75% of clients are at or below the federal poverty level.

Anyone who cares to dismiss the public service aspects of Planned Parenthood really should their reasoning.

In reviewing the original post I am again struck by the following statement:
“It’s debatable whether running a chain of abortion clinics qualifies as ‘public service.’”
I wonder what Frank considers to be bona fide public service, and how he would characterize Planned Parenthood.

The Bible also preaches against adultery, pre-marital sex, homosexuality, and more. Would you sign my petition to outlaw these practices? I thought not. Getting excessively rich may or may not be a sin. Depends on what you do with it. I’m not saying Bill Gates is a saint (Windows is evil incarnate), but he does a lot of good with his untold billions right now. And the computer revolution would certainly not be where it is today if he and others were artificially restricted on what the could earn or charge for their products. The market and their own excellences, or lack thereof, decided that for them. See, the market is the only way we have, short of being omniscient, of determining what the public wants or needs and does not want or need. Some bureaucrat, no matter how smart or informed, cannot take in all the variables. It’s like guessing the weather–even the best computers cannot take it all in and forecast with the accuracy we desire. The power companies give up their right to charge what they want in exchange for a monopoly in their given area. It is a fair exchange, not ideal of course, but it is the best way available given the current alternatives. (Some day they may invent a way to transport energy through the air to our houses and then this paradigm will shift–wait, I think they may be doing that already with cell phones.)

Also, what’s wrong with hospitals on every corner? We have a Walgreen’s and Starbucks on every one. “Get your latte and blood transfusion here! We’re the best in town! Try our convenient drive-up window!”

Cheese (and Caleb),

That’s the REAL problem with our health care system right now. Health care “insurance” companies are preying upon the same gene in the human race that makes us run up huge credit card bills when we know it’s going to come back and bite us in the shorts down the road. These scum bags saw an opportunity and they took it. Others joined in and it snowballed from there. This opportunity was created over the last 40 years or so (slowly at first, then accelerated exponentially), about the time Medicare and Medicaid came into existence. It’s funny to read the press of the time about how Medicare was going to heal all suffering in the world. Regulation upon regulation was piled on. Insurance companies are required by law to cover more and more and pass the costs on. Anyway, the gist of all this is they saw a separation between the patient and the doctor developing. My Dad, being a dentist, watched this develop over the past 50 years (yes, he’s been practicing that long). The patient now pays a third party for even routine stuff, check-ups and the like that they know are coming and used to pay for in cash. This third party is nothing more than a clearing house taking a cut for pushing some papers around. This disconnect gave them the opportunity to “negotiate” with the health care providers and artificially adjust the charges upwards. The “customer” is out of the mix–his employer handles most of the dirty work, and he is simply left wondering why everything gets more expensive. Taking this whole “abdication of personal responsibility (on the part of the customer)” and transferring it to the federal government does nothing to fix the situation and, as examples show, only makes it worse–health care is just as expensive, in terms of actual costs, everywhere in the world where there is a “system.”

You see heath care “insurance” companies are not really INSURANCE companies. They have become a sort of evil buyer’s club where you pay an excessively higher “membership fee” for less and less product. If it weren’t for regulations (which aren’t always bad, of course) their business model (highway robbery, really) would collapse when the customer realizes he has more choice. A classic example: I got Lasik surgery done on my eyes about ten years ago. This is not required coverage on any health “insurance” program that I’m aware of. It cost me about $3,500. A few months ago my sister got the same procedure (a lot better, actually) for about $300. When left alone, and people are free to be responsible for their own decisions, we will get the same effect in health care that we got in computers and virtually every other market: The price goes down as the quality goes up. (Compare computers and their prices between now and 10 or 15 years ago.)

I’m not arguing that our health care system isn’t a mess, what I’m saying is socialism (the tyranny of choice-suppression codified into law) will do NOTHING to alleviate the problems and will more likely than not exacerbate them.

So, how do we treat electric companies? I used to do a lot of work for various public utilities, and I know that in all jurisdictions, the government (usually through an administrative agency) controls the rates of these utilities. The formula is simple: The applicant files an application with the agency in which it states what its costs of doing business are, and what profit it wants to make. The agency’s job is to allow the utility to make a fair profit, while barring excess profits. They examine the costs proposed by the utility, and decide whether they’re fair or not, then add the profit to the mix and use this as the basis for their approval or disapproval of the rate requested.

