Mark Twain popularized this phrase of unknown origin: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Much of the talk about the pandemic is proving him right. CNN reports that the US has the highest number of coronavirus cases in the world at 82,000. Such isn’t all that surprising since we are the home of top-flight and broad-based health care and research. We are rich and capable enough to uncover the instances. I’m sure that CNN meant this to be an indictment of Trump, but it should be less surprising given our capabilities.
The above isn’t the only instance of our media making a muddle of our public discussions. Take for example the talk about “risk factors”. Yes, there are genuine physical risk factors such as age and the notorious “underlying conditions”. Completely left out, though, are the social risk factors. Just look at a map to see what I mean.
The areas most vulnerable are fronting onto the global economy, with globalized populations (“diverse” in today’s woke parlance), and with a critical mass of compacted dwellers. In addition, these places are politically captured by the cultural and political Left. So, they are ripe for infection due to the pipeline for pathogens from tourism and the to-and-from travel of residents with foreign relatives. Many of these cities are ports to boot. The governing personalities are enthralled with the mistaken notion of the bigger the government, the better — an idea born to disappoint. Need I say more?
So, what are we to make of this after-the-fact finger pointing? Not much. Neither Trump nor de Blasio is to blame. These things are black swan events with very little warning, especially if the country of origin is an even bigger-government state with every reason to hide the truth. We could bankrupt the country in the futile effort to prepare for unknown unknowns, to borrow a bit from Donald Rumsfeld.
Then, what are we to do? Get back to work, except for the intensely infected cities and a few other areas. The one-size-fits-all approach to public policy is ridiculous. The places most affected need to be treated differently. Lockdown and quarantine them. Everywhere else should carry on … and be leery of migrants from de Blasio’s Eden.
James Clyburn (D, S.C.) before the press on March 24, 2020.
The above quote came out of a statement from the alleged “conscience” of American politics, James Clyburn (D, S.C.), and House Majority Democrat Whip. The quip says a lot. It’s a “vision” similar to the end product of Marx’s Dialectical Materialism. For Americans who vote Democrat, are you aware that you’re voting for collectivist utopians? The debate over the pandemic relief bill brought this to light.
First, what’s the Marxist connection? Simple, it’s utopian egalitarianism in almost every sense of the word. Marx’s dialectic is essentially a series of interconnected episodes of class warfare with an apocalyptic final one (Proletarian Revolution) to usher in the world of equality. How’s that much different from the dream of the current leadership and base of the Democratic Party?
Clyburn’s remark speaks volumes. “Restructure things” comes dangerously close to totalitarian social engineering, reminiscent of Mao’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Mao was really into “restructuring”. What of Clyburn’s “vision”? Of course, all secular prophets have a vision of a “better world”. But Clyburn’s, Mao’s, and Marx’s “vision” probably isn’t the one that you and I have in mind.
The Socialist Feminists of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) protesting Trump’s health care plan on Jul. 5, 2017, in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. (photo: Erik McGregor/Pacific Press)
So, in the mind of Clyburn and company, for the country to get relief from the shutdown, the bill must be packed with the means to move us along the path to Marx’s end-state. The Dems aren’t happy with simply taking care of the sick and unemployed. They demand the measures that’ll cripple our economy and way of life, as in any place where it has been tried.
California governor Newsom announced the closure of bars and other “nonessential” businesses in the state on March 15.
My oldest son fled California to our place in northwest Montana after Gov. Newsom’s shut down of the state. Of course, the conversation turned to the topic of the pandemic. I expressed my doubts about the wisdom of some of the extreme means to confront the virus. He said that I may be taking the threat too lightly. I said, “No, the threat is real but you can’t make idle a sizable portion of a labor force of 160 million people for any length of time. A shutdown even for a month is unsustainable. ” More to the point, as Harry Callahan of “Dirty Harry” fame said, “A man’s GOT to know his limitations.” Translation: A shut down has its limits … real, concrete-bridge-abutment-style limits.
