers services to the point of exhaustion. A constitutional challenge by an association representing doctors in the US, which succeeds in establishing their rights as free individuals, would be the ultimate smack down of the supposed “constitutional expert” BHO is purported to be.

  19. Phantom
    You stole my thunder. I was going to say: I suppose he’ll change his mind now.
    You forgot to mention that the benefit of supporting centralized or top down anything is the remuneration for those at the top. This is the ultimate motive, those at the “top” are well aware of this. This is why the left is impervious to facts; they’re whole premise has been debunked. They use Orwellian speech when speaking to the people at the “bottom” to hide their motives under the guise of… well have your choice.

  20. Indiana and sonofAtilla, I think the blanked assumption of corruption is incorrect. The corruption comes after the centralization, not as a reason for centralizing.
    Why I say that is the pattern in large companies and governments is identical. The more centralization of decision making and monitoring of employees, the more “shrinkage”, employee discontent and people generally skyving off you find.
    Difference between governments and business is obvious. A business that can’t break out of the model (GM!!!!) goes broke. Governments raise taxes.
    So Krugman “might” be a shill for corrupt interests or not, I certainly have no evidence to support that assertion or I’d say it.
    All I’m saying is the urge to central planning is not automatically corrupt in the beginning. I do agree that it does become corrupt in time, as surely as the day follows the night.

  22. From a recent Mises.org daily e-mail. Fascinating bit of research done my Milton Friedman back in 1992.
    Some years ago, the Nobel-laureate economist Milton Friedman studied the history of healthcare supply in America. In a 1992 study published by the Hoover Institution, entitled “Input and Output in Health Care,” Friedman noted that 56 percent of all hospitals in America were privately owned and for-profit in 1910. After 60 years of subsidies for government-run hospitals, the number had fallen to about 10 percent. It took decades, but by the early 1990s government had taken over almost the entire hospital industry. That small portion of the industry that remains for-profit is regulated in an extraordinarily heavy way by federal, state and local governments so that many (perhaps most) of the decisions made by hospital administrators have to do with regulatory compliance as opposed to patient/customer service in pursuit of profit. It is profit, of course, that is necessary for private-sector hospitals to have the wherewithal to pay for healthcare.
    Friedman’s key conclusion was that, as with all governmental bureaucratic systems, government-owned or -controlled healthcare created a situation whereby increased “inputs,” such as expenditures on equipment, infrastructure, and the salaries of medical professionals, actually led to decreased “outputs” in terms of the quantity of medical care. For example, while medical expenditures rose by 224 percent from 1965–1989, the number of hospital beds per 1,000 population fell by 44 percent and the number of beds occupied declined by 15 percent. Also during this time of almost complete governmental domination of the hospital industry (1944–1989), costs per patient-day rose almost 24-fold after inflation is taken into account.
    The more money that has been spent on government-run healthcare, the less healthcare we have gotten. This kind of result is generally true of all government bureaucracies because of the absence of any market feedback mechanism. Since there are no profits in an accounting sense, by definition, in government, there is no mechanism for rewarding good performance and penalizing bad performance. In fact, in all government enterprises, exactly the opposite is true: bad performance (failure to achieve ostensible goals, or satisfy “customers”) is typically rewarded with larger budgets. Failure to educate children leads to more money for government schools. Failure to reduce poverty leads to larger budgets for welfare state bureaucracies. This is guaranteed to happen with healthcare socialism as well.
    Krugman IS an idiot and here’s why: his favourite topic of instruction in his economics class — the one he looks forward to each year — is on the so-called Paradox of Thrift. If you actually believe in this invented paradox [savings can be good privately, but bad publicly] you are unequivocally a IDIOT.

  23. Sorry Phantom but if it walks like a duck…
    WRT politics and central planning I believe the larger percentage of leftist politicians and those that support them could not command the incomes they have and desire in the free market. Add this with their moral superiority(ironic isn’t it) and the injustice of the aforementioned problem with income and you’ve got your conflict of interest. JMO
    I’m not buying the business analogy, as companies grow there is a need to centralize many operations. This is done to ensure consistency and quality throughout the company. Leftist politicians don’t advocate centralized policies out of necessity.

  24. He will always be, in the words of James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal “former Enron advisor, Paul Krugman”.

