Common Sense Health Care Solutions

Here is an excellent YouTube articulation of my own postings on the simple solution for health care- the free market:

How to Fix Health Care: Lasik Surgery For The Medical Debate

Interestingly, Lasik eye surgery is not covered by insurance and is completely a free market offering. Over the last 18 years, it has gotten cheaper, the care around delivery is driven to be excellent to get customers, and the technology has gotten better.

Contrast this with the increasingly government-controlled or health ‘insurance’ distorted current health market. Prices are sprialing out of control and quality is falling.

Do we need to send one or more generations back to school to learn the basics of free market economics that drive the majority of the rest of our prosperity (food, clothing, shelter)?

At the base of it, there is a lack of understanding of human nature (read: lack of wisdom) and how the free market unleashes the most good for the most people by matching up with the reality of individual human nature.

Filed under: Economy, Health Care, Philosophy, Politics, Business, Economy, Family, Government, Health, Health Care, Healthcare, Life, News, Philosophy

Environmental Utopia!

I’ve heard a myriad of great earth saving ideas from many passionate, well meaning environmentalists out there today. It struck me that if I were to put all of these great ideas together, we would see the wonderful, cheap, and sustainable outcome of the Eco-Utopia we are marching toward at Copenhagen next month! C’mon, let’s outline the benefits:

No power except wind or solar. No power grid- grids need stable sources of energy to work. So, we’ll no longer have those pesky computers, refrigerators, or pointless TV’s. When the wind blows or sun shines, you may get some limited electricity locally for lights. Unless you have wind, lights will only be available during the day. Batteries require more energy to manufacture than they are worth and contain toxic chemicals, friend! Learn to get your work done during the day and synchronize yourself with mother earth’s rhythms.

No meat. Meat animals take way too much land, bio-matter to eat and water to live to adulthood to be slaughtered for our heinous consumption. Just ask PETA. Prepare to embrace vegi-steaks and tofurkey (made of tofu grown on a collective farm).

No flatulence. Cows and most humans will need to be eliminated to save the atmosphere from ultra-damaging Methane. Humans also exhale CO2, so eliminate most of them on that basis, too. It also doesn’t matter that 95% or more of CO2 comes from natural sources. We have to do our part!
Cows are also meat, so they are also eliminated under the ‘no meat’ category above.

No chemicals or bio engineering of foodstuffs. So no fertilizers or high-yield, disease-resistant crops. This will also stop the corruption of our genetic purity. It doesn’t matter if this is unproven and only has the effect of getting more people fed. Franken-food must be eliminated! This will also cull the super-sized human herd. Hail Gaia!

No daily showers. This is too wasteful of Gaia’s precious fluids! Drink water if you must. The rest is for display purposes only.

No petroleum-based products. So if you stink from not washing, go to your earth garden and rub some mint on yourself. Live in a climate with winter? Suck it up and stink ‘til Spring. This also eliminates most household items. Women: you are liberated! You no longer have worry about trying to clean a house! Dirt and germs are now your friends! They will also help eliminate the disease of humanity more rapidly now, thank goodness!

No AC in summer. Hopefully like in Europe, we’ll get a heat wave that will eliminate ten of thousands of you old people that are past your ‘useful’ date. Note to everyone else: don’t get old.

Little or no heat in winter. What do you think you are going to destroy or burn of mother Gaia’s to warm your earth-raping body? Certainly nothing that will get you up to the 65-70 degrees you wastefully use today! Don’t even THINK about going out to cut down living trees for wood to burn once you lose gas, oil and electric feeds! The Government knows best. Please don’t complain and try to freeze to death with a little dignity.

No plastics. Milk will need to come in other containers like glass. Wait! How will we manufacture the glass in the first place? Forget any containers. You will just need to milk the cow directly if you want milk. Wait, I forgot! Cows are meat and flatulent! Forget milk and most any other container, device, or object in your house. Don’t even DARE think about replacing plastic with wood, earth-raper! Just do without. It’s environmental purity.

No cars. Certainly no gas powered ones. But wait! Where will the electricity come from for battery operated cars? But wait again- how will be manufacture or ship batteries full of toxic and dangerous chemicals? Cancel cars. Cancel horses, too. They are meat and flatulent like cows. Just walk you lazy scum.

