Why Is There A Health Care Reform Stalemate? Because There's A Language Disconnect, ...!

With auto insurance, every new driver can find auto insurance. Differences in rates depending on age are understood by everyone as routine.

After one accident maybe there's a rate increase depending on fault. After three or more accidents the driver gets penalized, the rates increase or the driver might get dropped. Even in these cases, the actions of the auto insurance companies are not only acceped but the public, tho maybe grudglingly, empathizes with the decisions as "just business". Even the driver's family usually steps in with a supportive "hey, cousin Bob maybe it's time you start using the BUS".

So cousin Bob loses his auto insurance and stops driving. Is that the end of Bob's getting around town? NO! Because Bob has ...OPTIONS!!!

Cousin Bob can use the public bus and can still get out and about, and affordably too. And everyone is happy or at least OK - the families, and Cousin Bob. And no one blames the auto insurance companies who are happier than a pig in XXX to get rid of the risk.

Now substitute "health care" for "auto" in this story and the problem becomes clear. America is not being served well by an insurance-model health care system where unhealthy, younger clients are simply dropped like bad drivers....because there is no option to go to! No one can or should expect Cousin Bob to simply die once he gets too sick to insure. But, like with auto insurance, a public health care option seems natural and should be part of the health care picture. In America, though, there is no health care option to private insurance unless one can qualify for medicare.

And the problem in Washington is the public option is a politically taboo subject for the Republicans....so, stalemate..and it is not even possible to discuss an option.

The result of trying to dodge the public health care option is a series of awkward "patch-quilt" attempts to create substitutes for a public option without really having a public option or even without having an option to for-profit insurance. Thus, the stumbling forth of "mandated" insurance which is an absurd frankenstein of self-delusion and words-stuck-in-mouth.

And this is the point of why all this health care reform debate has been so lengthy, traumatic and seemingly without solution. There is a LANGUAGE DISCONNECT.

INSURANCE IS NOT COVERAGE!! Health care insurance companies do not exist to serve the public or the nation. They exist to make profit, either that or go under.

Health care insurers operate just like any other insurance companies: if you become a risk (get sick) the companies will drop you! Ha, you say?! Well, that's what their stockholders expect them to do...plus, it's all above board and written down in the company charter.

The health care debate should not be about insurance. The health care insurance sector is doing just fine, thank you. But, America's health care system is gonzo, too expensive (17% of GDP), not covering everyone (40+ million uninsured), and getting worse.

The solution? First get the language straight, then apply logical analogies like the above story. We need public alternatives to private health care insurance, or better - a public, one source health care system.

President Obama's First Year, Pt. 2: The Economy and Recession (and MBA Follies #)

Right out front, this blogger believes one or more large banking/investment companies short-sold America into a recession. Maybe the same dynamics accounted for the Great Depression of the 30's, maybe not. However, this time around the culprits are for the most part self-admitted short sellers, but they claim, so far, they didn't do anything wrong (which claim might be supported on one of those in-crowd, yes-there-is-a-fox-in-the-henhouse-but-it's-here-to-keep-the-peace kind of rationales).

"Short-selling"? Essentially, the money sector principals (e.g., Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan-Chase) while agressively selling the sub-prime derivatives of shaky motgages, were betting those same derivatives would fail. The big trick, though, was different departments in the same companies were engaging in these cross-interest activities, which was supposed to protect these oompanies from conflict of interest which is a mild way of saying they hoped to stay out of jail for inside trading.

So the key point of this preface is the question: did G-S, and/or JPMC banking departments "cross the hall" and discuss their sub-primes with their brother departments, the special investment groups, who were structuring and touting their own investment issues whose eventually stupendous financial success depended on the eventual tanking of the sub-primes. (Take a breath.)

One assumes any congressional "look-see" commission will begin with finding if cross-talk happened. But one never knows does one?

And just why did the sub-prime market tank? Well, mainly because of the MBA Folly of assuming real estate prices would climb forever. (As if the "dot-com" tanking had happened in another universe.) But then there was another factor that played a big-big factor in blinding good-minded MBA types - the Magic Formula. Just about every business fairy tale in the last 20 years has a magic formula tucked somewhere down in the bedding. And, MBA types do love their formulas...makes thing so tidy and easy to remember. This magic formula was not understood, or it was misunderstood or it was just quoted by name just to look savvy, by nearly everyone. Plus, plus, the formula wasn't even developed by a business type, just a small-world-view mathematician...and you know how dweeby they can be.

