Daily Archives: June 9, 2005

The Lord of Regulation takes one on the chin

Posted on by
Reply

eliot_spitzer.ap.04.jpgA New York state court jury acquitted former Bank of America Corp. broker Theodore C. Sihpol today on 29 criminal counts relating to alleged improper trading of mutual-fund shares. The jury deadlocked 11-1 in favor of acquittal on four additional counts, and the judge declared a mistrial on those counts. Here is a previous post on Mr. Sihpol’s case.
The acquittal was a bitter blow for New York Aspiring Governor Eliot Spitzer, whose office tried the case against Mr. Sihpol as the first criminal trial emanating from Mr. Spitzer’s crackdown on what he characterizes as abusive trading practices in the mutual fund industry. As is his custom in such matters, Mr. Spitzer bludgeoned settlements out of several major fund firms by threatening them with devastating criminal indictments, but the young Mr. Sihpol refused to back down. Thus, even though he threatened Mr. Sihpol with an absurdly harsh 30 year sentence in prison if he were to be found guilty of the charges, Mr. Spitzer was forced to try the case and, in the end, had his hat handed to him.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Comparing the British and American health care systems

Posted on by
8

Britishlogo.jpgDavid Asman is an anchor at the Fox News Channel and host of “Forbes on Fox.” In this must read piece for anyone interested in the differences between a centralized and a decentralized health care finance system, Mr. Asman compares the care and cost that his wife received in the British and American health care systems earlier this year after she suffered a serious stroke during a vacation in London. The entire op-ed is interesting, but I found the following observation particularly telling:

When I received the bill for my wife’s one-month stay at Queen’s Square [Hospital, in London], I thought there was a mistake. The bill included all doctors’ costs, two MRI scans, more than a dozen physical therapy sessions, numerous blood and pathology tests, and of course room and board in the hospital for a month. And perhaps most important, it included the loving care of the finest nurses we’d encountered anywhere. The total cost: $25,752. That ain’t chump change. But to put this in context, the cost of just 10 physical therapy sessions at New York’s Cornell University Hospital came to $27,000–greater than the entire bill from British Health Service!
There is something seriously out of whack about 10 therapy sessions that cost more than a month’s worth of hospital bills in England. Still, while costs in U.S. hospitals might well have become exorbitant because of too few incentives to keep costs down, the British system has simply lost sight of costs and incentives altogether.

Meanwhile, Washington Post business columnist Steve Pearlstein contends in this column that most Americans are willing to dispense with market allocation in regard to health care:

For most Americans, providing health care ought to be different from selling soap; they won’t tolerate doctors acting like commissioned salesmen and investment bankers. And if that means having less market competition and more regulation in the health care system, it seems to be a trade-off they’re willing to make.

H’mm, I’m not so sure about that. Hat tip to Arnold Kling for the links to the articles.

Fiddling while Rome burns

Posted on by
2

perry.jpgIt’s a good sign that it’s not going to be a good day at the office for a Republican politician when the morning’s edition of the Wall Street Journal has both an editorial and an op-ed piece critical of the politician.
But that’s precisely what Texas governor Rick Perry is confronting today. In this WSJ editorial ($) aptly entitled “What’s the Matter with Texas?”, the Journal editors pick up on a theme that was noted earlier in this post — that is, the utter lack of leadership being exhibited by Republican politicians:

Republicans control every lever of political power in Austin for the first time since Reconstruction and had promised a sweeping reform agenda. Property tax relief. Vouchers for kids in failed inner-city public schools. An end to Robin Hood school financing. And passage of a fiscally tight budget.
This entire legislative agenda was ambushed. The school voucher pilot program for 20,000 mostly minority kids was rejected by the very Democratic legislators representing the families who would have benefited from the opportunity to attend private and parochial schools that actually work. The depressing fact that nearly half of the black and Hispanic children in the state fail to graduate from public high schools wasn’t perceived as a sufficient crisis to give choice a chance.
Most of the other failings of this legislature must be laid at the feet of the Republicans.

The Journal goes on to note that the Republicans are playing with serious political fire by failing to address the problem of spiraling property taxes in Texas:

But it’s almost inconceivable that the legislature would adjourn until 2007 without chopping property taxes. Skyrocketing appraisals are taxing Texans out of their houses, and infuriated home owners are ready to march on Austin. One Dallas legislator reported that he was accosted by irate voters at his kid’s swim meet this week. . .
[I]f property taxes aren’t cut meaningfully right now, the Republicans might not be coming back to Austin after the next election.

Meanwhile, over at OpinionJournal, J.R. Labbe, senior editorial writer and columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, pens this op-ed that addresses the challenges from within the Texas Republican Party that Mr. Perry is expected to face in the upcoming election campaign, and notes in particular that Mr. Perry’s recent political staging of a signing ceremony for parental consent legislation in the gymnasium of a Ft. Worth church could backfire:

But the community of faith, even in the Lone Star State, is not a monolith. Plenty of Texan Christians were put off by what they perceived as Gov. Perry’s use of religion as a theatrical prop. Witnessing oneself as a godly governor might be more effectively demonstrated if religion weren’t turned into a sideshow.

As I observed to Charles Kuffner during lunch yesterday, I’m not sure what’s worse — the risk that government will embrace the worst characteristics of certain Christian churches, or that those churches will embrace the worst characteristics of government.