Have national health costs ever remained at the levels originally projected by the governments or the “experts”? Why?
List five states or nations where instances of waste, abuse and fraud in medical care take place, and list what happened. Explain the advantages of running complex programs such as health care on the local level.
What is meant by a “death panel”? Are cancer patients who lost health coverage because of ObamaCare dropped into the category of having been left to die by “death panels”?531 Explain.
It is estimated that 100 million Americans are losing their private health insurance because of ObamaCare. List the pillars of socialism that must be at work to impose this degree of control on the U.S. Is America still free? Explain.
Part XIII--SOCIALIZING THE MONEY
“There is something behind the throne greater than the king himself.”
* * *
479 “Imbloat,” best describing a state of static and distended dilation of engorged excess—too large to move, too weak to correct, too seamy to contain, it labors unceasingly to perpetuate its own stagnation.—Author
480 Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons, SCIENCE, Vol. 162, December 13, 1968, pp. 1243-1248.
481 Edwin Leap, M.D., The Problem With ‘Free’ Health Care, WND, Dec. 11, 2009.
482 Sacramento State News, Report Highlights Emergency Room Abuse, September 1, 2004.
483 Debbie Gilbert, Hospitals Try To Limit Emergency Room ‘Abuse,’ Gainesville Times, October 15, 2007.
484 Chicago Tribune, July 28, 1962.
485 Howard E. Kershner, Christian Economics, April 14, 1970.
486 Dr. E. Lloyd Dawe, Nation’s Business, July 1961.
487 Did Kate Middleton Use the NHS? Of course Not, by Charles C. W. Cooke, National Review Online, July 23, 2013.
488 U.S. News & World Report, January 24, 1966.
489 Human Events, November 23, 1974.
490 Human Events, December 28, 1974.
491 Jenny Hope, GP bonuses ‘lead to poor patient care,’ MailOnline, June 29, 2011.
492 Stefan Gress, Private Health Insurance in Germany: Consequences of a Dual System, 2006.
493 Chee Hew, Healthcare in China, IBM Institute for Business Value, 2006; Bradley Blackburn, World News Gets Answers on China: Health Care, November 18, 2010.
494 Senate Joint Economic Committee, Minority Staff, Are Health Care Reform Costs Estimates Reliable? July 31, 2009.
495 George Winder, The British Nationalized Health Service, The Freeman, August 1962, pp. 3-14; NHS Summarised Accounts, www.nao.org.uk.2007-12-11.
496 U.K. Department of Health, Spending Review 2010, October 20, 2010.
497 National Health Insurance—It doesn’t work & it’s not free, American Cause, Inc., Vol. IV, No. 9, October 1978.
498 CBCNews, Canadian Health-care spending to top $180B,” November 19, 1990.
499 Ibid., Senate Joint Economic Committee.
500 Robert Pear, Obama Signs Children’s Health Insurance Bill, The New York
Times, February 5, 2009.
501 Ibid.
502 Kate Kelland, “Global health care fraud costs put at $260 billion,” Reuters, January 18, 2010.
503 National Health Care Anti-fraud Association white paper, Combating
Health Care Fraud in a Post-Reform World, October 6, 2010—www.nhcaa.org.
504 Associated Press, “Mass. Discovers Abuse of Free Health Care Pool,” May 29, 2011.
505 Ibid.
506 Medicare Fraud Strike Force Charges 111 Individuals for more than $225 Million in False Billing and Expands Operations to Two Additional Cities, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services news release, February 17, 2011..
507Ibid.
508 Ibid.
509 Transparency International, Global Corruption Report 2006, country reports, p. 183.
510 Myriam Marquex, Medicare crooks like Cuba—why? Miami Herald, February 5, 2009.
511 Transparency International, Global Corruption Report 2006, Chapter 1,
part 4, pp. 62-75.
512 Palyi, Ibid., p. 34.
513 BBC News, Obese patients denied operations, November 23, 2005.
514 U.K. Daily Mail, as quoted in FoxNews, New Zealand Denies Immigration to U.K. Wife Because She’s Too Fat, November 17, 2007.
515 David Nakamura, Fat in Japan? You’re breaking the law, GlobalPost, June 16, 2010.
516 Washington Post (AP), Russia’s Parliament Adopts Law Restricting Abortions to 12 Weeks, October 21, 2011.
517 Sven R. Larson, Lessons from Sweden’s Universal Health System: Tales from the Health-care Crypt, Vol. 13, No. 1, Spring 2008, pp. 21-22.
518 Quoted from Lin Zinser and Paul Hsieh, Moral Health Care vs. “Universal Health Care,” The Objective Standard, Vol. 2, No. 4, 2007..
