Canadian Health Care is NOT single payer

there seems to be an inconvenient truth that exposes a lie in the gazillion comments being made to further health care reform

it seems there is a thriving private insurance industry in Canada

from:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/balyasny-bets-against-healhcare-reform-2009-08-04#comment2591443

"While the health-care system in Canada ensures that virtually everyone living here has access to medical services in any part of the country, it doesn't cover everything. That's where private, or extended, health insurance comes in – it is meant to pick up where your government plan ends. Private health insurance is not the same as emergency health – or travel medical – insurance that you may consider purchasing when you travel outside Canada. Rather, it covers the day-to-day surgeries and treatments that can add up to big bills."

and from
http://www.insurance-canada.ca/health-products/health-dental/health-dental.php

"Directory of Health and Dental Insurance Providers

A certain amount of health and dental expense will be incurred every year by individuals and families. However, health and dental emergencies can prove quite expensive and personal or family health and/or dental insurance can be a big help in reducing the impact of unexpected costs.

For this reason many people not covered by an employer or group plan will consider their own health and dental insurance."

and, last but not least:
http://www.insurance-canada.ca/health-products/health-quotes/health-quotes.php

"Directory of Online Health Quotes Providers

When you decide to buy health insurance, the sales organization - broker, agent, company - must be licensed to do so in your province. Providers will make product information, coverages, pricing and applications available in numerous ways -- in local offices, through the mail, via telephone and/or on the web over the Internet."

pending health care reform

The latest proposals are broken down and available here for anyone who wants to take a look

http://www.kff.org/healthreform/sidebyside.cfm

http://docs.house.gov/gopleader/House-Democrats-Health-Plan.pdf

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.3815/pub_detail.asp

http://www.defendyourhealthcare.us/houseandsenatebills.html

The slope gets a little more slippery, and a little steeper

The slope gets a little more slippery, and a little steeper, as a Government agency wants the right to manage private industry, and be able to take it into receivership.

Without oversight from we, the people, a law could be crafted that would allow any private enterprise to be taken by the government.

In property law, that action is called eminent domain. For those of you that are computer search savvy, I invite you to Google "eminent domain issues" and find out how well that has gone.

Then search the history of Cuba, and see how the current Cuban government came about.

Geithner: Expand Our Mission

• By ARTHUR D. POSTAL

Published 4/21/2009

Washington

The Obama administration will continue to seek the authority to place non-bank financial institutions in receivership, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said today.

Passing legislation that would expand federal receivership authority to include systemically important non-bank financial institutions such as American International Group Inc., New York, is the centerpiece of Obama’s initial effort to strengthen regulation of financial services companies, Geithner testified during a hearing on the Troubled Asset Relief Program organized by the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel.

Even though the government now owns 80% of AIG, there is no “legal framework” for the U.S. government to place the troubled company into receivership, Geithner said.

Legislation the Obama administration has proposed would give the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. authority to place large, non-bank financial institutions into receivership and either rehabilitate them or liquidate them.

The House Financial Services Committee is expected to vote on the proposal by late May, before Congress departs for its Memorial Day recess.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, a member of the oversight panel and a member of the House Financial Services Committee, criticized the Treasury Department’s efforts.

“Most people are unimpressed with the Treasury’s management of AIG,” Hensarling said during his opening remarks.

Hensarling elicited Geithner’s discussion of federal receivership authority, by noting that Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke recently had testified that the Fed had lacked the authority in late 2008 to take direct control of AIG.

“Certainly, you, or he as the representative of the federal government, has that authority today,” Hensarling said. “I want to know what the exit strategy is for the U.S. government from AIG.”

Geithner rejected Hensarling’s premise.

“We are without the legal framework to deal with a financial crisis caused by an institution like AIG,” Geithner said. “This is a tragic failure. We still do not have the authority to intervene or manage effectively the risk posed by institutions like AIG…. We need to deal more quickly, more effectively with problems posed by institutions like AIG.”

One reason the government needs expanded receivership authority is to limit the effect the problems at a company such as AIG could have on other insurance companies, Geithner said.

No Republicans voted for the legislation

Well - speaking of a country very divided.

Seems the House definitely found the isle, and did not cross it either.

The sad part is, we, the people, will end up finding out the hard way who is correct in their party's opinion.

Stay tuned for what it becomes.


from the Baltimore Business Journal

Friday, February 13, 2009, 2:37pm EST

House passes $787 billion stimulus

Baltimore Business Journal - by Kent Hoover Washington Bureau Chief

The House passed a $787 billion economic stimulus bill Friday by a 246-183 margin.

No Republicans voted for the legislation.

Senate passage of the 1,071-page American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (H.R. 1) is expected later Friday.

The legislation includes billions of dollars in spending on items including infrastructure, education, tax breaks for individuals and businesses, help for unemployed workers and aid for state governments.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the the bill can be “summed up in one word: jobs.” The White House estimates the legislation will save or create 3.5 million jobs over the next two years.

Republicans contended the bill will do little to help the economy and will hurt the country in the long run because of the debt burden it will add to taxpayers.

“This legislation will not put people to work right away,” said House Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va. “Nor does it contain the time-honored incentives for work, investment, innovation and job creation that are proven to stimulate growth.”

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, conceded the bill is not perfect but said no legislation is. If anything, he said, the legislation is not large enough because of cuts made to win Senate approval.

“You show me a smaller problem we have to confront, and I’ll be happy to produce a smaller bill,” Obey said.

Data base to reduce healthcare costs how will it work

So how is this data base supposed to work - when everyone and their brother can get information?

maybe this article will help explain it, from a fellow blogger


UCI students victims of health insurer leak – United Healthcare

After several students had issued filing tax returns, the investigation is now pointed towards United HealthCare. After not being able to file tax returns and finding out someone else had used their information to file fake returns, the criminal investigation continued. So far, all the victims were covered by United Health Care after running a series of data queries to find what they all had in common.
As it appears now, the campus systems did not have a leak, and the jury is still out until finalized. It makes you wonder how safe is all your personal data and information and what are the full efforts that can be taken. When it comes to personal health records, I don’t think I am willing to trust an insurer at this time and would prefer either a Microsoft or Google account, or perhaps even a usb stick to carry with me.

IRVINE – A computer security breach at a health insurance company was responsible for an identity theft at UC Irvine that affected 1,132 students, and led to fake tax returns filed for at least 155 of them, officials said Thursday.
A criminal investigation is still underway in the case, which came from a leak at Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare, the insurance provider for UCI graduate students.

Japan’s Big-Works Stimulus Is Lesson

Japan’s Big-Works Stimulus Is Lesson
Shiho Fukada for The New York Times

The soaring Marine Bridge in Hamada, Japan, built as a public works project, was almost devoid of traffic on a recent morning.

And it is not just the bridge. Two decades of generous public works spending have showered this city of 61,000 mostly graying residents with a highway, a two-lane bypass, a university, a prison, a children’s art museum, the Sun Village Hamada sports center, a bright red welcome center, a ski resort and an aquarium featuring three ring-blowing Beluga whales.

