There is no better time of the year than sports in March. It is incredible. The NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament is the obvious, but baseball season begins to get under way and golf has the Master's as well. The month of March and the first week or two of April are by far the best of the year. Week 3 in April brings us the NFL Draft, which is more front office entertainment reserved for a special kind of nerd (like myself). It does not count.
March Madness has lived up to its name this season. Morons like Jay Bilas who want nothing more than 64 big "establishment approved" schools in the tourney have been left peeing down their leg watching these games, and I love it.
There have been upsets that were, but there have also been almost upsets. Sam Houston State was playing with Baylor for nearly the entire game, with Baylor pulling away late. Robert Morris should have beaten Villanova. Nothing would have made the big school lovers cringe more than Robert Morris taking down Villanova, I'm hoping that today St. Mary's pulls off the feat and eliminates them. Well wait, there was one thing that could make them cringe more......
Ohio (not Ohio State) took down Georgetown, I don't think Bilas slept a wink Thursday night in between cries after that shot in the nuts. Ouch..... Ohio is a team that finished ninth in a mid-major conference, and had to get hot in their "mediocre" conference's tournament and swing an automatic bid. The world chalked Georgetown up as an easy winner and allowed all of the "Kansas got the worst draw in the tourney talk" heat up because Georgetown, Ohio State, Michigan State, and Tennessee are all "establishment approved" schools. Well, someone forgot to tell the ninth seed in the MAC (who went 7-9 in their conference) that they are supposed to curl up in the fetal position at mid-court and let the established schools give it to them.
And on to Kansas, who is my obvious barometer for the season for a few teams. Temple played KU earlier this season and got rolled. A few days later, the Big Red Machine of Cornell went into Allen Fieldhouse and beat KU. Well, the refs said otherwise, but the Big Red won that game. What happened this weekend? Cornell rolled Temple. Now Cornell has Wisconsin coming up, and Cornell will move on.
Butler got a 5 seed even though they were a Top 10 team in the nation much of the season. How could Georgetown be ranked 22 and get a 3 seed while Butler who's been in the Top 10 gets a 5 seed. Murray State pulled off a little magic against Vandy, but I don't know that it will continue against a Butler team who is ready to go to the Sweet 16 and give Syracuse a run for their money.
Finally, for the establishment folks who continue to say the Big East is the best conference in America comes results in the opening round. They continue to ignore data such as the RPI rankings that say the Big 12 is better, they ignore that 50% of the Big East's teams got in the tourney while 58% of the Big we teams got in. Opening round, the Big East won 50% of their games while the Big 12 won 71% of their games. Georgetown and Notre Dame lost to Mid-majors, while Marquette and Louisville lost to two teams from the underachieving PAC 10 conference. The Big 12 saw a stumbling Texas team lose and Oklahoma State lose a game that went down to the wire against a team that made the ACC Championship game. Kansas, Kansas State, Baylor, and Texas A&M all took care of business and Missouri upset a very solid ACC team.
Hopefully the two biggest trends thus far in the tournament continue: the mid-majors handling the majors and the Big 12 continuing dominance. Sunday's game between Missouri and West Virginia will be interesting. Mizzou is a 10 seed from the Big 12, has very poor perimeter shooting, and even worse rebounding. They play good defense and hope for easy buckets. West Virginia won the Big East conference tournament. If West Virginia does not take care of business against Mizzou, it will be the final nail in the Big East's coffin in this tournament.
It's getting exciting. It's March, should I expect any less?
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Health Care is Not a Right
Everything has a unit of measure. As people, we are all measured in pounds of weight or inches of height. A tree is measured in its rings. Everything has some sort of measure that represents size or worth. Our lives can be measured in the amount of time we were on this earth. The more time we are here, the more experiences we have. If each experience were a unit, you would assume that an individual who lives to be 80 years of age had more "experiences" than an individual who lived to be 20 years of age.
The things that we have rights to are the items that facilitate the length of our lives and the experiences we have while not infringing on the rights of another person. We do not have a right to a television set because someone would have to construct it for us. We do not have a right to transportation because someone would have to build us a car or would have to drive the bus or train that gets us around. There is no right to a roof over your head, furniture in your home, the Internet, or anything else for all of the same reasons.
The Founding Fathers stated that we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Life is time and those experiences as stated above, liberty is that your rights will not be infringed upon to provide for others, and the pursuit of happiness is just that...a pursuit. We do not have the right to be happy, because no one is happy all the time. But we do have the right to the pursuit of whatever make an individual happy (family, profession, etc.) while not infringing on the liberty or lives of others.
The Bill of Rights that formed the original version of the United States Constitution gave us the right to speech, assembly, religious beliefs, bearing arms, a free press, as well as an array of other rights that protect us from government intrusion in our lives. Those rights, as written, do not infringe upon the liberty of another individual but are the rights of your own pursuit of liberty and happiness. The only questionable item is arms, because today no one produces their own guns or knives, we all buy them from someone else. The right to bear arms only goes far enough to say that you have a right to the possession of weapons to protect yourself, but no one has the obligation to provide you a weapon. A weapon is something you can produce for yourself if you do not wish to pay or trade with someone else. No one has the obligation to produce for you a weapon as it would be an infringement on their rights to life and liberty.