Why shouldn’t we apply the same standard to health care? In any community, there are only a few hospitals, and these act as an oligopoly, a monopoly shared by a few players. So, if this is a natural monopoly (we don’t, after all, want hospitals on every street corner), shouldn’t we regulate their rates as well? Maybe that’s the solution to the problem, rather than allowing the private sector to do for health care what it did for the rest of the economy.

Along the same line it is just as much a mistake to portray an unregulated society and economy as a paradise, yet that’s exactly how you sound. There are a lot of right wingers out there who absolutely worship the free market to the point of idolatry. If you think that our nation’s founders did not believe in community and shared burdens, think again. If you think that freedom can’t lead to oppression, take off your blinders. If you think that unregulation means choice, you had better study history. And if you think that a government run healthcare program will ignore the needs of the people, whereas a for-profit insurance company will be more generous even though it can earn bigger bonuses for its execs by denying claims, well then you’re hopeless.

Kid, if you want to be taken seriously then you might want to chill out a bit and stop accusing everyone of extreme positions that they do not advocate.

The postal service doesn’t tell you “now that you’ve got mail, we’re cutting your service.” The police officers don’t tell you “now that you’ve been robbed, we’re dropping our service.” The power company doesn’t tell you “now that you need electricity, we’re dropping your service.” They provide services that everyone needs all the time. The insurance industry does tell people “now that you’re sick, we’re dropping your coverage.” The insurance industry is the poster child for a case of conflict of interest. It’s not in their best interest to provide people with healthcare; that’s expensive. They’re in business to turn a profit, which means denying service to those they are supposed to be protecting. I would much rather have a disinterested government bureaucrat with a little checklist than a profit-driven CEO trying to thicken his Christmas bonus.

Here is a novel concept that you liberals never grasp. It’s the only thing that keeps oppression and tyranny at bay: I have a right to protect myself, my family, and my property. Since this is my God-given right, I can give that right to an external entity like a police force to do the job and free me up for other pursuits. But I had that right in the first place! I also have a God-given right to earn and acquire things and services. This is a proactive, as opposed to reactive, right. I cannot give my proactive right to get health care, earn money to buy food, etc. to someone else. I don’t have the right to demand or use the force of law to take from my neighbor’s earnings to provide myself with health care, food, or anything else. When I “give up” a right I don’t have (to oppress someone else), I’m only giving power of oppression to the government. I know it’s hard, but honestly try to think this through, it’s good to exercise your brain in different ways–you might experience a little enlightenment now and again.

Now, that said, there are such things as natural monopolies and limited resources. It is not efficient or effective to have multiple electrical power companies stringing up multiple power lines to service the same neighborhoods. They tried that in the early 20th century (God love ‘em), but it proved a debacle. Also, it does not make sense to have multiple mailboxes at your house for multiple mail services. Within a locality, certain areas need to be protected and maintained as public parks because of limited available land or other factors. These things function; however, who do you complain about more: The poor service at the post office or at FedEx? The power bill or the cable/satellite bill (cable vs. satellite: how novel, a choice)? Is it the condition of the public parks or Disneyland that you gripe about more? Don’t get me wrong, these things are needed, but why in the hell, unless you’re just a lazy slob looking for handouts, would you want the government to run your health care or grocery store or television service or anything else that it doesn’t have too?

People are people and care at a private hospital or a public hospital has the potential to be equally good or bad. But, if it gets bad, which paradigm will almost always lend itself to the quickest corrective action: the private where the “customer” or patient has a choice to go somewhere else, or the public where the nearest real recourse is some public official way up a bureaucratic (and often asininely regulated) chain of command whose elected term is not up for another 4 years? My town has two grocery stores. The chain owning one was recently bought out by the chain owning the other one. The FCC (God bless ‘em) said they were not allowed to buy the other one since it would constitute a monopoly in our market. This would never happen if our hospital were to be “bought out” by the government. Right now, if we don’t like the service here we can always go to the next town over or to one of several other health care facilities in town. Once the government grabs a power it does not rightly have and takes over these entities, where do we go?