Regardless, shutting down a population’s need to produce for any length of time and expecting no serious repercussions because you’re going to paper over the induced economic coma with “paper”, literally, as in paper money and bonds, is pure fantasy. Think about it. Squashing the livelihoods of the hospitality industry, suppressing production of anything bureaucratically defined as “nonessential”, eradicating a good slice of the transportation industry, etc., etc., will make the 25% unemployment rate of 1933 look small. Moreover, piling debt obligations onto the backs of the grandkids smacks of something pretty close to immoral, and economically suicidal.
Who would have imagined the possibility? Traffic is light on East First Street after the new restrictions by Gov. Newsom went into effect on March 20, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by David McNew)
Newsom’s gang in Sacramento – and Cuomo’s in Albany – are already operating on the thinnest of fiscal margins. Crushing the revenue pipeline for any length of time will force these guys to cry “uncle”. When the resultant mobs of the pitchfork brigades descend on the state capitol, the shut down will be in the rear view mirror.
Sure, getting sick has its hazards, but reverting back to hunting and gathering carries its own perils beyond a disease’s mortality rate. Get real. Rich societies – meaning those that produce lots and lost of stuff – make for rich health care. You can’t have the latter without the former. The Mayo Clnic and Johns Hopkins sounds better to me than the village shaman.
Health care after euthanizing a nation’s economy: a female shaman from the Clayoquot region of Vancouver Island.
Progressive/left protesters crowd and shout into Rep. Chris Stewart’s (R, Utah) townhall in Salt Lake City, March 31, 2017. George Frey/Getty Images
Our times seem to be especially fraught with some of the worst invective, character assassination, and outbursts of anger bordering on rage. Disruptive chants and slogans have replaced reasoned discourse. I’ve complained about this often. Astonishingly, it has taken place at a time when we are spending trillions on education. As it turns out, mass education hasn’t produced mass wisdom. The situation raises serious questions about our educational system. Are we educating citizens or producing close-minded activists?
Watch this episode of young climate-change activists making demands at a recent (August 22) DNC meeting in San Francisco. The Sunrise Movement is most certainly the Sundown Movement, the sundown of reasoned discourse.
Very little intelligent dialogue takes place, nor is there any evidence of its presence in the short cognitive histories of these young people. They jump from rash conclusion to street activism with nothing prior or between.
The same is true in much of our political landscape. Brusque knee-jerk reactions take the place of thoughtful discussion and civil discourse. I doubt if the groundwork in the form of sufficient knowledge has been made in order to make it possible. So, it’s back to chants, slogans, disruptions, and hectoring. I cringe just thinking about what will happen if Pres. Trump gets the chance to fill another Supreme Court vacancy.
In the case of the above video, the instigator is the previously-mentioned Sunrise Movement. When I look into the faces of these young people, I slump into depression thinking of what our media and schools have done to their minds. All is not lost though. There are still a few golden and older voices in the wilderness, even if they’re no longer with us. Two of those voices belong to the late Milton and Rose Friedman. Their legacy continues in the Free to Choose Network. Airing this month on Amazon Prime Video are “The Real Adam Smith: Ideas That Changed the World” and “Sweden: Lessons for America?”. I viewed both recently.
The first should be a must-see for Pres. Trump and some of the hosts on Fox News. Are you listening Tucker? The second one should be required viewing for – wait, it’s a list – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, her political soul mates, the activist base of the Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders, much of the rest of Democratic Party’s wannabee presidents, and those protesters pushing their way into the DNC’s meeting in San Francisco.
Pres. Trump reacts to trade issues in the same way as a developer dealing with his project’s immediate circumstances and the relevant people before him. Tariffs for him are like the rent charged in Trump Tower. It adds to his bottom line. The “trade deficit” is treated as a debt or loss in his books. It isn’t quite that simple. Tariffs are taxes paid by consumers in one way or another. Call it a value-added tax on imports, and operates in like manner. As for the “trade deficit”, it is just one component in the balance of payments. A shortfall in it will lead to surpluses in the other two components: the financial and capital accounts. The importer gets dollars and we get their goods. The dollars end up in financial instruments (bonds, government debt for example) and foreign direct investment.