Health care as it is practiced is not very different. Today, we seem to confuse the terms "health care" and "medical services." Our personal health has to do with our life and the ultimate pursuit of happiness, and as such we have the right to the pursuit of a healthy life. We have the right to our health much like we have the right to the possession of a gun.
Medical services are a different matter. For medical providers to be a right, someone else must be obligated to fore go their own lives, liberties, and pursuits of happiness. They are obligated to give up time and experiences of their choosing (units of measuring their own lives) in order to provide something for someone else. We only have a right to medical services to the extent that we are willing to trade money or services of our own to pay for it.
Our health care system is broken. It is broken because the risk/reward system that causes us to manage our own personal health is gone and the government actually incentivizes bad health. Through corn subsidies and high sugar tariffs, for example, the government incentivizes food producers to put less healthy high fructose corn syrup as a sweetener in foods instead of natural sugar.
Our system of health care might not quite be socialized, but it is much more collectivist or socialist than it is capitalist. The cost of most insurance plans from providers and employers is the same for everyone, regardless or age, weight, blood pressure, or any of an array of risk factors. I buy into a "community" plan that spreads risk among the population, which sometimes makes sense when we are talking about once in a lifetime phenomena. Unfortunately, medical services are something that are needed very often much like heat, water, food, etc.
If the government or a private organization provided us all heat, for example, we would be paying into a pool for everyone else. If gasoline were a right and the cost were spread among the population, we would have much less incentive to manage our miles driven efficiently. We would keep our homes much warmer because there would be no reason not to.
Medical services are no different. We have a right to a healthy life to the extent that we can provide it for ourselves with our own pursuits. Our system is broken because we treat medical services like they are too much of a right, and we have removed the incentives people had to manage health properly due to their own personal costs because if they don't the community picks up the tab.
Health care is not a right. No one is obligated to provide anything to us.
The things that we have rights to are the items that facilitate the length of our lives and the experiences we have while not infringing on the rights of another person. We do not have a right to a television set because someone would have to construct it for us. We do not have a right to transportation because someone would have to build us a car or would have to drive the bus or train that gets us around. There is no right to a roof over your head, furniture in your home, the Internet, or anything else for all of the same reasons.
The Founding Fathers stated that we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Life is time and those experiences as stated above, liberty is that your rights will not be infringed upon to provide for others, and the pursuit of happiness is just that...a pursuit. We do not have the right to be happy, because no one is happy all the time. But we do have the right to the pursuit of whatever make an individual happy (family, profession, etc.) while not infringing on the liberty or lives of others.
The Bill of Rights that formed the original version of the United States Constitution gave us the right to speech, assembly, religious beliefs, bearing arms, a free press, as well as an array of other rights that protect us from government intrusion in our lives. Those rights, as written, do not infringe upon the liberty of another individual but are the rights of your own pursuit of liberty and happiness. The only questionable item is arms, because today no one produces their own guns or knives, we all buy them from someone else. The right to bear arms only goes far enough to say that you have a right to the possession of weapons to protect yourself, but no one has the obligation to provide you a weapon. A weapon is something you can produce for yourself if you do not wish to pay or trade with someone else. No one has the obligation to produce for you a weapon as it would be an infringement on their rights to life and liberty.
Health care as it is practiced is not very different. Today, we seem to confuse the terms "health care" and "medical services." Our personal health has to do with our life and the ultimate pursuit of happiness, and as such we have the right to the pursuit of a healthy life. We have the right to our health much like we have the right to the possession of a gun.
Medical services are a different matter. For medical providers to be a right, someone else must be obligated to fore go their own lives, liberties, and pursuits of happiness. They are obligated to give up time and experiences of their choosing (units of measuring their own lives) in order to provide something for someone else. We only have a right to medical services to the extent that we are willing to trade money or services of our own to pay for it.
Our health care system is broken. It is broken because the risk/reward system that causes us to manage our own personal health is gone and the government actually incentivizes bad health. Through corn subsidies and high sugar tariffs, for example, the government incentivizes food producers to put less healthy high fructose corn syrup as a sweetener in foods instead of natural sugar.
Our system of health care might not quite be socialized, but it is much more collectivist or socialist than it is capitalist. The cost of most insurance plans from providers and employers is the same for everyone, regardless or age, weight, blood pressure, or any of an array of risk factors. I buy into a "community" plan that spreads risk among the population, which sometimes makes sense when we are talking about once in a lifetime phenomena. Unfortunately, medical services are something that are needed very often much like heat, water, food, etc.
If the government or a private organization provided us all heat, for example, we would be paying into a pool for everyone else. If gasoline were a right and the cost were spread among the population, we would have much less incentive to manage our miles driven efficiently. We would keep our homes much warmer because there would be no reason not to.
Medical services are no different. We have a right to a healthy life to the extent that we can provide it for ourselves with our own pursuits. Our system is broken because we treat medical services like they are too much of a right, and we have removed the incentives people had to manage health properly due to their own personal costs because if they don't the community picks up the tab.
Health care is not a right. No one is obligated to provide anything to us.
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