Category Archives: Healthcare

Tesla Whines About Protectionist Legislation for Auto Dealers While Using Government Largesse to Compete

Last week, I wrote about rent seeking auto dealers lobbying for protection from competition with manufacturers utilizing direct-to-consumer sales models. I mentioned direct-to-consumer manufacturer Tesla by name, and suggested such legislation would prevent consumers from enjoying the savings that might otherwise be realized from Tesla’s efforts to “eliminate the middle-man.”

I should have taken the opportunity to address Tesla’s own abundant receipt of government largesse.

And to be clear, “government” largesse is always paid for by the taxpayers.

In a piece entitled “If Tesla Would Stop Selling Cars, We’d All Save Some Money,” Forbes contributor Patrick Michaels details all the ways Tesla benefits from government handouts. Michaels concludes that taxpayers shell out $10,000 for every car Tesla sells.

Michaels starts with a claim that purchasers of Tesla vehicles receive a $7500 “taxback bonus that every buyer gets and every taxpayer pays.” Since the tax credit appears to be non-refundable, I would not count it as a cost to other taxpayers, as Michaels does.

But the federal tax credit is only the tip of the crony capitalist iceberg for Tesla.

There are also generous state subsidies paid by taxpayers to the wealthy people who buy Tesla’s expensive vehicles. Purchasers in Illinois, for example, can receive a $4,000 rebate from that state’s “Alternate Fuels Fund,” a $3,000 rebate to offset the cost of electric charging stations, and reduced registration fees. California likewise offers a long list of rebates and subsidies to buyers of electric vehicles.

One of the hidden costs to consumers comes in the form of the increased price tag on cars sold by manufacturers who do not qualify for California’s mandated emissions credits, which they instead have to buy from Tesla, allowing it to earn a profit despite selling cars at a massive loss. As Michaels explains:

Tesla didn’t generate a profit by selling sexy cars, but rather by selling sleazy emissions “credits,” mandated by the state of California’s electric vehicle requirements. The competition, like Honda, doesn’t have a mass market plug-in to meet the mandate and therefore must buy the credits from Tesla, the only company that does. The bill for last quarter was $68 million. Absent this shakedown of potential car buyers, Tesla would have lost $57 million, or $11,400 per car. As the company sold 5,000 cars in the quarter, though, $13,600 per car was paid by other manufacturers, who are going to pass at least some of that cost on to buyers of their products. Folks in the new car market are likely paying a bit more than simply the direct tax subsidy.

Slate’s Scott Woolley details another way in which Tesla has cost taxpayers money. In 2009, Tesla received a $465 million Department of Energy loan that allowed it to weather a financial maelstrom. Unlike Solyndra (and Abound Solar and Fisker Automotive and The Vehicle Production Group LLC), Tesla managed to repay the loan in 2013. According to Michaels, it did so by reporting its first ever quarterly profit (earned from the sale of the emissions credits), which sent its stock soaring and enabled it to borrow $150 million from Goldman Sachs, and then issuing a billion in new stock and long-term debt.

But Tesla paid the U.S. taxpayers back at a rate far below what venture capitalists would have earned on the same loan. As an example, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk also made a loan to Tesla. Musk got a 10% interest rate and options to convert the debt to stock, which he did, resulting in a 3,500% rate of return on his investment.

In contrast, the U.S. taxpayer received a 2.6% rate of return.

In other words, in our crony capitalist system, taxpayers take the loss on bad loans like the one to Solyndra, but do not enjoy commensurate reward on good loans like the one to Tesla.

But there is still more. Tesla cannot keep earning emissions credits, which allow it to earn a profit despite selling its cars at a loss, unless it can keep selling those cars. Josh Harkinson, writing for Mother Jones, writes that:

Its first-quarter profit, a modest $11 million, hinged on the $68 million it earned selling clean-air credits under a California program that requires automakers to either produce a given number of zero-emission vehicles or satisfy the mandate in some other way. For the second quarter, Tesla announced a $26 million profit (based on one method of accounting), but again the profit hinged on $51 million in ZEV credits; by year’s end, these credit sales could net Tesla a whopping $250 million.

Tesla’s ability to continue selling the cars that earn the credits is in question. The market for $80,000 cars has a limited number of buyers. Tesla must expand its customer base with a more affordable product.

