Tag Archives: Federal Trade Commission

Blocking Free Speech

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A politically neutral Twitter is a threat to Democrat success at the voting booth. If people had been allowed to know more about Hunter Biden’s laptop, it might have changed their votes. There are still some people who because of their primary news sources don’t know about the information on Hunter Biden’s laptop or the efforts to suppress the news about the laptop. That is not healthy for our Republic. There will be a fight to prevent Elon Musk from turning Twitter into a free speech platform because that is a threat to the Democrats’ monopoly on the American media.

Fox News reported Wednesday on a letter sent from Representative Jim Jordan to Federal Trade Commission chief Lina Khan regarding the sale of Twitter.

The article reports:

“The day after Twitter’s board of directors agreed to sell Twitter to Mr. Elon Musk, the Open Markets Institute (OMI), an extreme left-wing political advocacy organization, called on Biden regulators at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the Justice Department to ‘block’ the purchase,” Jordan, R-Ohio, wrote in a letter sent to Khan on Wednesday and obtained by FOX Business. 

“We are concerned that OMI – where you were previously employed as Legal Director – may be trying to leverage its close relationship with you to take action to further limit free speech online,” Jordan told Khan.

Open Markets Institute Director Barry Lynn issued a statement on April 26 saying the group believes Musk’s purchase of Twitter “poses a number of immediate and direct threats to American democracy and free speech.”

Lynn went on to say that Open Markets “believes the deal violates existing law,” and that the FCC, DOJ and FTC “have ample authority to block it.”

Jordan wrote in his letter to Khan that “OMI appears to believe that the FTC will be receptive to its cavalier effort to influence a federal agency that is run by its former employee.”

The article concludes:

Khan has a lengthy history of urging the federal government to go after Big Tech firms and regulate their power. After she became head of the FTC, tech behemoths Facebook and Amazon both asked that she be removed from any involvement in the agency’s antitrust litigation against the companies, alleging that she has a clear bias against them that is well documented.

I am not convinced that the people saying that Elon Musk buying Twitter is a threat to free speech actually understand what free speech is.

Restoring The Free Market To The Internet

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In 2015, rules were put in place to prevent the free market from working in the Internet. Under these rules, Internet service providers, such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast as well as smaller Internet service providers, were prohibited from blocking, slowing access to or charging more (priority pricing) for fast delivery of content above some specified threshold of high bandwidth usage.

An article in Frontpage Magazine posted today explains how the repeal of those rules will affect the Internet:

High-speed delivery of Internet services will no longer be heavily regulated on par with a common carrier utility monopoly service. However, the Internet service providers will have to disclose to the FCC changes to their access policies, which can consider any alleged abuses on a case by case basis. The Federal Trade Commission, which shares antitrust enforcement responsibility with the Department of Justice, will be tasked to take action against any anti-competitive behavior.

We are pretty much returning to what the Internet was before 2015. It needs to be considered in discussing this change that the Apple iphone could not have been released under the net neutrality rules–the original monopoly given to one service provider (which gave Apple a chance to work out the bugs) would have been illegal.

The article further explains:

The left would have us believe that the battle over “net neutrality” is between greedy, monopolistic, multibillion dollar Internet service companies and John Q. Public. This is the left’s typical class warfare rhetoric, helped along ironically by multibillion dollar content providers such as Netflix, Google and Facebook that hide behind slogans such as “net neutrality” and “open and free Internet” to obscure their own economic self-interest. Companies the size of Netflix, Google, Facebook, and the new Disney company that may emerge if its purchase of content assets from 21st Century Fox is approved by antitrust officials do not need FCC utility-style regulatory protection from Internet service providers. The FCC should not have placed itself in the position of picking industry sector winners and losers or coming down on the side of content providers, some of whom such as Facebook and Google have substantial market power of their own that allows them to censor content they believe is too controversial.

Moreover, “net neutrality” may be a nice slogan, but it does not reflect the reality of Internet usage. To understand why this is so requires a brief technology discussion.

Follow the link to the article to read the technical discussion–it is way over my head. Meanwhile, the political left never met a  government regulation it didn’t love!