But let's not blame the honorable mathematician, his formula checked out...within the parameters of strict mathematics validation. The problem was, it is claimed, no one plugged into this sturdy formula the simple matrix option where the grand upward market price trend would somehow, heaven forbid, turn sour, i.e. reverse and downtrend. Maybe, (?) this is forgiveable in the then enthusiasm of all the MBAs making so much commission, but more likely it is not forgiveable. Instead, it is likely someone did the dastardly thing, plugged in a downturn, which occurs in the nasty real-world, and got scared out of their mind since what they saw would cause angels to trade in their wings.

More to come....

President Obama's First Year, Pt 1: From The Bottom of the Pit, The Spirit of South Carolina's Zombie Racism (Red Shirt Vigilantes) Rides Again

Mr Obama's First year was a rocky ride. Racism surfaced, to put it mildly. Town meetings were clouded by gun-carrying, political paramilitary types and some of the the former Dixie states threatened secession. 

The economic collapse was revealed to be far worse than imagined and Wall street behaved as if it is not even part of American soil. 

An overdue proposal to reform American health care was met with outrageous distortions and even bald lying issuing from opposition media and pols. 

And then it appeared the President earned good points on the promise to make his administration a transparent one, but the machinations of Wall Street big banks and moguls were so distasteful and tricky and greedy, that it was almost too much for the mind to bear. 

All in all, one imagined that most new Presidents might rue being elected in such times. But Mr Obama keeps at his goals with diligence, endurance and a kind of Spartan doggedness and grind that shows promise of successfully meeting and overcoming these challenges. 

Personally, while dismayed by the above events and especially the extremes of hate, I can only hope that they allowed America to vent and finally scour clean the last remnants of racial animosity and leftover Civil War resentment. It would seem, hopefully, that such spewing can't occur again after being so exposed. 

I will offer some analyses and opinions on each of the above topics in future blogs. First, with regard to racism, this blogger wants to convey his disgust at the hateful and sometimes extreme utterances from some of the political and media opponents of President Obama during his first year. What was dismaying was that those utterances sometimes received a kind of chuckling support from the media corporations and opposition politicians. 

Along with the racial slurs, there emerged from the swampy muck of the old South, the South Carolina brand of post-reconstruction, vicious prejudice, and hate that peaked almost a century ago in the racially demeaning "Jim Crow" era: discrimination, segregation, and lynchings. Sadly, this hate was also given open and tacit support by some American religious groups and ministers...as is happening against Mr. Obama.

From these and other sources, this first year of Mr. Obama's administration was a time of America showing a racist face that surely frightened and dismayed other countries who have been 'told' about the American dream society of everyone being equal under the Constitution. But, in the light of such regressive cant, how could America hope to maintain an international image of fairness, hope, and democratic success. 

 The hateful speech from some right-wing media persons and politicians was/is apparently a new national buy-in to the media's profits-rationalized argument that hate speech is just entertainment. 

The key to this deception apparently derives from the speakers of such hate pasting on their faces a goofy, lopsided smile and an open-eyed, fake innocence - ala Limbaugh, Beck, Michelle Bachmann, Hannity, Savage, etc - as they spew their poison. 

These personages and their comrades directed such raw, hate-filled utterances on mainstream media, directed personally at the president and sometimes even at his family, that it seemed America had retreated 100 years to the rhetoric of Jim Crow lynch mobs. These racist utterances were deliberately scripted to slander the President and intended to incite a mob reaction. To claim otherwise is grossly cynical. 

Give credit to President Obama, however, that he did not show a reaction and seek revenge or engage in trading insults.

To some of his supporters, the President's patience was seen as too much turning of the cheek. But, one has to remember that a President sits for all citizens, so Mr Obama's patience has been appropriate and shows wisdom. 

