Posted by Frankly Francis on April 26, 2010 under Personal | 
Sometimes I can be a curmudgeon, and sometimes I am proud of that.
I’m waiting in the drive-thru lane, I’m still waiting, I can see myself aging, pigs are flying above my car, Hell is freezing over. OK, I’m overplaying it, but it seems like an undue amount of time. And all I want is a black coffee.
I’ve long maintained that the propensity to get “order screwed” in the drive-thru lane is the price that one pays for convenience, but I can’t even get up there to place my order.
Finally, I’m at the window. The young lady rejects my money and hands me my coffee. She says that it’s on the house for the wait. I offer to pay again, but she insists that the manager insists.
Why Thank You, Wendy’s…I’ll be back again.
What a unique experience. One that I’ve never had before at fast food: understanding of the customer and the desire to mitigate the delay.
Imagine that, it’s almost like they think my time might be valuable. I’ve had that notion before, but it is affirming when others feel that way as well.
I’d like to think that I’m easy to please, that I’m as understanding and forgiving as the next guy, but I’ve seen the next guy in action on many occasions and it hasn’t been pretty. And I have had my moments too.
I don’t mean to take my pleasant surprise over the top. I know it was just a coffee, but it is a response worth noting nonetheless.
Frankly,
Francis
Posted by Frankly Francis on April 23, 2010 under Books/Authors, Social Issues/Politics |
I had a real good idea what this book would say – I figured it would be preachin’ to the choir. Mostly because of that, I really took my time getting around to reading it. Published in 1979, I let it languish in my library for almost 30 years. Well, as it turns out, it was indeed preachin’ to the choir. And this choir really enjoyed the preachin’ it got.
Not to exclude Rose Friedman, but…
Here’s my take: Milton Friedman valued our individuality. He felt that the collective acts of individuals pursuing their own interests would provide much more, in terms personal satisfaction and economic resources than the results of individuals acting in a collective. It follows then, his basic tenet that without economic freedom, there cannot be political freedom.
The fusion of economic and political freedom becomes the optimum result. Note, Friedman was much too realistic to advocate utopia – he certainly knew that there was no perfection in any approach, but held firmly to the value of recognizing each individual life as having a value that exceeded that of the state. Frankly Francis says: True That!
A few thoughts directly from Friedman:
Milton Friedman
“A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both”
“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results”
“I think the government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem and very often makes the problem worse”
“I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it’s only the waste that prevents the harm from being greater”
Amen Brother.
Here’s a quote about Friedman by George Schultz that I think is worth aspiring to – “Everyone loves to argue with Milton, particularly when he isn’t there.”
Milton was philosophically a libertarian. Politically, he was a Republican, but that, he explained was for expediency, perhaps much the same as Congressman Ron Paul.
During his lifetime he was recognized with the John Bates Clark Medal (1951), the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (1976), and in 1988, both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science. Big Stuff!
I must say that as reading Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” strengthened my existing perceptions, reading Freidman solidified my existing beliefs.
It is distinctly your own unique and wonderful life – Do yourself a real favor and read this book.
Frankly,
Francis
Posted by Frankly Francis on April 9, 2010 under In The News, Social Issues/Politics |
A couple of weeks ago, I took my daughter to a general practitioner for an 8:30AM appointment. At 10AM she was still waiting in the big (first) waiting room. I approached the office staff at about 10:10AM and it went like this:
FranklyFrancis: My daughter has been waiting for over an hour and a half to be seen. Why would you schedule an appointment if you were not going to see her then?
Office Staff: Were you on time? Did you take too long to fill out the paperwork? Were you a double-booked appointment?
FranklyFrancis: We were here early. Your staff said that the paperwork was filled out faster than usual. I don’t know anything about a double booking, but I do know that the appointment was made well over a month ago.
FranklyFrancis: Would you wait over an hour and a half in a checkout line to purchase something in a store?
Office Staff: Well, this is not a store.
YIKES!
It was another hour before we were out of there. I wonder how many productive hours are lost each day in medical offices across America. The economic impact of waiting for service is another matter for another day. But time is valuable – not a commodity to be wasted.
I have been thinking about this appointment, particularly the comment “well, this is not a store.”
Obviously, the typical medical office is not a store, for if it were, it would be out of business. The office staff would be seeking other employment; the doctors and nurses would be somewhere else.
Stores operate in a competitive environment. If they do not service their customers, the customers go elsewhere. Competition for the consumer market makes them efficient and cost effective.
As health care customers, we are missing essential elements to service and pricing, but as patients we have no other place to go.
Doctors through their monopoly restrict the number entering into medical schools. The various licensing boards further regulate the number of doctors allowed to practice. Competition is minimized amongst doctors – more money and prestige for doctors, more cost and less service for us.
The insurance companies are a legalized monopoly. They are exempt from competition courtesy of the government. This enables them to fight with the doctors for our money.
The government is its own monopoly that has no competition. That’s why our Founding Fathers wisely were so insistent that government be as limited as possible.
So there’s our prescription of doctors controlling the amount of services offered, insurance companies that face no real competition and government doing stuff it is not capable of doing even if it had a constitutional basis in the first place. This complicity right in front of our faces is not only most indecent, but should be punishable for the lives that suffer as a result.
There is really no need to wonder why health care is so sick…
Open up the medical schools to more doctors. Let doctors compete for us as patients rather than us competing for their services.
Remove the legalized monopoly – insurance companies need to compete with each other for our insurance premiums.
Get government out of important business that is best left to business.
Instead, we get the complete take over of the health care system by the government.
Health care is already twice the price of comparable societies with less quality service provided overall. The federal government is going to make this better? Government has been the key culprit in how bad health care has gotten. Yet it portends to be our savior.
The doctors aren’t complaining about national health care – their racket continues to be protected.
The insurance companies aren’t complaining about national health care – their racket continues to be protected.
The federal government sure is happy that it can finally fully socialize the last key ingredient to empower its position over the people. Its racket is even more protected.
So, have you ever seen an efficient government program that worked or achieved its objectives?
- Let me remind you about the War on Poverty and The War on Drugs.
- Let me remind you of the insolvency of Social Security and the disaster that is looming there.
- Let me remind you of our little never ending adventure in Iraq and the hunt for Bin Laden.
- Let me remind you about the efficiency and cost effectiveness of Medicare/Medicaid.
- Let me remind you of the staggering (and radically growing) federal debt.
How can anyone rationally trust his or her health to the government?
When you remove the free market from any service transaction, distortions in quantity, quality, price and availability will inevitably occur. We have clear history of the inequities that centralized economic planning in socialized governments produce. Make no mistake about it – America is so far along that road that we should all be scared silly. But we are comfortably numb, as the government wishes us to be.
Hello: Is there anybody out there?
The health care solution is simple: Open up medical schools to students who want to treat people, remove the barriers to competition in the insurance industry and keep government out of our business.
Frankly,
Francis
