Monday, January 31, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
How to get lower govt. spending and get great health care in the US in one easy step
Take away Congress' health insurance benefit and make them buy it on the open market.
"I'm sorry, Senator McConnell, with your pre-existing condition, you're on your own there big guy..."
Make Congress subject to the same health insurance options the rest of us have, and we'd have universal coverage in about 3 days.
"I'm sorry, Senator McConnell, with your pre-existing condition, you're on your own there big guy..."
Make Congress subject to the same health insurance options the rest of us have, and we'd have universal coverage in about 3 days.
Did Obama pass 9th grade English?
Because I bet a 9th grader could tell you the difference between "spending" and "investing".
Paul Ryan moans and groans about "spending." And gets all kinds of traction from the faithful.
So is it beyond Obama's ability to explain that "investing" is different? Investing is done to get you something better as a return later.
For example, was it "wasteful govt spending" to build the US Interstate system or the plane that brought the bomb that ended World War II?
Is it "wasteful spending" when you fix your roof?
Kind of a basic difference, wouldn't you say?
Come on, Obama. You know what the real issues are. Get some balls and express them.
If you don't, the Republicans will succeed in convincing people that up is down and black is white and anything else they feel like, until all there's left to America is 1% gated communities for the rich and 99% desperate people in leaky trailers with lots of guns but no hope.
Paul Ryan moans and groans about "spending." And gets all kinds of traction from the faithful.
So is it beyond Obama's ability to explain that "investing" is different? Investing is done to get you something better as a return later.
For example, was it "wasteful govt spending" to build the US Interstate system or the plane that brought the bomb that ended World War II?
Is it "wasteful spending" when you fix your roof?
Kind of a basic difference, wouldn't you say?
Come on, Obama. You know what the real issues are. Get some balls and express them.
If you don't, the Republicans will succeed in convincing people that up is down and black is white and anything else they feel like, until all there's left to America is 1% gated communities for the rich and 99% desperate people in leaky trailers with lots of guns but no hope.
On Egypt
This could get really blissfully great, or really violently ugly.
Let's hope the Army is more of the people than the dictator. Some folks in the know seem to think it may be.
I wonder if the Red dictators in China are letting the scenes in Egypt pass through the great firewall. Anyone heard?
Let's hope the Army is more of the people than the dictator. Some folks in the know seem to think it may be.
I wonder if the Red dictators in China are letting the scenes in Egypt pass through the great firewall. Anyone heard?
A very smart friend points me to two wonderful writings:
http://www.truth-out.org/the-year-living-dangerously67110
http://www.truth-out.org/where-liberals-go-feel-good67093.
Great stuff.
I respond:
"Wow, great stuff. Thanks for sending it. I especially like the line, "To name this power, to admit that it has a death grip on our political process, our systems of information, our artistic and religious expression, our education, and has successfully emasculated popular movements, including labor, is to admit that the only weapons we have left are acts of civil disobedience. " I think that's so right on. But civil disobedience is useless when half the country actually supports the insanity (and is armed).
This is exactly what I've been thinking about in the wake of Egypt. I think a similar uprising may be inevitable in this country within a couple decades, maybe less. I think one day people are gonna wake up without medicare, medicaid, social security, a job, savings, a home, and future prospects, and there'll be nothing to do but what the Egyptians are doing - get out and fight and burn stuff.
Maybe things will turn around, but at the rate at which the powerful are grabbing more power, it's hard to imagine realistic forces that could manage to be behind a turnaround, a la the Hedges piece. Liberals are hopeless in their approach, and especially their messaging, as you and I have talked about so many times.
I love what Hedges said mostly, but I think he missed the mark on a big point, and that is that in our case, this band of criminals and dunces was actually voted in. Yes, the Tea Partiers are evil to the point of almost meriting the term Fascist, but it's not really their fault. If you're stupid enough to think Rand Paul and Michelle Bachmann will actually make your life better, it's your own damn fault.