The article concludes:

The economics of supply and demand should be permitted to play out under free market conditions. Internet service providers, just like the large content providers, are not monopoly utilities that require utility-style regulation. That said, there will need to be antitrust enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission to prevent anti-competitive abuses, such as an Internet service providers favoring their own affiliated content providers in terms of quality of service, ease of customer access, or discriminatory pricing. The FCC’s repeal of the overly burdensome “net neutrality” rules in no way undermines the ability of the FCC or the Federal Trade Commission to step in and address any abuses that may arise.

The left detests the free market, whether in the context of the Internet or virtually any other segment of the economy. Government knows best, leftists believe. Fortunately, elections have consequences and President Trump put in place at the FCC someone who understands the benefits of the free market. Under Chairman Ajit Pai’s leadership, the FCC removed the dead weight of intrusive regulation on Internet innovation and investment in infrastructure. It also restored the market freedom under which the Internet has thrived.

One Way To Keep Medical Costs Down

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The News & Observer, a newspaper located in Raleigh, North Carolina, posted an editorial yesterday about one rather obvious way to lower medical costs in North Carolina. It is an easy solution–except for the fact that there are corporate interests who do not like this solution.

The editorial explains:

One important element of the budget recently passed by the N.C. Senate would lower health care costs by reforming North Carolina’s Certificate of Need law and increasing the number of same-day surgery centers across the state.

Currently, North Carolina has one of the most restrictive CON laws in the nation. The Senate proposal would save patients about 40 percent in costs when centers are allowed to be built.

Certificate of Need laws started in the 1970s with the goal of keeping hospitals from overbuilding facilities and acquiring unnecessary hospital equipment – both actions thought to increase costs for consumers. Unfortunately, these CON laws ended up essentially increasing costs because competition was eliminated. In 1987, the Reagan administration recognized that CON laws were a bad idea and spoke out against the federal mandate for CON. States began to repeal CON restrictions.

Today, 71 percent of all surgeries are outpatient or same-day surgery. Of those surgeries, too many – 72 percent – are performed at the highest-cost hospital system facilities.

One very basic example of an outpatient clinic that saves time and money and improves the quality of medical care is in the area of cataract surgery. As our population ages, many Americans face cataract surgery. With today’s medical practices, this is generally very simple and uncomplicated surgery. It is very easily done at an off-site medical facility. In Massachusetts, Surgisite Boston is a facility used by 70 ophthalmologists from throughout the region. The center aims to best serve both patients and physicians by acting quickly to adopt new technologies and create a comfortable, accessible environment for treatment. Having the center outside of the hospital cuts the costs for patients, and because of the specialized nature of the center, allows for the newest technologies. It also allows the surgeons to share the cost of the latest equipment and to offset that cost by having the equipment used every day.

The editorial explains other aspects of the debate:

The Federal Trade Commission staff supports CON reform in North Carolina that allows the freedom to build independent, nonhospital surgery centers that lower costs. The FTC states that “CON laws raise considerable competitive concerns and generally do not appear to achieve their alleged benefits for health care consumers” and that “CON laws can restrict entry and expansion, limit consumer choice, and stifle innovation.”

Cost analysis by Blue Cross Blue Shield NC shows patients across the state are paying way too much – sometimes more than double what others are paying – for many surgical procedures:

▪ An ACL repair by arthroscopic surgery in the Charlotte area cost $9,710 at a nonhospital ambulatory surgery center in Concord while the same procedure cost $29,565 at a hospital-run outpatient facility in Charlotte.

So what isn’t the introduction of surgical centers in North Carolina an easy solution to rising health care costs? Unfortunately hospitals like having a monopoly on surgical procedures. Hospitals are telling their employees that if surgical centers are built, the employees will lose their jobs. This is not true, but unless an employee actually takes the time to investigate what surgical centers will do, they will oppose the centers in order to keep their jobs. During a recent visit to Raleigh, one of our state legislators showed me the pile of mail he had received opposing changes to the “CON” law. Oddly enough, much of the mail opposing the changes came in business envelopes with hospital return addresses printed on them. There were two significant piles of mail from people who worked for hospitals who feared losing their jobs.

Changing the “CON” law should be an obvious thing to do. However, when hospitals have a monopoly on surgical procedures both simple and complex, they are reluctant to give up that monopoly. Unless the healthcare consumer becomes more aware of why healthcare costs are rising, things like the “CON” laws will continue to stifle competition in medicine. It is up to the consumer to help fight the monopoly that prevents North Carolina from having the surgical centers it needs.