{"id":28,"date":"2010-05-04T04:47:40","date_gmt":"2010-05-03T23:47:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/?p=28"},"modified":"2010-05-16T03:20:34","modified_gmt":"2010-05-15T22:20:34","slug":"28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/?p=28","title":{"rendered":"Obama Care and Torrey Pines Tee Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Obama Care and Torrey Pines Tee Times<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Most everyone knows that Torrey Pines stands as one of the most magnificent golf courses in the world.\u00a0 Nestled against the Pacific shores of La Jolla, California, it offers unmatched cliff-side vistas\u2014a golfer\u2019s dream, and sparkles as the sight of the Buick Open each year.\u00a0 It also stands out as a <strong><em>public <\/em><\/strong>course with exceptionally low greens fees (e.g. for you non-golfers, cost to play).<\/p>\n<p>How do free markets react to exceptional values at artificially low prices?\u00a0 Excess demand, of course.\u00a0 Torrey Pines attempted deal with this by limiting advance tee times, meaning that golfers wishing to pay could not schedule a playing time in advance.\u00a0 Instead, it required the golfer to come in several hours in advance, huddle in the dim, cold morning fog, and wait in turn for the chance to secure, after a wait of several hours, one of the prized tee times for the day, with no guarantees.<\/p>\n<p>A frightful system?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 However, free market forces, like Marvel comic super heroes,\u00a0 mercifully intervened.\u00a0 A secondary market emerged.\u00a0 The unemployed, underemployed, or the merely adventurous entrepreneur, could stand in line for others, secure the \u201cgolden ticket\u201d tee time, and then sell the ticket to a broker.\u00a0 The end user golfer purchased the ticket from a broker, paying full market value for the tee time, but getting to play the fabulous course on the day, and at the time, that he needed.\u00a0 The entrepreneur, the broker, and the end user golfer all came out ahead.\u00a0 Free enterprise at its best!<\/p>\n<p>Alas, our story offers no happy ending.\u00a0 Sadly, the California State Parks Department took exception to our happy little enterprise zone.\u00a0 It secured illegal status for the brokering, scattered the entrepreneurs, and limited the allowance of out-of-county tee times to five per day.\u00a0 The result?\u00a0 A windfall for local residents, a requirement to sign up for tee times as much as six months in advance for everyone else, meaning no golf at all for most eager duffers, due to limits of time and scheduling.<\/p>\n<p>Medical care, like golf, by its nature possesses even more stringent limits on time and scheduling.\u00a0 As John Maynard Keynes accurately stated, \u201cIn the long run, we are all dead.\u201d\u00a0 Healthy competition between insurance companies or health care providers for your dollars seems most likely to secure an efficient allocation of health resources.\u00a0 Government control of the economics of medical care likely will fare no better than its regulation of Torrey Pines tee times.\u00a0 Enjoy your Obama Care; just don\u2019t get sick.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2010 \u2013David J. Carr<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Obama Care and Torrey Pines Tee Times \u00a0 Most everyone knows that Torrey Pines stands as one of the most magnificent golf courses in the world.\u00a0 Nestled against the Pacific shores of La Jolla, California, it offers unmatched cliff-side vistas\u2014a &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/?p=28\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-and-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/62"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}