How I removed squatters in less than a day.

from Outside the Box with Flash Shelton, from more than a year ago.

Hard to excerpt. The guy tells how he creatively and non-violently (and even somewhat humanely) got squatters out of his house so that he could put it on the market.

The Best Medicine in the World?

by Leonidas Zelmanovitz, Law & Liberty, January 1, 2025.

Excerpt:

Therefore, I hurried to consult a specialist to arrange for surgery to solve the problem definitively. He graciously received me the next day. After discussing the best procedure for my case, to my disbelief, he told me he was only able to schedule an appointment with a surgeon no earlier than three weeks later. The surgeon would then tell me how many weeks or months it would take him to schedule the surgery. Only after I insisted did the specialist give me an antibiotic to prevent an infection.

By then, I realized that according to the “protocols” followed in the United States for similar cases, once the emergency has passed, the procedure to address the problem is considered an “elective” one. So, no priority is given to people in my situation—at least in the United States. When I called my old doctor in Brazil, he was able to perform the same procedure the American recommended the following Sunday.

I do not question the technical skills or common decency of the professionals I interacted with in the United States—the service I got at the ER was fast and skillful, solving an issue that could have quickly escalated to a life-threatening condition. Nonetheless, there is no question that I got better and timely treatment in Brazil at a fraction of the cost of performing the same procedure here in the US. The question then is, why is that so?

Can We Have Health Care Without Health Insurance Companies?

by John C. Goodman, Forbes, December 29, 2024.

Excerpt:

An important tool private insurers use to avoid unnecessary spending and inappropriate care is to require preauthorization for a particular drug, therapy, or procedure. Doctors tend to regard these procedures as burdensome and irksome. Yet only 7.4% of requests by patients in Medicare Advantage and Medicaid managed care plans are denied. Moreover, in the vast majority of appeals (83.2%), the initial denials are overturned.

If you follow the health policy literature, you might be led to believe that the denial rate is a special problem in Medicare Advantage. In fact, the denial rate in Medicaid is twice that of the Medicare Advantage rate.

Some policymakers have decided to take aim at the use of AI in generating denials. At the same time, some doctors are using AI to file their appeals—greatly reducing the time to file and increasing the success rate. Yet both trends should be applauded if the desire is to make the entire process more efficient.

Overall, our health insurance system can be improved, and scholars associated with the Goodman Institute have proposed many ways to do that. But we cannot have a system that works well without companies that perform the functions health insurers are performing today.

Green Electricity Costs a Bundle

by Bjorn Lomborg, Wall Street Journal, January 1, 2025.

Excerpt:

As nations use more and more supposedly cheap solar and wind power, a strange thing happens: Our power bills get more expensive. This exposes the environmentalist lie that renewables have already outmatched fossil fuels and that the “green transition” is irreversible even under a second Trump administration.

The claim that green energy is cheaper relies on bogus math that measures the cost of electricity only when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. Modern societies need around-the-clock power, requiring backup, often powered by fossil fuels. That means we’re paying for two power systems: renewables and backup. Moreover, as fossil fuels are used less, those power sources need to earn their capital costs back in fewer hours, leading to even more expensive power.