For Trump, the dollars flow in the pockets of foreign fat cats as they live in, get this, a non-dollar society. How does that work? It doesn’t. The fat cat must translate his dollars into his country’s currency to buy that swank penthouse in Shanghai or keep the Benjamins to spend them on a Montecito mansion. He’ll need renminbis in the PRC or hand over the dollars to the old-moneyed seller in posh Montecito. Another option is parking the money in our government debt. Whichever way, dollars eventually come back here.
Dollars or renminbi (yuan).
Could trade deficits have downsides? Yes, they could. Some regions could fall into depression as they lose out in the international competition. The social effects of economic decline aren’t pretty. Shuttered factories and businesses, distressed neighborhoods, family breakdown, substance abuse, people locked into a cycle of life with few prospects, and welfare dependency are symptoms of the malaise.
Abandoned and dilapidated factory complex in Detroit, Mi.Injecting opioids.
This is one weak spot in the film. Free trade has a ying and yang quality. It works best among countries with free economies, more or less. The role of similar social expectations and norms among nations can’t be counted out. I suspect that the PRC sees trade as another weapon in the long twilight struggle for national and ideological dominance. If their people get richer in the process, that’s icing on the cake. The country is certainly one for us to be very leery.
Nonetheless, the first film – “The Real Adam Smith” – lays out a useful primer for the value of free trade, one that Trump and his courtiers should understand. It might restrain them in their enthusiasm for punishing our literal and natural allies with tariffs. But we can hold two ideas at the same time (per Hillary’s iteration, and true). President-for-life Xi may be Trump’s friend, but he isn’t ours.
The second film – “Sweden: Lessons for America?” – is a necessary corrective to a popular urban myth for self-styled urban sophisticates. They pride themselves in being smarter, more intelligent, and better informed than the rubes. For them, the right side of the political spectrum is populated with Morlocks.
The Morlocks in the 1960 movie, “The Time Machine”.
The prejudice was on full display when Paul McCartney accepted the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2010 and bellowed this insult at ex-President George W. Bush while President Obama and wife were in attendance: “After the last eight years, it’s great to have a president who knows what a library is.”
McCartney and Pres. Obama at the award ceremony, June 2010.
Ironically, the rank condescension of an accomplished pop music star is rooted in a profound ignorance that is common in places like bein pensant circles in Georgetown. For the beautiful people, all the smart people are on the left side of the spectrum. In reality, they’ve adopted John C. Calhoun’s outlook, but the target isn’t African-Americans. It’s anyone who might wear a tool belt, pay a mortgage, attend a Bible-believing church, and just might register Republican. Johan Norberg, the documentary’s host, unwittingly presents proof of the presence in chic quarters of the “Ignorant” stamp on the forehead with a frequency equivalent to tattoos in the crowd of heavy metal concertgoers. Norberg does it by shattering their fantasies about Swedish socialism.
Bernie Sanders has frequently tried to distinguish himself from the brutal socialism in the Soviet Union and Mao’s China. He does it by attaching his socialist vision to Scandinavian “social democracy”, not Pol Pot. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , a younger Bernie Sanders with different genitalia, imitates him. Both invoke the experience of “democratic socialism” in Scandinavia.
CNN quotes Bernie Sanders as follows: “I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway and learn what they have accomplished for their working people.” The Danes recoil from the “socialist” label. Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen responded in a speech at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, “I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.”
Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, October 30, 2017.
Bernie and AOC continue to maintain that these countries are working examples of a successful socialism. They try to do so, in spite of the Scandinavian leaders’ rejection of the “socialism” label, by emphasizing “democracy”. It’s rhetorical sleight of hand. The fact of the matter is that the scheme is all about government control. It matters little if the control is exercised through a small claque of ideological oligarchs or a mob of 50% plus one. Private property becomes meaningless if it is at the mercy of any assemblage of 50%-plus-one. “Democracy” is the cover for all sorts of sins.
