Classic Cons

Obama launches new push for healthcare overhaul

 
 

The headline is a typical case of deceptive minimalism, the vision of Obama is NOT an overhaul of the existing healthcare system. Over a very short period of time, the President’s multi-phased apparition is the removal and replacement of the healthcare system we have today. The President’s plan is nothing less than the road to another bloated and entrenched bureaucracy administered by another cast of unelected and unaccountable technocrats. There will be committees, counsels, directors, advisory boards, investigative bodies, designated spokesmen, legal advisors, and maybe even a Czar or two to demonstrate our deep commitment to freedom for good measure. We are talking about something like the eventual Social Security Administration of Healthcare with you paying 85% of the costs in additional taxes, and you will lose:

Freedom to choose what’s in your plan – Like most government programs you don’t get to choose you get what is allowed by the program. A single guy age 25 will pay for the costs of maternity care, which is a costly option in most private plans today.

Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs – Your individual choice to limit risk goes out the window as you will pay for inherent health risks of crack addicts, the morbidly obese, and skydivers equally.

Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage – Your opportunity to save by assuming a little more risk is gone. You will simply pay more that is your only “option.”

Freedom to keep your existing plan – If your employer offers a good health plan and you want to keep it, Obama says you can, but that is a lie for the most part. If the plan changes even in the slightest (e.g. – changing a co-pays, deductible, or even switching coverage for a single drug) you must drop out of the plan and use the government one. Most health policies are modified on an annual basis, so millions of employees will lose their plans within 12 months.

Freedom to choose your doctors – People have a lot of issues with HMO’s which was created by Congress to save us from rising health care costs in 1973. The law gave millions of dollars to HMOs, which, until then, had constituted a small portion of the market. HMOs multiplied rapidly with the new federal giveaways. Today, doctors practice medicine in an increasingly intricate web of rationing and regulations: Physicians are stripped of professional autonomy. As patients wander the maze of managed bureaucracy, costs rise and quality deteriorates. Every American dependent on a third party for health coverage is a potential victim of managed care, put Congress at the helm and you have a sure recipe for disaster.

If this apparatus of delivering compassionate universal access to medical services feels alien to you, that is you’re internal American patriot screaming, “Tyranny!” In order to make discarding what the United States is supposed to stand for (its freedom, if anyone forgot) less traumatic to you, the President’s plan has some familiar features built in. You will find the oversights, errors, overly optimistic projects, and critical omissions which have become the very hallmark of federal mismanagement. You can count on the highest level of incompetence and a complete lack of accountability by the administration managing your health care. Should there be significant cost overruns; any and all additional costs will be covered by you.

I am certain we will need to prove our mettle as the “Home of the Brave” once more when all those miscalculations lead us to decades if not centuries of the Social Security style political patchwork, predicaments, and panics we see as a direct result of federal negligence, malfeasance, abuse, and ineptitude which has been inspired by the gutless and corrupt leadership of the House and Senate. A common axiom says “You can tell what the future holds by looking at history.” Let’s look to the past and see how Congress and its progeny have served us in such matters…

• The criminal looting of the immoral and poorly implemented Ponzi scheme we know as Social Security.
  

Americans have been paying 15.3% on the first $97,500 in wages per year religiously since 1935. The program was so poorly implemented that it started paying benefits nearly immediately to recipients that had hardly paid anything in to the program. In 1940, Ida Fuller became the first monthly Social Security recipient. Mrs. Fuller had paid a total of total of $24.75 into the Social Security System. Her first check was for $22.54. Mrs. Fuller lived to be 100 years old and collected a total of $22,888.92! That’s right $24.75 became $22,888.92! Only the Federal government could create such a ludicrously inequitable system.

Rather than investing the contributions into anything that generates a return, Congress spent the funds as if they were general revenue replacing the cash with Treasury securities (IOUs) without regard for the future beneficiaries. To grasp this concept, let’s assume I am your retirement banker and I have promised you a certain fixed monthly payment per month once you reach retirement. You contribute a sizable percentage of your paycheck to me, I write an IOU to your account, and then spend your money on whatever I want. I’m counting on the fact that future contributors, many of which have not even been born yet, will provide the revenue stream to pay you in the future. Unfortunately, demographics turned against me and the birth rate declines significantly. There will not be enough future contributors to make up what I have already used to support untenable spending. I begin alternately increasing your required contributions, reducing your monthly benefit, and increasing the age required to retire and collect benefits. Still the system cannot last more than a few decades because the system is fundamentally unsound.