  25. Nicely summarized Yukon Gold at July 29, 2009 11:37 AM.
    Can I borrow it?
    Hell, I pretty much pilfered it from Sean Hannity and Andrew Wilkow, so go right ahead!

  26. I’m willing to believe the American system needs some reforming. I’m not willing to believe that the Canadian model is the way to go.
    Make no mistake, Obama doesn’t care about the health of Americans. He cares about what he can control. This health care plan will be more costly than some care to imagine.

  28. What’s funny to me is that you guys actually believe that you can have a private healthcare system that A) pays staff more B) generates profit for share-holders and C) is cheaper than Canadian healthcare.
    Talk about being suckers.
    But then again… you also have managed to convince yourself that climate change isn’t happening, and that the arctic isn’t melting, despite the hardest evidence possible, namely the opening of the Northwest passage.
    http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/07/29/0052242/Northern-Sea-Route-Through-Arctic-Becomes-a-Reality?from=rss

  29. Oh, John, wrong on so many levels.
    Perhaps you haven’t heard; Greenpeace’s summer arctic expedition got stuck in the ice. So much for the “opening” of the NW Passage. Seems they hadn’t counted on such thick icepacks. By the way, thinning or thickening of arctic ice has far more to do with wind and current patterns in the arctic than it does with temperature.

  30. His next question should have been:
    Are their any Canadian doctors or nurses in the audience who came to the USA because the medical system is better than in Canada ?

  32. MND:
    Thanks for the Friedman analysis, which, like many of his explanations, is just common sense.
    I wished I lived in a time without a social safety net, when people didn’t EXPECT someone else to help them every time something went wrong in their lives.

  33. I am not a lefty, (far from it), but I know far too many people who have had a huge medical crisis occur in their lives, and thanked God for the existence of our health care system.
    There are many things wrong with it, but their are many decent,decent people whose lives have been saved (financially and literally) because of the existence of medicare. Under Canadian Health Care, the insurance provider cannot just cut and run, when serious illness occurs, (as happens so often in America)

  34. “What’s funny to me is that you guys actually believe that you can have a private healthcare system that A) pays staff more B) generates profit for share-holders and C) is cheaper than Canadian healthcare. ”
    What’s funny to me is how you guys(John) actually believe that the government can operate anything that has customers efficiently. Canadian healthcare is an unsustainable debacle that we won’t have to argue about sometime in the future; Canadians will get their private healthcare out of necessity eventually. Unfortunately, retards like you don’t want to find a compromise or make the transition on our own terms. You prefer to suck the system and future generations dry for your own benefit.

  35. John; I do not know how old you are, but I learned about the NW passsage is school in the 1960s. Seems it was traversed somewhere back around 1900.
    That of course means that it was warmer then than it is now. Remember, it was a time before the automobile, before large scale industrialization and the increase in human related CO2.
    Do you think that it is possible that the earth goes through cyclical warming and cooling all on its own regardless of the behaviour of humans. It could explain why temperatures were taking a nose dive from 1945 to 1975, the period in which human produced CO2 was ramping up, and in which climate alarmists were telling us that the science was settled, we were heading for a killer ice age without any doubt.

  36. John wrote: “A) pays staff more B) generates profit for share-holders and C) is cheaper than Canadian healthcare.”
    Then called us ‘suckers’.
    If his position is true, why have anything ‘private’? Why not gov’t run shoe or groery stores a la’ the former Soviet Union?
    John overlooks the power of profit. With it comes innovation, efficiency and customer service. Without it we have stagnation, waste and indifference to the customer. Sure, these are generalizations, but nonetheless true.
    He also overlooks the fact that our system is not really ‘cheaper’ on a per person basis. In the U.S. people choose their provider and pay several hundreds of dollars per month on a cost sharing insurance basis.
    In Canada, we pay hundreds of dollars per month through our taxes with no choice of provider and the inefficiences of Fed/Prov. gov’ts plus the avarice of the unions – from the floor sweeper to the registerd nurse.
    Why do leftists hate the idea of choice so much?

  37. John; A post script to my post above. Google Roald Amundsen and read about him and the NW passage circa 1903-1906.

  38. as a regular visitor to the u.s. i say with confidence they are as socialist as we are. the silly stuff about land of the free and home of the brave has long since been swept aside. the taxes in some states would scare the shit out of most canadians. when they get rolling on national health care they will go broke. they now have about 28 trillion owing on medicare as it exists.