To say it is “democratic”, also, doesn’t mean the administrative state goes away. Rules to avoid chaos and give direction will have to be promulgated by a commissariat approaching the size of the Soviet Gosplan. The likes of Bernie and AOC have all kinds of social and eco “justice” to pursue. AOC helped author one incoherent version of the Green New Deal and Bernie later came up with his own monstrosity. Whichever of the two routes you take, you’ll end up in the same place: central planning!
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey (right) speak during a press conference to announce Green New Deal legislation on Feb. 7. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Plus, the two carnival barkers act as if nothing has happened since the heyday of Scandinavian socialism in the 1970’s. It’s here that the Swede, Johan Norberg, and “Sweden: Lessons for America?” clears away much of the verbal smog. To make it simple for Bernie and Alexandria, Sweden had a free market economy, lost it, then gained it back. How did they do it? They reined in their “social democracy”. Business taxes were lowered; pensions became contribution-based rather than benefit-based; universal school vouchers were implemented to the point of private high schools becoming half of all high schools; unions became cooperative rather than combative; the vaunted universal health care system is remarkably decentralized with vouchers and a growing number of private healthcare providers; and on and on and on. In many ways they are freer than us.
Bernie wishes that we could be more like Sweden. Oh really, Bernie? I don’t think so. There is one area that should especially draw the ire of Bernie and much of the Dem Party. Sweden makes everyone pay taxes. If you will receive government benefits, you will pay. They don’t have a tax structure that attempts to shoulder the burden of government on the pocketbooks of the wealthy and the businesses who are the engine of jobs. They tried that in the 1970’s and saw their economy slump and businesses flee. Don’t doubt for a moment that Bernie and AOC won’t try to inflict the horrible history on us.
Really, the amazing part of the story is the abject ignorance of the story. Bernie, AOC, and the like, stop history in the 1970’s. Democratic socialism’s failures are deleted from the record so they can ignore Scandinavia’s movement toward free markets. Our democratic socialist icons take the system of its heyday, pretend the failures and reforms didn’t happen, and attribute the successes of its reforms to the socialism of the earlier misbegotten period. This is circularity with a huge bite out of its circumference. It’s nonsense.
In Scandinavia, particularly Sweden, Adam Smith has made a comeback … out of necessity. Socialism failed. In America, especially among the Democratic Party base and millennials, Marx is making a comeback. Go figure. AOC tries to distance herself from Marx to be more politically palatable. So does Bernie. Yet, do they really understand Marx? I kinda doubt it. Marx is socialism with an eschatology. Strip the violent eschatology and you still have socialism. Our lefty politicos want socialism to be elected into power. But does the means of implementation matter? Socialism is socialism and it doesn’t work. Isn’t the emphasis on 50%-plus-one just another attempt at putting lipstick on a pig?
A return to a sound understanding of human nature and the modes of social organization that are attuned to it would be huge step forward in removing needless chatter and destructive venting. I doubt, though, that it will ever get a hearing in today’s toxic climate. Too many people just don’t know a damn thing. Many of them are on the left, but that won”t stop them from being oh so confident. There is nothing more dangerous than an over-confident ignoramus.
Demagoguing high pharmaceutical prices by our president and lefties of all stripes obscures the fact that foreigners are given a free ride on American R & D. Exercising gangsterism in a manner to make Scarface blush, foreign governments threaten the production of cheap knock-offs if our companies don’t cave on prices.
It’s easy for them to do: buy a pill and take it apart in the lab. Don’t worry, the theft is protected by these governments. Trump, yes, bash China for their unfair trade practices, but also let’s put some muscle behind a campaign to end this extortion racket.
Joining the economic-kiss-of-death crowd led by Bernie Sanders, et al, is hardly an adult response to high prices. It typically takes 12 years and $2.4 billion to bring a new medicine to market. Industrialized methods brings down production costs, but what about recouping the $2.4 billion? If not countered, Trump and lefties, alongside the international extortion racket, will become coffin-makers for an entire American industry. Now, what about all those tweets about “Jobs!, Jobs!, Jobs!”?
