American Missive

LONG BEACH— I’ve noticed that the debate over health care has changed from last fall. During the election the worry was “what are we going to do with all these people who don’t have health insurance?” Since the inauguration, the debate has slowly drifted into the light of the Liberal Left ideology, “what are we going to do to put an end to private industry?”

Senator Bernie Sanders wrote an op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor today. The piece was riddled with populist arguments and unsubstantiated claims along with a few bold faced lies. Red Meet for the Blue Team.

To me, the evidence is overwhelming that we must end the private insurance company domination of health care in our country and move toward a publicly funded, single-payer, Medicare-for-all approach.

Thus saith Bernie Sanders. To me, Tennessee Paul, it is blatantly obvious that it would be a massive disservice for the entire country to add more participants into a system which is already $40 Trillion dollars in debt and scheduled to be completely bankrupt by the end of Barack Obama’s second term.

I’ve read the rhetoric. Mr. Obama claims that it would be great to pay for “half of the cost up front.” Yes, that would sound good if two unsightly facts were not constantly getting in the way. The first, the Government has no money to afford paying for “half up front.” The federal budget is already running close to $2 trillion in the red and is projected to run over a trillion dollars a year in the red for the next ten years. And the second? Well that’s buried in the famed “fuzzy math” of the government. “Half” refers to the estimated cost of the plan for only the next ten years. With each day that estimated cost increases. And the funny thing about entitlements is not only do they not disappear after ten years, they get considerably more expensive and become less sustainable and more crippling to the nation. For reference, check out Medicare’s $40 Trillion dollars of unfunded obligations. For non-US references, check out Canada’s new push to privatize their national health care, or many of European countries systems which are based on private health care insurers.

This new push to nationalize yet another industry in the United States shouldn’t come as too big of a shock. Just this morning Barack Obama began laying out his plans for the “Sweeping Overhaul” of the financial industry. Buried in these plans was this:

The Treasury would also officially keep powers it has already been wielding to approve government action aimed at saving a company that’s teetering on the verge of collapse.

So the powers of the TARP are to be made permanent. Excellent. On a whim the Government can suddenly invade a company and/or industry and nationalize it. That should shore up risky practices going forward once people know that the government will always be there to mop up after you.

Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-avowed socialist who was ominously voted as less liberal than Senator Barack Obama, attempts to support his argument for the nationalization of health care with the following logic, and I summarize here, Private Insurance is too bureaucratic so the best option is to have bureaucrats plan out a system. And for good measure the following is added as supporting reasons, CEO’s make too much money. And to the horror of every one, less than 0.006% of the nation dies every year from preventable diseases.

It has been well documented that Government run programs are wrought with waste and fraud. Even Barack Obama agrees. He campaigned on cleaning up the waste in Washington. Yet, here we are as a country, listening to the doublespeak spewing forth from the elected officials about how the waste and fraud is suddenly not a problem in Medicare. Be sure, it is a problem. Medicare and Medicaid have zero fraud prevention programs.  As for the waste, Senator Sanders lays out the definition here:

private health insurance companies spend an incredible 30 percent of each healthcare dollar on administration and billing, exorbitant CEO compensation packages, advertising, lobbying, and campaign contributions

So to recap, campaign contributions, billing, administration, lobbying, high paid executives and advertising equals waste. Why is this blunt knife never used to carve up the massive lobbying, advertising, administration, campaign contributions, and union dues (billing) of all the Unions which paid to have the party of Senator Sanders in office? It is odd that the solution to the financial industry is to increase oversight and administration of the industry, but the problem with the private health insurance industry is the presences of administration. Perhaps Senator Sanders believes private businesses would be more efficient with no administration present? Perhaps Senator Sanders believes constituents should not be allowed to contribute to campaigns or lobby the government? Maybe the real downfall for General Motors was rooted in the wasteful spending on advertising their product. In five years, after shunning wasteful spending on advertising, GM will turn industry and practical knowledge on its head by setting record sells for vehicles no one knows exist.