Rick Perry Vetoes “Buy American” Bill Approved 145-0 by Texas House

hey now, that's the premise of single payer health care!

Top down, command and control, one size fits all, an unelected board to set the price of everything.

 

That's probably material for a different thread. If we get in an argument later about the merits of single-payer healthcare, you can link back to this thread and I'll see what acrobatics I can perform to demonstrate the two issues are different.

 

Good. You'd think legislators would have some background in Economics and would understand that protectionism is bad economics.

 

They can file bills on things that are not "on the call" (the proclamation that declares the special session and what for), but as I understand it, if it isn't on the call, and it is brought up for a vote, they can effectively kill the bill by calling a point-of-order. The House loves them some point-of-orders, but seeing as they unanimously voted in favor, I can't imagine a change of heart. Could see someone like Patrick (who voted against it) killing it if it were brought up again.

 

This isn't really protectionism, because no one is advocating making bad economic decisions to buy American. The bill was based on the idea that all else is equal - it's more like affirmative action for American companies.

In terms of economic merit, it actually makes sense if we believe creating jobs is a positive benefit to society. Because in that scenario, you get the products and create US jobs (and thus, generate tax revenues) vs just getting the products - in other words, you get more bang for the buck. It essentially makes buying things cheaper because you get a kick back in higher tax revenue and potentially lower social services costs, and thus is a rational and efficient economic decision.

That said, I'm not sure about the logistics of determining how this would actually work in practice. It might work for simple things like buying light bulbs or staples, but I'm not sure about anything more complex.

 

Free trade is a racket, just like war, so it's no surprise that the same politicians support both.

 

Like JuanValdez said, this probably needs to not take over this thread, but there are a lot of natural and unavoidable market failures in any private health insurance market. There's really no way around having a lot of government involvement.