Appeals to economic illiteracy and popular venality should be rejected in favor of a little common sense.
** Thanks to Steve Forbes, “Great Medicine for Trade”, Forbes, March 31, 2018, p. 15.
The closest parallel to the current debacle over the Republican efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare might be the failure of the far more numerous opposition to the Bolsheviks from 1917 to 1920. The divided nature of the opposition spelled their doom and anchored the Bolsheviks in power for over 70 years.
There are 3 effectual political parties in America: (1) the Republican Party, (2) the Semi-Republicans, and (3) the Democratic Party. Like the Whites in the Russian Civil War, the Republicans couldn’t sublimate their pet interests and form a united front to attain the ultimate goal of saving the country from Obamacare.
In contrast, the Democrats acted with the iron discipline of the Lenin-led Bolsheviks. The Bolshevik’s reward was a 70-year lease on power over millions. Could this be ditto for the Democrats?
Bolshevik leadership, 9th Party Congress, 1920.Congressional Democratic leadership, 2017.
Let there be no mistake: parties #2 and #3 have made it possible for American healthcare to continue to be on a death watch. Escalating premiums, deductibles, and declining participation by medical providers will proceed.
Americans will become acquainted with the truism that health insurance isn’t healthcare. Insurance is a piece of paper that no one need accept, unless the Dems push to enslave the medical industry as the Bolsheviks chained Russians. Are we now to look forward to Medicaid-for-all?
A contentious interview between Hugh Hewitt and Aaron Sharockman (3/28/17), executive director of PolitiFact.com, caught my attention. Apparently, differences between supportable points of view are shoe-horned into true/false judgments by PolitiFact. By so doing, sites like PolitiFact can distort the nature of the dispute and mislead the public.
Aaron Sharockman, executive director of PolitiFact.comHugh Hewitt, host of the Hugh Hewitt Show, Chapman University law professor
At issue was PolitiFact’s slapping of “false” on Hewitt’s claim that the Obamacare exchanges are experiencing a “death spiral”. In fact, it’s an easily supportable point of view. Sources can be cited in support of it. Instead, the PolitiFact journalist quickly labeled it “false” after cursory digging.
Understanding a “death spiral” requires knowing the difference between “collapse” and “collapsing”. In regards to the Obamacare exchanges, the high deductibles, costly premiums, shrinking involvement by medical practitioners, and withdrawal of insurance providers from many markets has discouraged the younger and healthier to opt out of the pool making them unsustainable — thus, a death spiral. It is collapsing, but hasn’t collapsed yet. The death spiral describes a collapsing insurance market. PolitiFact’s journalist doesn’t know the difference, nor the fact that it is a defensible position.
The simplistic approach may have much to do with an inadequate educational preparation for our younger wave of journalists: people who inherently have a predilection for quick, snappy judgments.
The impetuousness of their youth isn’t tempered by a deeper understanding of the major issues of life – something a better education could offset. Instead, having never grappled with the major battles of ideas throughout history, and in many cases unaware of their existence, leads them into premature judgments.
35-year-old Aaron Sharockman, himself, is a case in point. Exploratory questions into his background and preparation would lead one to believe that he isn’t well-read in the literary classics pertinent to his college major: Political Science/Journalism. Other than “1984” – something that could have been read in high school – he’s had no exposure to anything else that might enlighten him of the totalitarian mindset.
“1984”, Big Brother, and Ingsoc (abbreviation for “English Socialism”)
The totalitarian mindset, as described in books like “Darkness at Noon”, seeks to control thought by forestalling the presence of other points of view from space in public discussion by branding them “false”, “not preferable”, “wrong”. Is PolitiFact performing the function of Gletkin in “Darkness at Noon” or the Ministry of Truth in “1984”?
The modern fact-checker seems to be stepping into the role of truth-controller.
Speaker Paul Ryan after pulling the healthcare bill.
