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February 10, 2012
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The Kosher Gourmet byDana Velden: Going to the bother of making soup? You know it better be good. This CREAM OF TOMATO SOUP certainly is! And it's a cinch to make, too (Includes techinques and serving secrets)
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Mark Clayton: How did Anonymous hackers eavesdrop on FBI and Scotland Yard?
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Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
Jim Carney: Wrong number call may have saved her life
Reza Kahlili : Ex-CIA spy in Iran's Revolutionary Guard: What Obama doesn't grasp about striking deals with Tehran
Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
February 1, 2012
Brian Bennett: US officials see increasing threat of domestic attack from Iran
Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
January 31, 2012
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Suzanne Bohan: Warning: Nap-deprived tots missing more than sleep, study finds
Meg Handley: Banks Revamping Rewards Programs to Woo Customers
January 27, 2012
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Yochonon Donn: In liberal New York City, fervently-Orthodox Jews may soon be getting a district to call their own
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Katy Hopkins: New budget rules may affect how much money you get for college
January 26, 2012
Ed Koch: To the New York Times, calling for the murder of Jews by those capable of having their incitement taken seriously isn't news
Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
January 25, 2012
Richard Simon: House passes two bills endorsing the use of religious symbols at military memorials
Fred Weir: Putin: Multiethnic Russia cannot survive as a US-style 'melting pot'; must find its own way
Susan Johnston: 5 Sneaky Coupon Strategies Consumers Should Watch Out For
January 24, 2012
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Caroline B. Glick: America lost most in 'Arab Spring'. Sadly, many voters still don't grasp the extent
Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
January 23, 2012
Melissa Dribben: Jewish voters to play a key role in Florida's Republican primary
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Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
January 19, 2012
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David G. Savage: They sued their principals after slandering them online --- now the cases are headed to the Supreme Court
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January 13, 2012
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Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz: Thriving through touch: Gentle massage helps older people with low mobility improve in mind and body
January 12, 2012
Warren Richey: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a 'resounding win' for religious groups
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John Fauber : Statins found to raise diabetes risk in postmenopausal women
Katy Hopkins : Consider This Before You Pay for an Online Degree
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January 11, 2012
Shari Roan: Millions of atrial fibrillation sufferers at risk for devastating, but preventable, stroke
Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
Reza Kahlili: From an ex-CIA spy: US must exploit new split in Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Karen Kaplan: Study: Nicotine replacement products ineffective when used in real-life situations
January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
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Jewish World Review
August 26, 2009 / 6 Elul 5769
Competition
By
John Stossel
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
"Choice, competition, reducing costs — those are the things that I want to see accomplished in this health reform bill," President Obama told talk-show host Michael Smerconish last week (http://tinyurl.com/nb7r87).
Choice and competition would be good. They would indeed reduce costs. If only the president meant it. Or understood it.
In a free market, a business that is complacent about costs learns that its prices are too high when it sees lower-cost competitors winning over its customers. The market — actually, the consumer — holds businesses accountable and keeps them honest. No "public option" is needed.
So the hope for reducing medical costs indeed lies in competition and choice. Today competition is squelched by government regulation and privilege.
But Obama's so-called reforms would not create real competition and choice. They would prohibit it.
Competition is not a bunch of companies offering the same products and services in the same way. That sterile notion of competition assumes we already know all that there is to know.
But consumers often don't know what they want until it's offered, and their preferences and requirements change. Businesses don't know exactly what consumers want or the most efficient way to produce it until they are in the thick of the competitive hustle and bustle.
Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek taught that competition is a "discovery procedure." In other words, the "data" of supply and demand emerge only through the market process. We need open-ended competition not merely to see which rival is better, but to learn things we didn't know before and aren't likely to learn any other way.
"Competition is valuable only because, and so far as, its results are unpredictable and on the whole different from those which anyone has, or could have, deliberately aimed at," Hayek wrote.
Well-meaning politicians have created untold misery by assuming they and their experts know enough already.
The health care bills are perfect examples. If competition is a discovery process, the congressional bills would impose the opposite of competition. They would forbid real choice.
In place of the variety of products that competition would generate, we would be forced "choose" among virtually identical insurance plans. Government would define these plans down to the last detail. Every one would have at least the same "basic" coverage, including physical exams, maternity benefits, well-baby care, alcoholism treatment and mental-health services. Consumers could not buy a cheap, high-deductible catastrophic policy. Every insurance company would have to use an identical government-designed pricing structure. Prices would be the same for sick and healthy.
In this respect, it wouldn't matter whether or not Congress created a "public option," a government insurance plan. In either case, bureaucrats would dictate virtually every aspect of the health-insurance business.
What Obama says in favor of a public option — as of today, at least — tells us how little he understands competition. The public option's virtue, he told Smerconish, is that "there wouldn't be a profit motive involved." But as St. Lawrence University economist Steven Horwitz writes in The Freeman magazine, profit is not just a motive (http://tinyurl.com/m4nd2j). Profit (along with loss) is what enables competition to perform its discovery role:
"Suppose for a moment that we try to take the profit motive out of health care by going to a system in which government pays for and/or directly provides the services. … (P)ublic-spirited politicians and bureaucrats have replaced profit-seeking firms.
"By what method exactly will the officials know how to allocate resources? By what method will they know how much of what kind of health care people want? And more important, by what method will they know how to produce that health care without wasting resources? … In markets with good institutions, profit-seeking producers can get answers to these questions by observing prices and their own profits and losses in order to determine which uses of resources are more or less valuable to consumers. … (P)rofits and prices signal the efficiency (or lack thereof) of resource use and allow producers to learn from those signals."
Profit is the key to competition. Anyone who claims to favor competition but looks down at profit has no idea what he is talking about.
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© 2009, by JFS Productions, Inc.
Distributed by Creators Syndicate, Inc.
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