The Heartland Institute and Consumers for Health Care Choices are sponsoring Health Care Roundtables across the country. Earlier this week, Acton development associate Charles Roelofs attended a roundtable and offers this report:
The event was co-sponsored by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and Americans for Prosperity – Michigan. According to event organizers, over 100 people registered for the event. Participants included, local and national health care experts, medical and insurance representatives, current and former elected officials, and concerned citizens.
Common themes in many of the presentations included the need for reform of the current third-party payer system, the potential for consumer driven health care to reduce costs, and how much of recently proposed legislation to reform our health care system is ineffective. However, the discussions were varied and ranged from practical advice for saving money on prescription drugs to tips on communicating with elected officials regarding health care.
These policy discussions often lend themselves to moral questions regarding reform. Which types of reform most respect the dignity of the human person? Which types provide the most effective, highest quality health care for those least able to afford it? The Acton Institute has many resources available to answer such questions. The Health Care Resource web page has lectures, commentary, articles, and other media on the subject. Recently, Acton also published a new monograph by Dr. Donald P. Condit, A Prescription for Health Care Reform, which is available through our bookshoppe.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says that “the world needs a new moral architecture.” He also has a clear idea of what that morality ought to look like. Speaking at a conference on socialism in May of this year, he said that “every factory must… produce not only briquettes, steel, and aluminum, but also, above all, the new man and woman, the new society, the socialist society.” If Chavez manages to convince enough people that socialists are a new breed of humanity, a breed that has evolved beyond the old ideas of liberal democracy and individualism, then there is no compelling reason to acknowledge the rights of anyone else. Rights in the “new society” are not based on humanity, because the socialists are part of a new humanity. Rights are based on conformity.
Henrique Capriles is not a conformer.
Capriles is the Governor of Miranda, a state in northern Venezuela.
Read More…
In a blow to international relief work, the Spring Lake-based International Aid has announced that it is ceasing operation, effective immediately.
CEO Dr. Gordon Loux cited a “perfect storm” of fiscal hardship: “We have tried to turn it around and we’ve sent out a number of appeals,” he said. “But because of the West Michigan economy and because of donor fatigue of most organizations trying to raise funds, we’ve got the perfect storm.”
In May, longtime CEO and president Myles Fish resigned, citing a restructuring plan focused on handling decreased levels of giving. According to Charity Navigator, International Aid was a model of efficiency in 2007, with 95% of funds being directed to program expenses and garnering a four star rating for both organizational efficiency and organizational capacity.
Read More…
A recent NBER working paper, “Internationalization of U.S. Doctorate Education,” takes a look at trends in doctoral degrees awarded by American institutions in the physical sciences, engineering, and economics.
From the abstract, “The representation of a large number of students born outside the United States among the ranks of doctorate recipients from U.S. universities is one of the most significant transformations in U.S. graduate education and the international market for highly-trained workers in science and engineering in the last quarter century.”
That transformation wouldn’t be possible without travel and visa allowances, as well as an educational and cultural atmosphere that welcomes immigrants. The trend also speaks to the level of prestige and respect accorded to U.S. institutions and degrees, and the portability and value of those degrees abroad.
Read More…
Acton University has been over for almost two weeks now. A testimony to what a great experience it is can be found on a blog, A Voice in the Wilderness, by R.J. Moeller. Moeller was a student at Acton University this year and provides great insight to the experience he had. If you are curious about Acton University or even Acton Institute please read his blog post. He gives a great description about both that is very well written.
Read More…
Liberty is something we have valued for years in the United States, and the recent events that have occurred in Iran and Honduras demonstrate there are many people throughout the world who wish they were blessed to live in a country that protects and values liberty. As we get ready to celebrate the Fourth of July, Kevin Schmiesing, research fellow at the Acton Institute, writes a very timely commentary on liberty.
Schmiesing explains the delicacy of freedom and how it can only set its roots down and bloom in a mature civilization that has a virtuous culture. Furthermore, Schmiesing also reminds us to be wary of those who use liberty as camouflage to deceive us into supporting certain issues and policies. Schmieising states:
Such deceptive allures permeate our policy debates.
Read More…
Pope Benedict XVI’s much anticipated economics encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, is scheduled to be released early next week, according reports. For a good sense of this pope’s thinking on economics, we offer an article the then-Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger presented in 1985 at a symposium in Rome. The Acton Institute published it under the title “Market Economy and Ethics.” As indicated by the following quote, the pope believed in integrating morals into economics in order to have sound and successful economic policy:
This determinism, in which man is completely controlled by the binding laws of the market while believing he acts in freedom from them, includes yet another and perhaps even more astounding presupposition, namely, that the natural laws of the market are in essence good (if I may be permitted so to speak) and necessarily work for the good, whatever may be true of the morality of individuals.
Read More…
Last week I took Friday afternoon off and did the yard work. I’d been listening to radio broadcasts about the vote in Congress on HR 2454 - what some of us call the “cap and tax” climate bill. You know, the one none of the members had read before the vote? Yes, I know, there’s more than one bill that they haven’t read prior to voting.
Yard work is good for my psyche. In two hours I can make a measurable and meaningful contribution to my property’s appearance. Few things in life are so neatly determinate; and the activity allows me to ponder other issues at the same time that I’m tilling and trimming.
My plan was to relax over the weekend in the run up to my birthday; and moving the yard work to Friday seemed appropriate. My modest Saturday agenda included helping to reduce the ironing pile by doing my half.
Read More…
Over at World Magazine, Lee Wishing cites a speech by Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president and co-founder of the Acton Institute, on the subject of putting our faith in God and our own abilities instead of the government to manage economies. He quotes Rev. Sirico: “Many thinkers throughout the ages have noted that we face a choice between holding a robust faith in God or putting faith in man and institutions such as the state.” In such tough economic times, we are reminded that we need to put our faith and trust in God first.
Read More…
According to the Catholic News Agency, an Italian newspaper claims to have acquired some parts of the upcoming Caritas in Veritate encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI. Some of the quotes published by Corriere della Sera are claimed to be from the encyclical and align with the predictions that the Pope will be advocating for morality to be the basis of solving our economic crisis. Here is a quote:
Without truth, without trust and love for what is truthful, there is no conscience or social responsibility, and the social action falls under the control of private interests or logics of power, with the destructive effect on society, even more on a society on the way to globalization, in difficult moments like the current ones.
Read More…
2
commentsshare yours