Nor is this remote port in western Japan unusual. Japan’s rural areas have been paved over and filled in with roads, dams and other big infrastructure projects, the legacy of trillions of dollars spent to lift the economy from a severe downturn caused by the bursting of a real estate bubble in the late 1980s. During those nearly two decades, Japan accumulated the largest public debt in the developed world — totaling 180 percent of its $5.5 trillion economy — while failing to generate a convincing recovery.

Now, as the Obama administration embarks on a similar path, proposing to spend more than $820 billion to stimulate the sagging American economy, many economists are taking a fresh look at Japan’s troubled experience. While Japan is not exactly comparable to the United States — especially as a late developer with a history of heavy state investment in infrastructure — economists say it can still offer important lessons about the pitfalls, and chances for success, of a stimulus package in an advanced economy.

In a nutshell, Japan’s experience suggests that infrastructure spending, while a blunt instrument, can help revive a developed economy, say many economists and one very important American official: Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who was a young financial attaché in Japan during the collapse and subsequent doldrums. One lesson Mr. Geithner has said he took away from that experience is that spending must come in quick, massive doses, and be continued until recovery takes firm root.

Moreover, it matters what gets built: Japan spent too much on increasingly wasteful roads and bridges, and not enough in areas like education and social services, which studies show deliver more bang for the buck than infrastructure spending.

“It is not enough just to hire workers to dig holes and then fill them in again,” said Toshihiro Ihori, an economics professor at the University of Tokyo. “One lesson from Japan is that public works get the best results when they create something useful for the future.”

In total, Japan spent $6.3 trillion on construction-related public investment between 1991 and September of last year, according to the Cabinet Office. The spending peaked in 1995 and remained high until the early 2000s, when it was cut amid growing concerns about ballooning budget deficits. More recently, the governing Liberal Democratic Party has increased spending again to revive the economy and the party’s own flagging popularity.

In the end, say economists, it was not public works but an expensive cleanup of the debt-ridden banking system, combined with growing exports to China and the United States, that brought a close to Japan’s Lost Decade. This has led many to conclude that spending did little more than sink Japan deeply into debt, leaving an enormous tax burden for future generations.

In the United States, it has also led to calls in Congress, particularly by Republicans, not to repeat the errors of Japan’s failed economic stimulus. They argue that it makes more sense to cut taxes, and let people decide how to spend their own money, than for the government to decide how to invest public funds. Japan put more emphasis on increased spending than tax cuts during its slump, but ultimately did reduce consumption taxes to encourage consumer spending as well.

Economists tend to divide into two camps on the question of Japan’s infrastructure spending: those, many of them Americans like Mr. Geithner, who think it did not go far enough; and those, many of them Japanese, who think it was a colossal waste.

Among ordinary Japanese, the spending is widely disparaged for having turned the nation into a public-works-based welfare state and making regional economies dependent on Tokyo for jobs. Much of the blame has fallen on the Liberal Democratic Party, which has long used government spending to grease rural vote-buying machines that help keep the party in power.

But some Western economists who have studied Japan’s experience say the stimulus accomplished more than it is now given credit for. At a minimum, they argue, it saved the economy from an outright, 1930s-style collapse.

Moreover, they say, any direct comparison of Japan and the United States is inevitably misleading, because Japan has spent so much more over the years on infrastructure. Having neglected its roads, bridges, water treatment plants and more over the years, the United States is bound to generate a greater payback for such spending than would Japan.

Beyond that, proponents of Keynesian-style stimulus spending in the United States say that Japan’s approach failed to accomplish more not because of waste but because it was never tried wholeheartedly. They argue that instead of making one big push to pump up the economy with economic shock therapy, Japan spread its spending out over several years, diluting the effects.

After years of heavy spending in the first half of the 1990s, economists say, Japan’s leaders grew concerned about growing budget deficits and cut back too soon, snuffing out the recovery in its infancy, much as Roosevelt did to the American economy in 1936. Growth that, by 1996, had reached 3 percent was suffocated by premature spending cuts and tax increases, they say. While spending remained high in the late 1990s, Japan never gave the economy another full-fledged push, these economists say.

They also say that the size of Japan’s apparently successful stimulus in the early 1990s suggests that the United States will need to spend far more than the current $820 billion to get results. Between 1991 and 1995, Japan spent some $2.1 trillion on public works, in an economy roughly half as large as that of the United States, according to the Cabinet Office. “Stimulus worked in Japan when it was tried,” said David Weinstein, a professor of Japanese economics at Columbia University. “Japan’s lesson is that, if anything, the current U.S. stimulus will not be enough.”

Most Japanese economists have tended to take a bleaker view of their nation’s track record, saying that Japan spent more than enough money, but wasted too much of it on roads to nowhere and other unneeded projects.

Dr. Ihori of the University of Tokyo did a survey of public works in the 1990s, concluding that the spending created almost no additional economic growth. Instead of spreading beneficial ripple effects across the economy, he found that the spending actually led to declines in business investment by driving out private investors. He also said job creation was too narrowly focused in the construction industry in rural areas to give much benefit to the overall economy.

He agreed with other critics that the 1990s stimulus failed because too much of it went to roads and bridges, overbuilding this already heavily developed nation. Critics also said decisions on how to spend the money were made behind closed doors by bureaucrats, politicians and the construction industry, and often reflected political considerations more than economic. Dr. Ihori said the United States appeared to be striking a better balance by investing in new energy and information-technology infrastructure as well as replacing aging infrastructure.

Japan’s experience also seems to argue for spending heavily to promote social development. A 1998 report by the Japan Institute for Local Government, a nonprofit policy research group, found that every 1 trillion yen, or about $11.2 billion, spent on social services like care for the elderly and monthly pension payments added 1.64 trillion yen in growth. Financing for schools and education delivered an even bigger boost of 1.74 trillion yen, the report found.

But every 1 trillion yen spent on infrastructure projects in the 1990s increased Japan’s gross domestic product, a measure of its overall economic size, by only 1.37 trillion yen, mainly by creating jobs and other improvements like reducing travel times.

Economists said the finding suggested that while infrastructure spending may yield strong results for developing nations, creating jobs in higher-paying knowledge-based services like health care and education can bring larger benefits to advanced economies like Japan, with its aging population.

“In hindsight, Japan should have built public works that address the problems it faces today, like aging, energy and food sources,” said Takehiko Hobo, a professor emeritus of public finance at Shimane University in Matsue, the main city of Shimane. “This obsession with building roads is a holdover from an earlier era.”

The fruits of that obsession are apparent across Shimane, a rural prefecture about the size of Delaware where Hamada is located. Each town seems to have its own art museum, domed athletic center and government-built tourist attraction like the Nima Sand Museum, a giant hourglass in a glass pyramid. The prefecture, with 740,000 residents, even has three commercial airports able to handle jets, including the $250 million Hagi-Iwami Airport, which sits eerily empty with just two flights per day.

In Hamada, residents say the city’s most visible “hakomono,” the Japanese equivalent of “white elephant,” was its own bridge to nowhere, the $70 million Marine Bridge, whose 1,006-foot span sat almost completely devoid of traffic on a recent morning. Built in 1999, the bridge links the city to a small, sparsely populated island already connected by a shorter bridge.

