One Trick Pony

Harry Reid revealed what many of us already know; that when it comes to health care reform the Democrats are a one trick pony. Their only idea for fixing the issue, or any issue, is a government take-over, also known as a public option. That's it. If that doesn't happen then they are out of ideas.

Harry Reid has said that there is no purpose to health care reform if there is not a public option, and yet the public support for that public option is dwindling -- pretty rapidly. According to previous statements by the President this means you want the status quo, but that's not true either.

The "my way or the highway" statements of the president have indicated that if you don't support the public option then you don't support reform. This must be because they have no other ideas, no inkling of how to institute reform without the government taking over the industry. The problem is that even though they are out of ideas, other people aren't and yet the Dems are unwilling to listen to anything that does not include their one and only public option solution.

They are definitely a one trick pony and their only trick is to take a big ole crap on the American people. Maybe it's time they learn a new one.

Caps on Insurance Company Profits

In House Bill 3200 there is a provision that states your insurance company will have to re-imburse you if they made too much money (according to the government of course) in the premium Vs payout ratio. So what will they do in the years, currently paid for with those overruns, when the payout exceeds the premium? Nothing would be my guess. So here again we have the government dictating the profits that a private company can make.

This is from page 24 of bill.
A qualified health benefits plan shall meet a medical loss ratio as defined by the Commissioner. For any plan year in which the qualified health benefits plan does not meet such medical loss ratio, QHBP offering entity shall provide in a manner specified by the Commissioner for rebates to enrollees of payment sufficient to meet such loss ratio.

It does specify that it is based on a benefit year so there is no provision for balancing the good years against the bad; nor does it say exactly who is going to be calculating this ratio or how.

This sounds an awful lot like government dictating privat industry profits to me. What do you think?

Those Greedy Doctors

In speeches promoting the need for government oversight and cost control of our health care, Obama has accused our doctors of willful negligence in their care of patients in order to make more money. Does he honestly believe this or are these just exaggerated scenarios? Either way, they're insulting to our medical professionals.

At a press conference in July he said that a doctor will remove a kid's tonsils because he can make more money subjected a child to an unnecessary surgery than be treating the sore throat. That's a nice view of the medical professionals isn't it? But perhaps that was just a bad example. Maybe he didn't really mean it; he just misspoke. Isn't that the excuse we get from Press Sec Robert Gibbs. The president misspoke. OK, I can live with that. So what did Obama do to make up for that characterization of doctors?

At the recent town hall he said that a doctor will allow a patient's diabetes to advance untreated until his foot needs to be amputated because he can make more money depriving a patient of a limb than by treating the disease itself. So we've gone from taking out tonsils unnecessarily to shopping off limbs, all out of greed. You've got to be kidding me!

Does Obama know the difference between a GP and a surgeon? First, if you go to your GP for a sore throat unless he is an ENT he's not going to be the one to take your tonsils out. Second, your GP treating you for Diabetes is definitely not going to be the one to remove your foot. Does Obama think that doctors are giving kick-backs to each other? I can hear it now, "Hey, if you let your patient slide and send the amputation my way I'll hook you up with an extra case of tongue depressors."

I don't know what kind of doctors Obama has been surrounding himself with, but these aren't the kind of doctors I've ever been exposed to. My doctors harass me to do what I need to do in order to stay healthy; they do not, nor have they ever, encouraged me to be in bad health so they can make more money off of me. If anything they've put me through more tests than I would have liked in order to find something early.

If I'm interpreting the message from Obama correctly there are three things that Obama believes.
1) The insurance companies are evil and cackle with glee each time they deny a claim.
2) Doctors go to the Sweeney Todd Medical Academy where they learn they can make more money by hacking than healing.
3) Government is the answer to all questions and concerns.

And this is what is referred to as reasonable discussion and rational debate.

Pre-Existing Conditions

If you can't get insurance because of a pre-existing condition you should probably shop around. There are many plans that will not apply a pre-existing condition clause, and for those that do, most will waive that if you had insurance before your current effective date.

