Read Write React

Health Care Questions For Debate

 I received an email this morning (from WebMD) asking for health care questions to be posed during the October 7 presidential debate. WebMD has been working with the Commission on Presidential Debates to gather questions. They have an area for submissions on their site (in blog format) and many interesting questions have already been put forward.

Here are a couple that I plan to add:

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First, this great quotation (which I've used before):

“The market functions wonderfully when we want to sell more cereals, cosmetics, cars, computers, or any other consumer product. Unfortunately, it does not work in health care, where the goal should hardly be selling more heart bypass operations. Instead, the goal should be to prevent disease and illness. But the money is in the treatment – not prevention – so the market and good care are at odds.”

- Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele

I would extend that by saying drugs that combat symptoms on a recurring basis bring in money on a recurring basis while those that cure a condition outright simply do not. Now, if you, as a businessman, are going to invest your own cash, which drugs do you invest in? The answer is obvious and as such, so is the problem.

I would like to hear both candidates address this issue...

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Let's talk about health insurance, the lack of which has been a major topic of late. We have a situation where many of us cannot afford insurance. Why? The insurance is too expensive. Why is the insurance so expensive? To pay for the spiraling cost of the care.
Now, if you have a bunch of people who can't afford insurance. Well, how do you go about making it affordable? You will need to lower the price, at least in some segments of the population. If you lower the price, the insurance companies will then have less money to pay for the care, at which point there is not much incentive to be in the insurance business. When this issue is clouded further by doctors who need to protect themselves from lawsuits and the grossly high price of pharmaceuticals, the problem seems almost unmanageable.

My question here is simply how or where do we begin to address this, especially in the wake of this economic meltdown? (for either or both candidates)

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If you have your own questions you can visit WebMD and add them to their list. (or you can simply leave them here and I'll do it for you :-)

Palin Couric SNL Parody

If any of you have not seen this parody of Katie Couric's (Amy Poehler)  interview with Sarah Palin (Tina Fey), I strongly recommend watching it here and now. It is very, very, funny.

Free Market? Yeah, That

There latest proposal for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout has been agreed too, tentatively. Many economists say the deal is necessary to continue the flow of credit in this country. (blah blah) I'm pissed off and many others feel the same. We've been seriously let down by those leaders who DID (not 'should have', DID) know what was going on and made a decision not to do something about it. I'd like to smack some people in the head. This phrase, "should have known" is a farce used to lessen the damage to reputations. So...

With the initial, angry, statement out of the way, I question the role credit plays in our society as a whole. There is no doubt that the simple availability of credit drives up prices for everyone. It is simple, if company A wants to sell a product, they can sell it for a higher price if customer B has a line of credit. Because so many customers do use credit, the concept permeates many areas of our lives. Schooling, housing, transportation, stereo equipment, even clothing or shoes, pocket books, brief cases, essentially anything that you can put on a credit card costs more because credit allows a retailer to extract a higher price. A price that might be out of the question if the customer were unable to borrow.

Unfortunately, we can't just live without credit. Few of us would be able to save for a house and going beyond high school would become increasingly rare. Would small businesses be able to survive at all? The problem begins when credit becomes to too easy to obtain. This is just what happened during this latest crisis. People who could not afford a house using standard credit calculations, were enticed with extra credit, sometimes in their full view, sometimes not, to purchase what they could not afford. Customers should have known better. Lenders DID know better. This practice drove up the price of housing. The mortgages from these over priced homes were then pooled and sold as separate products called Mortgage Backed Securities. (your initial mortgage provider would still process your payments)

Mortgage backed securities are everywhere. They're in your pension and your 401k. Investors, be they individuals, banks or whoever, are screwed. Or should be. That's the nature of the game. This is where our government let us down. They saw these problems coming and they all know it. And they let it come to this. I'd look toward a management system with better decision making skills (and processes) before laying down $700 billion. Frankly, most citizens are pissed off, at least those who give a damn. I don't think it has hit many of our younger folks yet as things still seem to be taken for granted. One way or another, that is going to change. If they do actually pass this thing, I don't want to here a [expletive deleted] word about socialism from the Republicans for 10 years.

Please feel free to improve my understanding of the issue. Thanks

What About Health Care?

Will a dollar buy more than a piece of bubble gum this time next year? Politicians sometimes resort to fear tactics but right about now, Joe Politician is just as afraid as Joe Citizen. An inside view of the economic crisis has the president and Congress actually working together on something. But...

Does their plan address the enormous amount of medical debt carried in this country?

A few weeks back, Suzanne, my friend and roommate, had to go to the emergency room with severe stomach pains. After staying overnight and having some tests done, the doctor gave her the okay to return home. Tests showed everything working well and the diagnosis was a form of food poisoning. Simple enough. The bill was sixteen thousand dollars.

Somewhere along the line, we've developed a health care bubble that I've not heard a word about during these woeful economic talks. Being that Suzanne has no insurance, she now owes over $16,000 to our local hospital. I'm not here to make a case for Suzanne. I'm here to say that this is a debt that will likely never be paid. So, who owns this debt? The hospital? Maybe they have already sold it to some firm searching for a future government bailout. Universal health care anyone?