Sadly, the hateful utterances undeniably 'call' for killing innocent people. To argue against this conclusion is Satanic. But note well: although the fake-smile routine seems to have stymied American good taste and defied slander laws, several European countries appeared to have learned painful lessons from past demagogues and showed an ability to see through the faked smiles. The big example was that the UK showed no hesitation in seeing Savage, Limbaugh, Beck and company for what they are - callously unconcerned and deliberate wreckers of civil stability - and denied an entry visa to Michael Savage and Fred Phelps, an extremist right-wing minister. 

From these two and others in their group, we hear shouts of "secession" and "states' rights" ... which exposes "States' Rights" for what it really means - a shrill call to the wearing of robes and hoods, and circling the lynching tree. 

Also, the wearing of guns at the President's town meetings and the shouting of "Liar" by the South Carolina Congressman (Joe Wilson) is a strategy first laid down in print in post-Civil War Dixie in 1870 by the Dixie states in their efforts to squelch the voting of newly freed African-Americans by intimidation (showing of guns at town meetings and political rallies) and murder, if intimidation was not effective. Here is an excerpt from a 1876 South Carolina poster giving instructions to the white supremacist vigilante group, the South Carolina Red Shirts, how to intimidate and disrupt town meetings - the similarity with tactics used recently to disrupt Mr Obama's town meeting can't be denied:

2. That a Roster must be made of every white and of every Negro in the Townships and returned immediately to the County Executive Committee. 3. .... be armed with rifles and pistols and such other arms as they may command..... . . . 13. "... soon as their leaders or speakers begin to speak ..., tell them then and there to their faces, that they are liars, thieves and rascals, and are only trying to mislead the ignorant Negroes and if you get a chance get upon the platform and address the Negroes. 14. In speeches to Negroes you must remember that argument has no effect upon them; they can only be influenced by their fears, superstitions and cupidity. . . . Treat them so as to show them, you are the superior race, and that their natural position is that of subordination to the white man. . . . 16. Never threaten a man individually. If he deserves to be threatened, the necessities of the times require that he should die. . . . 29. Every club must be uniformed in a RED SHIRT and they must be sure and wear it upon all public meetings and particularly on the day of election. 30. Secrecy should shroud all of our transactions. Let not your left hand know what your right hand does.

(Source: William A. Sheppard, editor, Red Shirts Remembered: Southern Brigadiers of the Reconstruction Period (Ruralist Press, 1940), pp. 46-50, reprinted in Paul D. Escott, et al, eds., Major Problems in the History of the American South, vol. 2, second ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), pp. 37-38.) 

 A final comment on this sub-subject: the opponents of Mr. Obama are well-protected by their Constitutional rights to challenge, debate, and strongly criticize the policies and political philosophies of the election winner; however, it has been crystal clear that Mr. Obama's opponents haven't anything substantial to offer by themselves, and don't want to expose to close scrutiny their shabbily constructed, obsolete, dangerous laissez-faire "economics" and 1840's style States Rights' laments. 

We were offered, jnstead, quick glimpses of shrouds and tatters, dangling in broken windows of Tara, with ghosts of night riders with smoking torches astride skeletal steeds.

2012, A Different View

Rather than the current end-time gloom and doom, the coming 2012 date should be a event for celebration and marvel at the grandeur of the universe and majesty of its great cycles. 2012 comes around only every 26,000 years! And we are here to share this mystical rebirth of times.

Health Care: Insurance vs. Coverage = Apples and Oranges

It occurred to me that it is hard to make sense of the debate on health care because the various points of view are bogged down in the muck trying to compare apples and oranges, to use a good analogy. The debaters indiscriminately refer to "insurance" (apples) and "coverage" (oranges) as if they are the same.....but they are not the same.

Nutshell view: health care INSURANCE is not health COVERAGE!!

More: health care INSURANCE is a PRODUCT not a SERVICE!!

CONSEQUENCE: when the health care insurance businesses "cull" bad risks (get rid of very ill patients and cancel their insurance) they are doing what comes naturally as for-profit businesses by doing what is beneficial to their stockholders, maximizing profits. Insurance businesses survive and grow by this practice, so dont blame them for it...blame Americans-as-a-group short-sightedness and blame the lack of understanding of the english language on the part of the media, politicians and citizens. Everyone with an open mouth is, with only few exceptions, making this mistake.

CONCLUSION: America needs a 100% health care COVERAGE system. This can only come by a one-payer national service. The health care insurance businesses still have a role as sellers of insurance policies for extra-ordinary health emergency/specialist treatments.