  39. “He will always be, in the words of James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal “former Enron advisor, Paul Krugman”.
    Posted by: Roseberry at July 29, 2009 1:57 PM ”
    That’s Paul “Give me $50,000 and I’ll say anything you want” Krugman to you…..

  40. Alberta has the best system? We are all in trouble then. Call a specialist at the University of Calgary Sports medicine clinic (without a referral) and ask for an appointment. You will be lucky to get your initial consultation in 18 months. (Yes, a year and a half). Then sit and enjoy your chronic joint pain because, if you are then lucky enough to be sufficiently injured and require surgery, you only have to wait another 8-10 months for the treatment. But it is “free”.

  41. hey marko – it doesn’t matter if you’re referred or not. They play god equally. I’ve come to the conclusion that some receptionists are on a monstrous power trip. After all, if there really is a shortage, wouldn’t the waiting periods continually increase? Have you ever noticed they never seem to catch up OR get worse? I don’t think it’s a coincidence, I think it’s a shell game.

  42. Couple of things:
    It’s unfortunate that we don’t really have 10 separate medical systems in Canada (in order to get fed funding, they have to meet the standards of the (I believe) Canada Medical Act). Then we could (horrors!) experiment with different approaches to health care, and see what actually works. Of course, Quebec would be the most socialist, Alberta the most private sector oriented, and in Newfoundland, you wouldn’t get any health care unless you voted for Danny Williams.
    Second, I’m surprised no one has mentioned the 800-lb gorilla in the room – the US’s ambulance chasing lawyers. There are reams of evidence that many tests are prescribed merely to forestall malpractice suits, rather than actually being required. That raises the cost of health care dramatically. And the exorbitant malpractice premiums required have forced many doctors out of their practice, particularly in OB/GYN, where if little Johnny or Julie doesn’t come out absolutely perfectly, there’s a lawyer dangling a multi-million dollar suit in front of the affronted Mommy and Daddy (of which said shyster will keep up to 66% for himself). Some Republicans keep urging for tort reform, but given the amounts trial lawyers donate to the Dems, fat chance of that happening.

  43. sorry I’m late for the party but it is actually a nice day in the maritimes. gotta get your summer whenever you can.
    btw, Yukon Gold, if you read many of the previous “Tommy, Not Dead Enough” items you will see that I made the very same point you did. That is from personal experience, working and living in both systems. Wife just got an appointment for a mammogram… in November! I guess we are lucky it is this year. My son spent a half a year in Alberta going back and forth from family doctor to Worker’s Comp specialist in order for him to get the okay to go back to work. It seems that wanting to get to work is rather rare as nobody would take the responsibility to sign the papers. Need to see an Allergist then you have to get a referral from your family doctor. A Walk-In Clinic can’t refer you.
    Nobody has ever said the US system was perfect but at least there are options and choice (until the O plan gets in). The same cannot be said here.

  44. Much of this is the result of the feminization of our society in the West. There are increasing numbers of people who want to be taken care of. This is taught in schools and it’s part of the feminine psyhe. Historitcally women sought men to take care of them.
    Men were socialized to be independent and therefore able and willing to take care of wife and family.
    Now we have competing factions, one side, liberal take care us all and the conservative, I will take care of myself if you will just get out of my way.
    Clearly the weaker liberal side is the path of least resistance, but is calamity in waiting. It is the stronger self-reliant side that got us to the point where there was enough left over for governments to get into the caring business in a big way.
    That is one of the hugest reasons that high taxation must be resisted. That is where governments get their power … by taking our money and buying our freedoms out from under us.
    The fly in the ointment is as always, sooner or later you run out of other people’s money. Then it gets really ugly.
    You won’t win an argument with anyone who either wants to be taken care of or envisions himself as a high paid over lord of some sort.
    We will have many large wars and revolutions to go through before humanity will accepted into the federation of planets.

