Our national conversation of how to fix American healthcare is based on a decades-long pretense: that America has a free market in medicine, or had one until recently. Reforming American healthcare has been a question of whether, or how quickly, America should join the rest of the developed world in adopting socialized medicine. However Americans have lived under mostly socialized medicine since the advent of Medicare in 1965, and the state of the American healthcare market was hardly free prior to that.
Despite pockets of vitality, American healthcare is sick. Yet we have been offered different variations of more socialized medicine as the only cure. This event offers a radical and new cure: desocializing American medicine.
Join us for a series of talks and panels by philosophers and physicians who demonstrate that: (1) it has always been the lack of freedom in medicine that causes the problems to which socialization and regulation are demanded as solutions; (2) a truly free market in medicine is a moral and practical imperative; and (3) there are practicable first steps that would improve the healthcare of Americans in the short term by moving us (longer-term) in the direction of this ideal.
Schedule:
10-11 – ‘Freeing the Medical Mind’ By Greg Salmieri, Senior Scholar of Philosophy, Salem Center for Public Policy, University of Texas at Austin
11-12 – ‘Government and American Medicine: a brief history’ By Amesh Adalja MD, FACP, FACEP, FIDSA
1-2:30 – Panel 1 —The Doctor-Client Relationship with Michael Cannon, MA, JM, Director of Health Policy Studies, Cato Institute; Arthur Astorino, MD and co-founder of Americans for Freedom of Choice in Medicine (AFCM); Richard Parker, MD, ABEM, ACEP, TMA; Michael Garrett, MD
2:30-4 – Panel 2 —Decontrolling American Healthcare with Jared Rhoads, MS, MPH, and founder of the Center for the Study of Health Policy and Individual Rights; Michael Kauffman MD PhD, Boards of Directors; Jared Seehafer, MS RAC, CEO & Cofounder, Enzyme; Colleen Smith MD, FACEP
4:15-5:15 – ‘How to Desocialize Medicine‘ By Don Watkins, best-selling author of Free Market Revolution and Equal is Unfair
The Democratic Left's…theory is that Hamas has an inherent right to invade & commit barbarities while…shooting 1000s of rockets…at Israeli civilians—and yet any response that inadvertently kills Gazan civilians…used as shields by Hamas constitutes a war crime. — @VDHansonhttps://t.co/MHLY3aymsw
Victor David Hanson on the double standards in judging Israel and Hammas:
It is hard to think of any precivilizational act that Hamas did not relish. Their death work included but was not limited to executions, torture, beheadings, desecration of corpses, rape, necrophilia, incinerating people alive, dismemberment, and hostage-taking. The captured killers mentioned that their Hamas leaders expressly ordered them to behead and mutilate. All that and more are what Ivy League and Stanford students apparently believe to be legitimate forms of “resistance”—and by their support have now become party to.
The Democratic Left is screaming “proportionality” and “stop the cycle of violence” at Israel to cease their retaliatory attempts to destroy Hamas. Their apparent theory is that Hamas has an inherent right to invade and commit barbarities while continuously shooting thousands of rockets hourly and with impunity at Israeli civilians—and yet any response that inadvertently kills Gazan civilians, perhaps most likely impressed Gazans used as shields by Hamas, constitutes a war crime.
So in the unhinged West, it is now a more moral act to launch rockets designed only to kill civilians than it is to take out those killing pads. From the Hamas prisoners’ own admissions, and from their videos of the attack, it is additionally clear that many Gazancitizens were eager to tag along in the killing, torture, and looting—albeit only once it became clear to them that the targets were mostly unarmed women, children, infants, and the elderly, and the IDF was not there in force.
Here are three critical considerations that must be understood about the current Israel-Hamas conflict. It is a sort of half-war. It consists of a military trying to defeat an organized clique of passive-aggressive, media-obsessed tribal murderers.