519 National Health Insurance—It Doesn’t Work & It’s Not Free, American Cause, Inc., Vol. IV, No. 9, October 1978.
520 Brennan, Leape, Laird, et al, Incidence of Adverse Events and Negligence in Hospitalized Patients—Results of the Harvard Medical Practice Study I, February 7, 1991.
521 Gawande, Thomas, Zinner, Brennan, et al, The incidence and nature of surgical adverse events in Colorado and Utah in 1992, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, 1999.
522 U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Report OEI-06-09-00091, Hospital Incident Reporting Systems Do Not Capture Most Patient Harm, January 5, 2012.
523 Charles Vincent, Graham Neale, Maria Woloshynowych, Adverse events in British hospitals: preliminary retrospective record review, British Medical Journal, March 3, 2001.
524 Wilson, Runicman, Gibbert, et al, The Quality in Australian Health Care Study, The Medical Journal of Australia, November 6, 1995.
525 Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Vol. 13, No. 1, Spring 2008, pp. 21-22.
526 Ibid. p. 21.
527 PBS NewsHour, China Struggles With Health Care Reform Amid Growing Demand, April 14, 2011.
528 Health Care Tops List of Concerns in China, Washington Post, Jan. 10, 2008.
529 World Health Organization, World Health Report, Executive Summary, 2010.
530 All quotes: M. Palyi, Compulsory Medical Care and the Welfare State, 1949.
531 See, for example, Boy with Cancer Loses Coverage After ObamaCare Launch, WND, November 27, 2013
Chapter 75: John Law’s Trillion Dollar Idea
About 70 years before Alexander Hamilton pushed for a strong central bank, a clever scheme was unfolding in The Netherlands. At the hands of John Law, a Scottish economist, the scheme grew into a creature that would eventually infiltrate every bank around the world, control the U.S. economy, and saddle all sovereign economies with an expensive helmsman steering their growth. All of the necessary pieces didn’t come together overnight—in fact, it required a couple of centuries to catch on. Today, John Law’s get-rich-quick scheme is called fractional reserve banking.
CULPRIT: John Law (1671-1729)
IMPACT: Implemented fractional banking in France
STORY: In 1694, John Law was sitting in prison. He was just convicted for murder. It was a shooting duel over the affections of a young lady, and the competing beau died in the contest. Law was arrested and sentenced to death, but the dead man’s brother appealed the sentence—murder was reduced to manslaughter, and Law was spared. Then one day, Law managed to escape his English prison and fled across the channel to Amsterdam. That’s where it all started.532
One thing Law h
ad going for himself was a brilliant mathematical mind. He discovered great success as a professional gambler. He could win card games by calculating the odds in his head, and made a pretty good living at it. But a much bigger game eventually presented itself that whetted Law’s appetite. It was the risk of a lifetime, but could be worth millions.
The Bank of Amsterdam, he saw, was essentially a warehouse for gold. Merchants deposited their gold for safe keeping and were given a receipt to reclaim the gold at their pleasure. The bankers made their money by charging a storage fee.
Rocks, Paper, Scissors
And then Law caught wind of a strange pattern in human behavior. With very predictable regularity, the merchants rarely went to the warehouse to claim their gold. Using the paper receipts in their pockets was more convenient than taking a carriage ride downtown, withdrawing a purse sagging heavy with coins, bullion, and carrying it about around the neck or bulging in a pocket for key business transactions. Trading receipts was so much easier than heavy gold.
The Ten Percent
At the time, the clerks at the Bank of Amsterdam had already been working this curious tendency to their advantage. In fact, they had been keeping track. On any given day, only 10 percent of the merchants actually took their gold. The other 90 percent seemed content with trading around their paper, secure in the knowledge that their gold was always there, tucked away inside the bank vault.
The bankers then got the idea they could print up more receipts than they had gold. They could go about town, swapping a receipt for groceries, a horse, maybe a new boat. Or, why not make loans? Now there’s an idea—if the people believed they were actually borrowing real gold, but got receipts instead—and then had them pay back the loan with real gold, what a fantastic way to make some fast cash.
A Million for a Billion?
John Law saw an amazing phenomenon unfolding. Since only a small percentage, a small fraction of people, worried enough to retrieve their gold, could not an entire economy be built on this human tendency? Could a country prosper with only a million in gold but a billion in paper, or whatever amount was needed in the vault?533
John Law tried for 20 years to sell his scheme of fractional banking to other European governments, but nobody took the bait. He assured them that if at least 10 or 20 percent of the gold was kept in the vault, 80 or 90 percent of it could be loaned out.
First Up: King Louie’s Court
Law’s luck finally changed in 1715. France was grinding down into financial failure. King Louis XV was desperate. He summoned John Law to his chambers for details on how to make fractional banking work in France. The scheme sounded risky, but workable, so Louis put John Law in charge of the whole thing and sent him on his way to repair France’s troubles.534
John Law’s scheme started out great. All the country’s gold and silver was steered and enticed into the vaults of his banks. Paper money was suddenly in fashion for all business transactions.