• The bankrupt empty shell designated the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
  

One thing that government does better than anyone else is misnomers. In this case “Insurance” leads one to believe that the FDIC acts like a typical commercial insurer such as Zurich. The FDIC is nothing like any insurance company on earth. While Zurich is backed by premiums that are based on risk, FDIC is backed with tax dollars and risk is not considered. There is a premium to be paid by banks of about 13 cents per $100 of FDIC insured deposits, but nearly none of the banks (95%) have paid a cent in premiums in 10 years. Could you imagine not paying your insurance premiums for a decade and then expect to be covered for your losses? That is exactly what happened, and the net result is the taxpayers will cover the cost. Had the banks been paying their premiums the FDIC could have had hundreds of millions in reserve to deal with the financial crises, instead you will pay for the additional cost.

Essentially, FDIC is taking your tax dollars to replace money that was lost in the very unsafe institutions that Congress is inducing you to invest in by offering FDIC assurances that they are safe. We are not only robbing Peter to pay Paul, we are robbing them both to pay for the propaganda that says Peter was never robbed and Paul never needed to be paid. Many claim that this is the fault of deregulation, but I disagree. Deregulation is a good thing for financial markets and the People in general, the issue is you cannot let banks invest in whatever they like and still back them up with taxpayer money. We cannot pretend that market risk does not exist in any investment including banks, which is what the FDIC tries to do. It is not only illogical to ignore the existence of market risk in banks, it is getting damn expensive.

• The insolvent and incompetent Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac)
  

Created by an act of the US legislature in 1970, the purpose of the FHLMC was to expand the secondary market for mortgages which would increase the money available for home mortgage lending and new home purchases. While not directly a part of the government, the FHLMC is regulated by regulated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and is another obvious “brainchild” of Congress. If there was a real need for an expanded secondary mortgage market, entrepreneurs would step up and do it without a quasi-government corporation to show them the need. Rather than trusting that the basic supply and demand of capitalism really works if you leave it alone, the FHLMC is now in receivership (which they call “Conservatorship”) as another failed bright idea from Capitol Hill. The cost to taxpayers…nearly a trillion dollars.

Through a convoluted path Congress and a special interest group known as ACORN caused the financial crises which resulted in the failure of the FHLMC. Banks were increasingly pushed by both Congress and ACORN to make loans that were not financially sound or guided by any reasonable lending practices. In the early 1990s mortgages became driven by an “affirmative-action lending policy” through legislation like the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). In the mid 90′s risky sub-prime and what had evolved into a quota based lending system were pushing banks to stomach much higher risks in the normally safer home mortgage sector. Home ownership did increase substantially among minorities and the working poor over the past 20 years as a direct result of these policies. Additionally, the relaxed lending standards fed a construction boom that fueled an otherwise anemic US economy during the same period. Unfortunately, you can only get away with breaking the rules of common sense for so long. These were the mortgages to go critical in massive numbers. One might consider these “affirmative-action loans” to be the hot air which inflated the housing bubble. For a complete history of the housing bubble and how Obama played a key role in its creation at American Thinker.

• The Environmental Protection Agency
  

Reviled throughout the 90′s as the finder of federally protected “wetlands” became the modern equivalent of federal claim jumping when it came to private property, the EPA was duped by bogus climate data on global warming. The entire agency was so easily fooled by one person, a Professor Michael Mann, who skewed the data points on a temperature chart by simply and highly selectively omitting roughly 98% of geological time from the sample data. It was at best an honest effort to deceive the human species into thinking itself culpable of attempted “Gia-cide” and inflicting lasting damage to the planets delicate ecosystem. In my opinion, the smoking gun of gross incompetence within the EPA quickly paled in the light of the apparent failure of the entire staff of the Agency and the majority of Congress as well to remember that carbon dioxide is what most animals exhale and plants inhale in the cooperative cycle learned in 5^th grade science. Therefore, we can only conclude that all these individuals are not as smart as a 5^th grader.

