With education clearly on the decline in the nation’s public schools, one has to ask why it is happening. There is a movement afloat which began in the 1920s which theorized that there was too much information available to be taught and that new information was created at a rate that defied the ability to have it taught. The theory suggested that a better way to educate the young was to “teach them to think” rather than teach facts. Using that theory, mathematics, history, and science were placed on the back burner and “life skills” and “life adjustment” classes were prioritized. We have now had many years of those theories and to be honest, they suck. To paraphrase another writer, there is no use in being able to think if you have nothing to think about.
One could argue that the purveyors of those theories didn’t understand what was being taught in the first place. While it is true that most people not involved in science, engineering, finance, architecture, etc. don’t use higher mathematics on a regular basis, the theorists completely misunderstood mathematics education. While mathematics education does teach students how to manipulate and solve equations and problems, that is only one part of the class. More importantly, mathematics teaches students how to approach any problem rationally and to be careful in what assumptions you make. Problems need to be solved in a step-wise manner in which each step must be justified and not left to whim, chance, or assumption. Many times in mathematics, the real answer to a problem is not what the answer is intuitively. Additionally, when an answer is obtained using firm and true assumptions and steps based on correct technique, one can be confident that the solution is solid and reliable. This approach is valuable to almost everyone every day. Systematic problem solving is a valuable life skill and is arguably much more important than how you “feel” about the problem. As an aside, mathematics is important to the daily life of US citizens in that the current Congress certainly has demonstrated that they have no mathematics skills.
History classes tend to be criticized as rote memory of names and dates. If taught correctly, they are anything but that. The early history of the United States, for example, is a drama worthy of any novel or made for television movie. The founders of the United States were not homogenized in their views and goals. There was much consternation about splitting with Great Britain and even more dispute on the proper construction of the government once the revolution was won. The Constitution barely passed. The study of those people tells students not only who those people were but what this country was intended to become. It tells why these people were willing to die to create a way of life where individuals, not a monarch, held sway over their own lives. The founders were real people with differing thoughts and goals, not caricatures on different currency denominations. To be able to take a side in a political discussion, educated citizens should not only understand current issues but how the country got to be where it is and what it was in the past.
Science, at its core, is the search for the truth. Scientists are sometimes accused of being amoral because they do not subscribe to determined agendas. The true scientist takes the data presented and analyzes the data to determine where the real truth lies. Real science is reproducible and does not change with varying researchers. That is why true science is “open source”. Conclusions are only valid when someone else can do the same work and get the same result. When there is disagreement, it is because the data is conflicting when studied by many, not because a political or financial agenda is overshadowing the work. The ability to remain objective and unbiased is a very useful skill in everyday life and is difficult to achieve without education. If anyone watches opinion shows or reads the newspaper, they will realize objectivity is a resource surely lacking.
Political leaders who have nefarious objectives have always sought to “dumb down” the population because it is much easier to mislead and take advantage of an ignorant mob than an educated population. Educated populations ask tough questions and demand accountability from the leaders. In a representative form of government, the government functions best and is predicated on having an educated people. The founders realized that.
The conservative political philosophy encourages individual decision making and liberty. The liberal political philosophy encourages elite groups of leaders to make decisions for the population in their best interest. The assumption is denigrating in that the people are presumed to be unable to decide issues for themselves. It is therefore in the interest of liberals to have the population less informed and less educated and, conversely, in the interest of conservatives to have the population better educated so better individual decisions will be made. It is easier to guide the population to the liberal elites' interests if they are less informed and more dependent. The teachers unions are decidedly liberal, as evidenced by their devout support of liberal politicians. Perhaps that explains why the teachers unions oppose educational programs like the voucher program in Washington, DC which clearly produced better student results at half the taxpayer cost. Teachers colleges educate future teachers on the liberal 1920s theories of education and reinforce the “life skills” agenda. The old saying is “When you find yourself in a hole, you should stop digging”. The current educational philosophy in the United States public schools has consistently shown itself to be a failure. Why not go back to what worked and teach people how to think while they actually learn some factual information? Consider it a bonus.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Our Basic Freedoms: Exposing Hypocrisy, Lies and Arrogance
The founding fathers recognized early on that in order to have an effective government in which the people had a say in their governance, a number of things had to be present. I want to discuss several and the siege upon them. The basics are:
First, an educational system which allowed individuals to be cognizant of how the government worked and the history behind the system was necessary to have voters who had a sense of what the goals of the nation were and how it became what it was.
Second, individuals needed to be free to express opinions publicly so that all sides of a discourse were presented and debated.
Third, the press needed to be free to expose dishonesty, scandal, and the political process so that a ruling class could not operate in their own self-interest without being revealed.
The United States is not a democracy; it is a republic. Benjamin Franklin was quoted as saying something to the effect: “a democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what is for lunch; liberty is a well-armed lamb disputing the outcome”. In order for any representative form of government to be viable, an informed and knowledgeable electorate is required. Let’s look at some recent developments and see where we might be heading.
Education – the public education system in the United States has been declining over the last several decades by most measures, especially in urban areas. The basic skills required over the first several centuries of the countries existence (the three R’s: reading writing, and arithmetic), and the concerted study of our nation’s founding and history have been mostly replaced. Courses centered on “life skills” abound. Children are passed despite poor performance because we don’t want them to “feel bad”. There are no winners and losers. Everyone gets a trophy. The study of early American history and the moving parts of the government have less priority than contemporary study of the Civil Rights movement and homosexual rights. The Constitution is presented in essence as “someone wrote it and it passed”. There is no discussion of the effort and great contentiousness of the debate. Most cannot tell one Founding Father from another except to spout out sound bites. Samuel Adams is a beer. John Hancock is an insurance company. It seems the purpose of a public education is presently not to teach basic skills but rather to make people feel good about not knowing those skills. The teachers unions vote for Democrats because they are liberal. The Democrats pass legislation helping teachers unions. Teachers are then obligated to be liberal. It is incestuous. By dumbing down the population, politicians can operate without intellectual confrontation and debate. It is in the powerful player’s interest to stifle an educated population. It is easier to control the uneducated. Moslem countries and dictatorships have done this for all of history. Since test scores and measures of education keep getting worse, why expand the same policies which have contributed to the decline? If my walking was getting worse, I would stop hitting my foot with the hammer.
Individual Expression - Individuals who express opposing opinions can be dealt with in several ways. The most reputable way is to debate publicly on the issues and attempt to convince the populace that your side is correct. Politicians who are pursuing questionable policies or self-interest which will not hold up to public scrutiny use the second method which is to marginalize or demonize the critic. Using character assassination to dispute the reputability of your critic is common practice now. Recent episodes (i.e., Joseph Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber, an unknown prior to asking an opportune question) have shown that anyone critical of those in power can expect to be crucified by the supporters of the powerful. Politicians even set up media teams whose specific job is to destroy an opponent’s credibility. The third method, mostly used in dictatorships, is to have your opponents “disappear” to either a gulag or a grave. Fortunately, the United States doesn’t usually use that method. Using any of these methods to intimidate an individual citizen fly in the face of the founders expressed intentions.
Freedom of the Press – The way to fight corruption is to expose it. The central weapon in that regard is the press. Investigative journalism is the bedrock of acquiring information and shining the light of publicity on government practices. One of the first things a totalitarian regime does is to muzzle press freedom. There have always been and will always be people in the press and, more recently, broadcast media with agendas and political viewpoints. Anyone can watch CNN, NBC, CBS, etc. and easily see the liberal bias. Anyone watching Fox News knows that there is conservative bias. There is much more liberal television than conservative television. There are liberal newspapers and conservative newspapers. There is conservative talk radio and some, albeit a lot less, liberal talk radio. Those who constantly complain about the bias are unrealistic. It will always be present. The founders view was that the more media outlets there are, the more likely there was to be exposure of some semblance of the truth. One side can print biased stories or opinion pieces or even lies but the other side can confront those biases, opinions, and lies and publish or broadcast opposing views. There is now movement afoot to stifle public debate by controlling the media’s political viewpoint under government control under the guise of “diversity” and “fairness”. There has never been anything fair about the media. The Hearst papers essentially started the Spanish-American War. Grover Cleveland was called an illegitimate father. The papers of the colonial and post-colonial period, as well as the Civil War period were much harsher than anything seen today. For the government to attempt to control media is dangerous and is a first step toward totalitarianism. It should be avoided at all costs. Trying to control media output is tantamount to accusing the population of being too stupid to recognize nonsense when they see it and is disparaging. If you are going to have representative government, you can’t say the people are too stupid to participate.
First, an educational system which allowed individuals to be cognizant of how the government worked and the history behind the system was necessary to have voters who had a sense of what the goals of the nation were and how it became what it was.
Second, individuals needed to be free to express opinions publicly so that all sides of a discourse were presented and debated.
Third, the press needed to be free to expose dishonesty, scandal, and the political process so that a ruling class could not operate in their own self-interest without being revealed.
The United States is not a democracy; it is a republic. Benjamin Franklin was quoted as saying something to the effect: “a democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what is for lunch; liberty is a well-armed lamb disputing the outcome”. In order for any representative form of government to be viable, an informed and knowledgeable electorate is required. Let’s look at some recent developments and see where we might be heading.
Education – the public education system in the United States has been declining over the last several decades by most measures, especially in urban areas. The basic skills required over the first several centuries of the countries existence (the three R’s: reading writing, and arithmetic), and the concerted study of our nation’s founding and history have been mostly replaced. Courses centered on “life skills” abound. Children are passed despite poor performance because we don’t want them to “feel bad”. There are no winners and losers. Everyone gets a trophy. The study of early American history and the moving parts of the government have less priority than contemporary study of the Civil Rights movement and homosexual rights. The Constitution is presented in essence as “someone wrote it and it passed”. There is no discussion of the effort and great contentiousness of the debate. Most cannot tell one Founding Father from another except to spout out sound bites. Samuel Adams is a beer. John Hancock is an insurance company. It seems the purpose of a public education is presently not to teach basic skills but rather to make people feel good about not knowing those skills. The teachers unions vote for Democrats because they are liberal. The Democrats pass legislation helping teachers unions. Teachers are then obligated to be liberal. It is incestuous. By dumbing down the population, politicians can operate without intellectual confrontation and debate. It is in the powerful player’s interest to stifle an educated population. It is easier to control the uneducated. Moslem countries and dictatorships have done this for all of history. Since test scores and measures of education keep getting worse, why expand the same policies which have contributed to the decline? If my walking was getting worse, I would stop hitting my foot with the hammer.
Individual Expression - Individuals who express opposing opinions can be dealt with in several ways. The most reputable way is to debate publicly on the issues and attempt to convince the populace that your side is correct. Politicians who are pursuing questionable policies or self-interest which will not hold up to public scrutiny use the second method which is to marginalize or demonize the critic. Using character assassination to dispute the reputability of your critic is common practice now. Recent episodes (i.e., Joseph Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber, an unknown prior to asking an opportune question) have shown that anyone critical of those in power can expect to be crucified by the supporters of the powerful. Politicians even set up media teams whose specific job is to destroy an opponent’s credibility. The third method, mostly used in dictatorships, is to have your opponents “disappear” to either a gulag or a grave. Fortunately, the United States doesn’t usually use that method. Using any of these methods to intimidate an individual citizen fly in the face of the founders expressed intentions.
Freedom of the Press – The way to fight corruption is to expose it. The central weapon in that regard is the press. Investigative journalism is the bedrock of acquiring information and shining the light of publicity on government practices. One of the first things a totalitarian regime does is to muzzle press freedom. There have always been and will always be people in the press and, more recently, broadcast media with agendas and political viewpoints. Anyone can watch CNN, NBC, CBS, etc. and easily see the liberal bias. Anyone watching Fox News knows that there is conservative bias. There is much more liberal television than conservative television. There are liberal newspapers and conservative newspapers. There is conservative talk radio and some, albeit a lot less, liberal talk radio. Those who constantly complain about the bias are unrealistic. It will always be present. The founders view was that the more media outlets there are, the more likely there was to be exposure of some semblance of the truth. One side can print biased stories or opinion pieces or even lies but the other side can confront those biases, opinions, and lies and publish or broadcast opposing views. There is now movement afoot to stifle public debate by controlling the media’s political viewpoint under government control under the guise of “diversity” and “fairness”. There has never been anything fair about the media. The Hearst papers essentially started the Spanish-American War. Grover Cleveland was called an illegitimate father. The papers of the colonial and post-colonial period, as well as the Civil War period were much harsher than anything seen today. For the government to attempt to control media is dangerous and is a first step toward totalitarianism. It should be avoided at all costs. Trying to control media output is tantamount to accusing the population of being too stupid to recognize nonsense when they see it and is disparaging. If you are going to have representative government, you can’t say the people are too stupid to participate.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Another Goofy Idea
President Obama just came up with an idea on his weekly radio address that would allow people to put a check in a box on their Internal Revenue Service tax return to receive a Series I Savings Bond instead of a payment or check. Ahh...where to begin?
First, anyone who wants to buy a government savings bond can certainly do so now without the IRS's assistance. All this program does is allow the government to borrow extra money from citizens every Spring. After all, a government savings bond is just an IOU from the government for money you lent them. They borrow the money from you and give you interest on the loan. So instead of your money, you have a piece of paper. Why would anyone lend money to these guys until they constrain their spending? That is like giving money to a crack addict and expecting a return on your investment.
Second, it is not their money. It is the taxpayer's money. If someone overpays a bit to avoid writing a check at the end of the year, give them their money back. This program says "let me get back to you later with that money".
Third, will this eventually lead to all refunds being processed this way? If so, it will never work. It is easy enough to change your W-4 form to claim 935 deductions to pay less taxes during the year and just write a check on April 14th. If anything, the taxpayer will have more money to pay the bill with from the interest accrued during the year. The government will, of course, have less. The end result will be that the money the government gets to use now from people overpaying during the year will go away and the net result will be less money to the government, not more.
In one week, the President said we have to spend more and that we have to save more. Which is it?
This is a dumb idea.
First, anyone who wants to buy a government savings bond can certainly do so now without the IRS's assistance. All this program does is allow the government to borrow extra money from citizens every Spring. After all, a government savings bond is just an IOU from the government for money you lent them. They borrow the money from you and give you interest on the loan. So instead of your money, you have a piece of paper. Why would anyone lend money to these guys until they constrain their spending? That is like giving money to a crack addict and expecting a return on your investment.
Second, it is not their money. It is the taxpayer's money. If someone overpays a bit to avoid writing a check at the end of the year, give them their money back. This program says "let me get back to you later with that money".
Third, will this eventually lead to all refunds being processed this way? If so, it will never work. It is easy enough to change your W-4 form to claim 935 deductions to pay less taxes during the year and just write a check on April 14th. If anything, the taxpayer will have more money to pay the bill with from the interest accrued during the year. The government will, of course, have less. The end result will be that the money the government gets to use now from people overpaying during the year will go away and the net result will be less money to the government, not more.
In one week, the President said we have to spend more and that we have to save more. Which is it?
This is a dumb idea.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
What Is A Right and Does Health Care Belong in That Discussion?
Recent political discussion has brought up the concept of the "right to health care". If you need something, is it the view of some folks that you have a right to it. In order to have a "right" first you need to understand what a right is.
For example, if you are hungry, do you have a right to food? You certainly do need it to survive. However, a right implies that someone cannot take it away from you and that someone is obligated to provide that right to you. In the current political discussion, that someone is the US government. So, getting back to food, if you are able to work and provide for yourself but choose to sit in a lounge chair on your front porch, does the government have an obligation to bring you meals? I am not talking about someone who is affirmed or disabled, but rather about someone who expects assistance because of the "right" to food. Obviously, there is no right to food. If you can provide for yourself, you are expected to do so.
Do you have a right to a residence? We certainly don't want homeless people wandering the streets but if someone is capable of providing for his/herself, does the government have an obligation to house that person? Once again, I am not talking about affirmed/disabled people. The answer is obvious, of course not. Therefore, there is no "right" to a residence.
Alexander Hamilton in 1775, said: ``The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself;
and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.''
The beginning of the Declaration of Independence reads "WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of
Happiness..."
Seems pretty straightforward, I suppose. The idea, in both quotations is that rights are not granted, they are things which cannot be taken away. However, that is not always true. Some rights are specified in the US Constitution (more about that below). There are times when individual rights are balanced against the community's. You would think the life part would be pretty simple in that no one can kill you. However, it can get complicated. For example, there is the question of what constitutes life? Are fetuses considered a human life? Not to abortion proponents but yes to opponents of abortion. If someone's heart is beating but the upper brain is not functioning, are they alive? Legally, the answer is no even if they can continue physical existence without assistance for a period of time. The protection of your right to life is an obligation of the state. However, in death penalty cases, someone's right to life is taken away by the state. In those cases, it is the considered judgment of the state that the crime committed was so heinous that taking away the individual's life is justified for the protection of society as a whole.
