Just a quick glance at the Idaho state budget books tells you a great deal about how the state spends our money. If we simultaneously eliminated the individual income tax and state funding of public schools, our budget books would still balance, or very nearly so. Obviously the question then is, who funds education? Well, the state wouldn’t be able to, but that 1.3 billion that is back in taxpayer pockets sure could. Since private schools have a lower cost per student than state run schools, my guess is parents might actually be able to pocket some money to boot.

Normally I try and avoid making prognostications, but that doesn’t mean I ignore cause and effect. I would suggest up-and-coming attorneys make a push to understand medicine. When hospitals start to feel the pinch and don’t have the finances to treat grandma, relatives will start to hear “There is nothing more we can do except make her comfortable.” Roughly translated this means it is to expensive to treat the patient. An astute lawyer with access to the medical records of the deceased will know what comes next. I think suing hospitals and doctors will become a lucrative business in the next 6 to 10 years.

Many will say that the difficulties that currently exist in bringing a lawsuit against doctors and hospitals will still exist in the future, and that may be, but the jurors will begin to empathize with the plaintiff more readily.

“Under capitalism man exploits man! Under socialism it is the other way around.”

-John Kenneth Galbraith

This post is dedicated to the republicans of all parties.

Long ago an Aztec king, resplendent in his glory , reigned over a mighty nation.  His kingdom was grand and his subjects devout.  The lowliest of peasants lacked for neither food nor clothing. They were honored to be slaves in their master’s palaces.

A year of great famine came upon the land, and try as they might the farmers could not raise crops under the waterfall of fire poured forth from the sun. The great king, called forth his royal priest and demanded tradition be maintained. So to satiate  Atlacoya the priests daughter was brought to the top of the temple. Four priests held her limbs down and  as she lay on the cold stone her father took a piece of flint and cutting her abdomen. The flint was not smooth and did not cut easily like a razor blade sliding through your skin, her flesh had to be worked upon.  The elder priest slid his hand through her body, and reaching her heart pulled it from her remains. As her blood and flesh rolled down the steps the father turned his back to her and placed her beating heart in a stone basin held by Atlacoya. Tradition was recognized.

One must always ask  on what merit the tradition itself stands.

An excellent post.

Thanks to Josh W. for the link

Two children in an upper division high school math course sat next to one another. There was only a half hour left of class. The teacher begin passing out a pop quiz. Stock,  looked to his neighbor Flow. “She’s doing it again!” Flow Shrugged. Upon receiving the exam Stock realized, his mental faculties being what they were, he would have no chance of finishing the quiz in a half hour. “Never leave a question unanswered” he said to himself. He rationalized that the answer must be between 8 and 16. Quickly he wrote down 12 and turned in his quiz.

Flow sat quietly and began working out the details of the problem. She also realized she could not complete the problem in the allotted time, but  she pressed forward. She went to the teacher afterward and asked if she had gone wrong on the problem. “Time will tell.” said the teacher with a grin. Flow walked out disappointed.

As she left the building Stock caught up with her and asked if she finished the problem. “No, but I think I could have figured it out if I had more time.”

“Well if you knew you couldn’t finish it why did you spend so much time dithering over it?”

“Well, if you don’t care why are you in the class.”

The teacher handed the quizzes back later that week. “Some of you passed, some of you failed, and some of you did not complete. Many of you were on the right track, but at the end of the day only one of the 3 results qualifies you for the presidency.”

An introduction to game theory may be found here.

These graphs by economist Mark Perry shows two things. 1. Out-of-Pocket spending will cause people to want to ration on the basis of price, and 2. Introducing price competition, as in the cosmetic surgery industry, will cause price to decline.

So the real health care bill should simply require insurance companies to reimburse the patiant,  and require all hospitals and doctors to provide a comprehensive list of procedures, associated billing codes and prices.

Mark’s post on this can be found here.

There is a pannel discussion this evening regarding health care. The University of Idaho Economics club is sponsering the event which will take place in the court room of the Menard Law Bldg. at 6:00. Pannel members include Toni Lawson, Idaho Hospital Association; Nickolas Jorgensen, assistant professor of political science; James Foster, professor of biological sciences, bioinformatics and computational biology; Dr. Tim Moody, Pullman-based preventive medicine physician; and Steven Peterson, instructor of economics and regional economist.