“The bridge? It’s a dud,” said Masahiro Shimada, 70, a retired city official who was fishing near the port. “Maybe we could use it for bungee jumping,” he joked.

Koichi Matsuoka, a retired professor of policy at the University of Shimane in Hamada, said useless projects like the Marine Bridge were the reason that years of huge spending had brought few long-term benefits here. While Shimane has had the highest per capita spending on public works in Japan for the last 18 years, thanks to powerful local politicians like the deceased former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, its per capita annual income of $26,000 ranked it 40th among Japan’s 47 prefectures, he said. He said the spending had left Shimane $11 billion in debt, twice the size of the prefectural government’s annual budget.

Still, local officials in Hamada warn that their city’s economy will collapse without public works, though they recognize the spending cannot continue forever. They offered their own lesson to American communities in the Obama era: when you choose public works projects, be sure to get ones with lasting economic impact.

Among Hamada’s many public works projects, the biggest benefits had come from the prison, the university and the Aquas aquarium, with its popular whales, they said. These had created hundreds of permanent jobs and attracted students and families with children to live in a city where nearly a third of residents were over 65.

“Roads and bridges are attractive, but they create jobs only during construction,” said Shunji Nakamura, chief of the city’s industrial policy section. “You need projects with good jobs that will last through a bad economy.”

Makiko Inoue contributed reporting.

The first (less than) 20 days

We have the first non-white president.

He campaigned on change - so how are we doing?

I would say change is in the air - lots of change - but it's not what the public thought they would get when they voted for him.

Too bad this soon, less than 20 days after this great moment, his presidency is getting blasted, and much of the media is turning on his program.

We are already dealing with his own party betraying his campaign mission with personal pork; a plan that does almost nothing until 2011; and a bigger debt load than this country has ever seen, with social programs that will force, as many annalists are saying, a depression to rival the Great Depression.
- a predicted outcome, and with much regret conservatives are restraining from saying "I told you so." But. Public polls for his stimulus program resemble falling rocks.
The change we got was more pork, and less effective legislation.

The people responsible for vetting potential cabinet members have failed him in recommending cabinet choices, and he's got at least 10 cabinet picks that will not pass ethics standards, before they are even fully reviewed.
The change we got was more corrupt people being proposed for cabinet offices.

He has met with the military leaders, and now knows we went into the war because if we did not, Israel would have nuked the country and 10,000,000 would have died (yes, I got that from someone deep inside)and he has had to back pedal on the withdrawal promise. He has proposed adding many more troops to Afghanistan, which the Russians already tried, and the Brits tried before them, and both failed. I spoke yesterday to a former ranking 30 year officer from Pakistan, who knows the area almost as well as he knows his hand. We are fighting against people who need no supplies, live off the land, have held a rifle since age 10, consider it an honor to kill another (American Indians anyone?) and we expect to maintain a supply line for 5,000 miles and beat them?
The change we are getting is greater troop deployment, and greater expense, with greater lives lost.

Soon he will be dealing with the fallout of having detainees released, and them creating more terror; yes they were released during the Bush administration, and yes the terror is being committed now and then; but no one will care about that. It will have the effect of throwing the closing of the detention camp into question.
The change we will get will be from a prevention to a post act terrorism world. We will wait until something happens, investigate who did it, try to decide who is responsible, go RE-capture them, put on a trial, and let the liberal lawyers argue that it was the trauma of American actions that made him/her do it. Yes - this is a prediction, but did Clinton not have Osama and let him go?!! Remember the first World Trade Center bombing?!! Then everyone will point fingers at everyone else for letting them go. And if I were a victim of a subsequent attack - I'd be 1st in line to sue the asshole responsible for letting the terrorist go.

So - we got change - and all those who voted for the man just because you wanted change - we have not yet had 20 days - how do you like it so far?

Economic Stimulus Payment

This year, taxpayers will receive another Economic Stimulus Payment.

This is a very exciting program from the new administration. Please note this is one of the first changes from business as usual as promised by the new President.



WHEN WILL THE STIMULUS PACKAGE "KICK IN"? - An initial Congressional Budget Office analysis found that only $26 billion out of $274 billion (7%) in infrastructure spending would be delivered into the economy by next fall. An update determined that just 64% of the stimulus would reach the economy by 2011.

Since the majority of the infrastructure spending will not arrive until AFTER 2011 - it is up to the taxpayer to spend the next stimulus check wisely to start the economy.

This year, taxpayers will receive another Economic Stimulus Payment, late 2009.

As I said, this is a very exciting program from the new administration. Please support the new President.

In Part 1 I will explain this program using the Q and A format.

Please note that those who did not follow the recommendations of Part 2 may be held liable for prolonging the recession.

Q. The Stimulus package is said to be 1.2 Trillion dollars, and it's supposed to jump start the economy, so why is there only $ 274 Billion in infrastructure spending?
A. Because we are also going to give you another Economic Stimulus Payment.

Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.

Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.

Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. Only a smidgen.

Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.

Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China ?
A. Shut up.

Q. So where is all of the other money going?
A. To fix things we wanted fixed but could not get approved thru the last 8 years.

Q. Will that create jobs?
A. A few, for our favorite people.

Q. And isn't all of this the same method attempted by the Bush administration ?
A. Security! Security! Remove this conservative Republican hate monger!

Part 2

Part 2 is some helpful advice on how to best help the US economy by
doing your patriotic part and spend your stimulus check wisely:

Please note:

If you spend the money at Wal-Mart, all the money will go to China.

If you spend it on gasoline, it will go to the Arabs.

If you purchase a computer, it will go to India.

If you purchase fruit and vegetables, it will go to Mexico, Honduras, Chile
and Guatemala (unless you buy organic).

If you buy a car, it will go to Japan.

If you purchase useless crap, it will go to Taiwan.

And none of it will help the American economy.

We need to keep that money here in America. Here are options on how to spend it wisely, so those dollars stay in the American economy.

You can do that by spending it on:
upgrading your boat,
painting your house,
buying your landscape plants,
swap meets,
yard sales,
going to a baseball game,
corner restaurants.
and local Church suppers,

For those less Godly, try spending it on
American strippers, dancers, prostitutes,
pot (West Coast grown),
domestic beer,
whiskey and wine (again, domestic ONLY),
getting tattoos, or by buying American guns, since these are some of the few businesses still in the US.

Enjoy your stimulus payment - now do your part in supporting the new administration !!

Bitter truths, soon forgotten

We have a wave of great thoughts and much discussion about wealth redistribution and social programs that will cure all that ails this country

Let's reflect for a moment on truths that have arisen out of the ashes of great cultures in history,
and for many, ashes is all that remains.

History is a dry subject that many ignore at their own risk.


You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom.
What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation.
Those who do not study the history of such cultures are soon doomed to be a part of that history.

Now we have a choice - make history, or be a part of historical teachings

Congratulations America!!