Liberty is a little tougher. The old saying is that your right to swing your fist ends at my face. Allowing individual liberty must be balanced with the good of society. The first amendment protects free speech but not speech inciting violence or endangering the public. Per the second amendment, individuals have the right to bear arms but those arms do not include things like cannons, 500 pound bombs or other mass destruction weapons. You can have consensual sex with pretty much anyone you want but not with children. Believe it or not, in many states, it is legal to have sex with animals. In Oregon, it is not a law violation to be in public nude, even in the presence of children. Liberty as a specified right cannot be taken away unless your exercise of that liberty is deemed sufficiently harmful to society as a whole. Those specific limits to individual liberties have been litigated for as long as the United States has existed, and continue today. Some liberties have even been stretched a bit. Nude dancing in strip clubs has been interpreted as free speech. I think if people want to strip nude and dance in an indoor club out of the view of anyone except those who went there to specifically see the dancers, more power to them. But calling that free speech is a stretch.
I have always found, the phrase "pursuit of happiness" pretty vague. To take away someone's pursuit of happiness is then also a vague proposition. We clearly don't want to do it but don't know exactly what it is.
Other specified rights are included in the Constitution; protection against unreasonable search and seizure, the ability to practice the religion of choice; petitioning the government for grievances; freedom of the press; no quartering of soldiers in private homes in peace time; no self-incrimination, a speedy trial, etc. However, what is important to realize is that the Bill of Rights really specifies what the government can't do to citizens rather than what it can.
With that as a preamble, is there a right to health care? Just like food, people can certainly need it, at times. As opposed to food, a majority of the time, most people don't need it. While no one wants people to die from non-treatment of curable conditions, I revert to the previous example. If someone is perfectly capable of providing care for him/herself and chooses not to, does the rest of society have an obligation to give them a free ride? Once again, I am not talking about people who cannot fend for themselves. If health care is a "right" then the government has an obligation to care for those who can afford to take care of themselves and choose not to. I have a tough time swallowing that argument. If you are ninety seven years old with peripheral artery disease, poor cardiac function, obstructive pulmonary disease, etc., and you fall and break your hip, does the government have to provide you a hip replacement? I am not talking about whether it is risky but rather is it a right? If you choose not to wear a motor cycle helmet or seat belt despite a law requiring it, do you have a right to taxpayer-funded health care if you choose not to buy insurance for yourself? If you gorge yourself up to 600 pounds and cannot leave your bed, does the government have to pay for your care or gastric bypass? If you choose to become a heroin addict and contract hepatitis via an infected needle, do you have a right to free health care from the government?
I think is a rightful role of government to help the those who cannot help themselves due to disability or impairment but that if you have the ability to provide for yourself and do not choose to do so, you are on your own. Therefore, there is no "right" to health care and those who argue for it are doing so out of a desire to have everything provided to them without effort. Of course, if enough people go that route, no one produces anything and there is no care for anyone.
For example, if you are hungry, do you have a right to food? You certainly do need it to survive. However, a right implies that someone cannot take it away from you and that someone is obligated to provide that right to you. In the current political discussion, that someone is the US government. So, getting back to food, if you are able to work and provide for yourself but choose to sit in a lounge chair on your front porch, does the government have an obligation to bring you meals? I am not talking about someone who is affirmed or disabled, but rather about someone who expects assistance because of the "right" to food. Obviously, there is no right to food. If you can provide for yourself, you are expected to do so.
Do you have a right to a residence? We certainly don't want homeless people wandering the streets but if someone is capable of providing for his/herself, does the government have an obligation to house that person? Once again, I am not talking about affirmed/disabled people. The answer is obvious, of course not. Therefore, there is no "right" to a residence.
Alexander Hamilton in 1775, said: ``The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself;
and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.''
The beginning of the Declaration of Independence reads "WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of
Happiness..."
Seems pretty straightforward, I suppose. The idea, in both quotations is that rights are not granted, they are things which cannot be taken away. However, that is not always true. Some rights are specified in the US Constitution (more about that below). There are times when individual rights are balanced against the community's. You would think the life part would be pretty simple in that no one can kill you. However, it can get complicated. For example, there is the question of what constitutes life? Are fetuses considered a human life? Not to abortion proponents but yes to opponents of abortion. If someone's heart is beating but the upper brain is not functioning, are they alive? Legally, the answer is no even if they can continue physical existence without assistance for a period of time. The protection of your right to life is an obligation of the state. However, in death penalty cases, someone's right to life is taken away by the state. In those cases, it is the considered judgment of the state that the crime committed was so heinous that taking away the individual's life is justified for the protection of society as a whole.
Liberty is a little tougher. The old saying is that your right to swing your fist ends at my face. Allowing individual liberty must be balanced with the good of society. The first amendment protects free speech but not speech inciting violence or endangering the public. Per the second amendment, individuals have the right to bear arms but those arms do not include things like cannons, 500 pound bombs or other mass destruction weapons. You can have consensual sex with pretty much anyone you want but not with children. Believe it or not, in many states, it is legal to have sex with animals. In Oregon, it is not a law violation to be in public nude, even in the presence of children. Liberty as a specified right cannot be taken away unless your exercise of that liberty is deemed sufficiently harmful to society as a whole. Those specific limits to individual liberties have been litigated for as long as the United States has existed, and continue today. Some liberties have even been stretched a bit. Nude dancing in strip clubs has been interpreted as free speech. I think if people want to strip nude and dance in an indoor club out of the view of anyone except those who went there to specifically see the dancers, more power to them. But calling that free speech is a stretch.
I have always found, the phrase "pursuit of happiness" pretty vague. To take away someone's pursuit of happiness is then also a vague proposition. We clearly don't want to do it but don't know exactly what it is.
Other specified rights are included in the Constitution; protection against unreasonable search and seizure, the ability to practice the religion of choice; petitioning the government for grievances; freedom of the press; no quartering of soldiers in private homes in peace time; no self-incrimination, a speedy trial, etc. However, what is important to realize is that the Bill of Rights really specifies what the government can't do to citizens rather than what it can.
With that as a preamble, is there a right to health care? Just like food, people can certainly need it, at times. As opposed to food, a majority of the time, most people don't need it. While no one wants people to die from non-treatment of curable conditions, I revert to the previous example. If someone is perfectly capable of providing care for him/herself and chooses not to, does the rest of society have an obligation to give them a free ride? Once again, I am not talking about people who cannot fend for themselves. If health care is a "right" then the government has an obligation to care for those who can afford to take care of themselves and choose not to. I have a tough time swallowing that argument. If you are ninety seven years old with peripheral artery disease, poor cardiac function, obstructive pulmonary disease, etc., and you fall and break your hip, does the government have to provide you a hip replacement? I am not talking about whether it is risky but rather is it a right? If you choose not to wear a motor cycle helmet or seat belt despite a law requiring it, do you have a right to taxpayer-funded health care if you choose not to buy insurance for yourself? If you gorge yourself up to 600 pounds and cannot leave your bed, does the government have to pay for your care or gastric bypass? If you choose to become a heroin addict and contract hepatitis via an infected needle, do you have a right to free health care from the government?
I think is a rightful role of government to help the those who cannot help themselves due to disability or impairment but that if you have the ability to provide for yourself and do not choose to do so, you are on your own. Therefore, there is no "right" to health care and those who argue for it are doing so out of a desire to have everything provided to them without effort. Of course, if enough people go that route, no one produces anything and there is no care for anyone.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Health Care Insurance Reform Fallacies
Most of the political posturing about health insurance reform has now gone back to the old political methods of presenting heart-wrenching cases as justification for sweeping reform. It is much akin to how the media produces a sad case to promote their agenda. During the middle of the Bush administration, when the financial outlook was really good, liberal news outlets would find some obscure person somewhere and do a story on how terrible her situation was as a way of blaming the administration. It is common procedure. But alas, you will never see a story now about how bad the economy is but how well a particular person is doing somewhere.
There are ways to improve health care access and reduce costs that are fairly simple and a lot less costly than what is being proposed. I have previously written about removing state monopolies and other strategies. However, let’s think about health insurance generically and what it is supposed to do.
Back in the day, someone thought it would be a good idea to go to someone with money and sell “If you pay me some money up front and regularly, I will pay for your expenses if you have a catastrophe of some sort.” The concept would work for fire damage, severe weather damage, your herd dying of disease, your crops not coming in, and other property losses. With the invention of the automobile and the large investment required to buy one and the potential for expenses if you ran yours into someone or something, it seemed a good idea to have insurance against those expenses. The government thought it was such a good idea that laws were passed requiring insurance. Of course, mortgage holders also required insurance for properties that they held liens upon in order to protect their loan pay back. Legislatures are always willing to require insurance as: a) they are made up of lawyers; b) lawyers always pass laws that help lawyers; and c) insurance companies are quite willing to pay legislatures to support passing those laws.
As insurance companies grew, they thought of more and more things to insure against. Of course, health care cost was one of them. Somehow, the concept changed over the years for health insurance. Using the original concept, you would have insurance for catastrophic expenses. If you were injured severely or had a very serious illness, insurance would cover your expenses (or most of them depending on how much you paid up front). Somehow, the health insurance morphed into policies that paid for everything. Routine office visits, visits to the emergency room (even if it wasn’t an emergency), home health visits, cosmetic procedures, and hundreds of other expenses became covered. Of course, there is no incentive to restrain your visits when it doesn’t cost you anything. In fact, there is a tendency to want to “get your money’s worth” out of a policy for which you pay premiums. It is also inevitable that a policy like that cannot ever be financially viable for the insurance provider because the costs have no constraint. As costs rose, it became cheaper to buy policies as a group in order to average risk across a group of people. Since people generally can’t get together and form a group to buy insurance, would form these groups? Company employees. Thus began the employer-provided insurance plans.
With an employer-provided plan, there is exactly zero incentive to restrain costs for the employee. The employee only fills out forms and the employer pays all the costs. The employer goes down the tubes. Another financial innovator went to the large employers with this idea, “If you give me a certain amount of money each year per person, I will take care of their health care needs and you will have fixed costs. If it costs more, I will take the loss, if it costs less, I will keep the extra money”. Thus, the Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) was invented. Of course, the way HMOs make money is by doing as little for patients as possible. It is built into the contract. The paradox is that the companies compete by purporting to offer more services but the way they make money is by not providing them.
The real question is how health insurance veered off the normal insurance track. If health insurance was still using the same model as other types of policies, people would primarily have catastrophic insurance and would set their co-pays and deductibles by their level of risk and how much they were willing to pay in premiums. To reduce costs, there has to be incentive for people to do it. The only real incentive is to have people pay for what they use which isn’t catastrophic. For example, if you pay for an office visit, you will decide whether you really need to go before you do. If it costs six to ten times more to go to the emergency room than it does to go to your regular doctor, you will likely go to your regular doctor rather than fill the emergency room with non-emergency patients.
I am not saying people who are destitute should not have access to care. The government should help the poor and people who are unable to work. People don’t have a problem with helping people who are incapable of working. People do have a problem with paying for people who choose not to work or providing free care to affluent people who don’t need it. To reduce health care costs, the exact wrong thing to do is to make it “free”. The real answer to the problem is to go back to basics and review what health care insurance is supposed to do and the best and most efficient way to provide that care. Trying to cover everyone with “free” care and reducing physician payments until there are few doctors left is clearly not the answer.
There are ways to improve health care access and reduce costs that are fairly simple and a lot less costly than what is being proposed. I have previously written about removing state monopolies and other strategies. However, let’s think about health insurance generically and what it is supposed to do.
Back in the day, someone thought it would be a good idea to go to someone with money and sell “If you pay me some money up front and regularly, I will pay for your expenses if you have a catastrophe of some sort.” The concept would work for fire damage, severe weather damage, your herd dying of disease, your crops not coming in, and other property losses. With the invention of the automobile and the large investment required to buy one and the potential for expenses if you ran yours into someone or something, it seemed a good idea to have insurance against those expenses. The government thought it was such a good idea that laws were passed requiring insurance. Of course, mortgage holders also required insurance for properties that they held liens upon in order to protect their loan pay back. Legislatures are always willing to require insurance as: a) they are made up of lawyers; b) lawyers always pass laws that help lawyers; and c) insurance companies are quite willing to pay legislatures to support passing those laws.
As insurance companies grew, they thought of more and more things to insure against. Of course, health care cost was one of them. Somehow, the concept changed over the years for health insurance. Using the original concept, you would have insurance for catastrophic expenses. If you were injured severely or had a very serious illness, insurance would cover your expenses (or most of them depending on how much you paid up front). Somehow, the health insurance morphed into policies that paid for everything. Routine office visits, visits to the emergency room (even if it wasn’t an emergency), home health visits, cosmetic procedures, and hundreds of other expenses became covered. Of course, there is no incentive to restrain your visits when it doesn’t cost you anything. In fact, there is a tendency to want to “get your money’s worth” out of a policy for which you pay premiums. It is also inevitable that a policy like that cannot ever be financially viable for the insurance provider because the costs have no constraint. As costs rose, it became cheaper to buy policies as a group in order to average risk across a group of people. Since people generally can’t get together and form a group to buy insurance, would form these groups? Company employees. Thus began the employer-provided insurance plans.
With an employer-provided plan, there is exactly zero incentive to restrain costs for the employee. The employee only fills out forms and the employer pays all the costs. The employer goes down the tubes. Another financial innovator went to the large employers with this idea, “If you give me a certain amount of money each year per person, I will take care of their health care needs and you will have fixed costs. If it costs more, I will take the loss, if it costs less, I will keep the extra money”. Thus, the Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) was invented. Of course, the way HMOs make money is by doing as little for patients as possible. It is built into the contract. The paradox is that the companies compete by purporting to offer more services but the way they make money is by not providing them.
The real question is how health insurance veered off the normal insurance track. If health insurance was still using the same model as other types of policies, people would primarily have catastrophic insurance and would set their co-pays and deductibles by their level of risk and how much they were willing to pay in premiums. To reduce costs, there has to be incentive for people to do it. The only real incentive is to have people pay for what they use which isn’t catastrophic. For example, if you pay for an office visit, you will decide whether you really need to go before you do. If it costs six to ten times more to go to the emergency room than it does to go to your regular doctor, you will likely go to your regular doctor rather than fill the emergency room with non-emergency patients.
I am not saying people who are destitute should not have access to care. The government should help the poor and people who are unable to work. People don’t have a problem with helping people who are incapable of working. People do have a problem with paying for people who choose not to work or providing free care to affluent people who don’t need it. To reduce health care costs, the exact wrong thing to do is to make it “free”. The real answer to the problem is to go back to basics and review what health care insurance is supposed to do and the best and most efficient way to provide that care. Trying to cover everyone with “free” care and reducing physician payments until there are few doctors left is clearly not the answer.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Using Health Care Reform To Control Everything
The current administration is talking about the health care "crisis" and is prepared to spend over one trillion dollars to insure about 16 million people (of their estimated 40 million without insurance). That works out to about $62,500 per person. Why not just buy them a policy at a few thousand a year and save a bunch of money? Because that is not what this is about. I wrote an earlier article about the differences between the liberal and conservative philosophies and how the liberals always think they are smarter than everyone else and therefore want to determine how everyone else behaves and lives. Health care is the ultimate weapon of control. How can that be, you may ask? What is wrong with insuring people who have no health care now? Nothing, on the surface. Let's look a little closer at some of the issues.
President Obama said he wants to remove waste and overcharging by physicians. This is a straw man argument. There are already massive amounts of regulation and remedies for physicians who do that, in the way of both regulatory and criminal statutes. It is total nonsense to say new programs are needed. Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services stated that she wanted to protect physicians from liability if they practiced with (paraphrasing) "accepted standards". There in lies the rub. The entire idea here is that the government will financially twist the arms of physicians and hospitals to dictate care. They keep repeating the mantra that physicians should be in charge of medical care. Physicians will be free to make their own decisions. The only problem is that if the government disagrees, the physician doesn't get paid. Sounds like Chicago in the 1920s. Capone would be proud.
The government in the United States has a several hundred year history of taking good intentions and totally screwing them up. One of the reasons for this is that they try to write centralized regulations for currently about 300 million people. It is impossible to do and consider individual circumstances. Even much simpler issues (drug policy, transportation, weapons, etc.) have varying circumstances in different states. What you end up with is exception after exception added to the rules until you have the United States tax code (which no one, even the Internal Revenue Service, understands).
If a doctor decides a patient needs a drug and the government wants the patient to get another one, no payment. If your doctor tells you that you need surgery and the government disagrees, pay for it yourself. Actuarial tables will be used to determine who gets what. If you are over a certain age, head on down to the Soylent Green plant because you aren't getting anything that costs money.
But alas, it gets worse. Because the government decides who gets paid benefits and how much, it is easy to creep forward in logic. For example, if you engage in a dangerous activity (skydiving, scuba diving, bungee jumping, etc.) it is easy for the government to say you have to pay more for premiums or we just don't cover you. Okay. But it isn't a big step to say, if you smoke or are overweight, the same thing applies. There is already use of cigarette taxes to fund stop smoking programs. Hmmm. If you stop in McDonalds, you will pay a surcharge to cover the health care cost of eating a cheeseburger or french fries. There can be a dessert tax. You can get a break depending on what kind of car you drive, what kind of groceries you buy, what kind of hypoallergenic make up you use, if you take vitamins, if you are in a monogamous relationship, or if you limit yourself to two beers at the Fourth of July picnic. But how can we tell who deserves these premium benefits and coverage additions? Well, clearly we have to keep track of what people are doing so the government will know who to benefit. The government can track your vehicle registration, your purchases at the grocery store, your exercise log, your sex partner registration, your fast food purchases, if you bought condoms, or if you ate a second piece of cake at the birthday party. It's for your own good. I am from the government and I am here to help you.