One way to achieve that would be to cut the vehicle’s range. But subsidies, credits and fuel savings notwithstanding, consumers have little taste for lower ranges—even at a much lower price. Another way for Tesla to lower the cost of its vehicles is to cut the cost of its batteries without sacrificing the range. As Harkinson observes:

That, however, may again depend on massive subsidies—in this case funding to battery researchers and manufacturers by the governments of Japan and China. Over the past five years, Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, a public-private partnership founded in 1980, has pumped roughly $400 million into developing advanced battery technologies. Tesla’s Panasonic cells also might be pricier if not for subsidies the company received to expand its battery plants in Kasai and Osaka.

When Republican Gov. Rick Snyder signed the bill reaffirming Michigan’s protectionist legislation for traditional automobile franchise dealers, auto blog Jalopnik reported GM’s position as follows:

“Competition is always healthy,” GM spokeswoman Heather Rosenker tells Jalopnik. “But it needs to be on a level playing field.”

In the context of the substantial aid Tesla receives from federal, state and foreign governments, it is easier to have some sympathy for the plight of traditional manufacturers—and their dealers.

Ultimately, that sympathy shines a spotlight on the problems created when government starts “tinkering” in the market. Inevitably, that initial, well-intentioned tinkering necessitates ever more intrusive secondary tinkering aimed at remediating the unintended side effects of its initial foray into the market.

Consider health care. Inflation in the cost of U.S. health care began to outpace the general rate of inflation when the government began subsidizing health care costs. Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman has estimated that real per capita health spending is twice what it would be in the absence of third party payments, and that Medicare and Medicaid are responsible for 43% of that increase. The remaining portion can be blamed in large part on the third party payments from mandated employer health care coverage, further separating patients from the cost of their care and eliminating the market forces that would otherwise keep costs down. Add to the foregoing the government-enforced monopolies on health care education, leading to 22% fewer medical schools in the United States now than one hundred years ago, despite a 300% increase in population, and attendant provider shortage. All that well-intentioned tinkering created a whole host of ugly, unintended side effects, necessitating more tinkering. The federal government responded with the Affordable Care Act and its accompanying thousands of pages of new regulations.

Everywhere the pattern repeats. The cost of higher education outpaces general inflation precisely because the government wants to help people pay for it. The unintended side effect is increasing numbers of graduates with useless degrees and few job prospects, necessitating further tinkering in the form of loan relief, jobs programs and minimum wage hikes. The Federal Reserve suppresses interest rates to artificial lows in the well-intended effort to speed recovery from the bust of the dot-com bubble. The unintended (in this case, it may actually have been intended, at least by Paul Krugman) side effect is a new bubble in housing. When that bubble bursts, the government must step in to bail people and banks out of their bad investments, create new bureaucracies and new regulations making it harder for people to qualify for loans (in contrast to previous tinkering designed to make it easier).

Lather, rinse, repeat.

I am not a radical free-marketer because I dislike poor people or have a special love for corporations. I am a radical free marketer because I know no amount of tinkering ever produces results as beneficial as what the market produces, naturally and efficiently, all on its own.

Sarah Baker is a libertarian, attorney and writer. She lives in Montana with her daughter and a house full of pets.

John McCain vs John McCain: Ebola Czar Edition

In 2008, even though the presidency of Barack Obama has been a disaster, the American people picked the lesser of the two evils. It is truly terrifying that John McCain won the presidential nomination of a major political party.

At first, Senator McCain was opposed to using “czars” in government as this tweet obtained by the Huffington Post shows:

Fast forward to now and the Ebola epidemic. What does Senator McCain urge President Obama to do? Appoint an Ebola czar.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) believes President Barack Obama should appoint a “czar” to lead America’s response to Ebola.

“From spending time here in Arizona, my constituents are not comforted. There has to be more reassurance given to them. I would say that we don’t know exactly who’s in charge. There has to be some kind of czar,” McCain said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“I don’t think we’re comforted by the fact that we were told there would never be a case of Ebola in the United States,” McCain continued. “Obviously that’s not correct.”

Today, President Obama did just that. He appointed Ron Klain, a longtime advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, to the post. Klain has no apparent healthcare background.
So where does Senator McCain stand on the appointment? Senator McCain blasted the appointment of Klain.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who led the charge calling on President Obama to appoint a health czar to oversee the response to Ebola, says the president’s pick of Democratic operative Ron Klain is inadequate.