That's why I think Obama is such a monumental failure. He, as the leader of the opposition to this band of thugs, needs to explain to voters why voting for them is going to hurt their lives. When giving the SOTU about how the US needs to invest in all sorts of areas to compete with the world, he left out the most important line: "Of course Republicans aren't going to allow any building of new schools for your kids, police for your towns, projects to improve the environment, investment in technology that will make us less dependent on oil out of the MIddle East. They want to spend hundreds of billions too, but they just want to hand it over to rich people. So while we NEED desperately to invest in our future, the people you've voted in will never allow it. Investments are the changes we need to make your life better and our nation stronger, but until you vote the "all we care about is zillionaires" contingent out, your life, I'm afraid, won't get any better."
But of course he doesn't say anything of the sort, which makes him just one huge sickening hypocrite. Because he knows these realities, and yet he pretends all this "investment" talk actually matters, when in the current environment it's just pure hot air. Such nauseating hypocrisy. Who does he think he's fooling?
A friend sent me an article a prominent "centrist" Repbulican wrote wrote about how we need to cut all spending now because the deficit is the end of the world and the only priority, and asked me what I thought. I wrote back, "look, debt isn't a problem in a vacuum. It's what you do with the borrowed money that counts. If you could borrow infinite dollars at incredibly low interest rates, and you desperately needed to fix up your life so you could earn more in the future, wouldn't you do it? If just borrow like crazy and just feed it all to millionaires, then yes, you have a problem." Well just by ironic coincidence, I've now seen two interviews with giants of American business, Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's right-hand man, and Jim Simons, CEO of Renaissance Technologies, the original and most successful "quant" fund (he's had like 30% plus annual returns and personally made over a billion dollars pretty much every year since 2001). And both these guys (Munger a Republican) said exactly the same thing. And both these guys are magnitudes smarter about business than anyone in government today.
Which gives me confidence that we're doing the exact, 180 degrees wrong thing in this country. Plus, it's incredible how fast it's going. Already, they've defunded Social Security. And the same for Medicare is very much underway. Obama is aiding and abetting, even leading the charge. I'd lay even odds that pretty soon he'll be apologizing for the health care law, saying "we should have done it better", (the definition of "better" now meaning whatever Paul Ryan wants, presumably making Medicare a subsidiary of Wellpoint).
The situation is pretty simple. We desperately need to turn around our deficit situation or the world will stop funding us at zero interest rates. And unless you want to leave old and poor people dying on the streets (the new vision for America brought to you by the Tea Party) the only way to do that is to increase taxes, especially on those whose lifestyle would hardly notice, to nationalize and yes, "ration" health care to force costs down to something manageable, and to invest like crazy in industries that have an economic future while we have low funding costs.
But with Obama pretending this band of Republicans actually have good ideas, we don't have a prayer.
And if you think things are bad now, wait till the world wakes up and figures out it's hopeless here, and penalizes us with a crashed dollar, $5 gas, and high interest rates.
That's when we become Egypt. Or should, anyway!"
http://www.truth-out.org/the-year-living-dangerously67110
http://www.truth-out.org/where-liberals-go-feel-good67093.
Great stuff.
I respond:
"Wow, great stuff. Thanks for sending it. I especially like the line, "To name this power, to admit that it has a death grip on our political process, our systems of information, our artistic and religious expression, our education, and has successfully emasculated popular movements, including labor, is to admit that the only weapons we have left are acts of civil disobedience. " I think that's so right on. But civil disobedience is useless when half the country actually supports the insanity (and is armed).
This is exactly what I've been thinking about in the wake of Egypt. I think a similar uprising may be inevitable in this country within a couple decades, maybe less. I think one day people are gonna wake up without medicare, medicaid, social security, a job, savings, a home, and future prospects, and there'll be nothing to do but what the Egyptians are doing - get out and fight and burn stuff.
Maybe things will turn around, but at the rate at which the powerful are grabbing more power, it's hard to imagine realistic forces that could manage to be behind a turnaround, a la the Hedges piece. Liberals are hopeless in their approach, and especially their messaging, as you and I have talked about so many times.