Government will tell automobile manufacturers what kinds of vehicles they can make (already happening with General Motors). Government will determine which restaurants can stay open and what they can serve by imposing "unhealthy food" fees. Government will tell you which hobbies you can and cannot have and when you need to lose weight. It's okay though, because it is for your own good. Because anyone who is not liberal or progressive is too stupid to realize what is good for them individually, it is the government's responsibility to make decisions for them.
It is easy to take those steps in logic, just like it was easy to go down the path of eugenics in Germany in the 1930's. That didn't work out very well. Is this something we really want to do? Like they said in The Incredibles, "When everyone is super, no one will be". Take anyway people's right to individual decisions about their life, and there is no freedom and some would argue that it isn't a life worth living because we become cattle. The very basis of this nation's founding will have been killed. This is not about health care. It is about control.
President Obama said he wants to remove waste and overcharging by physicians. This is a straw man argument. There are already massive amounts of regulation and remedies for physicians who do that, in the way of both regulatory and criminal statutes. It is total nonsense to say new programs are needed. Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services stated that she wanted to protect physicians from liability if they practiced with (paraphrasing) "accepted standards". There in lies the rub. The entire idea here is that the government will financially twist the arms of physicians and hospitals to dictate care. They keep repeating the mantra that physicians should be in charge of medical care. Physicians will be free to make their own decisions. The only problem is that if the government disagrees, the physician doesn't get paid. Sounds like Chicago in the 1920s. Capone would be proud.
The government in the United States has a several hundred year history of taking good intentions and totally screwing them up. One of the reasons for this is that they try to write centralized regulations for currently about 300 million people. It is impossible to do and consider individual circumstances. Even much simpler issues (drug policy, transportation, weapons, etc.) have varying circumstances in different states. What you end up with is exception after exception added to the rules until you have the United States tax code (which no one, even the Internal Revenue Service, understands).
If a doctor decides a patient needs a drug and the government wants the patient to get another one, no payment. If your doctor tells you that you need surgery and the government disagrees, pay for it yourself. Actuarial tables will be used to determine who gets what. If you are over a certain age, head on down to the Soylent Green plant because you aren't getting anything that costs money.
But alas, it gets worse. Because the government decides who gets paid benefits and how much, it is easy to creep forward in logic. For example, if you engage in a dangerous activity (skydiving, scuba diving, bungee jumping, etc.) it is easy for the government to say you have to pay more for premiums or we just don't cover you. Okay. But it isn't a big step to say, if you smoke or are overweight, the same thing applies. There is already use of cigarette taxes to fund stop smoking programs. Hmmm. If you stop in McDonalds, you will pay a surcharge to cover the health care cost of eating a cheeseburger or french fries. There can be a dessert tax. You can get a break depending on what kind of car you drive, what kind of groceries you buy, what kind of hypoallergenic make up you use, if you take vitamins, if you are in a monogamous relationship, or if you limit yourself to two beers at the Fourth of July picnic. But how can we tell who deserves these premium benefits and coverage additions? Well, clearly we have to keep track of what people are doing so the government will know who to benefit. The government can track your vehicle registration, your purchases at the grocery store, your exercise log, your sex partner registration, your fast food purchases, if you bought condoms, or if you ate a second piece of cake at the birthday party. It's for your own good. I am from the government and I am here to help you.
Government will tell automobile manufacturers what kinds of vehicles they can make (already happening with General Motors). Government will determine which restaurants can stay open and what they can serve by imposing "unhealthy food" fees. Government will tell you which hobbies you can and cannot have and when you need to lose weight. It's okay though, because it is for your own good. Because anyone who is not liberal or progressive is too stupid to realize what is good for them individually, it is the government's responsibility to make decisions for them.
It is easy to take those steps in logic, just like it was easy to go down the path of eugenics in Germany in the 1930's. That didn't work out very well. Is this something we really want to do? Like they said in The Incredibles, "When everyone is super, no one will be". Take anyway people's right to individual decisions about their life, and there is no freedom and some would argue that it isn't a life worth living because we become cattle. The very basis of this nation's founding will have been killed. This is not about health care. It is about control.
Monday, March 16, 2009
The Unions Get Paid Off by the Democrats
There is a disturbing trend in the actions of the Obama administration when it comes to how they spend the money. There are at least four different examples which will highlight the trend.
First, the automobile industry bailout: Money was given to General Motors and Chrysler instead of allowing the companies to reorganize under a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Therefore, public money was taken from auto workers in the south whose average salary is about forty three dollars an hour and given to United Auto Workers members in Michigan whose average salary is about seventy one dollars an hour. The Obama administration portrayed the action as helping the General Motors and Chrysler corporations. In fact, a chapter 11 bankruptcy would have been much more advantageous as it would have allowed renegotiation of the labor contracts and would have relieved the pressure of legacy costs to the companies. The money was really a bail out of the United Auto Workers, not the companies. It hasn’t worked and the two companies have shown no signs of changing fortunes.
Second, the school voucher program in Washington, DC: The voucher program in Washington, DC cost about $7600 per student. The schools at which the voucher students attended had 90% higher scores in language tests and 95% higher scores in mathematics testing. The interesting paradox is that the Washington, DC public school system spends about $13,000 per student. The omnibus spending bill removed funding for the school voucher program. The Democrats, in their infinite concern for children, cancelled a program which cost taxpayers half as much and resulted in markedly better school performance. Why would they do that? The answer is easy. The teachers union has been paid off for supporting Democratic candidates in the election. The Democrats are willing to screw over poor children and their families in order to pay off the union.
Third, the stimulus construction projects: The stimulus bill passed by the Democratic Congress and the Obama administration has a provision that stipulates that stimulus construction projects have to pay union wages to workers on stimulus projects. Why would that provision be in the bill? After all, it would result in less money to do projects and the ones that are completed would cost more. The reason is easy. Governments don’t build roads and bridges, private contractors do. Those contracts are awarded by bid. A non-union company can submit a lower labor cost bid than a union company. The raw materials cost will be the same. Therefore, the non-union bid will generally be lower. This provision in the bill is expressly for the benefit of union contractors to receive stimulus money contracts for infrastructure. The unions will receive money but the taxpayers will get less infrastructure projects completed for their money.
Fourth, the “Employee Free Choice Act”: This piece of legislation is close to criminal. The rules would change and take away the right of workers to a secret union election ballot. To organize a union, all that organizers would need is 51% of employees to sign a card and the union would be installed. The cards would be public and the period of time to have them signed in unlimited. This is like the mob in Chicago in the 1930s. Union thugs intimidating workers is not progress. The intimidation may not even be the worst part of the bill. In the event of non-resolution of a union contract, after a set period of time the federal government will set wages. Hmmm… with the Democrats in power, I wonder whose side would be favored? Therefore, people who are intimidated into a union will have their wages set by the federal government. This is an economic disaster of the highest magnitude just waiting to happen. It will lead to companies closing because they are no longer profitable and revival of the union thugs who have essentially gone away due to people's reluctance to embrace unions.
In all four examples, it is easy to see the pay off to the various unions by the Democratic Congress and the Obama administration. It is brazen and open. It is also going to massively harm the United States economy and prevent recovery. A recent poll which asked people if they desired to have their jobs converted to union jobs had only 9% say yes and a resounding 83% say no. This is the Democratic version of the organized crime “protection” rackets and is disgusting.
First, the automobile industry bailout: Money was given to General Motors and Chrysler instead of allowing the companies to reorganize under a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Therefore, public money was taken from auto workers in the south whose average salary is about forty three dollars an hour and given to United Auto Workers members in Michigan whose average salary is about seventy one dollars an hour. The Obama administration portrayed the action as helping the General Motors and Chrysler corporations. In fact, a chapter 11 bankruptcy would have been much more advantageous as it would have allowed renegotiation of the labor contracts and would have relieved the pressure of legacy costs to the companies. The money was really a bail out of the United Auto Workers, not the companies. It hasn’t worked and the two companies have shown no signs of changing fortunes.
Second, the school voucher program in Washington, DC: The voucher program in Washington, DC cost about $7600 per student. The schools at which the voucher students attended had 90% higher scores in language tests and 95% higher scores in mathematics testing. The interesting paradox is that the Washington, DC public school system spends about $13,000 per student. The omnibus spending bill removed funding for the school voucher program. The Democrats, in their infinite concern for children, cancelled a program which cost taxpayers half as much and resulted in markedly better school performance. Why would they do that? The answer is easy. The teachers union has been paid off for supporting Democratic candidates in the election. The Democrats are willing to screw over poor children and their families in order to pay off the union.
Third, the stimulus construction projects: The stimulus bill passed by the Democratic Congress and the Obama administration has a provision that stipulates that stimulus construction projects have to pay union wages to workers on stimulus projects. Why would that provision be in the bill? After all, it would result in less money to do projects and the ones that are completed would cost more. The reason is easy. Governments don’t build roads and bridges, private contractors do. Those contracts are awarded by bid. A non-union company can submit a lower labor cost bid than a union company. The raw materials cost will be the same. Therefore, the non-union bid will generally be lower. This provision in the bill is expressly for the benefit of union contractors to receive stimulus money contracts for infrastructure. The unions will receive money but the taxpayers will get less infrastructure projects completed for their money.
Fourth, the “Employee Free Choice Act”: This piece of legislation is close to criminal. The rules would change and take away the right of workers to a secret union election ballot. To organize a union, all that organizers would need is 51% of employees to sign a card and the union would be installed. The cards would be public and the period of time to have them signed in unlimited. This is like the mob in Chicago in the 1930s. Union thugs intimidating workers is not progress. The intimidation may not even be the worst part of the bill. In the event of non-resolution of a union contract, after a set period of time the federal government will set wages. Hmmm… with the Democrats in power, I wonder whose side would be favored? Therefore, people who are intimidated into a union will have their wages set by the federal government. This is an economic disaster of the highest magnitude just waiting to happen. It will lead to companies closing because they are no longer profitable and revival of the union thugs who have essentially gone away due to people's reluctance to embrace unions.
In all four examples, it is easy to see the pay off to the various unions by the Democratic Congress and the Obama administration. It is brazen and open. It is also going to massively harm the United States economy and prevent recovery. A recent poll which asked people if they desired to have their jobs converted to union jobs had only 9% say yes and a resounding 83% say no. This is the Democratic version of the organized crime “protection” rackets and is disgusting.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Now That They Get It, They Can’t Fix It
I have written a number of times previously about the source of the current economic crisis in the United States. To briefly review, the Congress and Clinton administration created policy which encouraged loans to low income individuals because they thought more home ownership would be good for the country. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae bought a lot of the loans from primary lenders therefore leading the primary lenders to make more poor loans. The real problem came when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac created securities based on the value of those bad mortgages and sold hundreds of billions of dollars of the securities to investment banks around the world. The current problem with fixing the problem is that there is no way to determine which mortgages are associated with which securities. Because there is no association, no one can determine how much each security is worth. Therefore, banks who own billions of dollars in those securities don’t have any idea whether they own securities of value or not. They are holding onto the solid money they have because they don’t really know how much they have in those securities. The US government is discussing how to get those “toxic assets”, as they are now known, out of the financial system to try to restore normality to the system. The administration and the Congress are still trying to figure out how to do it.
There are several possible ways to try to value those assets. The grindstone way is to look at every single mortgage which was bought by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the value of the mortgage (solid, just getting by, or in default). Even if that monumental task was done (and it would take a long time), the question then becomes how to assign the individual mortgages to the securities. None of the owners of the securities want the worthless mortgages assigned to the securities that they own. In fact, the owners of the securities are looking for the government to get them their money back. That is patently ridiculous. The idea that taxpayers should make up money to speculators who greedily and hungrily bought those securities is insane. If I buy a stock and the value tanks, I don’t expect the government to refund my money. One way to assign mortgages which would seem fairer is to evaluate them all and to use the average value to calculate the value of the securities. That way, every institution that bought those securities will share proportionately in the pain of the downturn of the real estate market and none will be assigned entirely worthless mortgages. The problem with that approach is that a vague average is assigned and not the actual value of the individual mortgage. When assets are not based on a real value, there is a lot of uncertainty in the system. It is that very uncertainty which keeps financial institutions from freeing funds for lending.
The government solution currently seems to be to buy those “toxic assets” from the owners of the securities to resume normal operation of the financial system. There are several problems with this solution. The first is that by spending $750 billion on the first TARP (toxic asset relief program), a $760 billion “stimulus program” which had nothing to do with correcting the problem, a TARP II program, and then a $410 billion omnibus spending bill, the American public has caught on to the fact that the money has to come from somewhere. There is little, if any, patience left for another huge spending bill in addition to President Obama’s proposed 2009-2010 budget. The President is continuing to propose huge spending on social programs which are liberal politics and have nothing to do with fixing the problem. The cost of buying the “toxic assets” is staggering. I believe the current administration has misspent the political capital from the election on the huge liberal spending programs and now will have to deal with the resentment to their spending. The resentment and potential political backlash will likely prevent the spending which should have been the first priority, fixing the mortgage crisis. If the mortgage security problem had been originally addressed, the markets would have fixed themselves and several trillion dollars in government "stimulus" could have been saved. By taking political advantage of the crisis to put liberal social programs in place, there is nothing left with which to fix the crisis. The only option is to borrow from foreign countries and tax the people who actually earn money, therefore leaving them nothing to invest in the markets. It is self-defeating.
My guess is that they will inevitably screw the taxpayers by paying way too much for the assets in order to appear to be doing something and gain political points. The actual value of the assets will eventually declare themselves and the government (taxpayers) will be left holding the empty bag. The government will once again reward the speculators and failures at the expense of the prudent and safe investors. The same congressional representatives who screwed the pooch on oversight, regulation and then on spending will be the ones trying to fix the problem. When the government negotiates with people who are actually smart about financial matters and do it for a living, the government will always get hosed.
There are several possible ways to try to value those assets. The grindstone way is to look at every single mortgage which was bought by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the value of the mortgage (solid, just getting by, or in default). Even if that monumental task was done (and it would take a long time), the question then becomes how to assign the individual mortgages to the securities. None of the owners of the securities want the worthless mortgages assigned to the securities that they own. In fact, the owners of the securities are looking for the government to get them their money back. That is patently ridiculous. The idea that taxpayers should make up money to speculators who greedily and hungrily bought those securities is insane. If I buy a stock and the value tanks, I don’t expect the government to refund my money. One way to assign mortgages which would seem fairer is to evaluate them all and to use the average value to calculate the value of the securities. That way, every institution that bought those securities will share proportionately in the pain of the downturn of the real estate market and none will be assigned entirely worthless mortgages. The problem with that approach is that a vague average is assigned and not the actual value of the individual mortgage. When assets are not based on a real value, there is a lot of uncertainty in the system. It is that very uncertainty which keeps financial institutions from freeing funds for lending.
The government solution currently seems to be to buy those “toxic assets” from the owners of the securities to resume normal operation of the financial system. There are several problems with this solution. The first is that by spending $750 billion on the first TARP (toxic asset relief program), a $760 billion “stimulus program” which had nothing to do with correcting the problem, a TARP II program, and then a $410 billion omnibus spending bill, the American public has caught on to the fact that the money has to come from somewhere. There is little, if any, patience left for another huge spending bill in addition to President Obama’s proposed 2009-2010 budget. The President is continuing to propose huge spending on social programs which are liberal politics and have nothing to do with fixing the problem. The cost of buying the “toxic assets” is staggering. I believe the current administration has misspent the political capital from the election on the huge liberal spending programs and now will have to deal with the resentment to their spending. The resentment and potential political backlash will likely prevent the spending which should have been the first priority, fixing the mortgage crisis. If the mortgage security problem had been originally addressed, the markets would have fixed themselves and several trillion dollars in government "stimulus" could have been saved. By taking political advantage of the crisis to put liberal social programs in place, there is nothing left with which to fix the crisis. The only option is to borrow from foreign countries and tax the people who actually earn money, therefore leaving them nothing to invest in the markets. It is self-defeating.
My guess is that they will inevitably screw the taxpayers by paying way too much for the assets in order to appear to be doing something and gain political points. The actual value of the assets will eventually declare themselves and the government (taxpayers) will be left holding the empty bag. The government will once again reward the speculators and failures at the expense of the prudent and safe investors. The same congressional representatives who screwed the pooch on oversight, regulation and then on spending will be the ones trying to fix the problem. When the government negotiates with people who are actually smart about financial matters and do it for a living, the government will always get hosed.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
The Liberal versus Conservative Philosophies
I noticed that the Democratic Congress is talking about another bogus stimulus package. Everyone who paid attention knows that the first stimulus package was not intended for stimulus or, if it was, it was only a peripheral goal. The idea of that package was to use the crisis to advance liberal programs which would not have been passed through the normal appropriations process. By bundling them up in the package, the Democrats could get a lot of their long stalled programs into law. It was a total scam. President Obama used the Bill Clinton tactic of running as a moderate but has since shown his true colors as a far-left liberal. Let’s look at some of the fundamental differences in the philosophies between liberals and conservatives.
