I really wanted to be useful in a health care reform movement here in Colorado. I am still holding out for some effective effort. Right now, nothing is shaking.

I’ve been to meetings and am on email lists. But mindsets are stuck in designed-to-fail mode. One, they are focused on health “insurance” rather than health “care.” Secondly, they presume that the road to success is through the electoral and legislative process.

The second notion is easily set aside. ACA, or Obamacare, was nothing more than jujutsu, taking all of the great energy for reform and channeling it for benefit of AHIP*. Even if, with herculean effort, they elect one or two members to the legislature, they’ll never begin to mount the force that insurance companies bring to bear. Even assuming that the person elected is honest and sincere, he or she can only introduce legislation that cannot pass or would be subject to veto

The veto can easily kill any movement, as it did in California under Governor Schwarzenegger. Jerry Brown would do no better. Our governor, John Hickenlooper, is a D-Republican. That’s how it shakes out everywhere, from here to Bullock in Montana to Brown in California. D-Republican governors serve as gatekeepers.

AHIP seeks to minimize access to health care. Premiums, co-pays, deductibles and coinsurance are effective tools in preventing people from entering the system except when in dire need. Even with insurance, poor people can be bankrupted.

Ergo, the concept of “insurance” does not fit in health care except in a catastrophic sense. Rather, all of us need to access to health care. The insurance companies have effectively encircled the system so they can charge their 20% fee. It’s a classic leeching, or “rent seeking” activity.

I suggest part of the answer is small, local and free clinics where people can go for basic triage. Most health care issues are treatable in early stages. Too many people fear going for basic care due to the added burden of medical costs on top of existing premiums. (Anyone needing more intensive care would have to enter the insurance-corrupted system, and I have no answer for that other than our current highly inefficient free care system via public charity administered through hospitals.)

But we start at ground elevel. Free clinics would be busy and cash-strapped, so that the “reform” movement would be focused on funding and staffing. All work would have to be voluntary, and funding as well. Public-spirited citizens could then put their good energy into effective activities with a payoff: seeking contributions from individuals, businesses and foundations for the clinics. Volinteers could actually see a psychic reward.

If successful, it would be imitated and would spread. Insurance companies would see it as a threat to their business model. The real fight would then begin, reformers defending a successful model which would be under attack by insurers. They might succeed, as public perceptions would favor David over Goliath.**

It beats the hell out of quixotic legislative campaigns and battles that, even if successful, result in a veto.

Working in a corrupt system to fight corruption is futile. All who enter that system perish. Only reform from the outside is possible.
___________
*America’s Health Insurance Providers, the industry lobby group.

**The Democrat Party would then join the fray in their usual role as false friends, working inside the reform movement to kill it. They are a deadly enemy of reform.

I spent three hours last Saturday at a meeting run by local labor to promote a single payer health system in Colorado. The speaker, brought in from Detroit, was smart, interesting and on top of his game. He understood concepts like “rent seeking'” quite rare. There were about thirty people in the audience. In this brain-dead country, that’s a lot.

In Q&A I mentioned how in Montana we were at the mercy of the Public Relations industry, always behind the eight ball, as they killed us with short and pithy slogans like “death panels” and “government run” and “tax increases,” all false but so damned effective. I suggested that we study this, that we needed some slogans of our own. The speaker agreed, said they knew this.

Here’s one they came up with, a poster on the wall:

Medicare Yes.
Insurance companies No.”

That’s about as bland as they could have made it*. Even substituting the word “cartel” for companies would help, but these people don’t seem to have much in the way of creative juices. They are bound to lose.

Here’s the kicker. The meeting lasted three hours, I met some folks, 29 to be precise. For all of our sitting and listening, they did not ask anything of us. No outreach, community contact, even little things like letters and phone calls. We just listened and went home.

Yeah. That’ll work. Way to go, labor.
__________________
*The speaker said that there is a poster in the labor temple in Detroit that says “The bosses get two parties. Why can’t we have one?” That might be more effective if not kept in the basement. I suspect they are fearful of offending Democrats.

Our current system of governance is extremely corrupt, and the people who thrive in such a system are third and fourth-rate humans. We devote our national treasure to making weapons and attacking other places to steal resources. That is our primary function. The president and the congress are sold on this enterprise and lead the charge.

Bribery is at the center of our politics. I have seen people write with some pride that those who are getting the most bribes ought to be held up for praise. I am not kidding.
Continue reading “Rule by edict” →

This has been bugging me, and it was in the comments and not a private conversation, so I will pass it along here. A guy named Truthwillwin1 came here after I had paid a brief visit to Doug Ernst’s blog, and offered up a the following “study” he and others had done. This has to be the batshit craziest nonsense I have ever seen:

We recently did conduct a fun study to see if people are hypocritical in their views on giving and it had some interesting results. The study was conducted in 2 phases.

Phase one was to ask if all people should be covered for health care and we asked about their views on the fairness of the tax system.

Months later the same group of people (968 people) was asked a question something like this. If you received an A in this class would you be willing to reduce your grade to a B and give others in your class the points in order to help the ones that are failing pass?