I love what Hedges said mostly, but I think he missed the mark on a big point, and that is that in our case, this band of criminals and dunces was actually voted in. Yes, the Tea Partiers are evil to the point of almost meriting the term Fascist, but it's not really their fault. If you're stupid enough to think Rand Paul and Michelle Bachmann will actually make your life better, it's your own damn fault.
That's why I think Obama is such a monumental failure. He, as the leader of the opposition to this band of thugs, needs to explain to voters why voting for them is going to hurt their lives. When giving the SOTU about how the US needs to invest in all sorts of areas to compete with the world, he left out the most important line: "Of course Republicans aren't going to allow any building of new schools for your kids, police for your towns, projects to improve the environment, investment in technology that will make us less dependent on oil out of the MIddle East. They want to spend hundreds of billions too, but they just want to hand it over to rich people. So while we NEED desperately to invest in our future, the people you've voted in will never allow it. Investments are the changes we need to make your life better and our nation stronger, but until you vote the "all we care about is zillionaires" contingent out, your life, I'm afraid, won't get any better."
But of course he doesn't say anything of the sort, which makes him just one huge sickening hypocrite. Because he knows these realities, and yet he pretends all this "investment" talk actually matters, when in the current environment it's just pure hot air. Such nauseating hypocrisy. Who does he think he's fooling?
A friend sent me an article a prominent "centrist" Repbulican wrote wrote about how we need to cut all spending now because the deficit is the end of the world and the only priority, and asked me what I thought. I wrote back, "look, debt isn't a problem in a vacuum. It's what you do with the borrowed money that counts. If you could borrow infinite dollars at incredibly low interest rates, and you desperately needed to fix up your life so you could earn more in the future, wouldn't you do it? If just borrow like crazy and just feed it all to millionaires, then yes, you have a problem." Well just by ironic coincidence, I've now seen two interviews with giants of American business, Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's right-hand man, and Jim Simons, CEO of Renaissance Technologies, the original and most successful "quant" fund (he's had like 30% plus annual returns and personally made over a billion dollars pretty much every year since 2001). And both these guys (Munger a Republican) said exactly the same thing. And both these guys are magnitudes smarter about business than anyone in government today.
Which gives me confidence that we're doing the exact, 180 degrees wrong thing in this country. Plus, it's incredible how fast it's going. Already, they've defunded Social Security. And the same for Medicare is very much underway. Obama is aiding and abetting, even leading the charge. I'd lay even odds that pretty soon he'll be apologizing for the health care law, saying "we should have done it better", (the definition of "better" now meaning whatever Paul Ryan wants, presumably making Medicare a subsidiary of Wellpoint).
The situation is pretty simple. We desperately need to turn around our deficit situation or the world will stop funding us at zero interest rates. And unless you want to leave old and poor people dying on the streets (the new vision for America brought to you by the Tea Party) the only way to do that is to increase taxes, especially on those whose lifestyle would hardly notice, to nationalize and yes, "ration" health care to force costs down to something manageable, and to invest like crazy in industries that have an economic future while we have low funding costs.
But with Obama pretending this band of Republicans actually have good ideas, we don't have a prayer.
And if you think things are bad now, wait till the world wakes up and figures out it's hopeless here, and penalizes us with a crashed dollar, $5 gas, and high interest rates.
That's when we become Egypt. Or should, anyway!"
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
The way health care should be handled.
Universal coverage is the only way to go.
Not because it's "fair", or "good", or anything touchy-feely. And today's Tea-flavored Republicans would rather let people die in the street than help them, so we can imagine how far an argument to do the "right thing" and make it a basic right would go.
Universal coverage is the only way to go for business reasons, pure and simple.
On its face, it's a simple system:
1) Money flows in.
2) Services are paid for.
You decide what services should be paid for, who should pay, and you're done.
Let's look at the system as it currently stands:
Money flows in, but not from everyone. So people get covered who aren't paying. So the rest of us pay too much.
Plus since health insurance is considered a private good, like cars or cocaine, a ton of money that goes in goes to making people rich instead of paying for health.
