A Dose of Truth Would Be Best Medicine on Health Care Debate
There's a refrain from an old gospel tune that goes:
" Everybody wants to go to heaven - - but no body wants to die"
That sentiment is on par with the entitlement mindset of America and their statist enablers:
Everybody wants good health care - - but nobody wants to pay.
Yeah well, to coin another old saw, if you wanna dance you gotta pay the fiddler. In listening to Obama the other night you'd swear the Democrat designed plan will pay for itself with the savings of its own implementation, and, of course, a little "help" from those filthy rich.
Sounds good, so long as you enjoy the critical economic literacy and mathematical aptitude of say, a zucchini.
Watching this debate brings to mind one of my own heartland axioms:
it isn't that the problem is too complicated to fix - - it's that it's fixed to look too complicated.
First, be honest about defining the problem, the premise, and some key definitions.
This alleged crisis is not about health care, access to it, or the big bad insurance companies. It's an affordability problem resulting from health care costs out pacing inflation for the last 20 years. If you want an honest debate about this issue you have stop conflating heath care and health insurance and understand this: health insurance prices are a direct reflection of health care costs, period.
Take it from this formerly licensed health insurance agent, there is enough competition in health insurance to keep companies from price gouging. What healthy competition can't ameliorate however is defensive medicine practiced by Doctors who order excessive testing to prevent malpractice claims. Myriad studies show that alone accounts for up to 15% of that excessive inflation.
Dr. Charles Krauthammer, pundit and former medical practitioner, fleshes this theme out nicely here: Charles Krauthammer : Why Obamacare is Sinking - Townhall.com
So now that we know the real problem is the high cost of health care all efforts should be focused on maximizing efficiencies, which increases supply, which outpaces demand, which lowers the price.
Second, be truthful about the scope of the problem.
Obama has a tall order and it may well be the sales job of the century. So far he has failed to make the case that the state of health care is so utterly awful that immediate legislative action is imperative. Why? Well for starters we can look around and see no one dying in the streets or being refused care at emergency rooms. There's also the reality that the number of uninsured is virtually the same as it was when they ditched Clintoncare lo those many years ago.
So a regular, non-ivy league, thinker is left to wonder how a problem evolves into a crisis without apparent evidence that it's getting worse. That poll showing 90% plus are perfectly happy with their health care had to induce some wincing at the White House too.
And while we're at it let's take a critical look at that uninsured number. According to the census bureau of those 47 million, of those:
Herein lies the rub, and the challenge that Obama, and all of his horses and all of his men, will not be able to meet: Convincing us non-zucchinis that government commandeering one-sixth of the economy for the sake of 8% of the population can, or will ever be, economically feasible.
Crisis What Crisis?
Anywhere but politics the definition of crisis will always include elements of chaos and urgency. This crisis has neither. Yes, the state of health care today is far from perfect, but it is also far from chaotic. And, pardon my belaboring the obvious, an issue that has been simmering on the back burner for over two decades, and with most of the population okay with the status quo, the urgency factor is non-existent - - except in the fevered imagination of a dedicated Marxist, where emotion trumps reason as a matter of course.
Given all that, unless you just fell off the turnip truck, you might be on to something if you're thinking this whole "crisis" isn't about something else altogether. What is anybodies guess, but when statists are hell bent on the government taking over nearly one-sixth of the economy, and that sector is inarguably the most personal of any, it can't be good, and many freedoms taken for granted are on the line.
It is strange, but not surprising, that the same statists who contorted the right of privacy in the 4th amendment to legalize abortion have little or no concern about government custody of private medical records. This is what the minds that swim in the toxic combination of moral relativism and living constitution theory yields.
The mind boggles at the duplicity and hypocrisy as it always does at their faith in government. The same government that proves time and again it has neither the will or capacity to balance a freakin checkbook, but somehow will suddenly accrue the competence to handle a new health bureaucracy that would double the one we have now, Medicare/Medicaid. That bureaucracy, by the way, loses $60 billion annually in fraud alone. Not inefficiencies in record keeping or any of the other myriad wasteful hallmarks of bureaucracy, just fraud. (wouldn't that money, amounting to $250K each, go a long way in insuring those 24 million?)
Where does this confidence come from? I mean seriously, when it comes to religion I come down squarely in the middle between believers and non-believers, call me an areligious deist. Some belittle the religious as superstitious because they remain faithful without proof. Fine, but the government faithful, believe despite of the reams of history, daily news, their own eyes, and experience proving the fallibility of government. Call it what you want but it's a lot goofier than superstition. (Hint: it might have something to do with that repeating the same thing over and over and expecting a different result thing)
That kind of belief make even the strangest sect or fundamentalism sane by comparison, with the possible exception of snake handlers, wiccans, or libertarians. Kidding.
Truth about the quality of the plan proposals.
One last thing. It is very revealing that the proposers aren't leading by example in volunteering for the coverage they hope to foist on us plebeians. If this is such a great idea why wasn't the very first proposal to open up the aristocrat plan they enjoy to the rest of us?
I do hope all this debate results in some necessary reforms but from what I have seen so far the progress on reform is commensurate with the honesty of the debate.