Many of the inflated costs are aimed at the insurance companies. The price of insurance rises to cover these costs. The uninsured are then completely screwed.  Of course, this does not stop them from showing up at the emergency room and incurring more unaffordable debt. This drives the prices up further. And so on...

The Revolution by Ron Paul

I'm not sure if it was before or after I singed into Amazon a couple of weeks ago that I decided to purchase Ron Paul's 'The Revolution'. I don't know if it was due to my lack of confidence in both our current candidates or that I just wanted to gain another perspective for myself. Often, I'm a bit snobbish in the books that I read, paying only for what I think is going to improve, or at least advance, my own thought processes. As it turned out, 'The Revolution' met all of my criteria. Wow, what a book...

 Central to this (very compact) book was the fiscal soundness of this country. A fair portion was aimed at ending the huge (and growing) dependence on our government. You could look at this statement and say that it is simply blasting the Democrats or even the Republicans of today but that would be an incomplete view. Throughout the world there are entire nations that have become dependent upon the United States for various forms of support. You might include with that the 700 military bases that we maintain in 130 countries. Now that's a world police force.

Most people realize that earmarks are costing taxpayers a fair chunk of change. New to me was the idea that they can be used to support incumbency. Essentially, they work by throwing home town voters a bone in order to increase reelection chances. Bills filled with earmarks also come with much less clarity about them and allow argument over the validity the actual votes. A legislator dealing with an issue unpopular with constituents might insert an earmark, again, to keep the home town voters happy. This distorts the voting record.

All of the ideas in the book were deeply felt and very well thought out. As for my own views, I need some digestion time as the concepts might easily be considered radical in the context of what we are used to. As the book presents a view of the government the way it was designed to function, I would recommend it to everybody of voting, if not reading, age.

* For the record, I don't think that Ron Paul is presidential material. The ability to get your point across is very important and I think that he did a poor job of doing so during the Republican debates. In no way does this diminish the value of this book.

** It's ironic that while I was writing this post, Senator McCain actually stated publicly that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. If he believes this, then, maybe he is a little out of touch. If he doesn't...

T. Boone Pickens' Ground

I set out today to see which side of the aisle is supporting T. Boone Pickens. I was encouraged to learn that Boone has recently spoken with both John McCain and Barack Obama and given them each a 10 when it came to interest in the plan. (though I could not have expected anything less) I've also felt good seeing supporters of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) supporting T. Boone.

There are almost 5 million cars in the world today that run on natural gas. Commonly, these cars are able to switch between compressed gas and gasoline with the press of a button. The option to switch between the two is available during operation without interruption. A few major drawbacks exist. First, the natural gas tank takes up some space in the trunk of the car. This is of concern of car owners who've had their cars converted to run off of either gasoline or natural gas. Newer CNG cars place the cylinder underneath the car. More difficult to overcome is the lack of available supply stations. This is a matter of taking the next step. We use natural gas quite a bit in this country currently so it may not be as difficult as it initially appears. Still it is not an overnighter.

The major automakers in this country have set their sights on hydrogen engines which run cleaner than those using CNG. How much cleaner? Not so much. Greenhouse emissions from CNG based engines are FAR lower than those from gasoline engines though some hybrids produce less and hydrogen based engines, in theory, produce nothing but water. At some point, availability overrides cleanliness. The debate is over where that point might be.

Overall, I like what I see out of T. Boone Pickens a lot. The idea that he stands to make some money is held against him by some. It might be looked at another way. Being that he's got his own money at stake, he'll work like hell to get things moving! Critics have asked why he does little to support the use of coal and/or nuclear. From what I see, these are legitimate questions. I don't see automobiles running off of either anytime soon, however .

Did I mention that natural gas costs less to produce than gasoline and is plentiful here in the U.S.?

Conservatorship Sounds Nice

As I read the morning news, I felt progressively ill. Stories of Asian stock market rallies based on the United States government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are damning to the American public. Attempts to paint the takeover as protecting the U.S. consumers while not false, are misleading. Do you really believe foreign investors would be be dancing happily now that U.S. consumers are better protected? Let me not overstep my bounds here as I am no economist. My novice notwithstanding, I'm can now better suggest who really owns our homes here in the U.S.

What, exactly, do Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do?

When your bank lends you the money for a home, they will often sell off the debt. Otherwise, they'd soon run out of funds to be lent to the next customer. Freddie Mac will often purchase this debt which can then be sold to its own investors. To put it simply, Freddie Mac's investors (often major banks in and of themselves) are paid back, with interest, from monthly mortgage payments. The problem for the investors is that Freddie Mac has guaranteed the payment of the loans. When a mortgage defaults, the investors get the shaft, or should. I again need to acknowledge that I'm learning about this as I go.

Check out the site of Freddie Mac for more info more on how they do business.

Now to the easy questions.

How Much Will This Cost?