The overwhelming viewpoint of liberalism is arrogance. The view of liberals is that the population needs guidance and caring from the government. They are maternal in attitude. The liberals feel that the government has to be maternal because the liberal officials in government are so much smarter than the population. The fundamentals of conservatism include the concept that people can think and choose for themselves and that an individual or family will know better what they need for their own situation than program directors in the government. You will notice that states where there are large numbers of farmers, ranchers, and others who are used to living independently and making their own decisions are almost exclusively conservative and represented by conservative Republican or moderate Democrat officials. The states primarily in the north east and in the rust belt where people primarily live in large cities and depend more on government infrastructure tend to be Democratic. Much was made of the recent Democrat wins in 2008 but if you paid attention you would notice that a lot of the newly elected members of Congress were moderates, like Rep. Heath Shuler in North Carolina. I find the liberal attitude insulting and demeaning. The idea that someone who has never met me, knows nothing of my own or family situation, and has less education than I do, can tell me how to run my life because they are smarter than me is insulting and arrogant. The government is supposed to serve the people, not control their every day life. If you read the Federalist Papers, written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, it is clear that while there are clear reasons to have a strong central government (military, commerce, treaties, etc.) the Constitution is primarily there to define what government is NOT supposed to do. Liberalism thinks that the government should constantly guide your decisions because they know so much more than you do. It is offensive.
Both liberalism and conservatism attempt to improve the financial standing of the general population. There is a great difference in the ways that the two philosophies go about it. In general, conservatives feel that the road to economic success lies in opportunities and restricting the amount of personal or business income that the government takes from the population in the form of taxes. The idea is that people, when provided opportunity, will improve their own situations based on their merit and work ethic. By allowing individuals and businesses to achieve success based on their own ideas and effort, people have incentive to work harder and innovate. By allowing people to keep more of what they earn and by providing opportunities for people to succeed, those at the lower income levels can improve their situation with hard work. Liberals go about this differently. Liberals feel that people of lower incomes are “victims of the system”. The way that liberals will improve the plight of those at the lower end of the economic spectrum is to take income away from the upper income earners and give it to the lower income group. It is denigrating to those who would like to improve their situation on their own. It is tantamount to saying that those without success are incapable of achieving it on their own. It is a philosophy of victimhood and once again shows that the overarching liberal philosophy is that they are smarter than everyone else. Conservatives want to raise the lower end of the economic spectrum and liberals want to lower the upper end by giving their earnings to the lower end. They call it “fairness”. It is a disincentive to work and innovate. How many times have you heard someone say, “Why work? The government is going to take it, anyway.” Of course, the liberal philosophy leads to socialism and eventually communism. The only difference is how far you are willing to go.
Recent program proposals by the current administration are evidence of the differing philosophies. The proposal for government-run universal health care demonstrates the arrogance of the liberal elected officials. I have written a number of pieces about it. The idea is that in order to reduce costs, the government is now going to tell physicians how to practice and to take away the right of successful earners to individualize their coverage. It is demeaning. While everyone agrees that reduction of carbon emissions is a worth while goal, the last ten years have shown a cooling trend on the Earth. Despite data to the contrary, the current administration wants to put in place a “cap and trade” system which will substantially impact the American economy. Their justification is “global warming” despite all data to the contrary. It is because they are smarter than the scientists.
The real common thread of liberalism which differentiates the philosophy from conservatism is control. Everything about liberalism allows the government to obtain power over the population in their daily lives. Once again, the reason that they want that power is because they truly believe they are smarter than the population and therefore should tell the population how to live. If you look at the very populations that the liberals have identified as those they are "lifting up" in the last fifty years, there is little to no evidence that the liberal policies have done anything other than to further the dependence of those same people to government assistance. It is a Bernie Madoff scam of the highest order. Conservatism allows people to be left alone and gives more individual freedom to the population and therefore cedes control away from the government.
The idea that people are incapable of taking care of themselves, working hard and earning based on their own merits is arrogant and insulting. I am constantly amazed how liberal politicians can routinely insult people and still manage to acquire their vote by buying them off. It certainly is easier to just sit back, claim to be a victim, and have the government give you some free money that someone else earned, than it is to work hard for yourself. The problem with that is that if enough people do it, no one is left to earn. Then the economy collapses and you end up in the Soviet Union. Conservatism is the philosophy which drove people from Europe to the United States and drove the movement of people during the western expansion of the United States. It is a fundamental quality of the American people which will prove popular if elected officials who purport to be conservative would actually govern as conservatives once they are elected.
The overwhelming viewpoint of liberalism is arrogance. The view of liberals is that the population needs guidance and caring from the government. They are maternal in attitude. The liberals feel that the government has to be maternal because the liberal officials in government are so much smarter than the population. The fundamentals of conservatism include the concept that people can think and choose for themselves and that an individual or family will know better what they need for their own situation than program directors in the government. You will notice that states where there are large numbers of farmers, ranchers, and others who are used to living independently and making their own decisions are almost exclusively conservative and represented by conservative Republican or moderate Democrat officials. The states primarily in the north east and in the rust belt where people primarily live in large cities and depend more on government infrastructure tend to be Democratic. Much was made of the recent Democrat wins in 2008 but if you paid attention you would notice that a lot of the newly elected members of Congress were moderates, like Rep. Heath Shuler in North Carolina. I find the liberal attitude insulting and demeaning. The idea that someone who has never met me, knows nothing of my own or family situation, and has less education than I do, can tell me how to run my life because they are smarter than me is insulting and arrogant. The government is supposed to serve the people, not control their every day life. If you read the Federalist Papers, written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, it is clear that while there are clear reasons to have a strong central government (military, commerce, treaties, etc.) the Constitution is primarily there to define what government is NOT supposed to do. Liberalism thinks that the government should constantly guide your decisions because they know so much more than you do. It is offensive.
Both liberalism and conservatism attempt to improve the financial standing of the general population. There is a great difference in the ways that the two philosophies go about it. In general, conservatives feel that the road to economic success lies in opportunities and restricting the amount of personal or business income that the government takes from the population in the form of taxes. The idea is that people, when provided opportunity, will improve their own situations based on their merit and work ethic. By allowing individuals and businesses to achieve success based on their own ideas and effort, people have incentive to work harder and innovate. By allowing people to keep more of what they earn and by providing opportunities for people to succeed, those at the lower income levels can improve their situation with hard work. Liberals go about this differently. Liberals feel that people of lower incomes are “victims of the system”. The way that liberals will improve the plight of those at the lower end of the economic spectrum is to take income away from the upper income earners and give it to the lower income group. It is denigrating to those who would like to improve their situation on their own. It is tantamount to saying that those without success are incapable of achieving it on their own. It is a philosophy of victimhood and once again shows that the overarching liberal philosophy is that they are smarter than everyone else. Conservatives want to raise the lower end of the economic spectrum and liberals want to lower the upper end by giving their earnings to the lower end. They call it “fairness”. It is a disincentive to work and innovate. How many times have you heard someone say, “Why work? The government is going to take it, anyway.” Of course, the liberal philosophy leads to socialism and eventually communism. The only difference is how far you are willing to go.
Recent program proposals by the current administration are evidence of the differing philosophies. The proposal for government-run universal health care demonstrates the arrogance of the liberal elected officials. I have written a number of pieces about it. The idea is that in order to reduce costs, the government is now going to tell physicians how to practice and to take away the right of successful earners to individualize their coverage. It is demeaning. While everyone agrees that reduction of carbon emissions is a worth while goal, the last ten years have shown a cooling trend on the Earth. Despite data to the contrary, the current administration wants to put in place a “cap and trade” system which will substantially impact the American economy. Their justification is “global warming” despite all data to the contrary. It is because they are smarter than the scientists.
The real common thread of liberalism which differentiates the philosophy from conservatism is control. Everything about liberalism allows the government to obtain power over the population in their daily lives. Once again, the reason that they want that power is because they truly believe they are smarter than the population and therefore should tell the population how to live. If you look at the very populations that the liberals have identified as those they are "lifting up" in the last fifty years, there is little to no evidence that the liberal policies have done anything other than to further the dependence of those same people to government assistance. It is a Bernie Madoff scam of the highest order. Conservatism allows people to be left alone and gives more individual freedom to the population and therefore cedes control away from the government.
The idea that people are incapable of taking care of themselves, working hard and earning based on their own merits is arrogant and insulting. I am constantly amazed how liberal politicians can routinely insult people and still manage to acquire their vote by buying them off. It certainly is easier to just sit back, claim to be a victim, and have the government give you some free money that someone else earned, than it is to work hard for yourself. The problem with that is that if enough people do it, no one is left to earn. Then the economy collapses and you end up in the Soviet Union. Conservatism is the philosophy which drove people from Europe to the United States and drove the movement of people during the western expansion of the United States. It is a fundamental quality of the American people which will prove popular if elected officials who purport to be conservative would actually govern as conservatives once they are elected.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Bringing Down Health Care Costs
This is another in the health care discussion continuum. I am hearing a lot of ridiculous statements from politicians. Let’s look at some ways that would actually reduce health care costs and if we really want to go there.
I spent a lot of time discussing universal health care, the built in inefficiencies, and how it will lead to poorer quality physicians and care in an earlier entry. I am clearly convinced that universal government-run health care is a disaster and will make mediocre care available for everyone. As I said in that piece, 40 million Americans have poor care now but universal health care will make sure everyone does.
Rationing Care – We could do what the British and other socialized medicine care countries do. They don’t call it rationing. They call it an effective use of resources to deny care to significant portions of their population. The way they do it is with actuarial tables. For example, if the median age of death in the country is 74 and you are 76, no matter your medical health state, you are a bad investment for medical resources. If you prescribe to those statistical methods, you probably also believe that when you reach a certain age, you should just jump off a building or head on down to the Soylent Green plant for processing. Additionally, under mandatory universal health care, someone like Warren Buffet with a billion dollars earned, gets the same care as John Q. Suckerfish, who had lived his life on welfare. A system like this will set up generational war where the younger members of society will hoard the health care dollars despite having no where near the need for them. Do you really want to see your parents and grandparents denied care, even if they are in good health, based purely on an actuarial table? I don’t think we want to go there.
Improving efficiency – Everyone always talks about improving efficiency in health care. You might notice that they always do it in generalities. President Obama continually talks about the “billions of dollars we can save by improving efficiency in health care” but the only specific he ever mentions is electronic medical records. I have addressed the problems with those in an earlier post. When people talk about improving efficiency in generalities, it is a sure sign that they have no idea what they are talking about. It is a straw man. It is like saying “I am for better schools” or “I am for a strong defense”. Unless you have specific proposals, you reek of fecal matter from male cows when you discuss it.
Get Out of My Emergency Room – One method of reducing costs which has been widely recognized for years is moving people back to seeing their family primary care physicians and physician assistants. The same office visit which costs $75 at the family physician office costs $600 at the local emergency room. I have worked in many emergency rooms where every Sunday night, mothers bring in their children with minor complaints of colds, fevers, etc. to inquire whether their children should go to school tomorrow or not. It is major waste of health care dollars. If a family physician or pediatrician held office hours Sunday evening, the emergency room would only have half as many patients and the cost would be reduced by a factor of ten. The reasons that emergency rooms exist is because doctors historically did not want to have to work twenty four hours a day. Since internists and surgeons would be called in at all hours of the night to see patients, they came to hire physicians to man the medical facility at night. That eventually led to the creation of the emergency medicine specialty.
Many people now use the emergency room as their local clinic. Part of the reason for this is that emergency rooms are not allowed to turn away patients. Therefore, a person can choose not to pay for health insurance and just show up. Who picks up the cost? The taxpayers of the local area. In an analogous manner to the emergency room physician, why not have physicians or practitioners man clinics at night to allow primary care to be done at the clinic rate rather than the emergency room rate? If people use their existing health policies to make office visits instead of using the emergency room, huge savings are possible.
Private Health Insurance – Over the years, business interests have put in place laws which severely restrict which health care plans people can purchase. For example, in most places, you cannot buy a policy across a state line. If you live in Maryland, for example, you cannot buy a policy from a health insurance company in Utah. The system was set up by the local legislature after lobbying from the local health insurance company to set up a monopolistic system. The system guarantees no competition and therefore no reason to improve policies or reduce premiums. It is the same as universal health care in that the system is bloated and inefficient. To reduce costs almost immediately, those state line restrictions should be dropped. This must be done in combination with the next section to induce competition among health insurance providers. A family will buy the health insurance policy with the best benefit package and lowest premiums available if those plans are in competition.
Third Party Payers – This section goes hand in hand with the prior one. Companies always complain about runaway health care costs as the reason they are unable to make a profit. It many cases, it is true. No one who has company-provided health care cares what it costs because they never see the premiums. As long as you can get care for your family and keep your job, there is no reason to care about the premiums. I believe one answer is to get rid of third party payers. If your employer gives you, as part of your pay and benefits package, money to buy health insurance instead of providing a policy, you then have a vested interest in knowing what it costs and finding the best policy available for the best price. A system like that would provide a lot of flexibility. It would be like automobile insurance in some ways. If you are a young healthy person, you could opt for low premiums with higher co-pays (deductibles) because the likelihood of having a serious illness in your twenties or thirties is fairly low. As you age, you can adjust your policy for higher premiums with lower co-pays because the likelihood of your needing medical care increases. If you have an individual or family policy that you own personally, you can take it with you if you change employers. Since you would buy the policy while you are young, you would not run into the problem of changing jobs in your late forties and finding the new premiums prohibitively expensive. If any policy anywhere in the country was available, people would shop for the best policy around. Insurance carriers would then be forced to compete with better benefits and lower premiums in order to attract customers. This is the way that free markets always improve services for customers.
Did you ever notice that when you buy a slice of pizza in New York City that it is really good? There is nothing genetic about the people in New York that makes them better cooks and the ingredients are the same as everywhere else. Why is that? It is because if you don’t make a good pizza slice, there are three more places down the street that do and you go out of business. That is the way competition works. If competition in the health insurance industry is opened, policies will improve and prices will improve. People will be able to maintain their policies no matter where they move and if they change their job. The market will fix the problem if we let it. For those unable to purchase policies due to physical or mental disabilities, the government can help them. No one has a problem with that. The prices will be less expensive to the government because of the competition in the industry and it will cost less in tax dollars. I should point out that I do have a problem with providing tax money for health care to able-bodied people who choose not to work or buy a policy. They have chosen their own fate as people in the United States are free to do.
Tort Reform – Many physicians are now required to practice what is known in the sector as “defensive medicine”. What that amounts to is getting your ducks in a row before the inevitable frivolous lawsuit. Extra expensive radiology studies, laboratory tests, and follow up visits are the norm to prevent litigation. In the obstetrics field, there are two kinds of baby births: perfect and lawsuit. It doesn’t matter if the birth mother is a crack-smoking alcoholic who performed as a professional wrestler while eight months pregnant, if the baby isn’t perfect, the Ob/Gyn is getting sued. That is because there are law firms that do nothing else but sue physicians and hospitals. In Pennsylvania, the same malpractice insurance policy for a general surgeon that costs $37,000 a year in premiums in Virginia, costs $135,000. Why is that? Are surgeons that much worse in Pennsylvania? No, it is because the tort laws in Pennsylvania are set up for lawyers to make money. You will find this to be true in every Democratic state. Since the Trial Lawyers Association is the biggest single contributor to the Democratic Party, you will never see tort reform in one of those states. About 36% of the general surgeons in Pennsylvania have left the state. They cannot afford to practice there. They have to make $135,000 before they make a penny to keep. The does not include paying office staff, leases for offices, supplies, administrative costs, licenses, continuing medical education or any of the other routine costs of running a practice. Therefore, they move or stop practicing. Pennsylvania screws itself. Of course, that won’t stop the legislators from complaining about the situation, even though they caused it. It is a lot like Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank talking about the housing crisis. Next time you think medical care is too expensive; go to see your lawyer to get that coronary artery bypass surgery. I’m sure he can hook you up.
In summary, there are a number of ways to reduce health care costs which are far preferable to government-run universal health care. I have pointed out a few but not all. I am sure I will visit this subject again.
I spent a lot of time discussing universal health care, the built in inefficiencies, and how it will lead to poorer quality physicians and care in an earlier entry. I am clearly convinced that universal government-run health care is a disaster and will make mediocre care available for everyone. As I said in that piece, 40 million Americans have poor care now but universal health care will make sure everyone does.