" Everybody wants to go to heaven - - but no body wants to die"
That sentiment is on par with the entitlement mindset of America and their statist enablers:
Everybody wants good health care - - but nobody wants to pay.
Yeah well, to coin another old saw, if you wanna dance you gotta pay the fiddler. In listening to Obama the other night you'd swear the Democrat designed plan will pay for itself with the savings of its own implementation, and, of course, a little "help" from those filthy rich.
Sounds good, so long as you enjoy the critical economic literacy and mathematical aptitude of say, a zucchini.
Watching this debate brings to mind one of my own heartland axioms:
it isn't that the problem is too complicated to fix - - it's that it's fixed to look too complicated.
First, be honest about defining the problem, the premise, and some key definitions.
This alleged crisis is not about health care, access to it, or the big bad insurance companies. It's an affordability problem resulting from health care costs out pacing inflation for the last 20 years. If you want an honest debate about this issue you have stop conflating heath care and health insurance and understand this: health insurance prices are a direct reflection of health care costs, period.
Take it from this formerly licensed health insurance agent, there is enough competition in health insurance to keep companies from price gouging. What healthy competition can't ameliorate however is defensive medicine practiced by Doctors who order excessive testing to prevent malpractice claims. Myriad studies show that alone accounts for up to 15% of that excessive inflation.
Dr. Charles Krauthammer, pundit and former medical practitioner, fleshes this theme out nicely here: Charles Krauthammer : Why Obamacare is Sinking - Townhall.com
So now that we know the real problem is the high cost of health care all efforts should be focused on maximizing efficiencies, which increases supply, which outpaces demand, which lowers the price.
Second, be truthful about the scope of the problem.
Obama has a tall order and it may well be the sales job of the century. So far he has failed to make the case that the state of health care is so utterly awful that immediate legislative action is imperative. Why? Well for starters we can look around and see no one dying in the streets or being refused care at emergency rooms. There's also the reality that the number of uninsured is virtually the same as it was when they ditched Clintoncare lo those many years ago.
So a regular, non-ivy league, thinker is left to wonder how a problem evolves into a crisis without apparent evidence that it's getting worse. That poll showing 90% plus are perfectly happy with their health care had to induce some wincing at the White House too.
And while we're at it let's take a critical look at that uninsured number. According to the census bureau of those 47 million, of those:
- 10 million are either legal or illegal aliens.
- 19 million are between the ages of 18 and 35, statistically the healthiest group of all.
- 19 million have incomes over $74,000, 350% of the poverty level.
Herein lies the rub, and the challenge that Obama, and all of his horses and all of his men, will not be able to meet: Convincing us non-zucchinis that government commandeering one-sixth of the economy for the sake of 8% of the population can, or will ever be, economically feasible.
Crisis What Crisis?
Anywhere but politics the definition of crisis will always include elements of chaos and urgency. This crisis has neither. Yes, the state of health care today is far from perfect, but it is also far from chaotic. And, pardon my belaboring the obvious, an issue that has been simmering on the back burner for over two decades, and with most of the population okay with the status quo, the urgency factor is non-existent - - except in the fevered imagination of a dedicated Marxist, where emotion trumps reason as a matter of course.
Given all that, unless you just fell off the turnip truck, you might be on to something if you're thinking this whole "crisis" isn't about something else altogether. What is anybodies guess, but when statists are hell bent on the government taking over nearly one-sixth of the economy, and that sector is inarguably the most personal of any, it can't be good, and many freedoms taken for granted are on the line.
It is strange, but not surprising, that the same statists who contorted the right of privacy in the 4th amendment to legalize abortion have little or no concern about government custody of private medical records. This is what the minds that swim in the toxic combination of moral relativism and living constitution theory yields.
The mind boggles at the duplicity and hypocrisy as it always does at their faith in government. The same government that proves time and again it has neither the will or capacity to balance a freakin checkbook, but somehow will suddenly accrue the competence to handle a new health bureaucracy that would double the one we have now, Medicare/Medicaid. That bureaucracy, by the way, loses $60 billion annually in fraud alone. Not inefficiencies in record keeping or any of the other myriad wasteful hallmarks of bureaucracy, just fraud. (wouldn't that money, amounting to $250K each, go a long way in insuring those 24 million?)
Where does this confidence come from? I mean seriously, when it comes to religion I come down squarely in the middle between believers and non-believers, call me an areligious deist. Some belittle the religious as superstitious because they remain faithful without proof. Fine, but the government faithful, believe despite of the reams of history, daily news, their own eyes, and experience proving the fallibility of government. Call it what you want but it's a lot goofier than superstition. (Hint: it might have something to do with that repeating the same thing over and over and expecting a different result thing)
That kind of belief make even the strangest sect or fundamentalism sane by comparison, with the possible exception of snake handlers, wiccans, or libertarians. Kidding.
Truth about the quality of the plan proposals.
One last thing. It is very revealing that the proposers aren't leading by example in volunteering for the coverage they hope to foist on us plebeians. If this is such a great idea why wasn't the very first proposal to open up the aristocrat plan they enjoy to the rest of us?
I do hope all this debate results in some necessary reforms but from what I have seen so far the progress on reform is commensurate with the honesty of the debate.
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