The following is my comment to Byron York’s piece in the Washington Examiner of March 24, 2017, “14 Lessons from the GOP Obamacare Debacle”, (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-14-lessons-from-the-gop-obamacare-debacle/article/2618439?fb_action_ids=427872760895604&fb_action_types=og.comments)
Byron York of the Washington Examiner is correct in his post-mortem of the failure of the House Republican healthcare bill. He is most insightful in his last “lesson” to be gleaned from the debacle: it’s still way too early to write off the Trump presidency. It certainly isn’t a great start, but this too will fade as the unexpected comes to the fore.
Here are my “lessons”:
1) All large organizations have factions, particularly narrow, purist factions. I call the Freedom Caucus the seppuku clique among Republicans. With a small congressional majority, their influence looms much too large in the GOP tent. The arts of working with others not so inclined in their tenets isn’t in their DNA. Self-critiques of their behavior and beliefs are nowhere evident. They would be more comfortable in Mohammed’s legions than learning the ropes of governing with others of divergent views. Ways must be found to diminish their ranks. At least primary them!
2) “Insurance” and “healthcare” has been allowed to be bollixed together. Nothing can be further from the truth. One can have “health insurance” without “healthcare”(as Obamacare shows), and vice versa. So, the public discussion takes place on the Democrat’s favorite collectivist grounds. “Insurance” cements the idea in the public that somebody else will take care of their medical needs and wants. It’s the natural playground for socialists/progressives/collectivists of all stripes. Anything based on somebody else paying will produce a mess. Before venturing into the swamp again, much greater efforts must be made to reduce this opening for Democrat demogoguery.
3) This is more about what to do. Put the issue behind you. Obamacare is imploding. Spare no opportunity to point fingers at the Dem-Mensheviks for foisting the thing on us, as well as those purist zealots in the Republican ranks who won’t accept any other choice than between Valhalla and suicide. These are the dominoes: implode first; primary the purist fusspots second; and thirdly present a Marshall Plan rescue package in the wake of the ruins. The only problem is that the Republicans may not be in a position to do much by the time we get to rescue. To avoid that unhappy fate, create a record of success elsewhere, like with infrastructure, tax reform, rolling back the commissariats, etc. On this, you’re right Byron York.
I can’t help but come back to the baleful influence of the maniacal diehards. With a small Republican majority, they hold too many trump cards. They won’t get their libertarian heaven. Instead, we’ll most likely get Dem majorities and full-blown Castro-care. Querulous perfectionists are liabilities to their own side as they are assets for the opposition.
The fight over pulling the plug on Obamacare presents two lessons. First, government projections – like those of the CBO – are proof that hallucinations don’t have to be artificially induced. Give an agency a crystal ball and they will proclaim the future. Hilariously, the pseudo-visions of agencies like the CBO will be treated as fact in the debate over appropriating trillions of dollars. The tactic has the life of a vampire. Partisans, after sundown, will open up the crypt and let out the rhetorical monster of treating illusory numbers as reality.
Secondly, and more importantly, one part of the House Republicans’ AHCA blueprint is the block-granting and cap on the Medicaid entitlement. Have we unknowingly hit upon the antidote to our runaway spending addiction? The federal budget – surprise, surprise – is being inexorably swamped by cruise-control (entitlement/mandatory) spending. An obvious response might be to tie program spending to a set amount as every working adult does with a paycheck.
The AHCA block grants Medicaid to the states.
The problem with loosely connecting program funding to a kind of social inertia is the near impossibility of accurately predicting year-to-year money levels. These programs are called “entitlements”, and the spending is “mandatory”, with total amounts determined by beneficiaries and not by a predetermined, legislated figure. The formula is simple: legally qualify and a person gets benefits; no qualifier is turned away for lack of money. Spending is on cruise-control … and people in the out-years feign shock as to how wrong the projections were.
PolitiFact’s 2015 estimate for federal mandatory and discretionary spending. Notice the two biggest slices are of the “cruise-control”, mandatory variety. Defense, the first purpose of government, is “discretionary”, tied to a fixed amount, and frequently relegated to begging for more when things blow up in the world. Ironically, transferring money from one person to another is a guaranteed draw on the public purse, while defense must fend off the world’s crazies with a straitjacketed budget. Should “discretionary” be “mandatory”, and “mandatory” be “discretionary”?