I can’t believe I have to explain this. It’s a simple moral question any 5th grader should know almost intrinsically. I guess morals and insight are too intwined to hope for a convincing explanation. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the more socialist the country the more irreligious it also is. I guess that’s safe to say since this is a religious-topic site. Not saying that religion has a monopoly on morals by any means, I know many non-religious genuinely moral people and some totally amoral “religious” ones, but it is an interesting comparison. (And no I’m NOT looking at you, Caleb, I think you’re a basically genuine nice guy, if a little dim.)

I can’t believe you’re canonizing private hospitals like that. I suspect that care in private hospitals is worse than it is in public hospitals because the private ones want to cut back every expense they can to make a profit. But, hey, given that they only treat people who can afford them, or who have insurance, I guess my beloved poor people don’t have anything to worry about from them.

How do you feel about our socialized police forces, socialized fire departments, socialized K-12 schools, and socialized libraries? Should we privatize all those, too?

Many of us would like to see the VA system go away in favor of a more efficient system. The VA hospital in Philadelphia had broken equipment giving off false readings for over a year before someone discovered it. It also exposed more than 10,000 patients to HIV and hepatitis viruses. This would NEVER happen in a privately run (market driven) hospital! NEVER! Here is the link to the coverage of it: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/24/va-medical-shambles-veterans-groups-say/

I’m not saying that there is not good care at a VA hospital also, I get good service at my local post office too, but if someone is going to perform below standards (go “postal” maybe), it will always be much easier in a government-run bureaucratic environment.

As far as “elective” procedures: I guess my brother-in-law’s father in England’s dialysis therapy for his diabetes was “elective” after he turned 65. He was discontinued from the national health care system paying for his weekly treatments. They essentially told him it was time to go home and die. He had some money, fortunately, and was able to pay for it on his own in a private clinic for about a year longer, but then could no longer afford it. He passed away just two weeks before he was to meet his newest grandchildren for the first time. Don’t give me your bull about health care not being rationed. It is the ONLY way these bureaucratic operations have of controlling costs.

You’re all missing the real point to this anyway. I don’t care if Jesus Himself was in charge of the socialized health care system, I still wouldn’t support it because it is based on FORCE! That’s what you supposedly freedom-loving liberals can’t seem to get your minds around. You would sink us down to the lowest common denominator so that no one is responsible (responsibility comes with freedom–surprise) for their own decisions and choices.

Don’t like it here? Fine, move to Canada, but don’t FORCE me to pay for your face lift.

It is true that if your a big time capitalist you can buy most anything you want and that includes transplants or elective procedures but they should not leap frog you over the patient headed for surgery with a life threatning condition. True , there are the unscrupulous doctor or hospital that will cater to such but they are are insignificant in number when paired up to the actual facts.

And for those who assert socialism is the bain of all that is good for America why then do they not advocate for getting rid of the VA system which surely fits their definition of socialism. of socialism

Wow. You only observe what you want to. My brother is a doctor and the Medical Director of Intermountain Health Care, one of the highest-rated health care systems in the world, that’s right, the world (and it’s non-profit, case you were wondering). Every year he is a delegate to the AMA and was the campaign manager for the past AMA president. He has traveled the world investigating medical practices and technology. He spent 12 weeks in China a couple years ago voluntarily giving medical services in rural areas. He’s the one who gave me the Canadian MRI statistics. He has been to hospitals in England, France and Germany. Also Hong Kong and Tokyo. Nuff’ said, he knows what he is talking about. He doesn’t argue that these systems don’t work, they do keep people alive and a good doctor is a good doctor anywhere, but just because they are functional doesn’t mean they are anywhere near ideal. The DMV does manage to get all our cars registered, eventually. My brother adamantly states that these facilities and many of the people who run them are almost deplorable, by American standards. They look like they got their equipment from American garage sales, and they are dirty! I know this is anadoctal, but my brother-in-law had my sister come up and “rescue” him from a Canadian hospital when he got sick on a business trip up there. He said the filth disgusted him along with other issues. Of all the heath care systems he’s observed, by brother says Germany has a pretty good system, but still not on a par with ours. Over half the hospitals in Stockholm (in the Swedish socialist paradise) are now privately operated, though with public funds, and they get more that 70 percent of the business. The Swedes “figured out” that bureaucrats can’t reach the same level of “customer satisfaction.” Our health care system certainly has its flaws, but NO ONE who has studied these things argues that, in terms of the care given, that it is not by far the best in the world.