So we will be cold, stinky/unwashed wretches lacking any stable power supply, starving for lack of enough food for all. We’ll be stuck where ever we are living due a lack of any means of transportation. We’ll suffer greatly from the weather and die early from simple ailments and diseases.

Hey, no one said getting to Eco-Utopia would be easy! We will all have to make a few changes in our lifestyle and expectations. Get on board and reap all of these tremendous, earth-saving benefits. Please join me in a rousing chant to mother earth: “Hail Gaia, she must be untouched. Hail, hail Gaia, she’s the one for us…”

Filed under: Environment, Global Warming, Climate Change, Culture, Entertainment, Environment, Environmentalism, Global Warming, Health, History, Life, Nature, Politics, Thoughts

Obamacare will not Add a Dime to our Budget Deficit?

Does anyone besides the President believe this? In my previous post, I addressed Obama’s outrageous claim that he would not sign a bill that added one dime to the budget deficit. Syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell echo’s this same thought with the same incredulity:

To tell us, with a straight face, that he can insure millions more people without adding to the already skyrocketing deficit is world-class chutzpah and an insult to anyone’s intelligence. To do so after an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office has already showed this to be impossible reveals the depths of moral bankruptcy behind the glittering words.

Did we really need CBO experts to tell us that there is no free lunch? Some people probably did, and the true believers in the Obama cult may still believe the president, instead of believing either common sense or budget experts.

Again, either Obama is approaching a state of being delusional about what he believes or he thinks we are too dense not to see the falsehood and shout ‘Lie!’.

Filed under: Health Care, Politics, Barack Obama, Democrats, Economy, Health, Health Care, Healthcare, Obama, President Obama

Obama on Health Care: Pusher of Contradictions or Lies?

Building on my post the other night that Obama’s ‘high stakes’ health care speech was a broken record of collectivism and contradictions, I will high light again that he stated he would NOT sign any bill that would “…add a dime to the federal deficit.”

Amazingly, as far back as July of this year, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that the (one of many) house bill on health care would add billions to our deficit:

WASHINGTON — House Democratic legislation overhauling the nation’s health care system would add more than $230 billion to the federal budget deficit over the next ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the official scorekeeper of legislation on Capitol Hill.

That assessment means the legislation violates one of main principles that President Barack Obama has set for any health-care legislation: that it do nothing to increase the deficit. The report is likely to increase doubts that centrist Democrats have expressed about the $1 trillion package, and could stall action in the House.

The $239 billion gap is identified in a report sent late Friday by CBO to House Democrats. CBO analyzed the House bill as it was brought before the Ways and Means Committee.

The article even states Obama’s same ‘promise’ back then in July on no new deficit spending (sounds like Bush41, doesn’t it? “read my lips: no. new. taxes.”)

If Obama knew this going into his speech last night, why does we keep saying it? Does he think he can say that because hebelieves in his own mind that the CBO’s report is false and he only lives in the subjective reality of his head? Or is it arrogance that he thinks we are all as uneducated and gullible as the inner city Chicago-ians that he spent years ‘organizing’?

As President of the United States, we expect that he would be aware and briefed on all major aspects of ‘his’ health care agenda and not be telling us what amounts to lies with some bogus concept of plausible deniability (The Democrats did it- not me!).

Maybe that congressman that called him a liar during his speech was channeling the American public and was more accurate than the President, pundits, and media want to admit.

Filed under: Health Care, Politics, Barack Obama, Health, Health Care, Healthcare, Obama, President Obama

Obama Speech: Same Old Tune

Obama’s speech to Congress changed nothing in the health care debate. I am constantly amazed at the untruths and disconnects that he clings to.

-He says he will not sign a bill that adds one dime to the deficit. Great! If he was serious, that would mean his approach is dead.

-He says that if you want to keep your current insurance or doctor, you can. Once they give a business a ‘free’ option to dump one of their fastest growing costs, they will in a heartbeat! Does he think we are stupid and don’t see the indirect outcome here?