Serious stuff: what ever happened to the congressional assistqant staff that would have remembered all of this and been able to distinguish "insurance" from "coverage"? This arm of Congress was apparently disbanded for eithepolitical or economizing reasons, or both. The cost to the nation will greatly exceed the cost of continuing that assistance staff. Also, this paralysis of public policy-making is the result of the nation having bought into, at least subliminally, the ideology of privitization beginning with Reagan. The result is as if every American resource is reduce to equivalency as a market item - citizens as labor, oil and minerals, meat animals, real estate,... everything. America seems to have lost the concept of itself as a nation of people first and above all.

Public Policy Follies, #1: Whence Cometh the Recession and Health Care Crisis

This is written in the spirit of not so much as to be fair-minded, but to express my wonderment at the current wringing of hands and woe-crying from the media and public about the "apparent" causes of the current recession,the health care crisis, and the supposed "greed and excess of business, that I felt the whole picture needed to be discussed and perhaps explained. I am not necessarily pro-business but like to think I am clear minded in some areas, or try to be.

Our business institutions are not parasitic!! In truth, they are staffed by human beings who learn to do their jobs well. As businesses, they are doing what they are supposed to do – maximize profit. They were granted permissions to excess, and freed from common sense regulatory boundaries, by deregulations granted by a series of free-market ideological administrations ... and “voila” here we are deep in the muck of confusion. We've become entrapped in an ideological mire of our own, maybe misguided, making...believing that we can have a "free" market that we can just walk away from and it will govern itself. Wrong! A simple understanding of human nature would tell us, "WRONG". "For-profit", "Privatizing" and de-regulating have naturally given us "health care" INSURANCE institutions that pay most attention to the profit line and least to actual health COVERAGE". De-regulating banking and investment opened the gates to rampant “greed” - profit seeking, searching for regulatory and tax loop holes (“cheating”?), and big rewards – what businesses normally do, and eventual collapse of the economy. What do you expect!!!! Come on.

If you deregulate the business environment for these institutions, you get the plainly obvious - a collection of runaway (but focused) bulls in a china shop. Perhaps more to the point, you can't hope that lions can be made to like oatmeal.

So what is the problem? Less than well-thought out, though perhaps sincere, privatizations and deregulations have given us the current recession, the current health care problem, and more public policy confusions. The solution? Stop the crying and repair the financial regulatory fences and estqablish a public health care "coverage" through a one-payer system. Then let the business Bulls play to their hearts’ content and restore the economy. We can then watch the show in safety.

MBA Follies Revisited: The Public Still Can't Be Treated as a Labor Pool

This blurb continues from an earlier commentary (MBA Follies #1, Feb 6, 2009) on the folly of business modeling in ignoring the importance of the citizen and the power of the vote, aka the public-as-labor fallacy.

Recently, Paul Krugman and Robert Reich convincingly observethat corporate America appears rosier and seem to be coming out of the Recession, i.e., "business" trends are positive. But they also admit that the big picture, which inludes the good of the public, is not so rosy. Like other economists, they lament that classical Economics' modeling doesn't provide the language to deal with how the public is getting along nor the power behind this lag. This is a truly great weakness in these times because a democratic nation is not just a business. The public can't fired or let drift like a labor pool without putting both business and governments in peril.

Why? Because the public (unlike labor), doesn't just go away to another country or a vague "elsewhere". This is the weakness of classical economics - it ignores the public weal and most importantly, the public vote which is the game changer from management vs. labor to the nation's reason for existence, to further the interests of the citizen..their quality of life, happiness etc. At the end of the day, the vote determines whether the nation's insitutions, government and business, have earned their right to continue, i.e., have they adequately contributed to the national good, the "common weal".

The vote is not just countervailing power that brings public labor into par with business, The vote is the can't-be-ignored economic factor even though it can't be modeled. The vote can dethrone businesses with regulations, and price-profit-salary caps. This is real Stopping Power. The vote is the true reality of American affairs.

It is difficult to model the interests of the citizen because the public weal is not completely measurable, i.e., it can't easily be be quantified. Reich and Krugman hint at this notion, but even tho they are empathetic they are still students of classical economic models. Galbraith, Samuelson?
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