A coworker of mine worked for 10 years in a hospital in Michigan a few miles from the border. At any given time 1/3 to 1/2 of the patients were Canadian. Some of these paid cash for their services, but others were reimbursed by the Canadian government for services not available in Canada, but they had to cover all the rest of their expenses themselves. This is called rationing by geography, since only the ones close enough to make a trip across the border economical got such services. Your grandmother’s face-lift cost someone else some kidney dialysis time. I’m sorry, but socialized medicine (or socialized anything for that matter) does not magically pull extra resources out of the air. It is simply an inefficient and arbitrary way of redistributing finite resources according to what some bureaucrat, and not the customer thinks best.

All I can say is, thank God for C-SPAN. I personally watched Tony Blair BRAGGING in live debate in the House of Commons that his government had cut the wait time for open-heart surgery in England from 18 months down to 6 months. My jaw dropped! My father-in-law had just had open-heart surgery within 48 hours of being diagnosed–right here in little ol’ Utah.

As far as abortion goes, I don’t know where you’re getting your information. My parents remember being appalled, and the national uproar when the Roe vs. Wade decision was handed down (I was only 5 at the time). Probably didn’t make much news in Mass. or New York though, and I guess those are the only important places in the U.S.

I don’t know specifics, but I can’t imagine how abortions were safely or consistently performed in the 19th century. I’m sure they did, but considering the risks back then, I don’t think they were all that common. Laws were not on the books for it probably simply because it was fairly unusual. It all comes down to personal responsibility. How much responsibility should someone have for her decisions and the consequences of them. I think it’s a shame and a disservice to label every unplanned pregnant woman as a “victim” somehow of her circumstances, that some man “took advantage” of her, etc. I’m not anti sex, but there is a reason we have that drive. But, again, I wouldn’t make junk food illegal just because it is bad for you. But again, again, a potential innocent life is not involved. Tough to call, sometimes.

For good measure, take a look at national socialism and understand why it is more nationalist than socialist. And make sure you understand that many industrialized countries have democratic socialist governments that are both democratic and socialist.

Brother Caleb may be an unabashed socialist but I’m a capitalist (with a professional degree to boot) so I’m not motivated by defensiveness. However I must protest when the term is misused in this way.

1. The US does NOT have a higher standard of living than most other industrialized nations. Studies have consistently shown that US workers have a lower standard of living than those in Canada, Britain, and most of Western Europe. In most of those countries, they have a minimum wage that you can really live on, government health care, and mandated levels of sick leave and vacation. American workers have none of that. What we’ve effectively done in the US is create two classes of workers. Those who work for the government or big corporations (for the most part) have decent benefits and salary. A VERY few of these folks, like the big corporate executives who eat at the public tough, make a very large amount of money indeed. But this is a tiny minority. However, a huge chunk of the American work force works for smaller employers or are self employed, and generally end up with no health care, no benefits, and little pay. In this regard, the US is more akin to some truly non-socialist countries like Taiwan, Indonesia, and Singapore, where the working class is terribly poor and downtrodden, all so the big corporations which control these countries can make a profit.

Now I know what you’re going to say: Workers in the US have the OPPORTUNITY to all become Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and rule the world. Pah. This is the lottery ticket theory of capitalism and it works fine for the one in a million who wins the lottery, but doesn’t serve the others very well at all. Anyone who has spent much time around business entrepreneurs knows that 90% of getting rich in America is being lucky, not being particularly smart or talented. We’ve all known people who have been smart and talented and gotten nowhere, and others without two brain cells to rub together who have become millionaires. As Buffet himself says, we are too rich a society to allow people to die because they don’t get adequate health care or to fail to educate our children as well as other nations do. And, it’s not clear to me that socialism is bad for business. Would you rather drive a capitalist Ford or a socialist Mercedes? A capitalist Chevy or a socialist Rolls-Royce? Even Japan is a socialist country by American standards, and they’ve beaten us at car-making for twenty years now. How about a socialist Lexus?