“Frankly, I don’t think Mr. Klain fits the bill, as a partisan Democrat, certainly not in any effort to address this issue in a bipartisan fashion,” McCain said Friday evening on Fox News.

“He has no experience or knowledge or background in medicine,” he added.

McCain is correct about the fact that Klain’s sole qualification to be Ebola Czar is that he’s a partisan Democrat hack and as such, he has no business coordinating anything. So what does McCain propose instead?

McCain said on Fox that Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell was the logical choice to fill the role of an Ebola czar, adding that she is a “very capable individual.”

Do Senator McCain and President Obama know we already have an Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response within the Department of Health and Human Services whose job is to….coordinate the government’s response to pandemics like Ebola?

Why do we need yet another “czar”?

I’m one of the original co-founders of The Liberty Papers all the way back in 2005. Since then, I wound up doing this blogging thing professionally. Now I’m running the site now. You can find my other work at The Hayride.com and Rare. You can also find me over at the R Street Institute.

Performance Enhancing? Nope… normalizing… But don’t try to tell the DEA that

There’s a funny thing about my life… I’m not sure if this is comic, tragic, ironic or what…

I spent more than 10 years as a serious competitive powerlifter, football player, wrestler, and martial artist, and another few years as a just a hobbyist.

In that entire time, I never did a single “performance enhancing drug”… Never even tempted to do so.

Now I’m a broken down, fat, middle aged cripple… who the DEA looks at like I’m a drug dealer or abuser of “performance enhancing substances”… just to keep from getting fatter, more broken down, and more crippled.

I’m 8 years into the frank symptoms of chronic illness (which turned out to be a weird and rare kind of endocrine cancer, that almost killed me, and basically destroyed my endocrine system. I have been cancer free for almost 2 years now), and I am now on damn near the exact combination of drugs that “juicers” would traditionally use for such things. I have heard of people making use of what you can find at https://www.mypillapp.com/testogen-review/ as a supplement to work for them. I guess it just never worked for me.

I take more testosterone every week than most steroid abusers would even think of… and I don’t cycle it, I take it constantly, deep muscle injection every week. Although I have heard that you can use something like TestoUltra to achieve the same desired effects too.

I take an aromatase inhibitor to keep all that testosterone from converting to estrogens and testosterone antagonists (and giving me all the nasty side effects that not cycling off testosterone injections give you). We’re experimenting with that one right now, but we may end up adding an estrogen/estradiol antagonist to the mix on top of the aromatase inhibitor.

By the by… those drugs are normally what they give to breast cancer and ovarian cancer patients. They actually say in the interaction warnings “do not take if you are a man”… unless of course you’re a man whose body is producing too much estrogen, or converting too much testosterone into estrogens and testosterone antagonists, and blocking his ability to produce and use testosterone properly. If you’re not one of those men, it dramatically increases the effect of testosterone (and other steroid hormones) on your body.

I’m on enough primary thyroid hormone to quite literally kill a normal person… in fact, not just “enough”, the amount I take is several times the lethal dosage. It’s still may not be enough for me. The doc just increased it today, and will probably increase it again in 6-12 weeks when we sort out the effects of the new meds. Sometimes athletes abuse thyroid hormones for weight loss, increased energy, and to boost other performance-enhancing hormones naturally. However, thyroid hormones are normally used to help people who have had their thyroid removed. These hormones aim to help people try and produce some of the hormones that the thyroid gland can no longer produce itself. However, sometimes these hormone replacements, like levothyroxine, don’t work. To learn more about some signs levothyroxine not working, you could visit holtorfmed.com, for example.

For allergies, and for inflammation pursuant to the endocrine issues, I take two different other steroidal medications (a glucocorticoid and a mineralcorticoid), which act as bronchodilators and anti-inflammatories.

To deal with some of the unfun and nasty side effects and after effects of the cancer (to improve metabolic function, energy, mental acuity etc…) I’m also taking enough creatine to put a normal person into kidney failure… For me, it actually makes my kidneys work better.

Because of the aftereffects of the cancer, the endocrine issues, and the side effects of the medications, I’m on megadoses of vitamins and minerals. I mean MEGADOSES.

Between all of those, my growth hormone production and DHEA production should be elevated through the roof… as if I was taking illegal supplementation of HGH. It’s not… because my endocrine system is so screwed up.

For my edema (another lovely endocrine side effect, which can be made worse by my meds), I take more diuretics than the most abusive wrestler, gymnast, or bodybuilder. I’ve lost 24lbs in 24 hours, and 48lbs in 7 days just from the pills.