Rationing Care – We could do what the British and other socialized medicine care countries do. They don’t call it rationing. They call it an effective use of resources to deny care to significant portions of their population. The way they do it is with actuarial tables. For example, if the median age of death in the country is 74 and you are 76, no matter your medical health state, you are a bad investment for medical resources. If you prescribe to those statistical methods, you probably also believe that when you reach a certain age, you should just jump off a building or head on down to the Soylent Green plant for processing. Additionally, under mandatory universal health care, someone like Warren Buffet with a billion dollars earned, gets the same care as John Q. Suckerfish, who had lived his life on welfare. A system like this will set up generational war where the younger members of society will hoard the health care dollars despite having no where near the need for them. Do you really want to see your parents and grandparents denied care, even if they are in good health, based purely on an actuarial table? I don’t think we want to go there.
Improving efficiency – Everyone always talks about improving efficiency in health care. You might notice that they always do it in generalities. President Obama continually talks about the “billions of dollars we can save by improving efficiency in health care” but the only specific he ever mentions is electronic medical records. I have addressed the problems with those in an earlier post. When people talk about improving efficiency in generalities, it is a sure sign that they have no idea what they are talking about. It is a straw man. It is like saying “I am for better schools” or “I am for a strong defense”. Unless you have specific proposals, you reek of fecal matter from male cows when you discuss it.
Get Out of My Emergency Room – One method of reducing costs which has been widely recognized for years is moving people back to seeing their family primary care physicians and physician assistants. The same office visit which costs $75 at the family physician office costs $600 at the local emergency room. I have worked in many emergency rooms where every Sunday night, mothers bring in their children with minor complaints of colds, fevers, etc. to inquire whether their children should go to school tomorrow or not. It is major waste of health care dollars. If a family physician or pediatrician held office hours Sunday evening, the emergency room would only have half as many patients and the cost would be reduced by a factor of ten. The reasons that emergency rooms exist is because doctors historically did not want to have to work twenty four hours a day. Since internists and surgeons would be called in at all hours of the night to see patients, they came to hire physicians to man the medical facility at night. That eventually led to the creation of the emergency medicine specialty.
Many people now use the emergency room as their local clinic. Part of the reason for this is that emergency rooms are not allowed to turn away patients. Therefore, a person can choose not to pay for health insurance and just show up. Who picks up the cost? The taxpayers of the local area. In an analogous manner to the emergency room physician, why not have physicians or practitioners man clinics at night to allow primary care to be done at the clinic rate rather than the emergency room rate? If people use their existing health policies to make office visits instead of using the emergency room, huge savings are possible.
Private Health Insurance – Over the years, business interests have put in place laws which severely restrict which health care plans people can purchase. For example, in most places, you cannot buy a policy across a state line. If you live in Maryland, for example, you cannot buy a policy from a health insurance company in Utah. The system was set up by the local legislature after lobbying from the local health insurance company to set up a monopolistic system. The system guarantees no competition and therefore no reason to improve policies or reduce premiums. It is the same as universal health care in that the system is bloated and inefficient. To reduce costs almost immediately, those state line restrictions should be dropped. This must be done in combination with the next section to induce competition among health insurance providers. A family will buy the health insurance policy with the best benefit package and lowest premiums available if those plans are in competition.
Third Party Payers – This section goes hand in hand with the prior one. Companies always complain about runaway health care costs as the reason they are unable to make a profit. It many cases, it is true. No one who has company-provided health care cares what it costs because they never see the premiums. As long as you can get care for your family and keep your job, there is no reason to care about the premiums. I believe one answer is to get rid of third party payers. If your employer gives you, as part of your pay and benefits package, money to buy health insurance instead of providing a policy, you then have a vested interest in knowing what it costs and finding the best policy available for the best price. A system like that would provide a lot of flexibility. It would be like automobile insurance in some ways. If you are a young healthy person, you could opt for low premiums with higher co-pays (deductibles) because the likelihood of having a serious illness in your twenties or thirties is fairly low. As you age, you can adjust your policy for higher premiums with lower co-pays because the likelihood of your needing medical care increases. If you have an individual or family policy that you own personally, you can take it with you if you change employers. Since you would buy the policy while you are young, you would not run into the problem of changing jobs in your late forties and finding the new premiums prohibitively expensive. If any policy anywhere in the country was available, people would shop for the best policy around. Insurance carriers would then be forced to compete with better benefits and lower premiums in order to attract customers. This is the way that free markets always improve services for customers.
Did you ever notice that when you buy a slice of pizza in New York City that it is really good? There is nothing genetic about the people in New York that makes them better cooks and the ingredients are the same as everywhere else. Why is that? It is because if you don’t make a good pizza slice, there are three more places down the street that do and you go out of business. That is the way competition works. If competition in the health insurance industry is opened, policies will improve and prices will improve. People will be able to maintain their policies no matter where they move and if they change their job. The market will fix the problem if we let it. For those unable to purchase policies due to physical or mental disabilities, the government can help them. No one has a problem with that. The prices will be less expensive to the government because of the competition in the industry and it will cost less in tax dollars. I should point out that I do have a problem with providing tax money for health care to able-bodied people who choose not to work or buy a policy. They have chosen their own fate as people in the United States are free to do.
Tort Reform – Many physicians are now required to practice what is known in the sector as “defensive medicine”. What that amounts to is getting your ducks in a row before the inevitable frivolous lawsuit. Extra expensive radiology studies, laboratory tests, and follow up visits are the norm to prevent litigation. In the obstetrics field, there are two kinds of baby births: perfect and lawsuit. It doesn’t matter if the birth mother is a crack-smoking alcoholic who performed as a professional wrestler while eight months pregnant, if the baby isn’t perfect, the Ob/Gyn is getting sued. That is because there are law firms that do nothing else but sue physicians and hospitals. In Pennsylvania, the same malpractice insurance policy for a general surgeon that costs $37,000 a year in premiums in Virginia, costs $135,000. Why is that? Are surgeons that much worse in Pennsylvania? No, it is because the tort laws in Pennsylvania are set up for lawyers to make money. You will find this to be true in every Democratic state. Since the Trial Lawyers Association is the biggest single contributor to the Democratic Party, you will never see tort reform in one of those states. About 36% of the general surgeons in Pennsylvania have left the state. They cannot afford to practice there. They have to make $135,000 before they make a penny to keep. The does not include paying office staff, leases for offices, supplies, administrative costs, licenses, continuing medical education or any of the other routine costs of running a practice. Therefore, they move or stop practicing. Pennsylvania screws itself. Of course, that won’t stop the legislators from complaining about the situation, even though they caused it. It is a lot like Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank talking about the housing crisis. Next time you think medical care is too expensive; go to see your lawyer to get that coronary artery bypass surgery. I’m sure he can hook you up.
In summary, there are a number of ways to reduce health care costs which are far preferable to government-run universal health care. I have pointed out a few but not all. I am sure I will visit this subject again.
Democratic Selective Memory
Let’s start with a fact which is beyond dispute: The Democratic Party has been in the majority, and therefore in control, of both houses of Congress since the 2006 elections. In most of the recent discussions seen in the media and by Democrats themselves, that fact seems to get lost.
Part 1. When discussing the current economic condition of the United States, President Obama and all his surrogates constantly remind us that “this administration inherited this crisis from the previous administration”.
More facts: Article I, Section 7 of the US Constitution states, in part: “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.”
Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution, states, in part:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
I deleted a number of lines which don’t have to do with finances. I think you can get the drift of these two sections of the US Constitution. The Congress owns the money and determines where it goes. How it is it, then, that the Democratic Congress has nothing to do with the current economic situation when they have been running both houses of Congress since 2006? It seems they forgot.
Part 2. The $410 billion omnibus spending bill which is currently under consideration contains about 8600 earmark spending projects. The current administration campaigned on and constantly disparage the placement of earmark spending projects. Their excuse for the current bill is that that Congress did not pass a budget at the end of 2008 for fiscal year 2009 and this is a leftover from the Bush Administration. Therefore, the earmarks in the bill are a product of the Bush Administration. Let me review: The Democratically controlled Congress did not pass a budget in the fall of 2008. The Democratically controlled Congress inserted about 8600 earmarks into the current bill. The Democratically controlled Congress raises the baseline spending in the budget by about 8%. Somehow, all of that is the fault of the Bush Administration. That is insane.
Part 3. When describing the housing downturn and banking crisis in the United States, Democrats blame the Bush Administration. The Senate Banking Committee, which regulates banks, is chaired by Senator Christopher Dodd, Democrat from Connecticut. Not surprisingly, Dodd received the largest amount of political contributions from Fannie Mae. Senator (at that time) Obama, received the second most. The House committee regulating banking and housing is chaired by Representative Barney Frank, Democrat from Massachusetts. When approached by the Bush Administration and Senator John McCain about increasing regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac several years before the crisis, it was Barney Frank who prevented the increased scrutiny and declared boldly during a committee hearing that “There is no crisis at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.” The Securities and Exchange Commission was run by Christopher Cox, a Republican appointee. Let me review: The Democrats controlled both of the committees which regulated banking and housing. Therefore, one can argue that there is plenty of blame to go around, but to blame the Bush Administration exclusively is insane.
If you listen to MSNBC or other liberal media outlets, every day there is some story like: “Today a woman in Podunk, Missouri was run over by a toddler on a tricycle while searching for her lost cat. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stated today that lack of regulation of toddler tricycles by the Bush Administration is to blame for the accident.”
At some point, people are going to realize that the Democrats have run Congress since 2006 and will hold them responsible for their action and inaction.
Part 1. When discussing the current economic condition of the United States, President Obama and all his surrogates constantly remind us that “this administration inherited this crisis from the previous administration”.
More facts: Article I, Section 7 of the US Constitution states, in part: “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.”
Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution, states, in part:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
I deleted a number of lines which don’t have to do with finances. I think you can get the drift of these two sections of the US Constitution. The Congress owns the money and determines where it goes. How it is it, then, that the Democratic Congress has nothing to do with the current economic situation when they have been running both houses of Congress since 2006? It seems they forgot.
Part 2. The $410 billion omnibus spending bill which is currently under consideration contains about 8600 earmark spending projects. The current administration campaigned on and constantly disparage the placement of earmark spending projects. Their excuse for the current bill is that that Congress did not pass a budget at the end of 2008 for fiscal year 2009 and this is a leftover from the Bush Administration. Therefore, the earmarks in the bill are a product of the Bush Administration. Let me review: The Democratically controlled Congress did not pass a budget in the fall of 2008. The Democratically controlled Congress inserted about 8600 earmarks into the current bill. The Democratically controlled Congress raises the baseline spending in the budget by about 8%. Somehow, all of that is the fault of the Bush Administration. That is insane.
Part 3. When describing the housing downturn and banking crisis in the United States, Democrats blame the Bush Administration. The Senate Banking Committee, which regulates banks, is chaired by Senator Christopher Dodd, Democrat from Connecticut. Not surprisingly, Dodd received the largest amount of political contributions from Fannie Mae. Senator (at that time) Obama, received the second most. The House committee regulating banking and housing is chaired by Representative Barney Frank, Democrat from Massachusetts. When approached by the Bush Administration and Senator John McCain about increasing regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac several years before the crisis, it was Barney Frank who prevented the increased scrutiny and declared boldly during a committee hearing that “There is no crisis at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.” The Securities and Exchange Commission was run by Christopher Cox, a Republican appointee. Let me review: The Democrats controlled both of the committees which regulated banking and housing. Therefore, one can argue that there is plenty of blame to go around, but to blame the Bush Administration exclusively is insane.
If you listen to MSNBC or other liberal media outlets, every day there is some story like: “Today a woman in Podunk, Missouri was run over by a toddler on a tricycle while searching for her lost cat. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stated today that lack of regulation of toddler tricycles by the Bush Administration is to blame for the accident.”
At some point, people are going to realize that the Democrats have run Congress since 2006 and will hold them responsible for their action and inaction.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Universal Health Care
Health care costs in the United States are rising at a rate significantly higher than the rate of inflation. Corporations which provide health care to their employees are hammered by those increases. There is much discussion about how to slow the increase and improve efficiency. The Democratic Party has been pushing for government-run health care since the Clinton administration. Since it a huge agenda item for the Obama administration, let’s look at some of the issues involved.
Let’s start first with the people who actually provide health care. I will talk mostly about physicians but one must remember that in a private practice environment, if the physician makes less money, everyone associated with that physician makes less money also. One of the things which is coming out of the administration spokespeople is that they want to reduce waste, improve efficiency, and reduce payments to physicians. Let’s talk about reducing payments to physicians. I am a physician and I can honestly say that I don’t know a single physician who went in to the practice of medicine exclusively to make a lot of money. That being said, for those readers who might not know what is involved in becoming a practicing physician, let me give you a clue. I spent the requisite twelve years in public school getting good grades. Because my family could not afford to pay for college, I did an enlistment in the Navy to obtain Veterans Administration benefits. Using, those benefits and working full time, I obtained a chemical engineering degree in five years. I spent four years in medical school on a military scholarship and with loans because I could not afford medical school without them. I then spent five years working about 110-120 hours a week with virtually no days off to finish a surgery residency. I spent two more years completing a trauma/critical care fellowship. If you add that up, that is twenty eight total years of education. I paid for the scholarships with years of my life. Is it reasonable to think that after all those years of effort that I should be financially secure? Should I be held in contempt because I expect my efforts to be rewarded? I am not rich by any stretch of the imagination. With all of that education, should I make the same salary as a bank clerk, automobile mechanic, carpet installer, or ice cream vendor? It is an interesting question. In fact, should I be salaried at all or should I be paid by the services I provide? If I am a better surgeon than the guy down the street, should I make more money? I don’t make one tenth of what a professional baseball player makes. Is a baseball player more valuable to society than a surgeon? To place fixed salaries on any profession is to encourage mediocrity. If all baseball players make the same amount of money, there is no reason for anyone to try to become a star. There is no incentive. If you reduce incomes of physicians to the same level as any profession that requires one-year training program or a college degree, where is the incentive for someone to go through what I went through? I love taking care of patients but I am not a financial masochist. It took me sixteen years to pay off my medical school loans. Government-run socialized medicine is a one way ticket to mediocre physicians. Smart people will find something else to do.
What are people entitled to? There is discussion about whether health care is a right. Is everyone entitled to everything at any time? In an ideal world, that would be possible but in a real world with fixed resources, it is not. If it is not possible for everyone to have everything, who decides who gets what? The Democrats want the government to decide. That is happening in England now. They use actuarial tables to decide by your age what health care to which you are entitled. For example, past a certain age, if you having a failing heart valve, the government will not pay for a valve replacement because they have decided that it is a bad investment. It certainly does save costs. They do the same for interventional radiology, transplants, x-ray studies, etc. It is only another small step for the government to decide who lives and dies. It will be like planned obsolescence. You reach a certain age and you will be considered useless to society and we find ourselves cast in Soylent Green. Another government, years ago, went through these logical steps: why spend a lot of money on people who don’t contribute to society; why allow those people with genetic defects or insanity to reproduce; why spend money housing those people who aren’t reproducing anyway; why not terminate those people because their life is worthless and miserable, we would be doing them a favor. They called the science eugenics and it led to millions of deaths. In the current American system, decisions are made with your physician based on your individual story. I make these decisions all the time. A socialized set of rules will lead to philosophical questions. If you are a fifty year old award-winning teacher, do you deserve less care, based on an actuarial table, than a twenty-five year old crack dealer who was shot committing his fifth violent felony? If you are sixty five years old and are an active member of society, you have different options than a sixty-five year old in a skilled nursing facility who is completely unaware of the surroundings and has multiple chronic debilitating diseases. Is that cruel or is it just a better use of resources? While private insurers do limit treatment payments, the individual has a voice in choosing the limits of their coverage by the premiums they chose to pay. In a government run system, the rules will be fixed in concrete and the individual circumstances won’t be considered. The fixed salary, robotic doctors will practice under constraints and algorithms which will take decisions away from the doctor, patient, and family and leave in the hands of government health care administrators. That will lead to a dual system of medicine: a fee for service upscale system for the wealthy and a government-run mediocre system for everyone else. It is another step on the road to mediocrity. The Democrats argue that currently 40 million people have poor health care. They want to make sure everyone has equally bad health care.
Any government program has inherent flaws. The first is trying to write rules that apply to 300 million people and address all circumstances is impossible. Whenever it is tried, like in the tax code, it leads to tens of thousands of exceptions that no one can understand. It never works. Another generic problem with the way the United States government works is the way that money is handled. In private industry, the people who do the work own the money. Private industry will invest money in order to save money or improve efficiency any time they see a chance to do so. It is those investments and improvements which drive the economy and fill market niches. In the government, the people who own the money and the people who use it are separate. The government puts that system in place to try to control expenditures. The problem with that system is that the people who dole out the money don’t understand the work being accomplished and the only way that they can look good is to spend less money. Therefore, every year the money people have the goal of restricting spending no matter the outcome. There is no better example than the military supply system. It is onerous and unwieldy and the deck plate workers can’t understand the system or find what they need. Anyone who has ever worked in a government program knows that the program always asks for more than they expect to use. They also save money until the end of the fiscal year in case something comes up. If they spend less than their budget, the budget will be reduced the following year. Therefore, the left over money at the end of the year is always spent on something, no matter how redundant or unnecessary. If you plotted spending by month, you would find every government agency spends huge sums in September before the close of the fiscal year. It is built into the system. It wastes vast sums of taxpayer money. Universal government-run health care will be inefficient and wasteful. All government programs are. Any one who says differently has no experience with the government.
Pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment companies, medical service companies, and health care in general, is better in the United States than anywhere else in the world. I have heard the arguments using statistics about longevity and birth rates deaths, etc. But sensible people vote with their wallets. Does anyone leave the United States for anywhere on the Earth looking for higher quality care? People go all the time for cheaper care but not for better care. Pharmaceutical companies and medical equipment companies are not altruistic. They are in business to make a profit. Most of the advances in medicine, prosthetics, and equipment are developed in the United States and marketed around the world. If you take away the profit motive, those developments will slow to a crawl. The only reason that pharmaceutical companies invest so heavily in research and development is that they stand to make profits when successful drugs are marketed. If that profit potential is taken away, only government research, funded by tax money, will continue.
The very basis of the success of the United States is the market system. It is the best system ever developed to provide incentive for hard work and new ideas. The fact that the individual who works hard or develops a better product receives the benefits of his/her hard work or ingenuity is the thrust behind the success. People do not work hard when there is no incentive to do so. It is the reason communism and socialism always produce poor economies. If I work twice as hard and receive the same benefits, it is only a matter of time before I work down to the lowest level which allows me to keep my job. It brings up more philosophical questions. If I have been a producer, worked hard my entire life, and contributed to society in good behavior and tax revenues to the government, am I entitled to more benefits than the person who did not work and lived off the government (my earnings)? If the Democrats answer is no, why would anyone work? If everyone gets the same thing no matter whether they work hard or not, welcome to the Soviet Union. Some people will say it isn’t fair to have some with more benefits than others. I believe it isn’t fair to those who work hard and produce to be restricted in their benefits to the same level as those who don’t. At the same time I say that, I also say that there is clearly some base line level of care that all citizens should be receiving. Notice I said citizens. No one who is in the country illegally is entitled to a dime of publicly funded health care. It is insane to provide that kind of incentive to people to sneak into the country.
In summary, universal government-run health care will lead to poorer quality physicians, lesser paid assistants, rationing of health care based on broad-based rules not on individual needs, less new products and medications, and inevitable inefficiency and waste. It is a terrible idea and flies in the face of the very system that made the country great.
Let’s start first with the people who actually provide health care. I will talk mostly about physicians but one must remember that in a private practice environment, if the physician makes less money, everyone associated with that physician makes less money also. One of the things which is coming out of the administration spokespeople is that they want to reduce waste, improve efficiency, and reduce payments to physicians. Let’s talk about reducing payments to physicians. I am a physician and I can honestly say that I don’t know a single physician who went in to the practice of medicine exclusively to make a lot of money. That being said, for those readers who might not know what is involved in becoming a practicing physician, let me give you a clue. I spent the requisite twelve years in public school getting good grades. Because my family could not afford to pay for college, I did an enlistment in the Navy to obtain Veterans Administration benefits. Using, those benefits and working full time, I obtained a chemical engineering degree in five years. I spent four years in medical school on a military scholarship and with loans because I could not afford medical school without them. I then spent five years working about 110-120 hours a week with virtually no days off to finish a surgery residency. I spent two more years completing a trauma/critical care fellowship. If you add that up, that is twenty eight total years of education. I paid for the scholarships with years of my life. Is it reasonable to think that after all those years of effort that I should be financially secure? Should I be held in contempt because I expect my efforts to be rewarded? I am not rich by any stretch of the imagination. With all of that education, should I make the same salary as a bank clerk, automobile mechanic, carpet installer, or ice cream vendor? It is an interesting question. In fact, should I be salaried at all or should I be paid by the services I provide? If I am a better surgeon than the guy down the street, should I make more money? I don’t make one tenth of what a professional baseball player makes. Is a baseball player more valuable to society than a surgeon? To place fixed salaries on any profession is to encourage mediocrity. If all baseball players make the same amount of money, there is no reason for anyone to try to become a star. There is no incentive. If you reduce incomes of physicians to the same level as any profession that requires one-year training program or a college degree, where is the incentive for someone to go through what I went through? I love taking care of patients but I am not a financial masochist. It took me sixteen years to pay off my medical school loans. Government-run socialized medicine is a one way ticket to mediocre physicians. Smart people will find something else to do.
What are people entitled to? There is discussion about whether health care is a right. Is everyone entitled to everything at any time? In an ideal world, that would be possible but in a real world with fixed resources, it is not. If it is not possible for everyone to have everything, who decides who gets what? The Democrats want the government to decide. That is happening in England now. They use actuarial tables to decide by your age what health care to which you are entitled. For example, past a certain age, if you having a failing heart valve, the government will not pay for a valve replacement because they have decided that it is a bad investment. It certainly does save costs. They do the same for interventional radiology, transplants, x-ray studies, etc. It is only another small step for the government to decide who lives and dies. It will be like planned obsolescence. You reach a certain age and you will be considered useless to society and we find ourselves cast in Soylent Green. Another government, years ago, went through these logical steps: why spend a lot of money on people who don’t contribute to society; why allow those people with genetic defects or insanity to reproduce; why spend money housing those people who aren’t reproducing anyway; why not terminate those people because their life is worthless and miserable, we would be doing them a favor. They called the science eugenics and it led to millions of deaths. In the current American system, decisions are made with your physician based on your individual story. I make these decisions all the time. A socialized set of rules will lead to philosophical questions. If you are a fifty year old award-winning teacher, do you deserve less care, based on an actuarial table, than a twenty-five year old crack dealer who was shot committing his fifth violent felony? If you are sixty five years old and are an active member of society, you have different options than a sixty-five year old in a skilled nursing facility who is completely unaware of the surroundings and has multiple chronic debilitating diseases. Is that cruel or is it just a better use of resources? While private insurers do limit treatment payments, the individual has a voice in choosing the limits of their coverage by the premiums they chose to pay. In a government run system, the rules will be fixed in concrete and the individual circumstances won’t be considered. The fixed salary, robotic doctors will practice under constraints and algorithms which will take decisions away from the doctor, patient, and family and leave in the hands of government health care administrators. That will lead to a dual system of medicine: a fee for service upscale system for the wealthy and a government-run mediocre system for everyone else. It is another step on the road to mediocrity. The Democrats argue that currently 40 million people have poor health care. They want to make sure everyone has equally bad health care.
Any government program has inherent flaws. The first is trying to write rules that apply to 300 million people and address all circumstances is impossible. Whenever it is tried, like in the tax code, it leads to tens of thousands of exceptions that no one can understand. It never works. Another generic problem with the way the United States government works is the way that money is handled. In private industry, the people who do the work own the money. Private industry will invest money in order to save money or improve efficiency any time they see a chance to do so. It is those investments and improvements which drive the economy and fill market niches. In the government, the people who own the money and the people who use it are separate. The government puts that system in place to try to control expenditures. The problem with that system is that the people who dole out the money don’t understand the work being accomplished and the only way that they can look good is to spend less money. Therefore, every year the money people have the goal of restricting spending no matter the outcome. There is no better example than the military supply system. It is onerous and unwieldy and the deck plate workers can’t understand the system or find what they need. Anyone who has ever worked in a government program knows that the program always asks for more than they expect to use. They also save money until the end of the fiscal year in case something comes up. If they spend less than their budget, the budget will be reduced the following year. Therefore, the left over money at the end of the year is always spent on something, no matter how redundant or unnecessary. If you plotted spending by month, you would find every government agency spends huge sums in September before the close of the fiscal year. It is built into the system. It wastes vast sums of taxpayer money. Universal government-run health care will be inefficient and wasteful. All government programs are. Any one who says differently has no experience with the government.
Pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment companies, medical service companies, and health care in general, is better in the United States than anywhere else in the world. I have heard the arguments using statistics about longevity and birth rates deaths, etc. But sensible people vote with their wallets. Does anyone leave the United States for anywhere on the Earth looking for higher quality care? People go all the time for cheaper care but not for better care. Pharmaceutical companies and medical equipment companies are not altruistic. They are in business to make a profit. Most of the advances in medicine, prosthetics, and equipment are developed in the United States and marketed around the world. If you take away the profit motive, those developments will slow to a crawl. The only reason that pharmaceutical companies invest so heavily in research and development is that they stand to make profits when successful drugs are marketed. If that profit potential is taken away, only government research, funded by tax money, will continue.
The very basis of the success of the United States is the market system. It is the best system ever developed to provide incentive for hard work and new ideas. The fact that the individual who works hard or develops a better product receives the benefits of his/her hard work or ingenuity is the thrust behind the success. People do not work hard when there is no incentive to do so. It is the reason communism and socialism always produce poor economies. If I work twice as hard and receive the same benefits, it is only a matter of time before I work down to the lowest level which allows me to keep my job. It brings up more philosophical questions. If I have been a producer, worked hard my entire life, and contributed to society in good behavior and tax revenues to the government, am I entitled to more benefits than the person who did not work and lived off the government (my earnings)? If the Democrats answer is no, why would anyone work? If everyone gets the same thing no matter whether they work hard or not, welcome to the Soviet Union. Some people will say it isn’t fair to have some with more benefits than others. I believe it isn’t fair to those who work hard and produce to be restricted in their benefits to the same level as those who don’t. At the same time I say that, I also say that there is clearly some base line level of care that all citizens should be receiving. Notice I said citizens. No one who is in the country illegally is entitled to a dime of publicly funded health care. It is insane to provide that kind of incentive to people to sneak into the country.
In summary, universal government-run health care will lead to poorer quality physicians, lesser paid assistants, rationing of health care based on broad-based rules not on individual needs, less new products and medications, and inevitable inefficiency and waste. It is a terrible idea and flies in the face of the very system that made the country great.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Task Force Uniform (The Fraud, Waste and Abuse Kings)
I have already addressed some of these issues but we were discussing them once again and I thought I would reorganize the thoughts, specifically about the new blue battle dress uniform (BDU) and some other Navy recent uniform changes. I have some questions for Task Force Uniform about the new blue BDU uniform.
First: This uniform can only be worn on naval installations and aboard ship. Sailors cannot stop for gas, groceries or any other routine stop between work and home. If the uniform has to be worn only among other naval personnel, who are the people in a camouflage uniform hiding from? Aboard a ship or on a naval installation should be the safest environment in which naval personnel will ever be located. Why is it necessary to wear camouflage?
Second: Assuming everyone is wearing this camouflage uniform on board a ship, does it make any sense at all to be wearing a blue camouflage uniform when a sailor falls overboard? It is hard enough to find someone in the ocean without the added disadvantage of having the person in the water in a purposely difficult to see uniform. Maybe a shipboard uniform, which is worn virtually nowhere else, should be reflective yellow or fuchsia to be seen.
Third: In rapid evolutions (man overboard or general quarters), why come up with a uniform that takes longer to don than the current uniforms? Having worn BDUs in many deployments, they are a hassle to wear correctly with trousers bloused. People will argue that blousing isn’t necessary in a hurry. The counter argument is then why put in place a uniform which ever requires blousing on a ship?
Fourth: Another justification for the BDUs which has been offered is that it will make sailors feel more like “warriors”. This has to be the most condescending, insulting comment ever. Is anyone actually implying that Sailors in blue jeans and white T-shirts who fought throughout World War II were wimps? Are submarine Sailors in coveralls that perform so admirably upon submarines not warriors? I suppose it is a good thing that Task Force Uniform finally came up with a uniform which will make SeALs feel like warriors. This is the worst made up excuse for a uniform ever.
Fifth: If a Sailor deploys in a joint arena with the Army or the Marine Corps, will a Sailor be able to wear this new BDU uniform? Of course not, it is BLUE. If it makes you feel like a warrior, why is it inappropriate? The Sailor will wear either the Army colors or Marine Corps colors to blend in. So now we have a battle dress uniform which can only be worn in battles at sea. It isn’t used in land battles. That is ridiculous. Why come up with a uniform for combat that can't be worn most of the places where combat happens?
Sixth: The cost of the new uniform is $410.05 before the name and rank devices are attached. This uniform costs two to four times the uniforms it replaces. That is a lot of money for a relatively useless uniform. Whose idea was it to come up with an almost prohibitively expensive uniform?
Seventh: The Army and the Air Force allow their members to stop for routine necessities in their BDU uniforms. Assuming that there is a legitimate reason for the uniform (which I haven’t found), why would Task Force Uniform agree to one that is so hideous that no one can be seen in public wearing it? If the Army and Air Force uniforms are acceptable, why not change to Navy versions of similar ones? Someone commented that the leadership wanted time to have people get used to wearing it. Once again, it is incredibly insulting to imply that experienced Sailors cannot figure out how to wear a new or changed uniform and follow instructions.
Now, let's talk about the new physical training uniform. Only Task Force Uniform could come up with a physical training uniform for Sailors which cannot be laundered on a ship. It melts. Additionally, when Sailors bought it, it was like a tourniquet on the upper thigh. It is obviously poorly thought out and a total waste of money.
Let's talk about the new boots for the useless BDU uniform. There are two varieties. All of the other services now have suede finish boots which do not require polish. They are easier to care for and, not coincidentally, harder to be spotted by enemy snipers. Task Force Uniform, in their infinite wisdom, came up with two different black boots. One suede finish boot can only be worn on shore installations. A smooth polished boot must be worn aboard ship because of the sole and steel toes. You can wear the smooth boot on ship or on shore. Let's see... at about $120 a pair, do you think anyone would buy the boot you can only wear on shore if the other can be worn anywhere? Of course, this means that if a Sailor goes anywhere on land in a combat zone, he/she will have to buy the khaki suede boots to go with the Army or Marine Corps uniform. So, my questions would be: Why not find a suede boot with the correct soles and steel toes? Manufacturers will climb over each other to produce them. Why not use the khaki boots everyone else uses? Marines wear the khaki boots when they are on amphibious assault ships. Should they be less safe than Sailors?
Task Force Uniform has really screwed the pooch on this one. Someone in authority needed to squash these things. This is analogous to the ill-fated enlisted uniform of the mid 1970s which temporarily replaced the classic blue jumper uniform. This is the "New Coke" of the Navy's recent past. I suppose the Task Force Uniform members feel obligated to do something to justify the billets and the budget but doing dumb stuff just to do something is not adequate justification for these fiascoes. One of two things will happen with this new blue uniform, either it will go away after a long enough trial period to allow the people who came up with it to save face (and the manufacturer to make a lot of money), or the policies will change and the uniform will have similar limitations to the Army and Air Force. In the mean time, Sailors will have to take the costs on the chin so some manufacturer can get rich.
First: This uniform can only be worn on naval installations and aboard ship. Sailors cannot stop for gas, groceries or any other routine stop between work and home. If the uniform has to be worn only among other naval personnel, who are the people in a camouflage uniform hiding from? Aboard a ship or on a naval installation should be the safest environment in which naval personnel will ever be located. Why is it necessary to wear camouflage?
Second: Assuming everyone is wearing this camouflage uniform on board a ship, does it make any sense at all to be wearing a blue camouflage uniform when a sailor falls overboard? It is hard enough to find someone in the ocean without the added disadvantage of having the person in the water in a purposely difficult to see uniform. Maybe a shipboard uniform, which is worn virtually nowhere else, should be reflective yellow or fuchsia to be seen.
Third: In rapid evolutions (man overboard or general quarters), why come up with a uniform that takes longer to don than the current uniforms? Having worn BDUs in many deployments, they are a hassle to wear correctly with trousers bloused. People will argue that blousing isn’t necessary in a hurry. The counter argument is then why put in place a uniform which ever requires blousing on a ship?
Fourth: Another justification for the BDUs which has been offered is that it will make sailors feel more like “warriors”. This has to be the most condescending, insulting comment ever. Is anyone actually implying that Sailors in blue jeans and white T-shirts who fought throughout World War II were wimps? Are submarine Sailors in coveralls that perform so admirably upon submarines not warriors? I suppose it is a good thing that Task Force Uniform finally came up with a uniform which will make SeALs feel like warriors. This is the worst made up excuse for a uniform ever.
Fifth: If a Sailor deploys in a joint arena with the Army or the Marine Corps, will a Sailor be able to wear this new BDU uniform? Of course not, it is BLUE. If it makes you feel like a warrior, why is it inappropriate? The Sailor will wear either the Army colors or Marine Corps colors to blend in. So now we have a battle dress uniform which can only be worn in battles at sea. It isn’t used in land battles. That is ridiculous. Why come up with a uniform for combat that can't be worn most of the places where combat happens?
Sixth: The cost of the new uniform is $410.05 before the name and rank devices are attached. This uniform costs two to four times the uniforms it replaces. That is a lot of money for a relatively useless uniform. Whose idea was it to come up with an almost prohibitively expensive uniform?
Seventh: The Army and the Air Force allow their members to stop for routine necessities in their BDU uniforms. Assuming that there is a legitimate reason for the uniform (which I haven’t found), why would Task Force Uniform agree to one that is so hideous that no one can be seen in public wearing it? If the Army and Air Force uniforms are acceptable, why not change to Navy versions of similar ones? Someone commented that the leadership wanted time to have people get used to wearing it. Once again, it is incredibly insulting to imply that experienced Sailors cannot figure out how to wear a new or changed uniform and follow instructions.
