The False Choice Between Left and Right

The Current Financial System Is Not Capitalism:

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What's Scary About Health Care Reform?

Steve Chapman wrote a great column on health care today. Read the whole article here.

Some excerpts from the article below:

Plenty of people think the existing system is in need of repair. But when they hear about expensive plans that require a more powerful and intrusive federal government, they fear that what is best in our approach to medicine may get smashed in the process.
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One big reason our life expectancy lags is that Americans have an unusual tendency to perish in homicides or accidents. We are 12 times more likely than the Japanese to be murdered and nearly twice as likely to be killed in auto wrecks.

In their 2006 book, "The Business of Health," economists Robert L. Ohsfeldt and John E. Schneider set out to determine where the U.S. would rank in life span among developed nations if homicides and accidents are factored out. Their answer? First place.
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Some of those foreign systems are great, as long as you don't get sick. Samuel Preston and Jessica Ho of the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania examined survival rates for lung, breast, prostate, colon and rectum cancers in 18 countries and found that Americans fared best.

The U.S. also excelled on other measures, such as surviving heart attacks for more than a year. Why? Because our doctors and patients don't take no for an answer. The researchers attribute the results to "wider screening and more aggressive treatment." Another factor is that we get quicker access to new cancer drugs than anyone else.
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The challenge in this country is to extend coverage to the uninsured without degrading quality for everyone. With a little caution and humility, the president and Congress can find ways to achieve that goal. But first, they need to put down the hammer.

Obama Town Hall: We Need Reform

I just finished watching the town hall Obama held in Montana. I felt he did a much better job than the one he held earlier this week. I actually agreed with many of the things he said. For example, insurance companies should not be allowed to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions and that the healthcare system is definitely in need of reform.

I am still skeptical of his plan, mainly on the issue of the cost of the plan. I don't see how they can expand coverage to 47 million American without it costing trillions of dollars. The average annual cost of insurance for a single person is about $4,700 per year. Using this average, take 47,000,000 people uninsured times $4,700 and you get a cost of $220.9 billion per year. Over ten years this amounts to about $2.2 trillion, without taking into account rising costs (i.e., if they can keep health care premiums from rising at all during the next 10 years a task I find unlikely to be achieved). To give some idea about how much $220.9 billion per year is, the U.S. government will spend about $651.2 billion on defense this year.

Obama stated that 2/3's of the costs would be covered by making the healthcare system more efficient and that the government would only have to raise about $50 billion in addition revenue per year. I find these numbers quite dubious. I think best case scenario the plan will cost about $2 trillion over the next 10 years.

Also, during the town hall meeting it seemed like Obama and Dems were backing away from a public option. The public option was one of the mechanisms to control costs.

I would be in favor of a healthcare plan that is paid for by cuts in other government programs. I would not be in favor of a healthcare plan that is not paid for or one which would be paid for by rising already high taxes on the American people. Also, the costs of the plan have to be realistic numbers; the numbers that the CBO is putting out are unrealistically low.

I think some form of healthcare reform will be passed this year because the Republicans have no more credibility than the Democrats. My biggest fear is that it will not be paid for or that the government will drastically underestimate its cost.

We cannot continue to run up high deficits and expect that America will not go bankrupt some time down the road.

Friday Afternoon Linkfest: Required Reading

1. Big Pharma Loving Obama's Healthcare Bill. Big giveaways to drug companies in exchange for their support of the Healthcare bill.

2. Lobbyists Loving Obama's Healthcare bill.

3. Is the FDIC still solvent? Asks Karl Denninger.

4. How Raising Taxes Cannot Get The U.S. Completely Out of Our Budget Hole. From the NYTimes.

5. Public Spending's Day Of Reckoning. The government's profligacy could spell doom for the U.S.

6. Another Reason Australia Is So Awesome. Is the Australia central bank a model for popping bubbles?

7. Reserve Bank of Australia will have to raise the benchmark interest rate.

Happy Reading :)

Why Obama and Dems Are Having Bad Month

This has not been a good month for the Democrats and Obama to say the least. According to new polling, only 47% of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing while 52% disapprove. People are starting to really fight back against Obama's healthcare plan; only 42% now favor his healthcare plan and 53% oppose it. The town hall meetings have been going very poorly for the Dems to say the least.

The town hall Senator Arlen Specter had this week went especially poorly. You can watch it here. According to the latest polls Arlen Specter is now behind his potential Republican rival Pat Toomey, 36% to 48%.

Also, the according to the latest polling data the Dems are likely to lose two governorships in November, in Virginia and New Jersey. In Virginia, Robert McDonnell (R) is leading Creigh Deeds (D), 47% to 38%. In New Jersey, Chris Christie (R) is leading incumbent Jon Corzine (D), 50% to 37% according to the latest polling.

So why are things going so poorly for Obama and the Dems in general? I think there are several reasons.

The first thing is that the Dems and Obama have lost a great deal of credibility with the American people. One of the reasons for the lack of credibility with the people is due to the failure of his stimulus plan to actually work.

Obama promised the stimulus plan it would create 3.5 million new jobs and that the unemployment rate would not go over 8%. The stimulus was rushed through Congress without anyone reading the bill. Since then millions of jobs have been lost and the unemployment rate is well over 8%. Just today, news has come out that new jobless claims unexpectedly rose and retail sales unexpectedly fell in July. The stimulus did not turn out the way Obama was predicting, therefore many more people are questioning everything he says or does.

Another credibility problem Obama has is the fact that he promised he would post bills online five days before he would sign them. This has not happened. He promised he would end torture but he is still allowing the practice of rendition to continue. I could go on and on. The fact is he has promised many things that have not happened.

Secondly, the Democrats do not have a concrete healthcare plan to sell to the people yet. They are just asking the people to trust them, like they have credibility to do as they say they will do. For Democrats, it would not be a problem not having a concrete healthcare plan if they still had some credibility and the trust of the American people.

Third, the people are rightfully extremely worried about the deficit. The Dems have no good solid plan for dealing with this problem and getting us back to a budget surplus.

Fourth, the Democrats' cronies in the media are trying to paint anyone who disagrees with their healthcare plan as being part of some lunatic fringe. This is a brilliant strategy seeing how 53% of all Americans now oppose it.

Fifth, Obama's town hall appearance yesterday. It was horrible, obviously staged, rambling, and ridden with gaffes Joe Biden could be proud of. While trying to sell a public option he admits the U.S. postal service is in need of work and the private companies, Fed Ex and UPS, are, "doing just fine." Watch below.



Sixth, the lobbying and the corruption are as alive and well as they ever have been.

Seventh, Geithner. People hate Geithner, he is a Wall Street crony like Bush's Treasury Sec. Paulson. Geithner helped create the economic problem we are in. What is he doing as Sec. of the Treasury?

If the Dems continue on this path they will lose big in 2010. This is warning coming from one who is no fan of the Republicans and Bush--someone against the Iraq war--someone who did not vote for McCain.