Costs are out of control because everyone jacks up their price to make more money. Pharma, doctors, hospitals, GE on the scanners, etc. This money doesn't go to health, it goes to make people richer. Which just goes into stocks that pushes prices up and makes other rich people richer. Not a bad system for the rich folks, but doesn't do much for health for them or anyone else.
We have a public system to pay for these services in some cases, like when you're old or poor. But because of the cost problem, there's no way that system can handle the costs. That's why the US is bankrupt in a decade or two BTW. It's not social security or "stimulus", it's health care costs.
The only way to fix health care is to bring costs down. The only way to bring costs down is to bring as many payers as possible into the system, and force those who are getting rich of peoples' misery to get less rich.
Only the gov't through law can do this. The problem will never, ever get solved in the private markets, where the mission is to charge as much and provide as little health care as possible.
But the quality of the service IS relevant. Because until the day when we just let people die in the street (a day the Tea Partiers eagerly await, I know), those health services will get paid for, one way or the other.
And it'll cost WAY too much, because people are getting rich off the system.
And it'll cost WAY too much, because helping someone lose weight cheaper is way cheaper than paying for their diabetes later.
So, if we want a healthy nation, and we do, because a nation of unhealthy, scared people is not going to be anywhere near its maximum economic productivity, we need to force costs down across the board, and get everyone paying.
It's not rocket science. But when things need to apply to everyone, only govt. can do it.
Not because it's "fair", or "good", or anything touchy-feely. And today's Tea-flavored Republicans would rather let people die in the street than help them, so we can imagine how far an argument to do the "right thing" and make it a basic right would go.
Universal coverage is the only way to go for business reasons, pure and simple.
On its face, it's a simple system:
1) Money flows in.
2) Services are paid for.
You decide what services should be paid for, who should pay, and you're done.
Let's look at the system as it currently stands:
Money flows in, but not from everyone. So people get covered who aren't paying. So the rest of us pay too much.
Plus since health insurance is considered a private good, like cars or cocaine, a ton of money that goes in goes to making people rich instead of paying for health.
Costs are out of control because everyone jacks up their price to make more money. Pharma, doctors, hospitals, GE on the scanners, etc. This money doesn't go to health, it goes to make people richer. Which just goes into stocks that pushes prices up and makes other rich people richer. Not a bad system for the rich folks, but doesn't do much for health for them or anyone else.
We have a public system to pay for these services in some cases, like when you're old or poor. But because of the cost problem, there's no way that system can handle the costs. That's why the US is bankrupt in a decade or two BTW. It's not social security or "stimulus", it's health care costs.
The only way to fix health care is to bring costs down. The only way to bring costs down is to bring as many payers as possible into the system, and force those who are getting rich of peoples' misery to get less rich.
Only the gov't through law can do this. The problem will never, ever get solved in the private markets, where the mission is to charge as much and provide as little health care as possible.
But the quality of the service IS relevant. Because until the day when we just let people die in the street (a day the Tea Partiers eagerly await, I know), those health services will get paid for, one way or the other.
And it'll cost WAY too much, because people are getting rich off the system.
And it'll cost WAY too much, because helping someone lose weight cheaper is way cheaper than paying for their diabetes later.
So, if we want a healthy nation, and we do, because a nation of unhealthy, scared people is not going to be anywhere near its maximum economic productivity, we need to force costs down across the board, and get everyone paying.
It's not rocket science. But when things need to apply to everyone, only govt. can do it.
Taxation
The way a democratic nation runs is at one level pretty simple.
The people vote representatives into office who decide what people should do for themselves and what is important enough that it should be done for everyone by a bigger entity, aka government.
For example, no Libertarian, no matter how big his gun collection, is going to defend his home against an Chinese Air Force bombing run. So we band together, all pay a little money, and get weapons that are big enough to handle the job. Like intercontinental ballistic missles.
So, you've got things we all know we have to do for ourselves, like earn our rent, and things we want, but can't possibly do for ourselves, like defend against invading armies.
And then there's the stuff in the middle that we disagree about.