It is not really a war. …During peace and on a holiday, they entered Israel in a long-planned hit operation to murder civilians and take captives, focusing specifically on butchering the most vulnerable—the elderly, women, children, and infants—and in the most grotesque fashion imaginable. …By preplanned design, women were raped, and children and infants were burned alive, bound and executed, and (yes) beheaded. The dead were often mutilated. Some 1,400 Israelis were butchered, the vast majority civilians. Some 3,500-4,500 were wounded. Hamas never planned to stage a preemptive war against the Israeli military. Its only agenda was to send killers to unprotected villages to murder the unarmed as they slept—in the manner of Nazi Einsatzgruppen and other mobile death squads on the Eastern Front. Almost immediately they counted on using hostages, human shields, and the media to avoid any accounting from the IDF.
To distract from the murder mission, Hamas launched some 5,000 rockets—all intended as terror weapons to strike civilians, in the fashion of the V-1 and V-2 attacks on London. What followed is the most asymmetrical “war” in memory. The IDF is the only military in the world told to be “proportionate” in its use of retaliatory force—not the U.S. after 9/11, and not Ukraine after February 24, 2022. No Arab army or terrorist cadre has ever waged a war under the rules of “proportionality”.
[…]
Gaza is not anyone’s“colony”. It has been autonomous since 2006-7. No free Israeli Arab Muslim citizen would willingly emigrate there to live under the dictatorship of Hamas. And for good reason. Gaza has been the recipient of aggregate billions in cash from the Gulf monarchies, Europe, the US, the UN. and expatriate remittances. The more money came in, the less Hamas had any intention of using it to serve its people. Most of the gifted funds were used to build the world’s largest subterranean city of death, to buy drones and rockets, and to pay gunmen to kill Jews.
[…]
Only Hamas is deliberately targeting civilians. Hamas fires its rockets at Israeli civilians from hospitals, schools, UN facilities, and mosques. Again, note the logic: Hamas assumes that Israel fights wars more humanely than Hamas itself does, and so will both try to avoid Hamas’s Palestinian human shields, and of course never itself employ such a barbaric tactic—since, among other humane reasons, Israeli civilians would attract, rather than deflect a Hamas rocket.
Why hasn’t Israel used its superior military power to defeat Hamas? A major factor is that Israel’s leaders themselves lack the moral confidence to act resolutely to protect the individual rights of their citizens. Evidence of this can be seen in Israel’s continual bowing to pressure from Washington and the UN to “de-escalate” and to show “restraint.” This is rooted in the moral idea that one must turn the other cheek, that it’s wrong to pursue one’s self-interest, that a powerful, wealthy victim must appease a less-powerful, have-not aggressor.
How do we make life better for those who live in Gaza? According to Palestinian political analyst Bassem Eid, we start by recognizing who is really responsible for the suffering that happens there.
A painful story of how the U.S. anti-immigration system separates children from their parents who behaved legally.
On the surface, Dr. Pradyuman Singh has all the makings of the immigrant American dream. He has a business recruiting students to medical schools; a wife, son and daughter who is pre-med at UC Irvine; and his family lives in a Laguna Niguel home with ocean views.
But his picturesque life in the U.S. has been unraveling almost since it started. Now Singh is separated from his family and stuck 90 miles away, just across the border in Tijuana.
The Singhs are just one family making their way through the labyrinthine U.S. immigration process. But their experience shows that not even higher education, wealth and investments in the U.S. may make a difference when it comes to navigating a system that for many has become a bureaucratic black hole.
Singh, 55, arrived in the U.S. with his wife and daughter in 2008 on a work visa after he purchased a motel in Kansas City, Kan., where members of his extended family lived. The family landed in deportation proceedings in 2011 after his visa renewal was denied, but because of court backlogs and scheduling issues, he said, they didn’t get their day in court until this summer.
[…]
“The Singhs are not lawyers and they don’t have a USCIS handbook. They fell in love with this country; they solicited legal advice and lawyers including me provided them with advice; they followed that advice,” Raj said. “The Singhs never ran, never tried to do anything false, tried to adhere with every single law possible.”
[…]
Singh has missed three Father’s Days, Elena’s 21st birthday and his 25th wedding anniversary, which he and Shashi celebrated in June over FaceTime with Champagne. Elena hopes her father will make it back in time for her college graduation in December.
Throughout the years, even before becoming separated from his family, Singh considered leaving the U.S. He could go to Russia, where he lived for 18 years and owns two apartments and an office. Or he could go back to India, where he owns more properties and recently invested in a grocery store chain.