-He says the ‘worst’ mis-information is around death panels. I have lived in Canada and my wife’s grandmother WAS DENIED TREATMENT DUE TO HER AGE. It’s an objective fact. When bureaucrats decide if you are ‘productive’ or worthwhile-enough to warrant government treatment or not, they have the power of life or DEATH over you.

Obama continues to be an ‘idea’ guy whose lack of real world experience and wisdom constantly shows his dis-jointed, collectivist and theoretical worldview and rookie mistakes. Then he leaves the heavy lifting of the policy to a highly leftist Democrat party and seems baffled when its socialism is rejected by the American public and contains horrific or anti-American provisions.

Here’s an informed citizen’s solution for workable health care reform: https://pracphilosblog.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/a-radical-solution-for-health-care-the-free-market-not-socialism/

Filed under: Health Care, Politics, Barack Obama, Government-Run Health Care, Health, Health Care, Healthcare, Life, Obama, Politics, President Obama

A Must See Primer on Our Future with Obama-Care

Check out this short video, filmed guerilla-style, on the real state of ‘Health Care’ in Canada, our good neighbor to the North. It is a must-see for a glimpse at our inglorious future of health care in this country if we lurch left toward a govt-run program:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2jijuj1ysw

This is exactly the same experience I had with my family when we lived in Canada from 2004-2006 (it’s worse now- see below).

IBD Article: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=299282509335931

If that’s too right-wing, try CBS or NYTimes going back as far as 2005-2006: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/20/health/main681801.shtml?cmp=EM8705

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/28/international/americas/28canada.html

Filed under: Health Care, Politics, Canadian Health Care, Government-Run Health Care, Health, Health Care, Healthcare, Life, Obama, Politics, Socialized Health Care, Universal Health Care

A Radical Solution for Health Care: The Free Market! (Not Socialism)

So much debate is going on pointing out how bad the collectivist approach of the Obama/Democrats will be for our health care, but where is the advocacy of a workable solution?

Here is a brief outline of where we need to go with US health care:

The Modern Health Care Solution

We need to reset our health care system back to a free-market, patient-driven system. Every other successful part of our society runs this way- why not our health care for goodness sake?! We need:

1. Market-based pricing of health care. We need medical Care/Service/Procedures priced up front like everything else in our society- not the price/cost black-boxes of today’s employer and government-subsidized health care.

2. Minute-clinics and similar no-appointment, transparently-priced clinics are going in the right direction of delivering this concept:
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2006/01/23_zdechlikm_coninfo/

3. Just like with the fair, portability of pre-tax 401k’s, we need fair, portable pre-tax health savings accounts for everyone to save their own money over time, make their own decisions on health care, and pay it with their own money.

4. Make health care ‘insurance’ back into actual insurance. Couple health savings accounts with high-deductible catastrophic health insurance policies that people buy like they do for life insurance or car insurance.

5. Reform the medical malpractice system and the laws driving it. In some cases, up to 25% of the cost of individual health care is extra tests and procedures run by doctors to ‘bullet proof’ themselves from malpractice lawsuits.

The above approach gives everyone the access, proper control, and choice over their health- not the opposite helplessness dictated by some far away, faceless bureaucrat.

Filed under: Health Care, Politics, Democrats, Free-Market, Government-Run Health Care, Health, Health Care, Healthcare, Obama, Politics, Socialized Health Care

Obama and Democrats Push False Choice on Health Care Reform

The DNC is launching an ad campaign to blast critics of Obama’s health care plan.

The Democrat/Obama/Leftist formula is that there are only two choices: Inaction/status quo or the Obama-Democrat ‘plan’ of action for health care.

This is a completely false-choice argument. It’s built on a series of Leftist myths:

Obama-Dem Myth1: There is only one possible solution for Health Care. The one solution is Obama’s government run health care ‘plan’.

Objective Fact1: There are MULTIPLE solutions for reform. Only one has a proven, historical success story- The Free Market. One ‘solution’ has a proven, historical failure outcome- collectivized health care.

Obama-Dem Myth2: This ‘crisis/catastrophe/disaster’ is so imminent and dangerous for America that we need to pass a 1000+ page piece of legislation right now and worry about what it says and how it impacts our society later.