The real purpose of a pre-existing condition clause is to prevent people from only spending the money on insurance after they know they need it. Insurance is supposed to be a "just in case" situation and the premiums are based on the risk of the health care costs you will accrue. The idea is that you'll pay while using it little and that money will be there if you need to use it a lot.

Is it fair to the company which will cover you to go without insurance until you know you need it, and then expect them to pay for everything you've let go for years? I can already hear many people saying, yes it is, those evil insurance company bastards just want to steal my money and not cover me. This might be a slight exaggeration.

The healthy people paying their insurance premiums are paying for the sick people paying their premiums. It all goes into one big pool and the insurance company prays that they don't have to pay out more than they take in. The pre-existing clause is designed to help with that goal.

Would you wait until after a tornado struck your home to obtain homeowners insurance and then expect the new company to pay for the damage done before your coverage began? Waiting until you're sick to try to obtain insurance is basically the same thing. The tornado has struck and now you're saying "oh shit I better get covered."

HIPPA regulations currently limit the wait time for a pre-existing condition to be covered to 12 months, but most companies will waive this, again, if you've had insurance previously. This is due to the probability that you've been receiving treatment for it and have not just allowed it to get worse (and exponentially more expensive to address).

Insurance companies are companies; they do not print their own money and they do not have limitless resources. If there are no pre-existing clauses the alternative is to set the premium based on the anticipated expenses, which means that your coverage will cost you. A lot. The funny thing is that people who decide not to get coverage until they're sick expect to pay the same premium as a healthy person, and if you shop around enough you may be able to find a company with a wide enough margin to give that to you, but don't count on it.

Elimination of a pre-existing clause while simultaneously keeping the premium low is like telling somebody you'll pay them $500 a month for the use of their credit card and then charging $20,000 a month to it. You're leaving that person holding the bag for the extra $15,000; is that really fair? Maybe if they have lots of other people paying $500 per month and charging less than that. It's a big maybe.

So what's the answer to this issue? Simple, get coverage while you're healthy.

Fearmongering

We've been hearing a lot about fearmongering as it relates to any political debate. Right now the opposition to government run health care are being accused of spreading misinformation and fearmongering; so what exactly does that mean?

Wikipedia defines it as: is the use of fear to influence the opinions and actions of others towards some specific end. The feared object or subject is sometimes exaggerated, and the pattern of fear mongering is usually one of repetition, in order to continuously reinforce the intended effects of this tactic, sometimes in the form of a vicious circle.[citation needed]

Merriem Webster defines a Fearmonger as somebody who incites alarms needlessly.

If we use the Wikipedia definition then isn't anybody who says, "hey this bad thing could happen" considered a fearmonger?

If we use the Webster definition then is pointing out potential and probable issues around government health care really raising a needless alarm?

The biggest question though may be why it's ok to be a fearmonger when you oppose something, but bad to have a fearmonger opposing what you support? For example, does anybody remember the attempt to fix social security by phasing it out; giving the young people another option while leaving people over a certain age on the social security program? What happened to that? Opponents screamed that seniors would have their benefits taken from them and be left to die in the streets. Completelly untrue according to the information proposed but I guess that wasn't bad fearmongering because it was done by the same people crying about fearmongering now. But what is the fearmongering now? Is saying that there will be rationing of healthcare in the US based on what has happened in every other nation who has tried this type of program really fearmongering? Is telling the truth as you see it, calling out a consequence there is a high probability of occuring, fearmongering?

So here's how I see it -- Telling both faced lies about a proposed legislation and using those lies to scare the shit out of the general population is not fearmongering, but showing the true and actual potential problems of a piece of legislation is bad fearmongering.

Do I have this wrong?

Obama On Immigration Reform

While at the North American Summit, President Obama addressed the issue of illegal immigration. The clips below are from the Washington Post.

"Wrapping up the two-day meeting, Obama said that there needs to be "a pathway to citizenship" for millions of illegal immigrants in the United States, and that the system must be reworked to avoid tensions with Mexico. Without it, he said, Mexicans will keep crossing the border in dangerous ways and employers will continue exploiting workers."