For musculoskeletal pain and systemic inflammation, I’m on more and stronger anti-inflammatories than any athlete rehabbing after a major injury (I take 1000mg of etodolac twice a day). I also get periodic shots of antiinflammatory medications directly into my knees.

Those let me get out of bed and walk. Without them… I just don’t.

Between my normal blood chemistry, the damage the cancer did, and the side effects of medications, I’ve got polycythemia, and I’m a hyperclotter. I’m basically naturally blood doping.

To counter the aftereffects of the cancer and make the other meds work better (adrenal and pituitary support), I’m on enough stimulant medication (which is also a bronchodilator) to make the DEA look funny at my doctor… until he explains all of the above.

In fact, the DEA looks funny at several of the drugs I’m taking above. My doctors have had to explain to my pharmacists, and both have had to explain to the DEA… no, I’m not a drug dealer or abuser, I’m not a steroid abusing weight lifter… I’m just a guy who needs this stuff to live.

I should be taking actual pain killers too… I’ve got enough musculoskeletal damage, neurological damage, and inflammation, that my baseline background pain is pretty substantial.

For those familiar with pain management, I live at about a 3-4 most days, with breakthrough to a 7 on good days, and 6 or 7 with breakthrough to 9 or 10 bad days.

That’s with the meds. Without… there are no good days. There’s just days I can get out of bed, and days I can’t.

I simply refuse to take painkillers. They don’t do a damn thing for me unless I take horse tranquilizer doses, and then they knock me out cold… or worse, leave me semi conscious and barely awake, but unable to think, or concentrate, or really actually sleep. Besides, I don’t like the other side effects.

I’ve learned just to live with the pain, and take what pain reduction I can get with my other medications. I also look to purchase cbd bath bomb wholesale frequently so I can have a relaxing bath infused with CBD that is known for its anti-inflammatory and pain-reducing properties, these baths sometimes soothe me to the point of being under a 3-4 on the pain scale on a good day.

And by the way… this is a MASSIVE REDUCTION of the stuff I used to be taking, during the cancer. My primary care physician and my endocrinologist are both alternative and integrative medicine believers who hate drugs, and only prescribe the absolute minimum necessary.

I’m not overmedicated… if I go off of any of them, or all of them, nothing gets better and it all gets worse. We’ve done differential testing, going off one at a time and seeing the impact then going back on, then varying dosages… I’m definitely not overmedicated.

If anything, there are some other medications that might help me more. We’re very slowly adding things in one at a time, so we can test and measure and adjust.

This isn’t overmedication…

This is what happens, when your endocrine system completely loses the ability to regulate itself. It’s trying to regulate through medication, what the body normally regulates naturally.

It’s what I need to live, and be functional.

The worst thing is though… because of DEA actions, regulations, guidelines, and investigations… Several of my medications, that I need to live, and be productive, and actually be ME?

They’re constantly short of them, or out of them entirely. Sometimes it’s every pharmacy within 30 miles.

They don’t stock them, they don’t stock the dosages I need, or they don’t stock enough to fill my scrips for a month.

I have to get hand written, signed scrips every month, I can’t get refills, and I can’t get more than a 30 days supply at once. If I’m caught with more than a 30 days supply, I can be charged with unlawful possession, and possession with intent to distribute.

I have to hand carry those scrips to the pharmacies, only for them to tell me that it might be a week, maybe two weeks, before they can fill the scrip; because the DEA production quota for that quarter had been exceeded, or the distributors orders were above the DEAs suspect threshold, or because they had sold out of all they could order for that month without the DEA investigating them, or because one scrip of mine was more than the DEA told that pharmacy they could keep in storage.

We won’t even get into what the drugs themselves cost, or what they would cost without the regulatory and compliance burden to deal with these issues.

…And god help me if I actually took the painkillers I should be taking.

All this… because the medications that I need to live and function… are sometimes abused by other people to “enhance their performance”.

… and somehow, some people still seem to think that the “drug war” is helping?

I am a cynically romantic optimistic pessimist. I am neither liberal, nor conservative. I am a (somewhat disgruntled) muscular minarchist… something like a constructive anarchist.