Subject: A London Daily Mail Editorial on Obama's victory

I could not believe this came from an English newspaper. Leave it to the creators of the language, the English, to express distinctly what happened in the election of Obama. We all should examine who, how and why this cult of personality was created. Obama doesn't have a clue about what he is about to undertake. This individual could not have gotten a security clearance if he had joined the military service. Now he is about to be the Commander in Chief of the U.S. armed forces.


An editorial from the London Daily Mail Obama's Victory

A victory for the hysterical Oprah Winfrey, the mad racist preacher Jeremiah Wright, the mainstream media who abandoned any sense of objectivity long ago, Europeans who despise America largely because they depend on her, comics who claim to be dangerous and fearless but would not dare attack genuinely powerful special interest groups. A victory for Obama-worshippers everywhere. A victory for the cult of the cult. A man who has done little with his life but has written about his achievements as if he had found the cure for cancer in between winning a marathon and building a nuclear reactor with his teeth. Victory for style over substance, hyperbole over history, rabble-raising over reality.

A victory for Hollywood, the most dysfunctional community in the world. Victory for Streisand, Spielberg, Soros and Sarandon. Victory for those who prefer welfare to will and interference to independence. For those who settle for group think and herd mentality rather than those who fight for individual initiative and the right to be out of step with meager political fashion.

Victory for a man who is no friend of freedom. He and his people have already stated that media has to be controlled so as to be balanced, without realizing the extraordinary irony within that statement. Like most liberal zealots, the Obama worshippers constantly speak of Fox and Limbaugh, when the vast bulk of television stations and newspapers are drastically liberal and anti-conservative. Senior Democrat Chuck Schumer said that just as pornography should be censored, so should talk radio. In other words, one of the few free and open means of popular expression may well be cornered and beaten by bullies who even in triumph cannot tolerate any criticism and opposition.

A victory for those who believe the state is better qualified to raise children than the family, for those who prefer teachers' unions to teaching and for those who are naively convinced that if the West is sufficiently weak towards its enemies, war and terror will dissolve as quickly as the tears on the face of a leftist celebrity.

A victory for social democracy even after most of Europe has come to the painful conclusion that social democracy leads to mediocrity, failure, unemployment, inflation, higher taxes and economic stagnation. A victory for intrusive lawyers, banal sentimentalists, social extremists and urban snobs.

Congratulations America!

this new Presidential Cabinet and it's lack of business understanding will have a profound effect on the economy.

the mantra of "they just don't get it" will start resounding loudly during the next 4 years

Already - smaller U. S. toy makers are being put out of business in 2009 by the regulations our Democratic Congress put in place to prevent China from lacing toys with lead and poison paint.

In 2016, all U.S. light bulb production will be gone - another industry lost to overseas, done by Congressional legislation.

The tax package proposed by "our president elect" will shut down or push off shore businesses in the next 4 years. Exxon Mobile is already putting together an exit strategy to leave the U.S.

As more large employers leave the U.S. market, the TAX BURDEN WILL HAVE TO SHIFT TO SMALLER EMPLOYERS.

As more become dependent on government funds, the taxes that pay for those dependents have to increase on those who are not.

That's not just people - states are asking for more monies - Maryland is planning to request more federal funds to rebuild the crumbling infrastructure, because they are loosing tax revenue from existing residents.

The laws of unintended consequences will continue to fracture our economy, and further the recession.

Stay tuned for more on this as it develops.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008, 9:31am EST

Obama cabinet short on business experience

Baltimore Business Journal - by Kent Hoover Washington Bureau Chief

President-elect Barack Obama’s Cabinet will have a lot less business experience than President Bush’s first round of key appointees.

Bush, the only U.S. president with an MBA, turned to corporate America for several key positions, starting with vice president. Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton Corp., a Houston-based oilfield services company, before joining Bush’s ticket in 2000.

Another Texas oilman, longtime Bush friend Don Evans, was appointed secretary of Commerce. Former Alcoa Chairman and CEO Paul O’Neill was Bush’s first secretary of Treasury, but lasted less than two years.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had served as chairman and CEO of two companies, pharmaceutical giant G.D. Searle & Co. and broadcast technology developer General Instrument Corp. He also chaired Gilead Sciences Inc., a biopharmaceutical company.

Mitch Daniels, who headed the Office of Management and Budget, was a senior vice president at pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co.

Obama, by contrast, largely turned to people with extensive government experience for his Cabinet.

The Commerce Department, for example, will be headed by New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who also has served in Congress, as United Nations ambassador and as secretary of Energy. Obama’s pick for secretary of Treasury, Timothy Geithner, is president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and served in the Treasury Department during three administrations.

Obama picked a Maine venture capitalist, Karen Gordon Mills, to lead the Small Business Administration, but it’s not clear whether the SBA administrator will be part of his Cabinet. That post was not part of the Cabinet during the Bush administration.

Not counting Mills, Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, Obama’s pick for secretary of Interior, appears to have the most business experience of anyone in the president-elect’s Cabinet. Salazar, a fifth-generation rancher, and his wife have owned and operated several small businesses, including a Dairy Queen and radio stations in Pueblo and Denver.

Shaun Donovan, Obama’s choice to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development, worked at Prudential Mortgage Capital Co. before becoming New York City housing commissioner. He was a deputy assistant secretary of HUD during the Clinton administration, and also has worked as an architect.

Steven Chu, Obama’s pick to be secretary of Energy, is a Nobel laureate physicist who runs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a government-supported lab managed by the University of California. He once served on the technical staff at AT&T Bell Labs.

That’s about it as far as business experience goes on Obama’s Cabinet. Should business owners be concerned?

“I don’t think it’s a huge red flag,” said Molly Brogan, vice president of the National Small Business Association. “President-elect Obama spoke out frequently on small business issues during the campaign, and we have no reason to think they won’t continue to be a priority. A lack of business background in Cabinet members can easily be accommodated for by a president taking proactive steps to ensure that small business is at the table.”

Those steps should include making the SBA administrator a Cabinet-level position and hosting a White House Conference on Small Business early in the administration, Brogan said.

“My concern is less with direct business experience than Cabinet members’ history and willingness to work with business leaders,” said Karen Kerrigan, president and CEO of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council. “For example, Gov. Richardson’s record on business issues is quite good even though he lacks experience in the trenches.”

Kerrigan is concerned about Obama’s appointees to regulatory agencies “and whether the new leadership will put less of a priority on tools and outreach to help businesses comply with regulation, or whether we’ll see a hostile crackdown with respect to enforcement.”

“Those with business experience would relate to the business owner’s difficulty in understanding regulatory complexity and costs,” she said, “and may lean towards education, tools and efforts to promote voluntary compliance.”

Health Care plan assesment for Nov 4

This is a breakdown of the current health insurance system, as well as the system presented as part of the Obama and McCain health care plans.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am an agent in the Mid-Atlantic region.
Further - It is my opinion that if the European plan were offered here, the sale of supplemental and replacement plans will be an economic windfall for health agents, as it has overseas.

I have tried to provide a reasonably unbiased review of the stated and posted plan of each candidate, pulled off of the candidate's own web site, and with nothing else added, with one exception. That exception was in a concern for the tax that has been stated will occur on health insurance offered by businesses.