As bails of money were printed, John Law became wealthy and France prospered—everyone exchanging receipts that they had been led to believe were instant claims equal to all of their actual deposits.
Rainy Day Funds on Rainy Days
And then circumstances threw a wrench into the works. A growing number of people who picked up their gold didn’t turn around and deposit it again. Some took it with them and moved out of the country. Others shipped it away to invest in foreign activities or to pay off debts. And others stuffed it at home under the mattress. It was becoming more difficult to keep enough actual gold in the vaults to keep the wheels of fractional banking turning.
Ignore That Man Behind the Curtain
How did John Law respond? To stop the flow of gold out of the country, he arranged to outlaw private ownership of gold. The receipts were still good, he assured everyone—you just can’t trade them for gold or silver right now. That did not sit well with some people and they demanded their gold. Word spread and suddenly there was a run on the banks—those first in line emptied all the vaults. Everyone else was left holding millions in worthless receipts. Like a rock thrown off the yet-to-be-built Eiffel Tower, France’s economy plummeted overnight.
John Law had to flee the country in 1720, chased away by hordes with a hangman’s rope. He survived and managed to get along for a few more years, only to die in poverty in 1729.
National Banks to the Rescue
John Law’s experience demonstrated some important points that were later adopted by European bankers.
First, he demonstrated the power of illusion. So long as people were convinced that the system working their money was too complex to be understood, the average layman felt secure. All they cared about was receiving money when they wanted it. How many banks carry “trust” in their name?
Second, John Law showed the power of a central, all-powerful bank. If bank customers worried there wasn’t enough cash in the vault, a central bank could calm a potential run by shoveling in more—it could dispatch a coach hauling gold or freshly printed bills to the back door and have the clerks carry the boxes into the vault. With plenty of coin or cash to disburse on demand, the appearance of security and strength remained, and people calmed down.“They wrote it down—it must be true!”
Another appearance of stability was created by tracking everyone’s transactions in ledgers, passbooks and receipts showing balances remaining in an account. People could “see” their balances securely noted in ink, officially scrawled on official bank documents, official proof that they had that much money stashed somewhere ... officially.
Deception Becomes Policy
Today, the ruse is no longer hidden. In fact, allowing banks to lend the same money over and over again is an established policy for banks worldwide. They must keep a certain reserve of cash on hand “for the 10 percent” or more—whatever reserve their circumstances require.
The socialists loved this idea. Some 200 years ago, Nathan Rothschild said,
“The great body of people mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages that the capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.”535
Karl Marx made this scheme of top-down financial control an important goal for implementing socialism. His fifth communist plank espoused “Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital as an exclusive monopoly.”536 That goal has been met.
* * *
532 The Encyclopedia Britannica, John Law, Thirteenth Edition, Vol. 16, pp. 297-299, 1926.
533 A billion from a million is an exaggeration to make a point. “Deposit multiplication” is a complex subject, and lending on a 1:1000 basis would be deemed too risky for banks today.
534 See John T. Flynn, Men of Wealth, 1941, Simon and Schuster, Inc., NY.
535 This quote has been attributed to the Rothschilds—see National Economy and The Banking System of the United States, Document No. 23, 76th Congress, 1st Session, 1939.
536 Ibid., The Communist Manifesto.
Chapter 76: The Ruling Power of Central Banks
The principles of socialism are well exercised in international banking. The bankers’ entangling alliances have created financial labyrinths into which no sane person would ever wish to tread. However, by cutting away the centuries of barnacles and shrouds, the pillars of modern banking can be found resting on the very same ideas of control and change that have wreaked havoc since the dawn of humanity.
Power Behind the Throne
If money is power, do the powerful control the money? An interesting development in recent centuries is the place that central banking has taken in politics. It is so pervasive, some have suggested the real rulers are the bankers—
King Not Omnipotent? “There is something behind the throne greater than the king himself.”—Sir William Pit
t, House of Lords, writing in 1770.537
Bankers More Dangerous: “I sincerely believe, with you, that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies...”—Thomas Jefferson538 in a letter to John Taylor, May 28, 1816.
Power of the Purse: “The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”—Benjamin Disraeli, writing in 1844.539
Rulers in America: “The real truth of the matter is ... that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government since the days of Andrew Jackson.”—Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933.540
Invisible Government: “Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul this unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of statesmanship.” —Theodore Roosevelt, 1912.541 The Real Ruler is a Central Bank
The references to powers behind the throne point to privately-run central banks that concentrate financial power in just a few private hands. This idea is polar opposite from “power by the people” that the Founders envisioned.
The Naked Socialist Page 44