The projections were always guesses based on faulty assumptions. The near impossibility of predicting the effects of incentives and disincentives that are unleashed by the programs is a chronic problem. And, of course, “crap happens” to throw the best prognostications awry.
Look at the CBO’s guesswork for the number of enrollees in Obamacare’s exchanges. The exchanges are where individuals, unaffiliated to any employer, get their health insurance. The CBO is all over the place in their numbers.
Freopp.org’s display of CBO yearly projections for the number of enrollees on Obamacare’s exchanges.
The upper lines are the predictions in the rosy glow of Obamacare’s initial passage. 20+ millions were expected but then lowered in the 2016 red line. The green line is reality. They over-calculated the positive effects of the subsidies and individual mandate. In the end, Obamacare’s death spiral continues apace.
The CBO, OMB, or any number-crunching bureau can’t produce a firm bottom line for any program while an open checking account exists to cover anyone qualifying for a draw on the public treasury. Those programs deemed “mandatory/entitlement” should be treated as “discretionary”. In fact, all spending should be “discretionary”. The best thing about the proposed AHCA is the chance to move a program from the “mandatory” to the “discretionary” side of the federal ledger. It’s a tactic that should be repeated throughout the federal budget, thus depopulating and eliminating the “mandatory” category.
All federal spending should be “discretionary”. Fixed amounts would be appropriated for everything. If more is needed, Congress would have to approve it. It’s called the power of the purse, and that purse wasn’t meant to be latchless and permanently wide open .
“Pie chart of ‘federal spending’ circulating on the Internet is misleading”, Politifact, 8/17/15, http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/aug/17/facebook-posts/pie-chart-federal-spending-circulating-internet-mi/
“Medicaid and the American Health Care Act”, Medicaid and the Law, 3/9/17, http://www.medicaidandthelaw.com/2017/03/09/medicaid-the-american-health-care-act/
“Problems with the CBO Analysis of the American Health Care Act”, Avik Roy, National Review online, 3/14/17, http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/445742/problems-cbos-analysis-house-republicans-obamacare-replacement
Randomly asking a person at a mall on a Saturday afternoon about healthcare will be met with blank stares, bumbling utterances, and the mall’s background noise. Maybe not everyone, but a good number.
Why? Well, people don’t care about it till they need it; there’s a nearly complete disconnect about costs; people won’t read anything longer than the 3 lines of a Facebook post or Tweet; our politicans have been allowed to demagogue the issue; and self-serving special interests (AARP, and the list found here: https://votesmart.org/interest-groups/NA/38#.WLMbF_nyuUk) pettifog the issue. It’s scandalous … and all so confusing to a largely inattentive and ill-informed public.
Here’s some points of confusion. First, “healthcare” and “health insurance” have been jumbled together. The reality is that a person can have healthcare without health insurance, and health insurance without healthcare. Unless we enslave medical practitioners, we are learning that we can possess insurance that few with a medical license will honor. Conversely, healthcare can exist as a form of “welfare” without purchasing a premium.
Secondly, somebody else paying the bills creates childlike fantasies. It’s called the third-party-payer problem in economics. A barrier exists between seller and buyer called the insurance middle-man. Bottom line, particularly for the consumer: Who cares? The result is a chronic escalation of prices.
Thirdly, government can’t give you anything without taking from somebody else first. A Robin Hood society isn’t a healthy one, if we can project beyond our nose. Eventually healthcare will resemble a combination of the DMV and Saturday night in the emergency room at the public hospital.
Where does this leave us? Block grant Medicaid to the states; phase-in Medicare reforms; expand Health Savings Accounts; allow stripped-down policies; restrict sign-ups to one deadline per year; treat health insurance like car insurance; and grandfather existing policies. If some states love Obamacare, they can keep it … and foot the bill. How’s that for starters?