To evaluate each candidate's promises and the impact, an understanding of what exists is appropriate

Current system
1) Employer provided
- employer pays all or part of the employee premiums, and sometimes pays for the spouse and children as well
- employer cost is usually between 350 - 1100 per month per person
this cost is a tax deductible expense for the employer, and any benefit plan under IRS section 125 offers additional payroll tax reductions. Employer expenses for health plans is usually subtracted from the profit before calculations of corporate taxes
- premium cost is usually a factor of the average age of the organization, and the history of incurred medical costs, called experience rating
- normally 75% or more employee participation is mandatory to have group coverage
- coverage is usually through the provider network of physicians
upside:
- no pre-existing coverage issues, anyone is accepted
- coverage until recently was offered with no deductibles to meet and minor co-pay costs
- no lifetime maximum per individual
downside:
- out of network care costs can go to 100% employee expense
- employers often change insurance companies to reduce premiums, this involves changing the provider network, and can result in having to change established Dr / Patient relationships
- the system encourages age discrimination by the employer, as younger workers reduce the average insurance age
- the employee cost share can become prohibitive, resulting in younger and health employees opting out, and going to individual coverage, leaving increased group costs for older and unwell employees
- unhealthy and older employees are tied to the employer for health care coverage, very much like the last centuries' "being indebted to the company store"
- when the employee is terminated / laid off / otherwise no longer employed, the employee and family usually have the option to accept COBRA - which is the coverage provided by the employer, at the full employer cost plus 4% admin fee
once COBRA ends, or if COBRA is not selected, the employee and family may purchase individual coverage on the open market, in many cases subject to underwriting and pre-existing medical condition exclusions or rate adjustments

2) Self purchased
- insured pays all of the premiums for self, spouse and children.
- cost is usually between 150 - 400 per month for an individual, family coverage cost is between 350 and 1100 per month
- the lesser premium cost is usually coupled with a deductible of some manner
upside:
- this cost is a tax deductible expense along with other medical costs on schedule A
- for the self employed, all medical, dental, LTC ins. and out of pocket expenses are a tax write off on schedule C per IRS Section 105, so it can be subtracted from profit before calculations of corporate taxes, and in the case of a husband and wife sole proprietorship or "C" corporation
- coverage costs are age adjusted, but adjustments for health issues are normally not allowed by state laws
- since this is the individual's coverage, the individual has no ties to an employer for health care coverage, allowing job mobility
- lifetime maximums of 5 to 8 million per person are available, although lesser levels are more commonly selected due to consumer ignorance of implications
- established lifetime Dr / Patient relationships are possible
downside:
- usually medically underwritten, and premiums can be adjusted at issuance based on health issues or coverage can be declined
- policies vary and can be confusing, to the point that some people may find coverage insufficient for their needs, or gaps can exist that do not cover brand name drugs or services

3) Federal, State or Local Government provided
- taxpayer pays all or a large part of the employee premiums, and sometimes pays for the spouse and children as well
- cost is usually between 400 - 1300 per month per person
- premium cost is usually a contractual amount, vaugly a factor of the average age of the organization, and the history of incurred medical costs, called experience rating
- coverage is usually through the provider network of physicians
upside:
- no pre-existing coverage issues, anyone is accepted
- coverage has no deductibles to meet and very minor co-pay costs
- no lifetime maximum per individual
downside:
- out of network costs can be shocking to the insured
- the employee and family have no clear understanding of actual coverage or service costs, resulting in a large financial surprise when they leave the government position
- unhealthy and older employees are tied to the employer for health care coverage, very much like the last centuries' "being indebted to the company store"
- when the employee is terminated / laid off / otherwise no longer employed, the employee and family usually have the option to accept COBRA - which is the coverage provided by the employer, at the full employer cost plus 4% admin fee
once COBRA ends, or if COBRA is not selected, the employee and family may purchase individual coverage on the open market, in many cases subject to underwriting and pre-existing medical condition exclusions or rate adjustments

4) Low income, CHiP and State High Risk Plans
- State pays all or part of the person' premiums, based on household income
- State underwrites the cost of covering the medically unwell
- individual cost is usually between 350 - 1100 per month per person, based on plan choice and deductibles selected
upside:
- no pre-existing coverage issues, anyone is accepted
- coverage until recently was offered with no deductibles to meet and minor co-pay costs
- this cost is a tax deductible expense along with other medical costs on schedule A
- for the self employed, all medical, dental, LTC ins. and out of pocket expenses are a tax write off on schedule C per IRS Section 105, so it can be subtracted from profit before calculations of corporate taxes, and in the case of a husband and wife sole proprietorship or "C" corporation, reduce the self employment tax as well
- coverage costs are age adjusted, but adjustments for health issues are normally not allowed by state laws
- since this is the individual's coverage, the individual has no ties to an employer for health care coverage
downside:
- premium costs are usually higher than a medically underwritten policy
- lifetime coverage level can cap at 1 to 2 million, which can be insufficient for the individual


5) over 65 or severely medically challenged
Medicare part A (paid for by government)
and parts B and D, are usually paid out of the recipient's social security check
medicare advantage programs can combine the systems and provide an inclusive coverage package, forming an 80 /20 cost sharing for the consumer
upside:
- no pre-existing coverage issues, anyone is accepted
- coverage is offered with minor co-pay costs
open enrollment is every Oct 15 thru Dec 31, with an additional plan adjustment period the first months of each year
downside
- the schedule for medical procedure payments is set by the Federal Government, and many qualified physicians decline to treat people with limited payment systems and Medicare
- without assistance, many over 65 do select plans which are insufficient for their needs, or fail to purchase part D, and so are penalized for not having the coverage when they enroll later, or do not have coverage when they need prescriptions
- plans can change every 6 months, so a viable plan can alter to the detriment of the insured

6) Uninsured
there are about 45 million who currently do not have coverage
22 million are here illegally, and they can not purchase coverage
it is estimated that another 10 million have ot been able to find coverage due to medical issues
the balance find the costs unacceptable, and choose to allocate funds for other purposes

European Systems:
Most operate on the same basic principal. Taxpayers fund the government sponsored plan, which pays 70 - 80% of the cost of care inside the plan offered by the country. The resident pays the remaining 20 - 30 % of the care costs. If a person can afford it, and they want a better level of care, they apply for a voucher, opt out of the government plan, and purchase a policy on the open market.
What this does is create a clear class system, much like is occurring with our similar, medicare system. Those who can afford to, opt out, and get better and quicker care, or even come to the US for care.



Obama's proposal
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/healthcare/

• Require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions so all Americans regardless of their health status or history can get comprehensive benefits at fair and stable premiums. This exists in some states already, and comparable policy premiums are 10 -15 % higher. Fair and stable premiums artificially established by the Federal Government will require the Federal Government to re-insure the risk - it may be counter productive since the taxpayer becomes the financial entity responsible for covering the major cost of the financial risk. Without any controls in place, you and I will pay for the person who lives an unhealthy lifestyle, and the health risks they take. That also removes any incentive for the company to encourage the individual to adjust their lifestyle to minimize their personal health risks. In effect - the smoker who drinks a quart of booze per day and eats McFat burgers every day is put on the same economic level as someone who acts responsibly about their health
  
• Create a new Small Business Health Tax Credit to help small businesses provide affordable health insurance to their employees. This will be a reduction in taxes paid in - if it is above and beyond the already existing effect of the Section 125 provisions, it will reduce employer taxes and decrease revenue for the government, a small employer tax cut if you will.
  