But he feels trapped. Home, for his children, is California.
Congratulations to Novak Djokovic – banned from entering the U.S. for the past 2 years by COVID-19 fascists – on winning a historic 24th grand slam title.
In 2022, the Biden administration banned the best tennis player in the world, unvaccinated Novak Djokovic, from playing in the 2022 US Open, even though the CDC said he was safe. Politics, not science.
Progressives attack capitalism because it lets some become very rich while others stay poor. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez call such a system “immoral.”
But Yaron Brook, chairman of the Ayn Rand Institute says the opposite is true. He points out that the poor were much poorer before capitalism: “We have basically made about $2 a day for 100,000 years. In other words … we could eat what we farmed and that was it,” Brook tells me. “And then something amazing happened about 250 years ago.” Around that time, a few countries tried capitalism. For the first time, people were allowed to profit from private property. That changed everything. Brook explains:
“250 years ago we suddenly discovered the value of individual freedom. We suddenly discovered the value of leaving individuals free to think, to innovate, to produce without asking for permission, without getting the state to sign off on it and we call that the industrial revolution. We got much, much, much richer and it’s hard to imagine how much richer we got … electricity, running water, the things we all take for granted today, but we didn’t have 150 years ago … and yes, some people complain about inequality, but everybody got richer. Even the poor got richer.”
Steven Pinker observes on Twitter that “The US is not a typical affluent western democracy – we do worse in most measures of human flourishing. Guns, cars, drugs are major causes.”
The US is not a typical affluent western democracy – we do worse in most measures of human flourishing. Guns, cars, drugs are major causes. https://t.co/M6GKqCUUOx
Liberal law professor and Democrat, Alan Dershowitz, writing on the latest Trump Indictment, notes that: “The indictment against Mr. Trump for possession of classified material meets the highest evidentiary standard, but it does not meet the standard for a crime that is sufficiently serious to warrant prosecution in the midst of a presidential campaign,”:
As I have said for years now, when the leading candidate against the incumbent president is prosecuted, especially at the urging of the incumbent president, the case against him must be bulletproof, airtight and beyond any reasonable doubt. To paraphrase Mr. Biden, the prosecutor in such a case should act more “like a ponderous judge” and less like a zealous prosecutor. He should lean over backwards to assure not only that justice is being done, but also that it is seen to be done by all reasonable people.
The only alleged crime that meets this high bar is the indictment in Florida based on the videotape of Mr. Trump waving classified material in front of journalists and admitting that he had not declassified them and that they are still secret. This piece of evidence is indeed a smoking gun, but the crime itself is not nearly as serious as the ones charged in the January 6 indictment. The remaining indictments — the one at New York City and the current one in DC — are highly questionable and certainly subject to criticism by reasonable and objective people.
The essence of a Banana Republic — the description applies equally to some Eastern European and Asian authoritarian regimes, as it does to South American — is the criminal prosecution of political opponents by incumbent leaders. We are not a Banana Republic and we are not close to becoming one. Yet this most recent indictment, following Mr. Biden’s public demand for the prosecution of his political opponent, brings us one step closer to banana land.
I have no doubt that if the shoe were on the other foot Mr. Trump would be demanding prosecution of his political opponents, but two constitutional wrongs do not make a constitutional right. It is true that the law must apply equally to all, but it is equally true – and it has always been the case – that the law should take into account the realities of our democratic electoral system. Thus the standard for an incumbent administration prosecuting its political enemies, and especially the strongest opposition candidate, must be considerably higher than in the ordinary case because Democracy itself is at stake.
In describing the standards that must be employed in such highly political cases, I have articulated two criteria – the first is the “Nixon standard.” When President Nixon was threatened with impeachment, prosecution, or both for his obvious crimes, members of his own party joined in the call for his resignation. I am confident that if Mr. Trump had been caught on tape offering or accepting a personal bribe, many Republicans would join the demand for his prosecution. But the current indictments, and especially the most recent one, do not come close to meeting the daunting Nixon standard.
The indictment against Mr. Trump for possession of classified material meets the highest evidentiary standard, but it does not meet the standard for a crime that is sufficiently serious to warrant prosecution in the midst of a presidential campaign. Perhaps the superseding indictment alleging that Mr. Trump ordered the destruction of videotapes may meet that standard, but the evidence cited in the indictment seems questionable and based largely on hearsay statements.