Objective Fact2: It borders on criminal neglect on the part of the President and Congress to try to ram through legislation of radical and major change that no normal human has had enough time to read, let alone digest the content of. The only possible reason for this approach is the reality that if people get enough time to understand the content of the collectivized ‘plan’, they will not support it. This is also an approach of tyranny and disrespect for the democratic political process.

Obama-Dem Myth3: Republicans only want to stop the President’s ‘compassionate plan’ because they want to personally ‘break’ the President and don’t care about creating reform.

Objective Fact3: What Obama and the Democrats want to suppress is the discussion of, or exposure to, any of the Republican free market solutions  that have worked in every other part of our economy in the past and will work again if implemented.

Filed under: Uncategorized, Collectivised Health Care, Free-Market, Government, Government-Run Health Care, Health, Health Care, Healthcare, Life, Politics, Socialized Health Care, Society, Universal Health Care

Government Run Health Care is Always a Failure and more Expensive

The biggest lie of this whole Obama lurch toward Socialism/deconstructing America is that government run health care would be cheaper. A Democrat was recently heckled off the stage for trying to say this with a straight face in a public townhall meeting. Americans were not, and are not, buying it.

It doesn’t take anything but common sense to understand why a government run health care plan or any collectivist solution won’t work and won’t be cheaper. Take any good or service and make it a ‘right’. If your barrier to consuming a valuable good/service is taken away, demand will overwhelm the supply/system every time.

With other key goods and services like food, housing, and transportation, everyone has to decide how much they have to spend and then how much of that they want to spend.

If, for example, food were suddenly a make-believe government ‘right’, then we would all want steak and lobster and the best gourmet food all the time. The government would quickly run out of money and would start rationing expensive, good tasting food and give you what it decided it could afford for you, like Spam or hot dogs, etc.

In the past (even before employer health subsidies distorted the market), you weighed the cost of going to the doctor with how bad your medical issue was. Charge too much for health care and no one would buy it. Charge too little and demand overwhelmed supply. But this doesn’t happen because millons of individual health transactions created a natural market balance of quality to cost. This is how all the rest of our society works or used to work in a free market economy.

In the unsustainable pipe dream of government health care, the same supply will have to suffice for a doubling or up to a ten-fold increase in demand because someone else (the government) thinks they can pay for it. They can’t. Every country and US state that has tried this approach either goes bankrupt or else has to ration/restrict the care provided to meet the exploding demand. A government option has an objective history of creating long health service waiting lines where people die waiting for the care their tax dollars have paid for. Artificial, politically driven pricing will also drive talented people from the expense of becoming doctors or investing in developing new medical devices, pharmaceuticals, or other services. This further accelerates a mis-match of demand with supply.

It’s as if this government pretends the laws of economics don’t apply or they don’t understand them or the underlying human nature that drives them.

This week Obama will be on TV this week and attempt to mislead you again (post-failed auto market, mortgage market, and ‘stimulus’ schemes) that the laws of economics/human nature again don’t apply to health care. I urge you to reject his anti-health plan and his anti-American, collectivist world view.

The free market works! All of our prosperity has come from individuals working and producing what we need in this framework. Why in the world do we not AGAIN apply the free market to health care? It is the model and solution we need to tell our leaders to go back to for affordable, quality US health care!

Filed under: Health Care, Politics, Collectivised Health Care, Culture, Government, Government-Run Health Care, Health, Health Care, Healthcare, Life, Politics, Socialized Health Care, Society, Universal Health Care

How to Fight Government-Run Health Care

Below is the link to a 7 minute primer on how to fight government-run health care and the dangers we face from it as a society.

You may be surprised to find that this is not the first time that the US has fought to stop the flawed and unsustainable agenda of government control over your health care options and your control of your life.

You may also find it surprising as to the source of the timeless comments used in the video snippet.

Enjoy:  A Fight For Our Way of Life: Socialized Medicine vs. A Voice from Our Past

Filed under: Health Care, Collectivised Health Care, Culture, Government, Government-Run Health Care, Health, Health Care, Life, Politics, Socialized Health Care, Society, Universal Health Care