• Lower costs for businesses by covering a portion of the catastrophic health costs they pay in return for lower premiums for employees. This will require the Federal Government to re-insure the risk - it may be counter productive since the taxpayer becomes the financial entity responsible for covering the major cost of the financial risk. Without any controls in place, you and I will pay for the person who lives an unhealthy lifestyle, and the health risks they take. That also removes any incentive for the company to encourage the individual to adjust their lifestyle to minimize their personal health risks.
  
• Prevent insurers from overcharging doctors for their malpractice insurance and invest in proven strategies to reduce preventable medical errors. This will require tort reform, or caps on victim compensation - Obama did this to the sexual harassment laws in Il, reducing the amount an individual can collect from an employer. Premiums will not drop until the settlement is capped. We saw the impact of this in MD when the labor and Delivery malpractice costs were affecting the ability of Dr's to pay for coverage. Since no one can force an insurance company to cover a Dr, the private insurance companies recourse is to decline to issue coverage, since the stockholders (you and I and our 401K) will see this as an unsound risk. the next step will be that the Federal Government becomes the insurance company, and you and I become the persons accountable for paying the judgments and taking the financial risk
  
• Make employer contributions more fair by requiring large employers that do not offer coverage or make a meaningful contribution to the cost of quality health coverage for their employees to contribute a percentage of payroll toward the costs of their employees health care. This is the Federal Government telling the business how to run their business. No longer will workforce supply and demand control the benefits offered, now the Government will tell the employer what they can and can not offer. This will ultimately drive more industry off shore, since the costs to provide goods and services will include increased Federally mandated coverage levels. This practice is already in place for Federal and State contracts of all kinds. The costs the Federal and State governments pay for services are considerably higher than for the same service purchased by the private sector, and we, the taxpayer, pay for the coverage levels mandated by the Government in everything the Government purchases.
  
• Establish a National Health Insurance Exchange with a range of private insurance options as well as a new public plan based on benefits available to members of Congress that will allow individuals and small businesses to buy affordable health coverage. The congressional plan costs the taxpayer about 1200 per month per covered person. Given that most people d not have that level of income, the only way a private individual can afford the plan is with extensive Government subsidies, which the taxpayer will be paying for. Even assuming the average age of this coverage plan drops, and the rates reduce accordingly, covering 20 million plus uninsured and under insured people will still cost the taxpayer about $10,000 of the $12,000 per year premium per person, (this is Obama's own statement of premiums) or $20,000,000,000.00. If the plan is better and cheaper than the existing coverage the individual already has, it is very probable the coverage level will jump to 100 million plus people, which will cost the taxpayers an additional $100,000,000,000.00 per year as they subsidize the costs. (I'd take it as well, since it's better than any plan I can buy or sell) Interestingly enough, the GAO already reports the existing Federal, State and Local health care plans are underfunded and will go deficit spending, BROKE, by 2015 - see page 8 and 13 of http://www.kslegislature.org/postaudit/GAO.pdf
  
• Ensure everyone who needs it will receive a tax credit for their premiums. This will reduce taxable income, income taxes paid in, and reduce tax revenue to the Government, increasing the deficit.
  

Reduce Costs and Save a Typical American Family up to $2,500 as reforms phase in:

The average individual family policy I write in MD is less than 6500 per year

• Lower drug costs by allowing the importation of safe medicines from other developed countries, increasing the use of generic drugs in public programs and taking on drug companies that block cheaper generic medicines from the market. To do this, patent laws will need to be changed, so that companies will lose rights to ownership and development. The incentive to create and develop drugs and procedures and technology will disappear, and the US is one of the last countries on the forefront of medical development.
  
• Require hospitals to collect and report health care cost and quality data. There is an increased risk for identity theft and privacy being compromised. Personal data will be widely available - anyone following the news has seen where laptop and data base files are being breached and compromised. the more data is electronically available, the more data can be and is accessed by individuals who have malicious intent. Google "government laptop losses" for an education on how bad it already is.
  
• Reduce the costs of catastrophic illnesses for employers and their employees. This will require the Federal Government to re-insure the risk - it may be counter productive since the taxpayer becomes the financial entity responsible for covering the major cost of the financial risk. Without any controls in place, you and I will pay for the person who lives an unhealthy lifestyle, and the health risks they take. That also removes any incentive for the company to encourage the individual to adjust their lifestyle to minimize their personal health risks.
• Reform the insurance market to increase competition by taking on anticompetitive activity that drives up prices without improving quality of care. Interesting idea - except there are currently many companies that compete in the individual and group sectors. MD has 6 major group providers and their offerings are dictated by the consumers, and the state laws and mandates. To do this, other insurance companies will have to be created, state regulatory laws will have to be challenged or removed, and the Government will need to subsidize companies to enter into and compete in a mature market.
  

The Obama-Biden plan will promote public health. It will require coverage of preventive services, including cancer screenings, and increase state and local preparedness for terrorist attacks and natural disasters. Adding preventative and early detection services will not add to many policy costs, as most are already covering those costs. It is a logical move. What is being missed is that over 50% of the population in this country already has it, thru their Federal, State and Local Government and Learning institution health care package. Also, most major employers have hugely beneficial preventative health focused plans already. individuals with HSA plans even have some, as most HSA plans allow certain early detection and testing without having to meet the deductible.

I am having a math problem with this one, only because there are no incentives in the Obama plan for healthy actions by the individual.

McCain's proposal
http://www.johnmccain.com/Issues/JobsforAmerica/healthcare.htm

Cheaper Drugs: John McCain will look to bring greater affordability and competition to our drug markets through safe re-importation of drugs and faster introduction of generic drugs. Will require the Federal testing and approval system FDA, to be streamlined.

Chronic Disease: Chronic conditions account for three-quarters of the nation's annual health care bill. By emphasizing prevention, early intervention, healthy habits, new treatment models, new public health infrastructure and the use of information technology, we can significantly reduce these costs. We should dedicate more federal research to treating and curing chronic disease. There will be a financial impact on the taxpayer, to find the research, but there are already existing Federal funding programs in place on many diseases.

Coordinated Care: Coordinated care - with providers collaborating to produce the best health care for the patient - offers better outcomes at lower cost. We should pay a single bill for high-quality care which will make every single provider accountable and responsive to the patients' needs. Accountability and responsibility will have an additional effect, in that malpractice may go down - reducing the multiple bills to a patient eliminates the confusion and double billing. however, the current delivery system has each provider as a separate entity, a separate company so to speak. To have one bill, there would need to be a structure to assimilate all bills into one, much like a general contractor manages sub-contractors.