Another EPA critical fail occurred in 2000 when the agency required certain regions of the nation to sell gasoline that contains methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE), a gasoline additive that was supposed to help the environment by reducing ozone. Ignoring a 1999 National Research Council study, requested and funded by the EPA, which found that while MTBE “do reduce some pollutants from motor vehicle emissions, the oxygenates appear to have little impact on lowering ozone levels. MTBE’s ineffectiveness as an anti-pollutant was only the tip of the EPA’s regulatory miscarriage. MTBE poses significant health risks. The liquid is highly soluble in water and has been detected in approximately 20% of the ground water where the reformulated gasoline is sold, while there is only a 2% detection rate in non-reformulated areas. At least 10,000 groundwater sites throughout California are now contaminated according to a University of California study. The additive produces turpentine like taste and odor to water, and is believed to be a human carcinogen resulting in maternal and fetal defects in lab animals. It also causes headaches, nausea, vomiting, disorientation and eye irritation upon exposure. The use of MTBE in RFG has also been shown to increase formaldehyde tailpipe emissions (a human carcinogen) by 13%. Adding insult to injury the price of this EPA required noxious gasoline is 10 cents per gallon higher and results in a 2-3% reduction in mileage.

• The Department of Education has achieved universal and equal access to regime sanctioned ignorance. In the 1970′s, Johnny could not read, but 40 years of Congressional oversight later and Johnny cannot even reason. On the positive side of the equation, we have instilled a superbly over developed and markedly undeserved sense of self-esteem in Johnny. He is so blissfully ignorant and totally unaware of how unprepared he is to cope with the rest of his life. It seems to me that our educational goals over the past thirty years have succeeded in reproducing what the Church of Scientology would call a state of “clear”. Achieving “clear” is an important step in clearing your mind of obstacles that might impede the Church of Scientology cult from furthering their goals of controlling your mind and your money.
  
  • I been asked which side the Japanese were on in World War II by a high school Junior.
    
  • Simple math such as $10.00 -$7.63= $2.37, is beyond many high school students without a calculator.
    
  • Moreover people in Congress cannot read simple English such as the phrase, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” They seem to think the word “people” means “state “and that the Second Amendment is a calling for a National Guard.
    

  Feel good legislation, such as “No Child Left Behind”, mixed with increasing federal control in setting educational standards has succeeded in alienating the parents and condemned the students to the lowest common denominator in education. “No Child Left Behind” resulted in no students moving forward. More poorly conceived and always underfunded educational mandates colloquially referred to as “initiatives” have waxed and waned in cult like popularity for decades. Many left only the increased administrative progress, compliance, and reporting burdens but little more as their only real product. Most of these quietly dissolved into more things of slogans than substance. Those programs that left bigger marks upon the map were generally the ones that failed in epic proportions like “outcome based” education. Education needs to be the synergistic result of three essential components Parents, Teachers and Students, nothing more and nothing less. If one of the three parts is missing the system will fail. Try to add more parts to it the system will fail.
  

   
   

   
   

• The latest shining stars upon the crown of “Classic Cons” is a dead heat (in the very literal sense) between the farce of the Afghan Interim Government and the sham of the Iraqi Interim Government. Perhaps I am mistaken in thinking that history will not judge our actions upon the ultimate success or failure of properly delineating the 12-foot tall cement barriers we have used to carve Baghdad into a dozen or so petty duchies reminiscent of medieval walled cities that any former East German could appreciate. At this point, this seems to be the strategy of the American military command at this time. We are fighting to build something more closely resembling a kennel rather than a free nation out of Iraq. If we gain northing from the lessons learned in the Middle East we should take with us the sports axiom that says, “If you poor strategy cannot win on the home field, your poor strategy won’t succeed on the road no matter how swiftly (shock and awe) you can the execution and how long you can logistically support that poor strategy.”
  

   
   

Here is when I ask the 4.3 trillion dollar question,

Given their long documented and consistent history of failure, fraud, and financial fiascos, are these the people you want controlling the future of your healthcare?

Perhaps we could extrapolate this query further to ponder the question are these the people you want controlling the future of your country?

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