Avoid tensions with Mexico? So having a secure boarder might create tensions with our neighboring nation, but we'll pay no attention to the tensions created within our own nation over NOT securing the boarder. Isn't this like saying that though the neighbors keep breaking in to my house I'm not going to lock my doors because my neighbors may not like it? Doesn't make a whole lot of sense does it?

Mexicans will keep crossing the boarder in dangerous ways? So what we're really interested in here is making it less dangerous for the Mexicans to violate our immigration laws? I know that's my top priority when it comes to immigration reform. It's so dangerous to break our laws that we should just do away with the laws all together. That will make everything so much nicer because right now it's just tragic what they have to go through to bypass all of our immigration laws and boarder patrols. I think it is tragic what people suffer when violating our laws, but we can't forget that they wouldn't be going through any of it if they weren't violating our laws.

Employers will continue to exploit workers? The workers of course have no culpability in their own exploitation; or should we make it easier for them to get false documentation so they aren't exploited. It's just so unfair that we don't give somebody who shouldn't be here taking the job of a citizen the same way we treat the citizen. How rude.

"We can create a system in which you have . . . an orderly process for people to come in, but we're also giving an opportunity for those who are already in the United States to be able to achieve a pathway to citizenship so that they don't have to live in the shadows," Obama said during an hour-long news conference at the Cabañas Cultural Center in downtown Guadalajara. "Am I going to be able to snap my fingers and get this done? No. This is going to be difficult."

So they don't have to live in the shadows? How dare we force the people who break into our country without documentation, violating our immigration and labor laws and putting stress on our educational and healthcare systems, to live in the shadows.

The common theme in these statements from Obama is that none of the fault for the illegal immigration issue lies with the illegal immigrants. It's all our fault and the poor illegal immigrants are being unfairly forced into dangerous environments to get here illegally, exploited when they try to work illegally, and live in the shadows like a criminal just because they're here illegally.

So the people who violate the laws are the victims and the people who seek to uphold the law are the criminals. Isn't that typical.

If You Build It...

I just watched the Nancy Pelosi weekly press conference (have I mentioned that I love working from home)and healthcare was addressed. The congress is looking mainly for a government run option which would follow their pattern of spending as much money as they can as fast as they can.

When asked about the cost of the public option that the majority support, Pelosi indicated that the Congressional Budget Office has not factored in the savings from prevention and early intervention, and that they need to look for every bit of savings they can find. Savings, savings, savings, is what she said. But that savings would be very difficult to calculate. Should we base the savings on the assumption that if you build it they will come? There are many people, like me, who just don't go to the doctor regularly. And I have preventative care as part of my insurance. How then can we calculate the cost of the savings when we don't know how many people would actually use their new preventative benefit? History has already shown us that their estimates on the costs of their programs is usually way off, and this could be why. If they are going to count on savings that won't actually ever come to pass, we should be concerned.

My other concern is their insistence that a bill, any bill, must be passed this summer. This continues their trend of being more concerned with doing something fast than doing it right. Look at how that worked out with the stimulus package. We had to pass it without reading it so the money could get into the system immediately. And 4 months later only 10% of the money has been spent. Shouldn't we instead take the time to ensure that a program which will impact the country for decades, if not forever, is the best possible bill that it can be? Shouldn't they be looking for a plan that delivers the best solution for the lowest cost instead of trying to cook the books to make the plan they want more palatable to the people? Shouldn't this fall under the old cliche of "if it's worth doing it's worth doing right"?

I am very concerned with the way Congress is spending our money. It appears, to me at least, that they are using our money to fund the growth of the government instead of the growth of the economy. And should we burden an already struggling economy with another $1 trillion in debt?

Delay is preferable to error. - Thomas Jefferson

Another Stimulus?

So the white house admits that they had their collective heads up their asses when it came to the economy. Didn't know it was that bad, and didn't write the stimulus package right. So now they're saying, since we screwed this first stimulus package up so royally, we'd like a do over.