Greater Access And Convenience: Families place a high value on quickly getting simple care. Government should promote greater access through walk-in clinics in retail outlets. Local care provided by easily accessed providers is a model that existed when we had the general practitioner of old, the town Doctor. This deliver system is one already in use for pharmaceuticals, and seems to work well.

Information Technology: John McCain will promote the rapid deployment of 21st century information systems and technology to improve patient safety, enhance quality and lower costs. Communication of new practices and methods would be enhanced doing this. If it applies to patient records, there is an increased risk for identity theft and privacy being compromised. Personal data will be widely available - anyone following the news has seen where laptop and data base files are being breached and compromised. the more data is electronically available, the more data can be and is accessed by individuals who have malicious intent. Google "government laptop losses" for an education on how bad it already is.


Medicaid And Medicare: John McCain will reform the payment systems in Medicaid and Medicare to compensate providers for diagnosis, prevention and care coordination. Medicaid and Medicare should not pay for preventable medical errors or mismanagement. We also need to implement a zero tolerance policy towards Medicare and Medicaid fraud that is increasingly stripping away resources from the sick and the elderly. A good idea all around - some insurers are already refusing to pay for the results of medical mistakes. An increased focus on prevention will as a minimum keep the costs the same to the taxpayer, but provide early detection and improve quality of life.

Smoking: John McCain will promote the availability of smoking cessation programs. Most smokers would love to quit but find it hard to do so. Working with businesses and insurance companies to promote availability, we can improve lives and reduce associated chronic diseases through smoking cessation programs. The New England Journal of Medicine ran an article after a review of lifetime medical costs for smokers and non-smokers. The overall result was that smokers die sooner and incur less lifetime medical costs than non-smokers. Given that, this may have a negative economic impact on Medicare costs, and a negative impact on programs funded by the tobacco taxes.

Tort Reform: John McCain will lead the fight for medical liability reform that eliminates lawsuits directed at doctors who follow clinical guidelines and adhere to proven safety protocols. Every patient should have access to legal remedies in cases of bad medical practice but that should not be an open invitation to endless, frivolous lawsuits that drive up health care costs for everyone and make the practice of medicine unaffordable for good doctors everywhere. Currently, even though the Doctor can do everything right, he/she can still be sued, and in many cases the settlement is out of court since trial costs are excessive. This process, if done right, will allow peer reviews to determine if the proper procedure was performed. the risk is that the peer review process could be corrupted by professional interests.

Transparency: John McCain believes we must make information on treatment options and doctor records more public, and require greater transparency regarding medical outcomes, quality of care, costs and prices. We must also facilitate the development of national standards for measuring and evaluating treatments and outcomes. Given that most people have no concept of the actual medical costs, the public being aware can affect the amount of frivolous testing occurring. The risk is that new tests, new procedures may take overly long to be approved and accepted.

Reforms To Make Health Insurance Innovative, Portable And Affordable

Health Care Costs: John McCain will reform health care making it easier for individuals and families to obtain insurance. Americans are working harder and longer, yet the amount workers take home in their paychecks is not keeping pace because of rising health care costs. An important part of his plan is to use competition to improve the quality of health insurance with greater variety to match people's needs, lower prices, and promote portability. Families should be able to purchase health insurance nationwide, across state lines. This process already occurs in large, multi state companies, where the plan may be based in SC while the employee works in MD or DE. Currently, the cost of a policy varies due to profit, claims. state mandates and insurance overhead costs. Allowing sales across state lines will weaken state regulation and put the consumer at greater risk of no state representation, or having to go to the policy state for assistance. This may be an unacceptable option for the consumer.

Making the Tax Subsidy Fair: By making the tax code more equitable and transparent, John McCain will give every family a refundable tax credit - cash towards insurance - of $5,000 (Individuals receive $2,500). Every family in America, regardless of the source of their insurance or how much they make will get the same help. Families will be able to stay with their current plan, or choose the insurance provider that suits them best and have the money sent directly to the insurance provider. This portion is a plus for the consumer as there is no difference for the insured based on employer or employment.

Making Insurance More Portable: Americans need insurance that follows them from job to job. Too many job decisions today are controlled by a fear of losing health care. Americans want insurance that is still there if they retire early and does not change if they take a few years off to raise the children. John McCain will lead the reform for portable insurance. This is a solution to a real problem - if I can not keep my insurance in effect, I am at risk of not being able to acquire a replacement policy due to pre-existing issues.

since there has been much talk about taxes on benefits, I searched also for this, and found Mc;Cain's speech on health care, see:
http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/News/Speeches/2c3cfa3a-748e-4121-84db-28995cf367da.htm

from that speech:

"Americans need new choices beyond those offered in employment-based coverage. Americans want a system built so that wherever you go and wherever you work, your health plan is goes with you. And there is a very straightforward way to achieve this.

Under current law, the federal government gives a tax benefit when employers provide health-insurance coverage to American workers and their families. This benefit doesn't cover the total cost of the health plan, and in reality each worker and family absorbs the rest of the cost in lower wages and diminished benefits. But it provides essential support for insurance coverage. Many workers are perfectly content with this arrangement, and under my reform plan they would be able to keep that coverage. Their employer-provided health plans would be largely untouched and unchanged. "

Only if this benefit would no longer be a tax reduction for a business would it have the effect of reducing the amount of coverage a business would pay for.

To do that, it would require a change to the tax code (not likely) and such a change would only affect about 25 - 30% of the employed. Here is why:

Since the government pays no taxes to it's self, changing where those benefits fall on the balance sheet would have no impact on government workers. Those that are self employed, and those in the the public service sector, like Public Schools, Police and Fire, State and local municipalities and services, would also not see any changes to coverage. Add to that the 6% unemployed ( just under 30 million), the 45 million uninsured, plus those on Welfare programs, those who are retired or on Medicare and out of 360 million in the US, it's safe to say over 7o% of the population will see no impact of such a change.

"But for every American who wanted it, another option would be available: Every year, they would receive a tax credit directly, with the same cash value of the credits for employees in big companies, in a small business, or self-employed. You simply choose the insurance provider that suits you best. By mail or online, you would then inform the government of your selection. And the money to help pay for your health care would be sent straight to that insurance provider. The health plan you chose would be as good as any that an employer could choose for you. It would be yours and your family's health-care plan, and yours to keep. "

This would encourage the healthy uninsured to get coverage, since they could not get the credit without the insurance.

"The value of that credit -- 2,500 dollars for individuals, 5,000 dollars for families -- would also be enhanced by the greater competition this reform would help create among insurance companies. Millions of Americans would be making their own health-care choices again. Insurance companies could no longer take your business for granted, offering narrow plans with escalating costs. It would help change the whole dynamic of the current system, putting individuals and families back in charge, and forcing companies to respond with better service at lower cost.

It would help extend the advantages of staying with doctors and providers of your choice. When Americans speak of "our doctor," it will mean something again, because they won't have to change from one doctor or one network to the next every time they change employers. They'll have a medical "home" again, dealing with doctors who know and care about them.