  45. Under the inflexible socialist health care mangement system that we have in Canada many people are forced to suffer needless delays, do without proper tests and treatment, be denied alternative services, be imposed upon by incompetent providers without recourse, endure complications and even death as a result of the bureaucratic disinterest of the system.
    Anyone who thinks this is a good thing is less than a moron.
    The problem is that we are denied choice… choice that those wealthy enough or connected enough do have.
    We are stuck with a health care lottery that doles out the minimum level of service … an ever lowering bar … while as taxpayers we are forced to contribute ever increasing portions of our income .. all the while being denied any say in the matter.
    We are abused by the medical professionals who play the system for their benefit and derided by the ideolgical fools who cling to it as a birthright when we question or point out the failings.
    The US politicians are A$$ES of the first magnitude for even considering going down this road.
    P/S … On Klugman you are a day late and dollar short … this was old news by bedtime yesterday.

  46. Texas — I can relate to your wife’s problem. Mine is not so serious, just embarrassing. I came back from Mexico in January with a skin condition ON MY FACE. After a few GP’s tried to fix it, I was finally referred to a dermatologist in April.
    It’s now the end of July, and I’m still waiting to see the dermatologist, and I’ve still got problems going out in public during flare-ups.
    My GP’s solution? He told to me to be “less self conscious” and to “just get on with my life.”

  47. In a private system like the US, the middle class gets screwed in that the costs to the middle class are high. But at least the service is good. The poor get poor/old get poor coverage via the government and the wealthy get the best.
    In the Canadian system, the middle class still gets screwed thanks to high tax burden, but gets the same crappy service the poor/old get in the US. The rich go to the US.
    Everyone (except those with enough coin) gets the same poor service.
    When you account for healthcare insurance costs my counterparts in the US pay about the same as we do here in Canada. They pay less tax but higher insurance, I pay more tax 40% of which is healthcare related. Difference is my counter part south of the boarder gets an MRI on his tennis injury the same day, I wait 6 months to see a specialist who will then book a MRI…
    I have never heard a good argument as to why, as a Canadian I shouldn’t be able to pay for medical insurance of my own.

  48. So far this week I have been asked by my Bank, car insurance company, & my old dental coverage group. If I wanted to buy health care protection. Coverage for a bed, wages et all. This on top of my regular deductions on my work plan.
    Call me crazy but it looks like we might be getting back private care threw the back door. If true. Harper your the sneakest SOB its been a pleasure to watch work.
    JMO

  49. duffman:
    I’ve written about this here before, but I’ll repeat it now. In Canada, it’s not how much money you have, but who you know. If you belong to the right golf/tennis/bridge club, you’ll know someone who knows someone who knows a specialist, and if you need that knee/hip/MRI, you’ll get bumped to the front of the line.
    I know this from personal experience. My mother-in-law needed two knee replacements. She went through the standard system for the first one, and it took almost two years for her to get it fixed. We mentioned this to our private banker, and he was aghast. When she needed her other knee replaced, we told Paul; he had us referred to a top specialist in Toronto in two weeks, and she had her new knee in less than two months.
    As I’ve said repeatedly, this is the dirty secret of Canadian health care – the rich and connected get priority access to the system through pull; the poor get their usual crap access, but at least they don’t pay for it. It’s the middle class who get it royally in the butt – they pay the taxes and get the same crap access as the indigent. It’s no wonder the “elites” fight so strongly against any changes to our system; they get privileged access at no extra cost – nice work if you can get it.

  50. KevinB, this is SO right on. This is the golden truth.
    I have to say though, it isn’t really the “rich” who benefit most from the current situation. Its family and friends of people in the health care business. Your mum was fortunate to get in on the connection chain.
    There’s really two systems. One for people who are important -to the providers-, one for everybody else. Unless you’re Ted Rogers kinda rich, you’re “everybody else”.
    A moment’s reflection will reveal that this is NOT CORRUPTION. This is the 100% normal and natural result of people looking after the ones they care about first. Any system which takes money out of the equation will instantly default to family and friends first.
    Corruption comes in when people who have money but no friends buy in under the table. That doesn’t really happen much with the actual care portion, in my experience. People don’t usually slip the head nurse a couple hundred to make sure Grandma gets her bed pan changed. (Not yet, anyway.) That happens more in hospital management, construction, supply, etc.
    In the absence of the profit motive, systems default to the buddy system and shortly thereafter to corruption. This is how humans are. This is what makes Paul Krugman a purblind fool.

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