An Actual Good Idea for Healthcare Reform Seen on CNN

That's right, I didn't believe it either.  My wife and I were watching CNN this morning when my wife proclaimed "they are going to give their thoughts on the healthcare reform".  My knee-jerk reaction was "they are just going to support the Obamacare plan".  The reality was a pleasant surprise...

It was Sanjay Gupta's show an he was interviewing a Harvard business professor who was strangely reminiscent of Julia Childs.  Anyway she starts off with the standard talking point of how there are 50 million uninsured people in this country and how much of a moral shortcoming that is for all of us.  We notice how the figure changes from 30 million to 50 million to sometimes less than 20 million depending on who is making the statement but I digress...  She praises the administration for the desire to cover these people and I braced myself for the worst - and to my surprise she starts talking sense!

Her next point is that Medicare and Medicaid is running a $30 TRILLION dollar unfunded mandate that will fall on those of us working today and our children and grandchildren.  Basically we put a train on the tracks, tied ourselves to the rails, pointed it in our direction and started it up hoping our children and grandchildren will arrive in time and with enough wherewithal to save us.  She accurately points out how the political realities of this country include the fact that current politicians will use entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid to give unfunded benefits today to get votes today.  They do this by borrowing money since they also don't want to raise taxes to pay for the entitlements which would similarly cost them votes.  My solution to that problem - don't allow government to engage in entitlements and that applies to any expansion of Medicare, Medicaid or any other subsidizing of health insurance under any circumstances.

Then she offers the solution - "consumerize" health insurance.  What is that you ask?  It means instead of insurance companies catering to employers they would have to cater to us - the consumer!   She makes an accurate point by comparing Switzerland to the United States in the right way:  Switzerland has 48 insurance companies while the U.S. has 15.  Note that Switzerland is about the size of Massachusetts.

So some things to know:
1. The problem with the cost of health insurance is not complicated - there is no competition among health insurance companies.  15 health insurance companies for a country of 300 million shows that there are regulatory blocks to competition that we need to remove.  That is economics 101.  When health insurance companies compete you win!  This will make health insurance affordable for the majority of people and bring about real improvement in the system.

2. Government funded health insurance will destroy our economy.

Until the debate turns to this simple point we are all losing and with that $38 trillion Medicare "train" charging at us we cannot afford to ignore this. Don't let the politicians screw it up just because they think some healthcare reform is better than no healthcare reform and they need to get it done before their term runs out.   Real reform based on the above costs us nothing, is easy to do and brings about meaningful change.

Medicare expansion - is it a great idea?

Right now almost one third of the Federal Budget is for Medicare and Medicaid and that quantity of spending actually comprises over 5% of our economy.  Just imagine that a full third of your tax burden right now is already going to pay for a program that most tax payers do not benefit from.  On top of that realize that conservative estimates put that 10% of Medicare and Medicaid payments are fraudulent.

We wonder why the U.S. spends so much on healthcare??  It is because the government basically forces us to!  Aside from the built in 10% fraud that is occurring in the Medicare and Medicaid system there is also all the money being spent on mental health drugs - drugs that treat illnesses for which there is no physical diagnosis and for which there is no cure, only limitless treatments with drugs.  If you don't think that is important consider this report about Medicaid expenditures in the state of Texas:

“According to a report on the state's Medicaid Vendor Drug Program, mental health drugs made up the largest category of expenditures among the top 200 drugs in 1999.  They accounted for nearly $148 million. Those costs have more than doubled since1996.”

“For the proposed 2002-2003 budget, lawmakers have increased by $1 billion theamount of money allocated to health and human services. A significant portion of that will go for medications,officialssaid.”

So if you are thinking all that Medicare and Medicaid money is going to treat people with broken bones, cancer, heart disease and things like that - think again.

This brings us to the next point.  It seems that if you open the tax payers' wallets to health care expenditure it is certain that someone will reach in there an take it.

Stimulus Success

It has been great this morning listening to CNN commentators argue about whether the stimulus created jobs or not.  The point of these programs seems to be to discredit people who are saying the stimulus didn't create any jobs by bringing up isolated companies and how they got money and hired some people.  As usual what is considered the "main stream" media is way off the point.  I think even my 5 year old daughter could take $100 billion and wind up creating a bunch of jobs.  The question is whether this was effective legislation to fix the problems with the country's economy.

So really what do we know?  The net loss of jobs appears to have been around 6 million and the unemployment rate, even when taking a "rosey" view of it is over 10% right now.  We have a huge national debt and our entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are constant sources uncontrolled public expense that basically threaten all private citizens and businesses.  In other words anyone deciding to create a life or a business in this country knows they will automatically inherit huge expenses beyond their control.  Many states have saved public sector jobs with stimulus dollars - jobs that will wind up unfunded when the stimulus runs out.

In the end has our government done what it takes to address the underlying problems?  Did stimulus dollars just rob from Peter to give to Paul?  Did the $100 billion spent result in more in added value to the American people than $100 billion plus whatever interest will have to be paid on that money?

These are the questions that we need answered.

Left and Right - the Political Conundrum

As I have been getting myself more and more worked up reading about how Goldman Sachs and other bankers basically fleeced every single tax paying American right in our faces and how our government opened up OUR checkbooks making it all possible I think about the Enlightenment in France and the struggle of the common folk against the aristocracy.  That struggle ended with the people of France rising up and cutting the heads off of a lot of arrogant aristocrats in the bloodiest revolution known to man.

First - if you are not totally pissed at our politicians  who have sold their souls to banking and healthcare special interests you need to wake up.  Do you really think that defaults on what amounts to 20% of the subprime mortgage market that makes up only a quarter of the entire mortgage market was going to cause a total failure of the banking system?  By the way those are generous figures.  Folks, we were robbed by a scam and it was our elected officials, both Democrat and Republican, that provided the pipeline to suck the money out of our pockets and put it in the hands of these criminals.

Also, do you think that a several thousand page healthcare legislation that was crafted by healthcare lobbyist was ever going to benefit the people?  That didn't pass (yet) but it doesn't really matter because healthcare special interests already have enough political clout at the state level to continue to fleece us via our taxes and Medicare payments.

The coining of the terms Left and Right politics came from the Enlightenment period in France when the aristocrats sat to the right of the king and representatives of the people sat on the left of the king.  During that time period those on the left were tired of special treatment and benefits those on the right were receiving at the expense of the people.  Today we have a similar struggle.  There are special interests that use our elected officials to guide money from our pockets into their own and there are those elected officials in both parties that facilitate this activity.

Today political discussion likes to refer to Democrats as leftists and Republicans on the right but this is totally false.  Right now both Republicans and Democrats are on the right because they refuse to take effective action to break the stronghold of special interests.  Another misleading concept is that big government, socialism and communism are left wing concepts.  History has shown us that big government ALWAYS winds up serving special interests at the expense of the people.  Sometimes, in the case of communism, it is the politicians themselves who simply become aristocrats who use the state police forces to maintain their power.

Left wing politics would be politics designed to protect the rights and opportunity of all and favor none.  It could never enact entitlements as entitlements always take more from some and benefit more others thus favoring one public sector over another.  It also has the side effect of enslaving to a certain degree those that receive the benefits and starts to favor the politicians who give the benefits because they, as the "slave owners", now have a group of people who will vote for them to keep the entitlement they have grown dependent on.