Like health care. Should we all pay for our doctors, or should we pay into a health care fund that pays for our doctors?
Well, of course, almost none of us can pay for the seriously expensive things doctors do, like remove cancers. But only a small percentage of people have that done. So an extra dollar from the rest of us cures that unfortunate person of their cancer.
What do you get as an end result? People with cancer know their treatment will be covered. The rest of us pay a small premium. What do we get for that premium? The security of knowing that if we get cancer, we'll be covered too.
Now everyone talks about "why should I pay for this other guy's problem"? Rick Santelli doesn't want the public to be on the hook for the mortgage that his neighbor took out. But Rick doesn't protest when his pockets are stuffed with money by tax cuts on the superwealthy.
Ok, fine. No Republican wants to do nuthin' for no one else. Altruism is the antithesis of what they believe. Let's concede that point. America (at least Tea Party America) is a bunch of selfish whiners who want want want, but who think it's immoral to give to the common welfare through taxes or even the existence of government itself. Fine, that's their right. When they have troubles if they think I'm gonna help them they've got another thing coming, but that's neither here nor there.
But left out of the debate is the value of the security of knowing that you're covered. And this is why "socialist" nations do so much better. People know they're covered and they go on with their lives, being productive, earning money, being useful people who add to the strength of a society. In America, we all worry, "OMG I gotta save like crazy, cause the health insurance company's gonna drop me once the lunatic Republicans repeal the health care law and replace it with just handing money to Wellpoint", or "I can't move because I'll lose my coverage", or "I can't change jobs because the new one doesn't cover me and because of some pre-existing condition, I'll never get covered", or "even if they do cover me, they can just jack premiums up 30% a year and no one can stop them".
This insecurity is completely devastating to the productivity of a nation.
The people vote representatives into office who decide what people should do for themselves and what is important enough that it should be done for everyone by a bigger entity, aka government.
For example, no Libertarian, no matter how big his gun collection, is going to defend his home against an Chinese Air Force bombing run. So we band together, all pay a little money, and get weapons that are big enough to handle the job. Like intercontinental ballistic missles.
So, you've got things we all know we have to do for ourselves, like earn our rent, and things we want, but can't possibly do for ourselves, like defend against invading armies.
And then there's the stuff in the middle that we disagree about.
Like health care. Should we all pay for our doctors, or should we pay into a health care fund that pays for our doctors?
Well, of course, almost none of us can pay for the seriously expensive things doctors do, like remove cancers. But only a small percentage of people have that done. So an extra dollar from the rest of us cures that unfortunate person of their cancer.
What do you get as an end result? People with cancer know their treatment will be covered. The rest of us pay a small premium. What do we get for that premium? The security of knowing that if we get cancer, we'll be covered too.
Now everyone talks about "why should I pay for this other guy's problem"? Rick Santelli doesn't want the public to be on the hook for the mortgage that his neighbor took out. But Rick doesn't protest when his pockets are stuffed with money by tax cuts on the superwealthy.
Ok, fine. No Republican wants to do nuthin' for no one else. Altruism is the antithesis of what they believe. Let's concede that point. America (at least Tea Party America) is a bunch of selfish whiners who want want want, but who think it's immoral to give to the common welfare through taxes or even the existence of government itself. Fine, that's their right. When they have troubles if they think I'm gonna help them they've got another thing coming, but that's neither here nor there.
But left out of the debate is the value of the security of knowing that you're covered. And this is why "socialist" nations do so much better. People know they're covered and they go on with their lives, being productive, earning money, being useful people who add to the strength of a society. In America, we all worry, "OMG I gotta save like crazy, cause the health insurance company's gonna drop me once the lunatic Republicans repeal the health care law and replace it with just handing money to Wellpoint", or "I can't move because I'll lose my coverage", or "I can't change jobs because the new one doesn't cover me and because of some pre-existing condition, I'll never get covered", or "even if they do cover me, they can just jack premiums up 30% a year and no one can stop them".
This insecurity is completely devastating to the productivity of a nation.
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