2. I realize that Rush Limbaugh and company have been putting out the story about six month waits in Canada for some time, and like Goebbels, he believes that if he tells a lie long enough and hard enough people will believe it. My grandmother lived the last 20 years of her life in Canada. She got a FACE LIFT on Canadian national health. She got far better treatment for her heart condition and other ailments than she ever could have afforded in the US. Anyone who has actually taken the time to study socialized medicine realizes that it is a far better system than the for-someone-else’s-profit system we have. And look at it this way. Canada is a nation of middle class people who are far better educated and articulate than the average American (Socialism again; Canadian schools are far better than American schools). Do you think they would stand for a system that didn’t give them adequate medical care? Of course not.

As far as abortion goes, while I feel your concern, I have to laugh a little bit at the history of the so-called pro-life movement. When Roe v. Wade came out in 1973, every major protestant denomination supported it. It was only in the late ’70s, when conservatives were looking for a hot-button issue that they seized on abortion. As I’ve said here many times before, prior to the late 19th century, abortion was perfectly legal and available under roughly the same guidelines as Roe, and had been since Roman times, and as far as I know, no one ever objected to this on religious grounds. People forget that Roe was passed not out of some academic concern for the right to privacy, but because women were staggering out of backroom abortion clinics and bleeding to death on the streets. It was considered a humane ruling by everyone but the Catholics at the time. But, of course, everyone is all moral and holy now.

Then how come America’s standard of living is higher than almost all the socialist countries? For someone who supposedly values his own freedom, you sure like to force others to pay for everything you like. Why stop at tuition and health care? Let’s really “stick it to the Man!” Let’s have socialized grocery stores! After all, everyone has a RIGHT to eat, don’t they? Imagine a grocery store run like the DMV. You want a loaf of bread. You submit form 1054-A and get a numbered ticket. You take that ticket to Grain Products counter and they tell you your loaf will be ready in three weeks. etc, etc.

You ever try to get an MRI in Canada? Six-month or more waiting list. In 1990, the state of Utah had 26 MRI machines to service 1.5 million people. Canada at the same time had 2 MRI machines to service 20 million. I’m sure its a bit better now in this specific instance, but this is typical across the board. What new life-saving technology will the Canadians in their socialized paradise have to wait on next? The cancer survival rate is 16% lower up there than in the U.S. Must be something to do with the cold winters, I’m sure.

Socialism is not the paradise you think it is. It all sounds great (who’s against lower tuition?) and it is, except for one fatal flaw–at the core it is based on FORCE. The market-driven model is not always perfect, but if left alone, it is at least driven by people’s choices and rewards. The DMV worker could give a rat’s ass what you think of her service. The grocery store clerk and owner knows you have a choice and their success depends on your satisfaction and freedom.

Back on the subject, though: I know Planned Parenthood does a lot of good and I think the author of this article is reading too much into this. Abortion is tricky because virtually no one is “against choice” per se, and virtually no one is “against life” per se. Truth is no one knows where “life” actually begins and there are logical arguments all the way from the moment a couple lustfully looks into each other’s eyes up to 3 months after birth (self-awareness being developed). There are nuts (a.k.a. control freaks) on either side of this ambiguous definition of life and rights. What concerns me is Planned Parenthood’s focus on women only (or almost exclusively). If I’m wrong on this, let me know, I’m not involved with them, but I think the men have an absolute equal responsibility in matters of pregnancy and parenthood. It took two the make the baby, or plan the baby (usually), it should take two to make all the decisions concerning the child or potential child. If the woman has the right to choose, so does the man. If the woman decides she does not want to raise the child the father should also have the right to choose whether he wants to be responsible for this child. Right now all power is in the mother’s hands. It’s out of balance. I believe there are reasons it takes two people to make a child.

That said, I can’t judge every circumstance. Like the vast majority, I believe the innocent have rights that need to be protected, but also, the woman has rights to do with her body as she pleases. However, at some point, she must give up some of that right when she produces a child. If that right is forfeited when she sleeps with the man or when the baby becomes self-aware, I don’t know. In the absence of God coming down in all His majesty and power and declaring the truth in this matter, we should cast the “control freaks” to either side and go down the middle, with alterations to bring in the rights of the father where possible.