Now, let's talk about the new physical training uniform. Only Task Force Uniform could come up with a physical training uniform for Sailors which cannot be laundered on a ship. It melts. Additionally, when Sailors bought it, it was like a tourniquet on the upper thigh. It is obviously poorly thought out and a total waste of money.
Let's talk about the new boots for the useless BDU uniform. There are two varieties. All of the other services now have suede finish boots which do not require polish. They are easier to care for and, not coincidentally, harder to be spotted by enemy snipers. Task Force Uniform, in their infinite wisdom, came up with two different black boots. One suede finish boot can only be worn on shore installations. A smooth polished boot must be worn aboard ship because of the sole and steel toes. You can wear the smooth boot on ship or on shore. Let's see... at about $120 a pair, do you think anyone would buy the boot you can only wear on shore if the other can be worn anywhere? Of course, this means that if a Sailor goes anywhere on land in a combat zone, he/she will have to buy the khaki suede boots to go with the Army or Marine Corps uniform. So, my questions would be: Why not find a suede boot with the correct soles and steel toes? Manufacturers will climb over each other to produce them. Why not use the khaki boots everyone else uses? Marines wear the khaki boots when they are on amphibious assault ships. Should they be less safe than Sailors?
Task Force Uniform has really screwed the pooch on this one. Someone in authority needed to squash these things. This is analogous to the ill-fated enlisted uniform of the mid 1970s which temporarily replaced the classic blue jumper uniform. This is the "New Coke" of the Navy's recent past. I suppose the Task Force Uniform members feel obligated to do something to justify the billets and the budget but doing dumb stuff just to do something is not adequate justification for these fiascoes. One of two things will happen with this new blue uniform, either it will go away after a long enough trial period to allow the people who came up with it to save face (and the manufacturer to make a lot of money), or the policies will change and the uniform will have similar limitations to the Army and Air Force. In the mean time, Sailors will have to take the costs on the chin so some manufacturer can get rich.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Complaining About the Inevitable Results of Your Choices
One of the silver linings of the re-election of Marion Barry as Washington, DC Mayor a few years ago after his crack cocaine bust was that the whole DC statehood issue went away. After all, could folks who elect a crack head as mayor possibly be reputable voters? The issue has recently reared its ugly head again but only because the Democrats want to try to have more seats in Congress. It has nothing to do with fairness or people’s rights. In addition, the Democratic White House wants to manipulate the 2010 census numbers to increase Democratic seats in Congress and funding to Democratic districts. President Obama may become “Papa Doc” Obama if Rahm Emmanuel is unchecked in his power to skew the census. It got me thinking of a broader set of issues which have to do with complaints about the results of knowing choices. The theme will emerge as we look at some seemingly disparate issues.
When you become a resident of Washington, DC, you do so knowing that since the advent of the city, it was meant to be and still is a federal territory providing a location for the federal government. It was created from land ceded to the federal government from Maryland and Virginia for specifically that purpose. The Virginia side was returned to the state in 1846. People have suggested all kind of options: making the District of Colombia a state, ceding it back to Maryland, etc. I suppose it is appropriate to point out that the establishment of the District of Columbia as a federal territory is mandated in the Constitution Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 and specifically argued for in Federalist No. 43. It was a sensitive issue after Continental soldiers marched on Philadelphia when it was the capitol and caused the Congress to flee to New Jersey. The point I am making is that when you move to a federal territory and then complain about living within the rules of a federal territory, you are an idiot. That is like moving from one state to another state by choice and complaining about the new home state’s sales tax. You moved there, suck it up.
In Virginia Beach, Virginia, the Oceana Naval Air Station has been an active home to many US Navy fighter and bomber jet squadrons for many years. As the city allowed development to sprawl because of the housing boom and their desire for tax revenue, developments of housing encroached closer and closer to the air station. A couple of years ago, there were many outcries from people who bought homes and lived near the air station complaining about the noise from the fighter jet engines as they passed overhead. It is funny how when the Navy proposed to move the entire base to Florida, taking hundreds of millions of tax dollars from Virginia Beach, all of a sudden everybody LOVED jet noise. If they had built the air station after you already lived there, you would have had a valid complaint. If you bought a house at the end of an existing runway and then complain about jet engine noise, you are an idiot. You moved there, suck it up.
If you live in a Democratic controlled state and you complain about the lack of tort reform, higher taxes, unfriendly atmosphere toward business, companies leaving the state, or social programs for illegal aliens funded out of your tax money, you should move or vote for someone else. Those are bedrock principles of the Democratic Party. The largest single contributor to the Democratic Party is the Trial Lawyers Association. If you think the Democrats will ever pass a law which costs lawyers money, you are smoking crack. Liberals always think the government knows more about what you need than you do. Other huge contributors to the Democratic Party are labor unions. Business is evil to liberals. Business is evil to labor unions. Therefore, a perfect marriage: liberals and labor unions. If you continue to vote those folks into office, businesses cannot prosper and go to where they can prosper, taxes stay high because the businesses leave, causing more to leave. What you end up with is Michigan. If you live in a place like that and support the liberals, you deserve what you get. You live there, suck it up.
I remember several young women in the US Air Force who were on CNN at the beginning of the first gulf war with their parents complaining about the war. These two “rocket scientists” actually had the gall to say, “We joined the Air Force to get a college education, not to go to war”. They might as well have “idiot” tattooed across their respective foreheads. If you join a military organization, you might find yourself doing military things. I have heard Sailors complaining about being at sea. In fact, it is said that a Sailor is never happy except when complaining. I suppose if you join the Navy, you should probably be aware that the Navy has ships which sail on and under the oceans. If you join the Army or Marine Corps, you should expect to spend some time with a rifle. If you join the Air Force, you might find yourself in an aircraft. Anyone who can’t figure out those things is an idiot. The American military is an all volunteer force. No one is drafted. You joined the service; suck it up.
The overwhelming majority of Americans are associated with some religion. The founding fathers did not want religious groups taking over the government and imposing their views on others who did not share the same views. That is the Islamic state model. In contrast to what is being espoused by some recently, the founding fathers were not against religion. In reading the writings of Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, John Jay, and on and on, there was a common thought that the freedoms sought after in this country were of divine origin and that divine providence was part of the very formation of the nation. Currently, the American Civil Liberties Union wants to remove all reference to religion from everything the government touches. With the Democrats now controlling all three branches of government and expanding greatly on the Republican mistakes of late 2008, the US government is rapidly getting involved in the financial system, automobile manufacturing, the housing market, and other private industries. There will soon be nothing that the government does not touch. Therefore, there will be no place for religion in the nation. That is clearly not what the founding fathers intended. If you elect leaders who agree with this philosophy and who appoint judges who agree, you deserve what you get. If you elected them: don’t complain, suck it up.
The goofy woman who had eight embryos implanted and ended up with fourteen children despite being uneducated, unemployed and living in her parent’s home made a selfish choice. She is banking on the state of California welfare and Medicaid system to pay for her children. People will argue that you shouldn’t punish the children for the idiocy of the mother. I agree. Take the children and put them in proper homes. They are doomed with this incompetent arrogant fool as a parent. She made the choice to have them. She can either find a way to adequately care for them or lose them. The taxpayers have big hearts and have no problem helping distressed children. However, they have no obligation to help the mother. She made the choice; she can suck it up.
Most people who work for a living have a fairly good idea how much money they earn. Knowing that information is fairly important in determining how much stuff you can buy. I recently bought a house. Before I did so, I sat down and spent a great deal of time determining if I could afford the payments on the house. That is apparently a novel idea to some people. Because I did figure out how much I could afford, the current downturn in home values would only affect me greatly if I had to move anytime soon. Therefore, I do not plan on doing so. In fairness, I should point out that this does not apply to you if you lost your job in a lay off. I also saved some money just in case of hard times, another old school idea. Thank you for teaching me that lesson, Dad. There has been a recent wave of conspicuous consumption. Everyone has to have the biggest car, a huge plasma television, and the list goes on and on. Apparently, everyone wants to be on MTV Cribs. I am currently driving my well-maintained 2001 vehicle, watching my normal television, and not wearing ridiculously priced clothing. I do not run up tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt which I cannot pay back. Therefore, if you do spend a lot more than you earn, I have no obligation whatsoever to bail you out. You spent the money; watch the bad economic news on your giant screen plasma television and suck it up.
In a much larger version of the same theme, California has for years passed ridiculous anti-business laws and watched the businesses flee from the state. California gives health care and free public education to illegal aliens. California passes liberal policies which cost fortunes and environmental policies which raise costs. California is sitting on billions of dollars in off shore oil and natural gas but won’t allow it to be tapped. To expect the other states which act responsibly to bail California out for its inane policies and irresponsible spending plans is idiotic. The people of California voted in that lame government, let them live with it. Other states are under no obligation to allow the state of California to continue with their insipid policies. California spent the money; they can suck it up.
There is an axiom that insanity is performing the same act over and over again and expecting a different result. Electing liberal politicians inevitably results in higher taxes, more intrusive government, disparagement of religion, discouragement of business, artificial inflation of wages for union workers, more money for attorneys resulting in increased insurance premiums, and less incentive to work. In the liberal world, nothing is ever anyone’s fault. Everyone is a victim of circumstance. A famous golfer once said that the harder he practiced, the luckier he became. Making any choice for which the outcome is inherently obvious and then complaining about that inevitable outcome and expecting someone else to come to your rescue for your foolish choice is shirking responsibility and idiotic. You live with the result of your choices. That is why they should be taken seriously.
When you become a resident of Washington, DC, you do so knowing that since the advent of the city, it was meant to be and still is a federal territory providing a location for the federal government. It was created from land ceded to the federal government from Maryland and Virginia for specifically that purpose. The Virginia side was returned to the state in 1846. People have suggested all kind of options: making the District of Colombia a state, ceding it back to Maryland, etc. I suppose it is appropriate to point out that the establishment of the District of Columbia as a federal territory is mandated in the Constitution Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 and specifically argued for in Federalist No. 43. It was a sensitive issue after Continental soldiers marched on Philadelphia when it was the capitol and caused the Congress to flee to New Jersey. The point I am making is that when you move to a federal territory and then complain about living within the rules of a federal territory, you are an idiot. That is like moving from one state to another state by choice and complaining about the new home state’s sales tax. You moved there, suck it up.
In Virginia Beach, Virginia, the Oceana Naval Air Station has been an active home to many US Navy fighter and bomber jet squadrons for many years. As the city allowed development to sprawl because of the housing boom and their desire for tax revenue, developments of housing encroached closer and closer to the air station. A couple of years ago, there were many outcries from people who bought homes and lived near the air station complaining about the noise from the fighter jet engines as they passed overhead. It is funny how when the Navy proposed to move the entire base to Florida, taking hundreds of millions of tax dollars from Virginia Beach, all of a sudden everybody LOVED jet noise. If they had built the air station after you already lived there, you would have had a valid complaint. If you bought a house at the end of an existing runway and then complain about jet engine noise, you are an idiot. You moved there, suck it up.
If you live in a Democratic controlled state and you complain about the lack of tort reform, higher taxes, unfriendly atmosphere toward business, companies leaving the state, or social programs for illegal aliens funded out of your tax money, you should move or vote for someone else. Those are bedrock principles of the Democratic Party. The largest single contributor to the Democratic Party is the Trial Lawyers Association. If you think the Democrats will ever pass a law which costs lawyers money, you are smoking crack. Liberals always think the government knows more about what you need than you do. Other huge contributors to the Democratic Party are labor unions. Business is evil to liberals. Business is evil to labor unions. Therefore, a perfect marriage: liberals and labor unions. If you continue to vote those folks into office, businesses cannot prosper and go to where they can prosper, taxes stay high because the businesses leave, causing more to leave. What you end up with is Michigan. If you live in a place like that and support the liberals, you deserve what you get. You live there, suck it up.
I remember several young women in the US Air Force who were on CNN at the beginning of the first gulf war with their parents complaining about the war. These two “rocket scientists” actually had the gall to say, “We joined the Air Force to get a college education, not to go to war”. They might as well have “idiot” tattooed across their respective foreheads. If you join a military organization, you might find yourself doing military things. I have heard Sailors complaining about being at sea. In fact, it is said that a Sailor is never happy except when complaining. I suppose if you join the Navy, you should probably be aware that the Navy has ships which sail on and under the oceans. If you join the Army or Marine Corps, you should expect to spend some time with a rifle. If you join the Air Force, you might find yourself in an aircraft. Anyone who can’t figure out those things is an idiot. The American military is an all volunteer force. No one is drafted. You joined the service; suck it up.
The overwhelming majority of Americans are associated with some religion. The founding fathers did not want religious groups taking over the government and imposing their views on others who did not share the same views. That is the Islamic state model. In contrast to what is being espoused by some recently, the founding fathers were not against religion. In reading the writings of Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, John Jay, and on and on, there was a common thought that the freedoms sought after in this country were of divine origin and that divine providence was part of the very formation of the nation. Currently, the American Civil Liberties Union wants to remove all reference to religion from everything the government touches. With the Democrats now controlling all three branches of government and expanding greatly on the Republican mistakes of late 2008, the US government is rapidly getting involved in the financial system, automobile manufacturing, the housing market, and other private industries. There will soon be nothing that the government does not touch. Therefore, there will be no place for religion in the nation. That is clearly not what the founding fathers intended. If you elect leaders who agree with this philosophy and who appoint judges who agree, you deserve what you get. If you elected them: don’t complain, suck it up.
The goofy woman who had eight embryos implanted and ended up with fourteen children despite being uneducated, unemployed and living in her parent’s home made a selfish choice. She is banking on the state of California welfare and Medicaid system to pay for her children. People will argue that you shouldn’t punish the children for the idiocy of the mother. I agree. Take the children and put them in proper homes. They are doomed with this incompetent arrogant fool as a parent. She made the choice to have them. She can either find a way to adequately care for them or lose them. The taxpayers have big hearts and have no problem helping distressed children. However, they have no obligation to help the mother. She made the choice; she can suck it up.
Most people who work for a living have a fairly good idea how much money they earn. Knowing that information is fairly important in determining how much stuff you can buy. I recently bought a house. Before I did so, I sat down and spent a great deal of time determining if I could afford the payments on the house. That is apparently a novel idea to some people. Because I did figure out how much I could afford, the current downturn in home values would only affect me greatly if I had to move anytime soon. Therefore, I do not plan on doing so. In fairness, I should point out that this does not apply to you if you lost your job in a lay off. I also saved some money just in case of hard times, another old school idea. Thank you for teaching me that lesson, Dad. There has been a recent wave of conspicuous consumption. Everyone has to have the biggest car, a huge plasma television, and the list goes on and on. Apparently, everyone wants to be on MTV Cribs. I am currently driving my well-maintained 2001 vehicle, watching my normal television, and not wearing ridiculously priced clothing. I do not run up tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt which I cannot pay back. Therefore, if you do spend a lot more than you earn, I have no obligation whatsoever to bail you out. You spent the money; watch the bad economic news on your giant screen plasma television and suck it up.
In a much larger version of the same theme, California has for years passed ridiculous anti-business laws and watched the businesses flee from the state. California gives health care and free public education to illegal aliens. California passes liberal policies which cost fortunes and environmental policies which raise costs. California is sitting on billions of dollars in off shore oil and natural gas but won’t allow it to be tapped. To expect the other states which act responsibly to bail California out for its inane policies and irresponsible spending plans is idiotic. The people of California voted in that lame government, let them live with it. Other states are under no obligation to allow the state of California to continue with their insipid policies. California spent the money; they can suck it up.
There is an axiom that insanity is performing the same act over and over again and expecting a different result. Electing liberal politicians inevitably results in higher taxes, more intrusive government, disparagement of religion, discouragement of business, artificial inflation of wages for union workers, more money for attorneys resulting in increased insurance premiums, and less incentive to work. In the liberal world, nothing is ever anyone’s fault. Everyone is a victim of circumstance. A famous golfer once said that the harder he practiced, the luckier he became. Making any choice for which the outcome is inherently obvious and then complaining about that inevitable outcome and expecting someone else to come to your rescue for your foolish choice is shirking responsibility and idiotic. You live with the result of your choices. That is why they should be taken seriously.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Another Day, Another Stimulus Hose Job
Well, here comes another “stimulus package”. This time it is $75 billion for troubled mortgages. Of course, there is no reduction in mortgage rates for anyone who is currently paying their mortgage on time. Is anyone else seeing the trend in all of these stimulus and bail out packages? Let’s see if we can spot a common theme in these packages.
In the case of the bank bail out, the Treasury Department takes money from the general revenue fund and “infuses it” into banks that are in trouble. Banks that did not engage in questionable lending practices do not receive any help and just get to pay their taxes on time. The successful banks are having their money taken to support the unsuccessful banks. It seems a little counterproductive. With the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation guaranteeing that depositors would not lose money, banks that go under would be replaced by other successful banks rapidly and individuals would not lose any deposits less than $250,000.