   Nobody knows. It depends on the number of future defaults.

Who is going to pay for it?

   You. And me.

Here is a page that I found very interesting and helpful to my understanding of the situation.

Los Angeles Times -> Fannie - Freddie - Q & A

Undecided With Conviction

John McCain looked like his old maverick self as he spoke the other night on the Republican Convention floor. The old self I thought he'd given up explicitly for this campaign. Actually, the old self that I would have considered voting for in years past. Even so, serious conservatives are very excited with his pick of Sarah Palin for the vice presidential nomination. Can Senator McCain please everybody by playing maverick on one hand while playing to staunch conservatives on the other? Barack Obama thinks so. To combat the rhetoric of John McCain, Senator Obama has resorted to the abortion issue tactic. This is not the new type of politics that Barack Obama has been promising us. This is the very same fear mongering that Republicans have been accused of (rightly) for a long time.

It sounds like I'm ready to vote for John McCain, right? No, sir. John McCain does not seem to believe that international problems can be solved other than through the use of our military. Neither does John McCain have much grasp on the lower to middle class economic situation. As for taxes, a quick look at John McCain's website will let you know where he stands on what he terms, 'Simpler and Fairer Taxes'. You may have heard that John McCain plans to lower business and corporate taxes and shift these to the middle class. Well, on his site, he states with fair precision which corporate taxes will be lowered but he make no reference to where the difference in capital will come from. Maintaining worldwide military installations, maintaining our presence in Iraq, combined with a lowering of taxes does NOT add up. I don't blame John McCain for Medicare or our system of welfare but these things MUST ALSO be considered during talks of tax cuts. How much was that war supposed to cost?

A Comment From a Friend

In response to my last post, Palin: McCain's Anti-Women's Selection , criticizing John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as vice president, Matt Urdan responded with the comment below. Matt writes with a great deal of passion. He and I don't agree on everything but we strongly agree that there is a structural problem with the political system in this country. Getting this fixed is more important than any individual elected leader. Regardless, I don't believe that Sarah Palin was a proper selection for Senator McCain to make for vice president and said so. Matt picked it up from here:   (click on the image to visit his blog)

Well those are the arguments on the face and the talking points of the democratic party. The last time I checked, neither the democratic party or the republican party is interested in what's best for the United States. Both parties are interested in mudslinging and partisan politics as usual. Right after 9/11, President Bush said: "If you're not for us, you're against us." I couldn't believe I was hearing the words of the dictator then. But apparently, the same is true in partisan politics.

In this country, you're either a liberal or a conservative. You're a red state or a blue state. You're rich or poor. Apparently everything is black and white with not a shade of grey to be found.

The thing is, what I believe most Americans want is for our elected leaders to stop acting like children only concerned with their own image, political grandstanding and reelection. Because those things drive politics as usual in America. Americans want our elected leaders to get the job they are elected to do done without all this divisiveness which only serves their own purposes of finger-pointing, mud slinging and reelection.

John Adams, the second president of the United States said that he feared the forming of political parties because it would polarize Americans of their new country, cause divisiveness and make America vulnerable to defeat should the U.S. be attacked--which was a very real probability. Now, our two party system and divisiveness just results in gridlock with our government working against itself to maintain its reason for being rather than accomplishing things that would be in the best interests of the American people.

What Sarah Palin and John McCain represent are a one-term ticket. They would not be reelected. Maybe Sarah Palin would run for President in four years, maybe she wouldn't. But as one-term, lame-duck elected officials, who better would have the chance to try to reach across party lines as Sarah Palin has demonstrated she can do in Alaska and possible unite our people?

Bill Clinton was polarizing. Hillary was polarizing. Barack Obama is polarizing. George Bush was polarizing--both of them. When will the polarization of this country end? When will Americans unite behind a leader and end our dependency on foreign oil. When will we address worldwide climate issues. When will we be a beacon for human rights and for peace and for hope around the world instead of a nation to be feared for its nonsensical aggressive policies towards perceived enemies?

And the thing about McCain/Palin that really intrigues me is that their election would all but guarantee--and make easier--a Hillary Clinton presidency in 2012. A presidency that would absolutely be focused on children and heath care issues.

When we get right down to it. Barack Obama is great at giving speeches. He has no proven track record. Adolph Hitler was great at giving speeches. Because of a speech, it didn't turn out so well for the Jews of Germany and 6 million other europeans who didn't measure up to Aryan ideals. Obama is not Hitler. Let's be clear. But the ability to make a great speech is an inspiring and terrifying double-edged sword. We know he talks a good game. But he's never really delivered anything. And even more frightening, no one is questioning Obama--every democrat is just giving Obama their blind allegiance when Obama's questionable church affiliation, ties of friendship, and ties of family should give everyone else pause for concern--at least as much as the ultra-conservative ideals of Palin have given the democrats cause for concern.

I've never been a fan of the way Matt refers to Obama and we disagree about the personnel to get the job done in DC. I decided to include these ending comments out of fairness though I disagree with both their message and their delivery. That's another post altogether.