The results were very interesting (a quick summary):

• 436 believed we should all have health care.
• 863 believed the top brackets should get a higher tax to support the lower income groups.
• 39 stated they would take a grade reduction to help others.

When it came to actually providing the assistance the majority was against it, yet when it would come from others they were fine with having them embrace the burden.

The next goal may be to see how much a person is willing to pay…

WTF? Giving away a grade? How about instead of that give away intelligence or good looks? I know what the mindset is behind this, that money is a symbol of success and accomplishment, in and of itself a valuable commodity rather than a device used to enable commerce. And that is the funniest thing about this study – normally they try to be clever and disguise their objectives. They did so in this study, and here is what they discovered: The people doing the study do not understand money, social structure, caring and compassion, or the health care system. They are stupid.

By the way, I pay taxes and willingly support Medicare and Social Security and assistance for those who are in true need. I would never give away an “A” I had earned in a class. That’s dumb. I told him I thought the study was more education than a survey of attitudes, and that it was contrived to boot. He got angry, commented that he’s a professional in these matters, and left in a huff. Which is OK – he’s the type with a cannot let someone else have the last word. Since I am that type too, we were doomed to tragedy, hours of painful exchange. This is not meant for bait. He’s gone and there are no links.

It’s just so freaking stupid that it needs to be highlighted. What payroll is he on? Are my taxes paying for this nonsense? This, AND we have to pay for their stupid wars? Jesus! Give a poor citizen a break. Now they’re just rubbing our faces in it.

Amid all of the hubbub about Obamacare working, signing up new people, and more people being allowed access to the health care system, it does not hurt now and then to say something that is true. Here goes:

Countries with socialized medicine have far lower costs, 100% coverage, and better outcomes.

America’s Health Insurance Providers (AHIP) gave us Obamacare to ward off single payer. That program, if implemented even in a small-scale, would work and drive them out of business one state at a time, Canadian style. There were rumblings in places like Vermont and California. 2008 was the time for action. Obama was AHIP’s point man, along with Max Baucus. These two very corrupt politicians managed to stave off true health care reform for a generation, perhaps longer.
Continue reading “America’s Health Care System: A Moral Hazard” →

Bill Maher’s Real Time last Friday was a pretty good show. He had Erin Brockovich (the gal who made Julia Roberts seem smart), Josh Barro, Carly Fiorina and Howard Dean. Willie Nelson stopped by at the end, and was his great old usual self. (He said that there was a guy one time who was hit on the head with a bale of marijuana, and that is the only known death from the substance.)

Somewhere in the latter part of the panel discussion, all three agreed that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was Romneycare, and that it had been written by industry executives. According to Dean, and the panel knew it as well, these people descended on Baucus’s office and had the run of the place, moved over the the White House for implementation, and are all now back in private industry.

I’ve been saying that for years now. However, it was on TV. Now we know it is true.

Tax conferring today … Not fun but necessary. This paragraph that follows needs emphasis, as if affects everyone:

You will receive a notice from the IRS stating that you owe the penalty (for failure to have health insurance). The IRS can collect the money by reducing the amount of any tax refund that you are owed in the future. But the law says that you will not be subject to criminal prosecution and the government cannot file a notice of lien or file a levy on your property.

Got that? They went off the rails. The health insurance industry wrote and passed ACA, mandating that we purchase products from private companies. They must have assumed that a penalty on a private mandate would be unconstitutional, if not the mandate itself. But AHIP was insistent. So they wrote a penalty and made it unenforceable.

I expect this to change, as the mullahs in black robes ruled that the mandate is a tax. But for the time being, if you are penalized for failure to have insurance and are not owed a refund, tell IRS to f*** off. It’s rare we can do that.

I’ll summarize here for those who do not have time to read this, and please do include JC’s remarks in the comment section regarding payment of costs for people below poverty level to be better informed. What I found is that we are basically being sold catastrophic policies where we are on the hook for the first $6,350 of medical costs. If you have that much in costs, you can ignore all policy features except monthly premium. Go for the cheapest. The more expensive policies are an attempt to buy down the $6,350, but it’s a trap, as you end up spending more in medical expense plus premium than you would otherwise spend with a higher deductible and lower premium. If you have ongoing costs, go cheap.
_________
I was looking over the available policies on the Colorado Health Exchange, and it is very confusing, as it is designed to be. There are differing co-pays, co-insurance and deductibles. So I decided to do a side-by-side comparison, and selected twelve plans with varying monthly premiums, the low $430 (Kaiser) and the high $1,049 (Access Health Colorado). Bear with me here, as it will for a while seem confusing, but in the end be stone-cold simple.

There’s no way of anticipating what kind of health coverage anyone will need in a given year, so I decided to compare policies based on what might be typical for someone my age. I have an annual physical, blood tests, office visits, lab fees, an MRI and out-patient surgery, some physical rehabilitation after surgery, and ambulance and two ER visits, and a two-day hospital stay. I’ve done nothing but visit doctors for minor ailments (one knee surgery, outpatient) for decades, but am assuming that this year, SHTF. The total costs I imagined I would incur: $14,275.
Continue reading “It’s not complicated. It’s just deliberately confusing.” →