Basically what that means, is that I believe, all things being equal, responsible adults should be able to do whatever the hell they want to do, so long as nobody’s getting hurt, who isn’t paying extra

Re-post: The Right to Life Also Implies a Right to Die

Brittany Maynard says ‘I don’t want to die.’ The 29 year-old is is not unique in her desire for self-preservation as most of us do not want to die. What does make her somewhat more unique is she has tragically been diagnosed with a stage 4 glioblastoma. To put this in laymen’s terms, she has terminal brain cancer which will end her life if nature is allowed to take its course.

Brittany, however; has other plans. She has moved from California to Oregon to take advantage of Oregon’s ‘right to die’ law. Her goal is to live until her husband’s birthday on November 1st. If she lives until November 2nd, Brittany says she wishes to die on her own terms on that day. “I may be alive on Nov. 2 or I may not, and that’s my choice,” Brittany explained.

Back in June of 2007, I wrote a post entitled: The Right to Live Also Implies a Right to Die. I wrote the post in response to Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s release from prison. While I appreciated the gravity of physician assisted suicide then, it was still a bit abstract. Since that time I have seen friends and family members waste away to terminal conditions and it is truly horrifying to witness. I cannot say for sure that any of these friends or family members would have opted to make the same choice as Brittany and others have made but they should have had the choice. The state should not stand in the way of end of life decisions by the person who owns his or her life.

The following is a re-post of the original article I wrote in 2007.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian has finally completed an eight year prison term. For what exactly? For helping a terminally ill and suffering man exercise his right to a have a dignified and peaceful death. I find it very irritating that the media has given Dr. Kevorkian the nickname ‘Dr. Death’ as if he were some kind of serial killer.

Dr. Kevorkian has done our society a great service by bringing this issue into the national debate. On what basis can society deny a person his or her right to die? If we truly believe that every individual has the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and property, then the individual cannot be denied this right on any of these measures.

The individual has the right to life but this does not mean that government can force an individual to live. The individual has the right not to exercise his or her rights. The individual has the right to keep and bear arms but the government cannot force an individual to own a gun. The individual has the right to his or her liberty (provided he or she does not infringe on the liberty of others) but he or she can willfully surrender his or her liberty to be subjugated to a cult or religion. The individual has a right to his or her property (which would include his or her body by the way) which means he or she can do with it whatever he or she wishes (again, provided he or she does not infringe on the life, liberty, or property of others).

Thomas A. Bowden has an excellent piece on this issue at Capitalism Magazine.

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed, for the first time in the history of nations, that each person exists as an end in himself. This basic truth–which finds political expression in the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness–means, in practical terms, that you need no one’s permission to live, and that no one may forcibly obstruct your efforts to achieve your own personal happiness.

[…]

For these reasons, each individual has the right to decide the hour of his death and to implement that solemn decision as best he can. The choice is his because the life is his. And if a doctor is willing (not forced) to assist in the suicide, based on an objective assessment of his patient’s mental and physical state, the law should not stand in his way.

The fear by those who oppose the inherent right to die is that the government would eventually start killing those who are suffering regardless of the wishes of the individual. But upon closer inspection, recognizing an individual’s right to choose his or her manner of death is protecting the individual’s right to life. The individual does not live for the purpose of pleasing society or the religious sensibilities of others.

Watch A Couple Of Millennials Talk About Barack Obama’s Policies Have Harmed Their Generation

A couple of young Millennial women, Alyssa Lafage and Elly Mae, appeared on “The Rick Amato Show” on the One America News Network (don’t worry, you probably don’t even get the channel). Amato had both young ladies on to talk about how the policies of President Obama and progressives have harmed the Millennial generation.

Some reports show that Millennial unemployment remains high at 15% in September. This summer, it was estimated that Millennials are 40% of the overall unemployed in this country. Millennials still cannot afford health insurance, despite Obamacare’s promises.  Finally, Millennials are trapped by high amounts of student loan debt, which cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, in order to obtain near worthless degrees.

Watch these two Millennial women describe how the polices of President Obama and progressives have harmed their generation and made their generation worse off than ever. Also, check out our own Quincy’s takedown of Obama drone Paul Krugman’s proclamation of Obama as one of the greatest presidents ever which touches on some of these same issues.

h/t: Wayne Dupree

I’m one of the original co-founders of The Liberty Papers all the way back in 2005. Since then, I wound up doing this blogging thing professionally. Now I’m running the site now. You can find my other work at The Hayride.com and Rare. You can also find me over at the R Street Institute.
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