This brings us to the January 6 indictment. Here the crime is very serious, but the evidence seems lacking. I am aware of no direct eye- or ear-witness testimony that would prove beyond the reasonable doubt that Mr. Trump himself knew and believed that the election was fair and that he had lost. Indeed the evidence of which I am aware strongly suggests that Mr. Trump had convinced himself — quite wrongly in my view — that it had been stolen from him. If this is the case then any prosecution under this indictment would fail to meet the Nixon standard.
The other standard that must be met is what I have called the “What Aboutism” question. It is entirely fair to ask: “what about Hillary Clinton? What about Joe Biden? What about Mike Pence? They too possessed classified material after they left office.” There are of course considerable differences among these cases, especially with regard to cooperation. But failure to cooperate is not a crime; it is a right under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.
No incumbent administration should ever prosecute a leading candidate against its president unless there is a widespread consensus among reasonable Americans of all parties and backgrounds that the prosecution is beyond legitimate controversy. None of the current indictments, in my view, meet that daunting standard. [Biden, Prosecuting His Rival, Fails To Meet the ‘Nixon Standard’ in Trump Indictments]
And in an earlier article on the January 6th indictment and its implications in regards to freedom of speech:
The bottom line of the recent Trump indictment alleges that he knew or should have known that he lost the election fair and square, and that his actions in challenging the result were therefore corrupt and unlawful. The problem with the indictment is that the Supreme Court has repeatedly held under the First Amendment that there’s no such thing as a false opinion. Every American, and especially politicians, have the right to be wrong about their opinions. They also have the right to express their false opinions, at least as long as they honestly believe they are true. Imagine what the world would look like if every politician who told a fib in order to get elected were to be prosecuted and imprisoned. Our legislative sessions would have to be held in the Allenwood prison rather than in the halls of Congress. Lying has long been endemic in politics. That’s why we honour George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as truth-tellers among the array of politicians who don’t meet that standard. Indeed, this indictment itself fails to meet the standard of honesty that it requires of Donald Trump. In describing his speech of December 6, this is what it says: “Finally, after exhorting that ‘we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,’ the defendant directed the people in front of him to head to the Capitol, suggested he was going with them, and told them to give members of Congress ‘the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country’.” Yet the indictment omits two key words from that speech – “peacefully” and “patriotically” – which suggest that the speech itself was protected advocacy under the First Amendment rather than unlawful incitement. A lie by omission is as serious as a lie by commission, especially in the context of a legal document such as an indictment.
…
All in all, this indictment does not seem to serve the interests of non-partisan justice. It appears to be yet another manifestation of the hen an attorney general authorises the prosecution of his president’s main political opponent in an upcoming election, the case must be so strong that it leaves no doubt as to its non-partisan credibility. It should meet what I call the “Nixon standard”. The case against Richard Nixon was so strong that members of his own party and independents supported his impeachment and possible prosecution. That standard does not seem to have been met in this case. [The Trump indictment fails the Nixon test]
Capitalism is the social system that enables our survival and human flourishing.
One complaint by ivory-tower anti-globalists is why are Argentinian pears, packaged in Thailand, for export to the U.S.? As for why it’s cheaper to package Argentinian pears in Thailand for world consumption watch this video:
Watching this moving talk by Agustina Vegara Cid on the U.S.’s anti-capitalist, anti-rights, anti-American — in the moral/philosophical sense of the term — immigration system.
For fans of Ayn Rand’s novels, Agustina’s imaginative alternate-reality use of Kira from “We The Living” escaping the Soviet in the modern day 21st century is a “truck-like” metaphorical device to illustrate the injustice faced by those immigrants who are American in spirit.
Making the round on Twitter is a video of Just Stop Oil goons preventing a woman from taking her baby to the hospital. Such actions are to benefit the “environment” of which apparently human beings are not a part of.
Just Stop Oil prevent a woman from taking her baby to the hospital.
