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November 27, 2009

Readers' forum: Nov. 28, 2009

Consumers deserve public option choice



Health care reform without a public option amounts to billions of dollars of bailouts for the insurance companies. By expanding health insurance to the uninsured, we’ll be giving tens of millions of new customers to the insurance companies, along with federal subsidies to keep premiums affordable. But there’s no incentive for the health insurance companies to keep costs down, or to provide better service. By subsidizing high premiums, all we’re doing is bailing them out.

The public health insurance option provides competition that will make the private health insurance industry fight for customer loyalty by offering lower premiums and better service. Lower premiums means less tax dollars going into the pockets of corporate CEOs.

Americans deserve the right to choose their own health care. Limiting our choice to the same for-profit corporations means trusting the same people who benefit from the broken health insurance system we have now. Congress must give Americans more choices for their personal health care by allowing the availability of a non-profit public health insurance option. Requiring people to purchase health insurance from a limited pool of for-profit insurance companies only is not real reform; it is a taxpayer bailout of the insurance industry. If the for-profit corporate health insurance companies fail us and cannot provide quality service for less, we deserve the right as consumers to choose a non-profit public option.

— LaVonne Dodson

Center Point

Keynes saved capitalism from self-destruction



The Tribune Star needs to employ a full-time staff writer just to correct the mistakes of Arthur Foulkes, the paper’s in-house, would-be expert on economic doctrine. In the Nov. 12 edition Foulkes’s target is John Maynard Keynes, the early 20th century British economist who, in the 1930s, developed the theory that saved capitalism from its worst self-destructive impulses. Foulkes claims that Keynes was both “condescending and wrong” in his description of private sector investors as being motivated by “animal spirits” rather than by a desire to earn profits. Foulkes goes on to explain that investors “will invest when they believe profits are likely and refrain from investing when they appear more doubtful.”

Lost on Foulkes is the fact that the profit-seeking logic is precisely what Keynes had in mind when he used the term “animal spirits.” The term, while poetical, was not pejorative. Keynes, as much as anyone, understood that capitalists are motivated by profit. He further understood, as Foulkes does not, that circumstances occur when individual capitalists suffer from a shortage of confidence that they will find a receptive market for their outputs. This is particularly true during periodic crises when unemployment climbs and incomes shrink as does the purchasing power of consumers. At such times there is really no other recourse than for government to re-ignite the engine of economic growth and restore the confidence (“animal spirits”) necessary for resumed business expansion. Nowhere does Keynes suggest, contrary to Foulkes implication, that individual businesses or investors are regarded (by Keynes) as short-sighted or otherwise irrational. The focus of individual businesses, however, is appropriately on their own businesses, and not on the economy as a whole, i.e. the macro-economy. Individual businesses and investors have neither the motive nor the resources to promote wholesale macroeconomic recovery. We have learned since Keynes that this is a responsibility for national economic policy.

Foulkes is wrong to assert that the economic effect of government spending is to simply deprive the private sector of resources that it would otherwise be put to productive use. Often the opposite is true. During periods of crisis and contraction, government spending is capable of putting to work resources, including labor, that would otherwise remain idle. The output produced by these resources then creates additional incomes that represent the demand for additional production in a cumulative and causative fashion. This spending multiplier process does not displace private sector production, but rather stimulates it. Absent government intervention during periods of recession or depression, the economy would stagnate for a much longer period than necessary, the work skills of the labor force would depreciate, productive opportunities would be lost and human suffering would mount.

It is far better that government actively intervene to promote recovery, even when it offends the market fundamentalist sensibilities of ersatz economics journalists like Arthur Foulkes.

— Donald Richards

Professor of Economics

Indiana State University



Goodman column not based on facts



The False Choice? It seems to me that the Nov. 18 Ellen Goodman piece would be better titled The False Opinion.

If the writer wants to support abortion, that is her right. It is just a shame that she does it under the guise of health care reform. It is also a shame that she presents her case in this writing with nothing but false or derogatory statements. Let’s set the record straight.

The Conference of Catholic Bishops has stated that it may or may not support a health care bill that does not include public funding for abortion, but it definitely will not support one that does. This in no way scuttles their longtime support for universal health care. I also don’t see how this rolls back any woman’s access to abortion. Currently, public funds are not used for abortion. The Bishops propose that this not change. Finally, I find it difficult to believe that the Bishops‚ or the Republicans‚ common cause on health care reform is to defeat President Obama.

Ms. Goodman states that more than 40 pro abortion representatives who had reluctantly voted for the bill signed a letter threatening to oppose any version that came out of conference committee with these same restrictions. Why is this not a scuttling of support for universal health care by these representatives?

What is “abortion neutral?” At one end of the spectrum, groups that are pro life such as the Bishops, have voiced quite a bit of concern over the wording of the bill. At the other end groups that are pro abortion such as Planned Parenthood, have voiced nothing but pleasure. It would seem to me that neither of these positions considered the bill “abortion neutral.” It also could be considered a little odd that the latter groups still aren’t showing a lot of concern that their position is in peril.

The Stupak-Pitts amendment does not strip American women of reproductive health coverage. Prenatal care, fertility and other reproductive care will still be covered.

What would not be covered is the intentional termination of the life of an unborn child. This does not come under the definition of reproductive health. On the contrary, there is no study that suggests an abortion is in any way medically beneficial to either the woman or the child. In fact, studies show the opposite. The rate for many physical and emotional conditions, from breast cancer, to depression, to suicide increases significantly for women who have had abortions. As for the child, it is always deceased. It is reasonable to imply then, that the pro life groups are actually concerned with health care, while pro abortion groups are more concerned with an agenda.

Finally, candidate Coakley is quoted: “I can’t believe that we are now reduced to saying the only way to get good health care is by taking steps backward in women’s rights.” Again, women are giving up no right that they currently have. Also, the problem with our health care system is not quality. It is that under current conditions, it is not economically sustainable.

Again, I say, if Ms. Goodman wishes to support abortion it is her right. I just believe that it is a shame for this newspaper to allow her to use such shabby journalism to state her position.

— Warren Brown

Rosedale

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