In the case of the automobile manufacturers, there is no help for any of the successful companies in Tennessee, South Carolina, or Texas. The provision to give tax credits for all automobile purchases was stripped from the bill. Therefore, the only help is going to the automobile manufacturers in Michigan which have United Auto Workers Union plants. What a coincidence. Therefore, tax money from auto workers in the south who earn about $45 an hour is being used to prop up wages for union auto workers in Michigan who earn about $71 an hour. The successful companies are having their money taken away to support the unsuccessful companies. If the Michigan-based automobile companies stopped making cars, would everyone stop driving? I think not. People would buy cars and trucks from the more successful and better-run companies. The Democrats say the answer is more union involvement when the very millstone around the neck of the auto industry is the United Auto Workers.
In the case of the bail out to the states, tax money from states with responsible governments like Texas is used to bail out irresponsible state governments like California and will only encourage more bogus spending and will delay the state legislature making the appropriate decisions to balance their spending and income. California refuses to secure the Mexican border and continues to provide free health care and public education to illegal aliens. Should it surprise anyone that their budget is screwed up? The successful states are therefore being screwed to reward the unsuccessful states. Irresponsible governors like Schwarzenegger are not held responsible for their actions.
In the case of the mortgage bail out, tax money is being used to refinance mortgages of people who, in many cases, should have never qualified for a mortgage in the first place. Will those people suddenly be flush with money? What is always failed to be mentioned is that the mortgage lenders will have to make their money back somehow. Let’s see… how will they do it? They will increase the rates on newer mortgages. Who will receive those mortgages? Only those people who are well-qualified will receive them because the mortgages lenders have been burned once and won’t do it again. Therefore, money will be taken from successful home buyers to bail out unsuccessful home buyers. At least this one has a logical argument in that preventing foreclosures reduces inventory of existing homes and stabilizes home prices. It does hurt the rental market. In listening to President Obama today, to his credit, it seemed that at least someone has put some thought into this package. That is a refreshing change from "You have to sign it now or the Earth will explode" spending packages.
Did anyone notice that Senator Harry Reid snuck a hand-written amendment of five billion dollars in the stimulus bill for a light rail system from Los Angeles to Las Vegas? Bernie Madoff is a small-time operator next to Harry Reid. The worst part is that no other Senator will point out how crooked that is. Five billion dollars without a hearing, without oversight, without anything but a pen. It makes you want to vomit.
The common thread throughout the processes is obviously to reward the unsuccessful and sometimes criminal at the expense of the successful and responsible. It is economic redistribution which rewards bad behavior. In time, people who are responsible will either stop producing because it won’t be in their best interest to produce or everyone will jump on the bandwagon and just start behaving badly to get on the gravy train. The problem there is that someone has to pay for that gravy train because it is a government-sponsored Ponzi scheme. When enough people stop putting money in, the whole thing will crash. That is where we are heading with these “stimulus” packages. All they had to do was stabilize the housing market and let people keep more of their money and the problem would have corrected itself. Every time the new administration interferes, the stock market dips lower because smart business people recognize where this is headed. It is nice to finally see some effort to do something about housing. In this case, it seems the right thing to do.
In the case of the bank bail out, the Treasury Department takes money from the general revenue fund and “infuses it” into banks that are in trouble. Banks that did not engage in questionable lending practices do not receive any help and just get to pay their taxes on time. The successful banks are having their money taken to support the unsuccessful banks. It seems a little counterproductive. With the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation guaranteeing that depositors would not lose money, banks that go under would be replaced by other successful banks rapidly and individuals would not lose any deposits less than $250,000.
In the case of the automobile manufacturers, there is no help for any of the successful companies in Tennessee, South Carolina, or Texas. The provision to give tax credits for all automobile purchases was stripped from the bill. Therefore, the only help is going to the automobile manufacturers in Michigan which have United Auto Workers Union plants. What a coincidence. Therefore, tax money from auto workers in the south who earn about $45 an hour is being used to prop up wages for union auto workers in Michigan who earn about $71 an hour. The successful companies are having their money taken away to support the unsuccessful companies. If the Michigan-based automobile companies stopped making cars, would everyone stop driving? I think not. People would buy cars and trucks from the more successful and better-run companies. The Democrats say the answer is more union involvement when the very millstone around the neck of the auto industry is the United Auto Workers.
In the case of the bail out to the states, tax money from states with responsible governments like Texas is used to bail out irresponsible state governments like California and will only encourage more bogus spending and will delay the state legislature making the appropriate decisions to balance their spending and income. California refuses to secure the Mexican border and continues to provide free health care and public education to illegal aliens. Should it surprise anyone that their budget is screwed up? The successful states are therefore being screwed to reward the unsuccessful states. Irresponsible governors like Schwarzenegger are not held responsible for their actions.
In the case of the mortgage bail out, tax money is being used to refinance mortgages of people who, in many cases, should have never qualified for a mortgage in the first place. Will those people suddenly be flush with money? What is always failed to be mentioned is that the mortgage lenders will have to make their money back somehow. Let’s see… how will they do it? They will increase the rates on newer mortgages. Who will receive those mortgages? Only those people who are well-qualified will receive them because the mortgages lenders have been burned once and won’t do it again. Therefore, money will be taken from successful home buyers to bail out unsuccessful home buyers. At least this one has a logical argument in that preventing foreclosures reduces inventory of existing homes and stabilizes home prices. It does hurt the rental market. In listening to President Obama today, to his credit, it seemed that at least someone has put some thought into this package. That is a refreshing change from "You have to sign it now or the Earth will explode" spending packages.
Did anyone notice that Senator Harry Reid snuck a hand-written amendment of five billion dollars in the stimulus bill for a light rail system from Los Angeles to Las Vegas? Bernie Madoff is a small-time operator next to Harry Reid. The worst part is that no other Senator will point out how crooked that is. Five billion dollars without a hearing, without oversight, without anything but a pen. It makes you want to vomit.
The common thread throughout the processes is obviously to reward the unsuccessful and sometimes criminal at the expense of the successful and responsible. It is economic redistribution which rewards bad behavior. In time, people who are responsible will either stop producing because it won’t be in their best interest to produce or everyone will jump on the bandwagon and just start behaving badly to get on the gravy train. The problem there is that someone has to pay for that gravy train because it is a government-sponsored Ponzi scheme. When enough people stop putting money in, the whole thing will crash. That is where we are heading with these “stimulus” packages. All they had to do was stabilize the housing market and let people keep more of their money and the problem would have corrected itself. Every time the new administration interferes, the stock market dips lower because smart business people recognize where this is headed. It is nice to finally see some effort to do something about housing. In this case, it seems the right thing to do.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Centralized Medical Records, Behavioral Modification and Security
The currently debated “stimulus” bill has about $300 million in it for establishment of an electronic medical record system for the government. I mentioned this briefly in a previous post but think it should probably be explored in more depth.
The idea of a central repository for all medical records has great merit in an ideal world. Information would be available, no matter where a patient was located, about past medical history, allergies, current medications, and past surgical history. Since everyone is altruistic and no one would access information that was not required, the system would be wonderful in an ideal world. We don’t live in an ideal world.
A central repository of any information of value is a hackers dream. That information would be so valuable to obtain that it could be sold surreptitiously to potential employers, insurance providers, for personal motives, etc. by anyone with access and enough temptation. Miscreants could erase or modify the records for profit or for malicious reasons. The government would counter with a back up system of records. That just provides a broader target to access the information. Even without hacking through computer safeguards, the records could be compromised by individuals through bribes or other personal motives. This is a relatively common occurrence when it comes to national security issues in the United States. People with agendas or personal political philosophical differences with the government pass information to liberal publications like the Washington Post and New York Times which routinely publish classified information. Even more recently, out of one hundred forty anonymous screening tests for baseball players concerning steroids, only the name of Alex Rodriguez was leaked to the press. Someone clearly had an agenda against Alex Rodriguez. It is easy to see similar leaks for candidates for office, other sports figures, celebrities, and for personal vengeance. A history of a sexually transmitted disease, elective abortion, or potential debilitating disease could be used for extortion or political blackmail.
The breadth of the system is inherently a security and bandwidth problem. In order to be effective, the records will have to be available to any medical facility in order to care for patients wherever they present for care. That means that tens or even hundreds of thousands of facilities will have access to the system. A system that large will be similar to the AHLTA military system which is slow, unwieldy, and crashes regularly. A system with that kind of capability probably doesn’t exist outside of the military or National Security Agency anywhere in the world. An electronic health record system which is undependable would be a danger to patients as necessary patient information would not be available when required. Additionally, with the many thousands of access points to the system, there is no practical way to adequately maintain the security of the system. It is like a fence with thousands and thousands of gates, any one of which when breeched makes the entire system accessible.
As a physician, I am well aware of the tendency of health care administrators to now view patient care as a “product line”. In a group of physicians, I have once actually been instructed by a senior administrator to increase patient throughput even if it increases risk of inadequate diagnosis. The reason I bring this up is that there is a tendency for anyone under a time constraint to avoid “reinventing the wheel”. Errors in records in a central repository will propagate because the information will convey authority and go unchallenged. Errors will be like bad tattoos and go with patients everywhere.
To use the hackneyed Orwellian analogy, all health care information in the hands of the government is not a good idea. I will point out that while the government will be a problem, it may not be the biggest problem. With a records system that will inevitably leak like a sieve, it is only a matter of time before private insurance providers get their hands on the information. With that information in hand, insurance companies will begin to modify their actuarial tables depending on your private information. If they note a minor injury while surfing, skiing, sky diving, playing contact sports, riding, etc. you will have the option of stopping the activity, not being covered while doing it, or paying higher premiums. This type of focus will eventually lead to widespread financial behavioral modification. The analogous government scenario is to force behavior modification by denying benefits for activities, diet, etc. that are not approved by some group of “experts” who decide what they want you to do and not do. This is not a new argument. There was a suggestion years ago that in states with motorcycle helmet laws, if you didn’t wear a helmet, there would be no government funding for your health care should you be injured on a motorcycle. The idea was fairly popular. The same has been suggested for bicycle riding for children and cigarette smoking. The idea being that the government says out of one side of the mouth, “We aren’t forcing anyone to change their behavior” while making the behavior so financially untenable that no sane person would engage in it. It is a slippery slope that eventually leads to only government and insurance approved lifestyles being covered. Anything else leaves you on your own.
One advantage proponents will claim is the ability to gather data about treatment options and outcomes. Former Senator Daschle has already written in his book about using those data to determine which treatments will be available. In other words, the financial behavioral modification will not only be used on patients, it will be used to force physicians to become robotic in their prescribing and treatment patterns. Once again, it will be “Treat the patient in the way you see fit, but we will only pay you if you do it the way we want.” If patients cannot be treated individually, we might as well scrap the entire health care system and have everyone use a site like WebMD to treat everyone. There is no reason to talk to patients and examine them if it isn’t going to make any difference in what you can do for them.
My counter proposal, which I have actually sent to Senators Graham and DeMint, is to not have the government establish an actual computer system but rather to establish national standards for the electronic medical record. The format of the record, type of computer storage file, and transmission protocols could be specified and monitored by the Department of Health and Human Services. In the past, similar standards have been established for radio and television transmission, automobile safety, food safety, air traffic control systems, and other systems. My suggestion is that a commission or committee of overpaid top notch experts to establish standards has miniscule costs compared to establishing and building a huge overpriced ineffective system of computer networks. Additionally, in a free market economy, software developers will come out of the woodwork in droves to develop and market commercial versions of software to make new electronic records and convert existing records. To paraphrase Field of Dreams, “If there is money to be made, they will definitely come”. Having private companies supply the software will create many high-paying jobs and result in substantial tax revenue to the government, instead of costing huge amounts in government payroll. Additional jobs will be created all across the country when people are hired by health care facilities to convert existing records into the standardized electronic format. The government virtually never gets the appropriate value for its contracts, there is no reason to assume that it will on this one. Therefore, in the spirit of the American entrepreneur, to save hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money and to avoid the Orwellian consequences, I believe the system I am proposing is superior to the current thinking.
The idea of a central repository for all medical records has great merit in an ideal world. Information would be available, no matter where a patient was located, about past medical history, allergies, current medications, and past surgical history. Since everyone is altruistic and no one would access information that was not required, the system would be wonderful in an ideal world. We don’t live in an ideal world.
A central repository of any information of value is a hackers dream. That information would be so valuable to obtain that it could be sold surreptitiously to potential employers, insurance providers, for personal motives, etc. by anyone with access and enough temptation. Miscreants could erase or modify the records for profit or for malicious reasons. The government would counter with a back up system of records. That just provides a broader target to access the information. Even without hacking through computer safeguards, the records could be compromised by individuals through bribes or other personal motives. This is a relatively common occurrence when it comes to national security issues in the United States. People with agendas or personal political philosophical differences with the government pass information to liberal publications like the Washington Post and New York Times which routinely publish classified information. Even more recently, out of one hundred forty anonymous screening tests for baseball players concerning steroids, only the name of Alex Rodriguez was leaked to the press. Someone clearly had an agenda against Alex Rodriguez. It is easy to see similar leaks for candidates for office, other sports figures, celebrities, and for personal vengeance. A history of a sexually transmitted disease, elective abortion, or potential debilitating disease could be used for extortion or political blackmail.
The breadth of the system is inherently a security and bandwidth problem. In order to be effective, the records will have to be available to any medical facility in order to care for patients wherever they present for care. That means that tens or even hundreds of thousands of facilities will have access to the system. A system that large will be similar to the AHLTA military system which is slow, unwieldy, and crashes regularly. A system with that kind of capability probably doesn’t exist outside of the military or National Security Agency anywhere in the world. An electronic health record system which is undependable would be a danger to patients as necessary patient information would not be available when required. Additionally, with the many thousands of access points to the system, there is no practical way to adequately maintain the security of the system. It is like a fence with thousands and thousands of gates, any one of which when breeched makes the entire system accessible.
As a physician, I am well aware of the tendency of health care administrators to now view patient care as a “product line”. In a group of physicians, I have once actually been instructed by a senior administrator to increase patient throughput even if it increases risk of inadequate diagnosis. The reason I bring this up is that there is a tendency for anyone under a time constraint to avoid “reinventing the wheel”. Errors in records in a central repository will propagate because the information will convey authority and go unchallenged. Errors will be like bad tattoos and go with patients everywhere.
To use the hackneyed Orwellian analogy, all health care information in the hands of the government is not a good idea. I will point out that while the government will be a problem, it may not be the biggest problem. With a records system that will inevitably leak like a sieve, it is only a matter of time before private insurance providers get their hands on the information. With that information in hand, insurance companies will begin to modify their actuarial tables depending on your private information. If they note a minor injury while surfing, skiing, sky diving, playing contact sports, riding, etc. you will have the option of stopping the activity, not being covered while doing it, or paying higher premiums. This type of focus will eventually lead to widespread financial behavioral modification. The analogous government scenario is to force behavior modification by denying benefits for activities, diet, etc. that are not approved by some group of “experts” who decide what they want you to do and not do. This is not a new argument. There was a suggestion years ago that in states with motorcycle helmet laws, if you didn’t wear a helmet, there would be no government funding for your health care should you be injured on a motorcycle. The idea was fairly popular. The same has been suggested for bicycle riding for children and cigarette smoking. The idea being that the government says out of one side of the mouth, “We aren’t forcing anyone to change their behavior” while making the behavior so financially untenable that no sane person would engage in it. It is a slippery slope that eventually leads to only government and insurance approved lifestyles being covered. Anything else leaves you on your own.
One advantage proponents will claim is the ability to gather data about treatment options and outcomes. Former Senator Daschle has already written in his book about using those data to determine which treatments will be available. In other words, the financial behavioral modification will not only be used on patients, it will be used to force physicians to become robotic in their prescribing and treatment patterns. Once again, it will be “Treat the patient in the way you see fit, but we will only pay you if you do it the way we want.” If patients cannot be treated individually, we might as well scrap the entire health care system and have everyone use a site like WebMD to treat everyone. There is no reason to talk to patients and examine them if it isn’t going to make any difference in what you can do for them.
My counter proposal, which I have actually sent to Senators Graham and DeMint, is to not have the government establish an actual computer system but rather to establish national standards for the electronic medical record. The format of the record, type of computer storage file, and transmission protocols could be specified and monitored by the Department of Health and Human Services. In the past, similar standards have been established for radio and television transmission, automobile safety, food safety, air traffic control systems, and other systems. My suggestion is that a commission or committee of overpaid top notch experts to establish standards has miniscule costs compared to establishing and building a huge overpriced ineffective system of computer networks. Additionally, in a free market economy, software developers will come out of the woodwork in droves to develop and market commercial versions of software to make new electronic records and convert existing records. To paraphrase Field of Dreams, “If there is money to be made, they will definitely come”. Having private companies supply the software will create many high-paying jobs and result in substantial tax revenue to the government, instead of costing huge amounts in government payroll. Additional jobs will be created all across the country when people are hired by health care facilities to convert existing records into the standardized electronic format. The government virtually never gets the appropriate value for its contracts, there is no reason to assume that it will on this one. Therefore, in the spirit of the American entrepreneur, to save hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money and to avoid the Orwellian consequences, I believe the system I am proposing is superior to the current thinking.
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