Friday, May 10, 2013

That's Not Entrepreneurship

A remarkable claim, a remarkably naive, dangerous claim, by Mr. Obama and Co.

"New health law encourages entrepreneurship."  To the extent that people are able to work for themselves, that may even be true.

But the law itself encourages rent-seeking, the pursuit of artificial gains without creating any actual value. An example:  Physician-owned hospitals will make out like bandits.  Because the new law actually encourages them to behave like bandits.

I knew entrepreneurship.  Entrepreneurship was a great concept.  Entrepreneurship was a friend of mine.  Mr. Obama, you are NO entrepreneur.  Entrepreneurship is a virtue.

Nod to Kevin Lewis for the links, not the interpretation, which is no one's fault but mine.

3 comments:

W.E. Heasley said...

When government privilege economies are actively advocated by politicos through the purposeful political process of welfare state schemes and through mountains of legislation spawning mountain ranges of regulation, such rent seeking behavior intentionally and/or unintentionally follows.

The resulting crony capitalism is framed as entrepreneurship, as is dystopia framed as utopia.

Politics Debunked said...

There is a lot of entrepreneurship in the healthcare field because there is a lot of money to be made. The problem is the unseen cost of myriad entrepreneurs and investors who avoid the highly regulated world of healthcare like the plague since they are find better ideas to focus on. Startups are risky enough as it is without introducing the further risk that the government will come along and change regulations and either put you out of business, or force you to redo your product/service and cost you lots of money. Some entrepreneurs in the med tech areas are politically connected and think their connections will let them be on the right side of any future changes.

Many aspects of healthcare legislation are done to protect big existing companies from competition from new innovative companies. Regulatory costs may be too high a burden for a new company to raise the funds to startup, or it may be forced to let a big company buy it to finish the approval process.

Aside from the myriad ways government protects insurance companies from competition,now they even benefit from activists pushing single payer. Would you start a business if you thought it might be outlawed in a few years, before you can build it up and sell it (to those who need to believe it is worth buying due to its future prospects)?

The healthcare world is full of myriad examples of "crony capitalism" limiting competition and driving up prices, as this page details:
http://www.politicsdebunked.com/article-list/heatlhcare

it is nothing remotely like a free market.

Politics Debunked said...

PS, I should add that the Kaiser article talking about doctor owned hospitals is interesting since *non*-doctor owned hospitals keep fighting for restrictions on doctor-owned hospitals, as the link in my last page explains (with source links). The special interest groups fight to use political advantage to benefit or to hurt their competitors.