Far from “peaceful” physically blocking a vehicle with your body on a public road is not peaceful. It’s an indirect initiation of physical force, that accomplishes the same objective as if they physically held the driver down at gunpoint, albeit through the “fraud” of being “peaceful.” – Mark Da Cunha
“The difference in prize money awarded to men and women at tournaments where it has not been equalized has been stark. At last year’s Italian Open, for example, Novak Djokovic took home more than $900,000 for winning the men’s draw, while Iga Swiatek earned only about $365,000 for her women’s title. Borna Coric won $970,020 for his men’s singles victory at the 2022 Western & Southern Open in Ohio, while Caroline Garcia earned $412,000 for winning the women’s singles competition.”
The differences in tennis player salaries between WTA and ATP Tour Tennis players are not about women’s equality, but about who sells more tickets.
If sexism does not dictate ticket prices what does?
Economics dictates ticket prices and player winnings. Ticket sales show that men and women would rather watch the pro men’s matches (though there are times I have found personally that some of the women’s matchups are better). In the case of Serena Williams she probably should get more than the men as she is the draw, especially in the U.S., as she attracts tennis fans for her amazing tennis ability, she attracts black non-tennis American fans who follow her because of her race, and she attracts American fans for her celebrity. Like her or hate her Serena Williams, like Nick Kyrios or John McEnroe, is exciting to watch:
“In 2015, the U.S. Open women’s event between Serena and Venus Williams, sold out before the men’s event. The 2013 and 2014, women’s U.S. Open final garnered higher U.S. TV ratings than the men’s final. In 2005, the Wimbledon final between Venus Williams and Lindsay Davenport drew 1 million more viewers than the showdown between Roger Federer and Andy Roddick.”
Yet, when I went to watch the Canadian Open a few years back in Toronto I asked why the stadium was so small as some of the top seating was gone, and my friend told me that they don’t sell enough tickets for the women’s event, they put it back up for the men’s event— and it was Serena Williams playing Canadian #1 women’s player and past U.S. Open tennis champ A. Bandreescu. It also depends on the sponsor: sponsors of the Mubadala Citi DC Open can opt to pay women more then men. They chose not to. (Note in the recent DC event that the men’s field was 48 players; the women’s 28.)
Why is men’s tennis on average more popular? Physically, there are male juniors tennis players who would trounce the woman #1, which is not a knock on women as they can do something much more important than play tennis: give birth to human life. If tennis events were open for everyone regardless of sex there would be no pro women’s tennis; that’s the nature of the game, and is why as the great Martina Navratilova would agree, “trans women” (biological males who label themselves as women) should not be in women’s sports.
What about the Grand Slam tennis events which pay equal prize money to the men and women? In the case of tennis Grand Slam events, it’s not the players as much as the event itself that brings in fans. (On an equality setting one can argue that men should be paid more for playing best of five sets, as women play best of three.) Outside the slams, the players tend to be a draw and male players such as Rafael Nadal, Carlos Alcaraz, Npval Djokovic, Roger Federer, Nick Kyrgios draw in more fans, so they deserve more money. I think this is why a lot of the smaller events with lessor name recognition even pay appearance fees, it means the difference between making a profit and bankrupt.
“One of the main pillars of the strategy includes creating a pathway toward equal prize money, a goal envisioned 50 years ago when Billie Jean King founded the WTA. This increase will happen over time, to ensure the changes are sustainable for players and tournaments in the long term, with WTA 1000 and 500 combined events attaining equal prize money by 2027 and single-week WTA 1000 and 500 events by 2033″ [emphasis added]
“Obviously it’s a very delicate situation…Women deserve respect and admiration for what they are doing. You know, equal prize money was the main subject of the tennis world in the last seven, eight years. I have been through that process as well so I understand how much power and energy WTA and all the advocates for equal prize money have invested in order to reach that. I applaud them for that, I honestly do. They fought for what they deserve and they got it. On the other hand I think that our men’s tennis world, ATP world, should fight for more because the stats are showing that we have much more spectators on the men’s tennis matches. I think that’s one of the reasons why maybe we should get awarded more. Women should fight for what they think they deserve and we should fight for what we think we deserve. As long as it’s like that and there is data and stats available upon who attracts more attention, spectators, who sells more tickets and stuff like that, in relation to that it has to be fairly distributed.”
