The Long View 2008-01-31: Protean Robotics; Deposit insurance & Health Insurance; The Resurrection of McCain

Microbots_2.jpg

The Disney adaption of Big Hero 6 [Amazon link] did in fact feature protean microbots, but also did not use that term.

There is a bit of meat here on John J. Reilly’s idea for turning American healthcare into a public utility. Not a right, but a public good. John was right that an individual insurance mandate would increase costs overall, but I think incorrect that is there is any fundamental cost-savings available in healthcare. It would be good to decouple employment and healthcare though.

The health-care system should not be run as an insurance system at all, no more than the fire department. No less a person than Milton Friedman is of similar mind on this point, though he strongly opposes turning the health system into a public utility.

A point to consider: if the federal government simply assumed the costs of the current insurance system, the profits of businesses that offer health-care benefits would increase by, what, a tenth? a fifth? a third? The saving would not be just liberation from premium payments; personnel departments would also be freed from administrative costs. Certainly the US auto industry would stop looking like the buggy-whip industry. That would mean a corresponding increase in tax revenue without raising taxes. Since a properly structured national system would be in a position to negotiate with health-service providers in a way that keeps costs down, that might actually be enough to fund the system and keep it funded. Most important, labor would be emancipated through portable coverage.

Protean Robotics; Deposit insurance & Health Insurance; The Resurrection of McCain

Why is the word Protean not used to designate this class of robot?

Swarms of robots that use electromagnetic forces to cling together and assume different shapes are being developed by US researchers. The grand goal is to create swarms of microscopic robots capable of morphing into virtually any form by clinging together. ...But software, not hardware, may be the biggest challenge facing researchers working on swarms of robots..."I'll be done when we produce something that can pass a Turing test for appearance," says [Seth Goldstein, who leads the research project at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh]. "You won't know if you're shaking hands with me or a claytronics copy of me."

We do, of course, already have ensembles that can pass this version of the Turing Test: they are called "multicellular organisms." The closer mechanical systems get to passing the test, the more their units will resemble living cells, even if the cells cannot reproduce.

* * *

The evolution of the medical industry is on track for becoming a public utility, though the editors of the Wall Street Journal would have you believe otherwise:

What the California collapse [the recent failure of Governor Schwarzenegger's semi-universal health insurance plan to pass the legislature] should discredit in particular is the individual mandate as a policy tool for Republican reformers. This was Mr. Romney's enthusiasm for a time, helped along by the Heritage Foundation. But in order to be enforceable, such a mandate inevitably becomes a government mandate, and a very expensive one at that.

Voters are rightly concerned about health care, but they also don't want to pay higher taxes to finance coverage for everyone. Mr. Schwarzenegger's spectacular failure shows that there's an opening for Republicans to make the case for health-care reform based on choice and tax-equity, not mandates and tax hikes.

As I have remarked before, the evolution of the national health-care system looks very much like that of bank-deposit insurance: the states experimented for several decades and all the experiments failed; then it became an element of the New Deal bank stabilization program, almost as an afterthought, and the system worked like a charm.

It is true that the individual-coverage mandate is a bad idea, almost tautologically so. Such plans leave the existing system intact, but try to extend it to the uncovered part of the population. The cost of extending it to that group will be higher than current costs; that's why the uncovered part of the population is uncovered. Costs must be lowered at the core of the system. Dealing with the periphery is just feeding the beast. Indeed, one of the things that needs to be fixed is that most of the people who are covered by health insurance find that their policies are booby-trapped should a serious illness arise.

The health-care system should not be run as an insurance system at all, no more than the fire department. No less a person than Milton Friedman is of similar mind on this point, though he strongly opposes turning the health system into a public utility.

A point to consider: if the federal government simply assumed the costs of the current insurance system, the profits of businesses that offer health-care benefits would increase by, what, a tenth? a fifth? a third? The saving would not be just liberation from premium payments; personnel departments would also be freed from administrative costs. Certainly the US auto industry would stop looking like the buggy-whip industry. That would mean a corresponding increase in tax revenue without raising taxes. Since a properly structured national system would be in a position to negotiate with health-service providers in a way that keeps costs down, that might actually be enough to fund the system and keep it funded. Most important, labor would be emancipated through portable coverage.

None of this is hard. Well, some of it is hard, but it is both practical and necessary.

* * *

Here's an aphorism for you: It takes an lot of government to keep a libertarian living in anarchy. This is a conservative observation.

* * *

The resurrection of John McCain has occasioned much wailing and gnashing of teeth in very much those sections of the Right who decided in 2000 that what this country really needed for president was a one-term governor of a state with a ceremonial governorship, no foreign policy experience, and no discernable economic views except lower business taxes. To be fair, President Bush did better than might have been expected in a office for which he was minimally qualified, but one nevertheless has to ask about the faction that promoted him for the Republican nomination: What were these people thinking of?

Whatever it was, they seem still to be thinking it. In 2000, John McCain was the road not taken, and they are adamant against taking it this time. I quote Don Feder simply as a representative sample:

This may just be the year when conscientious conservatives decide sit out the election...The prospect of John McCain as the Republican nominee caused Rush Limbaugh to declare last week, “I can see possibly not supporting the Republican nominee this election, and I never thought that I would say that in my life.”

With Hillary or Obama as the alternative, this is not an easy decision, but one dictated by both conscience and common sense.

John McCain is a conservative’s worst nightmare – I mean other than George Soros being elected president.

The danger with sitting out an election is that the electorate might do good without you. If Senator Nightmare wins, that victory calls the bluff of the variety of conservative who asserts the indissoluble union of business conservatives and social conservatives. It also, frankly, calls the bluff of the sects and lobbyists who have claimed to speak for faith-based social conservatism.

Long-time readers will recall that, even in 2000, my support for John McCain had certain caveats. In the interim, more caveats have been added, particularly on immigration. I will have more to say about these points. For now, just let me repeat that McCain will do.

Copyright © 2008 by John J. Reilly

Why post old articles?

Who was John J. Reilly?

All of John's posts here

An archive of John's site