These reforms will take time, and critics argue that when my proposed tax credit becomes available it would encourage people to purchase health insurance on the current individual market, while significant weaknesses in the market remain. They worry that Americans with pre-existing conditions could still be denied insurance. Congress took the important step of providing some protection against the exclusion of pre-existing conditions in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act in 1996. I supported that legislation, and nothing in my reforms will change the fact that if you remain employed and insured you will build protection against the cost of treating any pre-existing condition.

Even so, those without prior group coverage and those with pre-existing conditions do have the most difficulty on the individual market, and we need to make sure they get the high-quality coverage they need. I will work tirelessly to address the problem. But I won't create another entitlement program that Washington will let get out of control. Nor will I saddle states with another unfunded mandate. The states have been very active in experimenting with ways to cover the "uninsurables." The State of North Carolina, for example, has an agreement with Blue Cross to act as insurer of "last resort." Over thirty states have some form of "high-risk" pool, and over twenty states have plans that limit premiums charged to people suffering an illness and who have been denied insurance."

for another opinion, see:
http://healthpolicyandmarket.blogspot.com/2008/03/detailed-analysis-of-barack-obamas.html

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights? <http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/081017light.html>

By Orson Scott Card

Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.

An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means. That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.

More Joe the Plumber: It's really about the dream

More Joe the Plumber: It's really about the dream

Tracy Coenen
Oct 23rd 2008 at 10:01AM

Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Tax, Career

The controversy still rages over Joe the Plumber, who has been raked over the coals by the media and bloggers for asking presidential candidate Barack Obama a question about his tax plan. He's been accused of being a plant and an outright liar, and his divorce and delinquent taxes have been discussed ad nauseum.

Whether you're for or against Joe the Plumber, it's clear that he still represents the American dream. Maybe he's not considering buying a business. Maybe he doesn't have a plumber's license and instead works under someone who does. Maybe he's never going to make a lot of money.

But Joe represents the possibilities that Americans believe in. Someday he could be a business owner and he just might make enough to be considered one of those "high income" people. And indeed, many Americans believe they have a chance to someday be financially successful. But they also know that a strong U.S. economy depends on entrepreneurs.
Companies considered to be "high-growth" are responsible for creating almost all the job growth in the U.S., even though there are only about 30,000 of these companies. When inventors get to work and bring desirable products and services to the marketplace, we all benefit, and the economy expands. Our economy relies heavily on innovation, but that could be negatively impacted by a decreasing desire by consumers to start their own businesses in recent months.

It's popular to suggest that higher taxes on the "rich" are better for us as a whole, and that those in need are helped by such a move. Higher taxes likely would have just the opposite indirect effect, however. When governments seize more from taxpayers, the incentive to innovate and take risk is reduced. That results in less entrepreneurship, which results in fewer jobs, which impacts those in need very heavily.

A system that taxes more and distributes those funds to the less fortunate shouldn't ignore the side effects. Lower taxes encourage development of new companies and industries, and history has shown that the increased output from such development can greatly benefit all classes of taxpayers. So before we're too quick to believe that more taxes on the wealthiest of Americans are their duty (and even a "penalty" that they deserve for being wealthy), let's pay careful attention to what a move like this might mean for the rest of society, which depends on the jobs created by innovative entrepreneurs.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud

Camp Followers

Camp Followers
By Patrick J. Buchanan
October 24, 2008

Perhaps the only institution in America whose approval rating is
beneath that of Congress is the media.

Both have won their reputations the hard way. They earned them.

Consider the fawning indulgence shown insider Joe Biden with the
dripping contempt visited on outsider Sarah Palin.

Twice last weekend, Biden grimly warned at closed-door meetings
that a great crisis is coming early in the term of President Obama:

"Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests
Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. ... Remember I said it
standing here if you don't remember anything else I said ... we're
gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the
mettle of this guy."

A "generated crisis"? By whom? Moscow? Beijing? Teheran?

This is an astonishing statement from a chairman of the Foreign
Relations Committee who has access to the same intelligence as
George Bush. Joe was warning of a crisis like the Berlin Wall of
July 1961, where JFK called for a tripling of the draft and ordered
a call-up of reserves, or the missile crisis where U.S. pilots like
John McCain were minutes away from bombing nuclear missile sites in
Cuba and killing the Russians manning them.

Is Russia about to move on the Crimea? Is Israel about to launch
air strikes on Iran's nuclear sites? What is Joe talking about?

If one assumes Joe is a serious man, we have a right to know.

Instead, what we got was Obama's airy dismissal of Joe's words as a
"rhetorical flourish" and a media -- rather than demanding that Joe
hold a press conference -- acting as Obama surrogates parroting the
talking points that Joe was just saying that new presidents always
face tests.

Had John McCain made that hair-raising statement, he would have
been accused of fear mongering about a new 9/11. The media would
have run with the story rather than have smothered it.

Contrasting McCain with his hero, Joe declared a few weeks back,
"When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the
television and ... said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"

Nice historical reference. Except when the market crashed in 1929,
Hoover was president, and there was no television.

Can one imagine what the press would have done to Sarah Palin had
she exhibited such ignorance of history. Or Dan Quayle?

Joe gets a pass because everybody likes Joe.

Fine. But Joe also has a record of 36 years in the Senate.

Has anyone ever asked Joe about his own and his party's role in
cutting off aid to South Vietnam, leading to the greatest strategic
defeat in U.S. history and the Cambodian holocaust? Has anyone ever
asked Joe about the role he and his party played in working to
block Reagan's deployment of Pershing missiles in Europe, and SDI,
which Gorbachev concedes broke the Soviets and won the Cold War?

In the most crucial vote he ever cast -- to give Bush a blank check
for war in Iraq -- Joe concedes he got it wrong.

Is Joe's record of having been wrong on Vietnam, wrong in the Cold
War, wrong on the Iraq War, less important than whether Sarah Palin
tried to get fired a rogue-cop brother-in-law who Tasered her
10-year old nephew to "teach him a lesson"?

"I've forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my
colleagues know," says Joe humbly. Given his record, it is
understandable Joe has forgotten so much of it.

Saturday, the New York Times did a takeout on Cindy McCain that
delved back into her problem with prescription pills. Yet when
Hillary's campaign manager, Mark Penn, brought up Obama's cocaine
use on "Hardball," he was savaged by folks for whom the Times is
the gold standard.

The people apparently had a "right to know" of Bush's old DUI
arrest a week before the 2000 election, but no right to know about
how and when Obama was engaged in the criminal use of cocaine.

The media cannot get enough of the "Saturday Night Live"
impersonations of Palin as a bubblehead. News shows pick up the
Tina Fey clips and run them and run them to the merriment of all.

Can one imagine "Saturday Night Live" doing weekly send-ups of
Michelle Obama and her "I've never been proud" of my country, this
"just downright mean" America, using a black comedienne to mimic
and mock her voice and accent?

"Saturday Night Live" would be facing hate crime charges.

How do we know? When the New Yorker ran a cartoon of Michelle in an
Angela-Davis afro with an AK-47 slung over her shoulder, New Yorker
editors had to go on national television to swear they were not
mocking Michelle, but the conservatives who have so caricatured
Michelle and The Messiah.

Is there a media double standard? You betcha.