So they want us to let them try again and see if they do better this time. Problem is that the first stimulus has only had 10% of it's stimulus money spent. So if they pass another one, will THAT one get money into the economy now? Doubt it. After making an $800 billion dollar mistake we should just give them another try?

Maybe, just maybe, they should have taken the time to actually READ the first one. That might have helped. But they had to do it right now and get that money into the system. Uh huh. So here we are 4 months later, and 10% of that money that had to be spent so quickly that we couldn't read how, has actually been spent.

Of course they also claim the stimulus is working, even though unemployment is at 9.5% now and their green shoots have withered and died. But still they claim it would be worse without that stimulus. Of course there is no proof, no evidence, and no way to prove this.

Another stimulus package is the height of stupidity. But then again, isn't stupidity what Washington does best?

The Caribou Call to Arms

Let me just start by saying that I don't want Sarah Palin to run for President. I think she would do a much better job of inspiring the people and holding the politicians accountable when she doesn't have other duties to distract her or compromise her. I think instead that she should play to her strengths, and say what you will about her, she does have some.

In a blog on The KOOK's Manifesto, I commented that I wanted her out there throwing a bucket of ice water in the faces of the complacent American populace to wake them up and make them see what's going on, while simultaneously delivering a series of bitch slaps to the Republican party and the old politics as usual rut we're stuck in.

Call her Caribou Barbie if you want, call her an idiot, call her a quitter, the woman still has the charisma to really reach out and speak to the American people. This is where her folksy charm, you betcha and a wink come in to play. She can speak TO the American people, not AT them. And what we need now is a wake-up call so WE can take back our country from the endless pursuit of ever growing government power. We don't need somebody in a single office anywhere near as much as we need the people to pay attention to those in EVERY office. We need somebody to remind us all of the great principles on which this country was founded and inspire the populace to stand up and fight for them all. Let's set all the distracting social issues aside and send them to the states where they belong, and instead focus on a federal government that is growing at a rate that makes cancer look sluggish. Focus on the irresponsible spending of OUR money with out even an attempt at efficiency. Focus on reminding our politicians that they actually work for us and we're not afraid to send them packing. This is what we really need.

So if it's going to be Caribou Barbie that can put the focus of the American people where it needs to be, well then, I'll have to learn how to do a caribou call. If I had the least idea what a caribou actually sounds like, I'd start practicing now.

America's Addiction - And Not To Oil

We hear a lot about America's addiction to oil, but she has another addiction. One much more destructive to her. America has an addiction to government breast milk.

The breast milk is the drug that has been sweeping the nation since the 1960's when the war on poverty created welfare. Like many other drugs, this one is for a specific purpose and helps the individual when used as directed. However, when abused it has the same bad results as the other drugs on the market.

So what are the bad effects of this drug? For one, it is very, very addictive. The longer you suck on the government tit, the more palatable the milk becomes and the more difficult it is to give it up. That milk saps your ambition, your desire to work and keeps you in a continuing state of poverty. It propels people to violence as they seek more than what the milk can give them, and are driven to find something, anything, to fill their time and their days. It also causes children to be born into this addiction, thereby perpetuating generations of families addicted to the government tit and unable to break free. Many know nothing but this addiction and can't see what it is doing to them or how much better life without it would be.

There are those that manage to kick the habit and go on to live very productive lives. But as with any rehab, the percentage of addicts who recover is very small.

And yet, unlike an addiction to any other drug with such negative effects when misused, we do not arrest the dealers for this drug. Why? Because the dealers are the different levels of government. Instead of being encouraged to free themselves from this addiction, the government, the pusher, does their best to convince the addict that they will take care of them. That more will come and this time it will be better. And this drug is cheap, you get the fix every month and all you have to do for it is cast a vote. A very fair trade. This is how the pusher keeps the user addicted and keeps their power over the user.

This drug must only be used as directed. The failure to do so has such debilitating effects on individuals and all of society. And yet, instead of encouraging people to enter rehab to break the drug's hold, the government is always working to find more versions of the drug in order to get more people addicted. Just like any other drug dealer would do.