May 26 2010

It’s time to take action! Part ONE

Category: education,environment,government,healthcare — harmonicminer @ 9:34 am

As slick spreads, so does frustration

The White House is being pounded for not acting more aggressively in the month-old oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The administration is hitting back, mostly at BP. Louisiana is threatening to take matters into its own hands. The truth is, the government has little direct experience at either the national or state level at stopping deepwater oil leaks, and few realistic options.

“As the administration is being pounded,” eh? This is “pounding?” I invite the writer of this particular opinion piece to go back and review the press coverage of Katrina. Now, that was an administration getting pounded.

With the oil flowing and spreading at a furious rate, President Barack Obama has accused BP of a “breakdown of responsibility.” He named a special independent commission to review what happened.

But the administration seems to want to have it both ways, insisting it’s in charge while also insisting that BP do the heavy lifting. The White House is arguing that government officials aren’t just watching from the sidelines, but also acknowledging there’s just so much the government can do directly.

The problem here is that the administration is having a hard time being seen as doing something. 

When somebody didn’t have health coverage at a price they were willing to pay, the government could DO something.  What it did is incomprehensible, incoherent, and incompetent…  but it’s going to be a few years before the degree to which this is true is manifestly undeniable, so, for now, some people give the feds credit for at least having done something….  though the numbers of such people appear to be dropping daily.

Is somebody out of work?  Hey, the government is spending billions and billions and billions on makework projects (did you know you can create a $50,000 per year job for only half-a-million bucks of federal money?), unemployment benefit extensions, and shovel ready projects of all kinds (I have dogs…  so I have a few shovel ready projects I wouldn’t mind federal funding for…  and they’d do about as much good for the economy).

Are some children mentally disabled?  Let’s create a federal law that imposes on the states an enormous bureacracy whose net effect is to send an army of expensively educated people with Master’s degrees to work in small classes (or even private lessons!) trying to teach 3rd grade arithmetic to 15 yr olds who have no chance of ever remembering a significant amount of the instruction, let alone using it for anything.  Let’s make federal laws that force states to create educational policy by lawsuit, so that one parent sues under new federal law, and the entire state’s approach changes, very expensively, as a result.  And let’s remember to reserve names like “mean-spirited” and “cold-hearted” for anyone who thinks perhaps this isn’t a wise use of public resources.  In the meantime, let’s continue to complain about how financially strapped the state and county education establishments are.

At least we’re trying to do something.

So, just to get in the spirit of things, tomorrow (or the next day), I’ll be posting some suggestions for things the Obama Administration could do immediately to stop the Gulf oil leak.  Not that I’m promising any of them will actually work.  But one of them might….  and we have to try, don’t we?

May 20 2010

Thank you, America. You may begin paying my bills immediately!

Category: healthcare,humor — amuzikman @ 8:00 am

Speaking of Obamacare, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi recently said:

We see it as an entrepreneurial bill, a bill that says to someone, if you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations because you will have health care.

Well, it’s about time.  I have been waiting for this – and not a moment too soon!

I have been in some aspect of the music business for 32 years. In order to have some degree of both success and career longevity I have had to work very hard and wear many hats through the years; performer, arranger, producer, copyist, proofreader, librarian, contractor, conductor, teacher, etc. And to be perfectly honest not all of those jobs necessarily played to my skills, talents or aspirations.  Sadly some of them were simply for the purpose of providing food, shelter, and yes, even healthcare for my family.  But that was then and this is now.  There is a new paradigm! First thing I’m going to do is quit my current university teaching job per Ms. Pelosi.  After all, what is the point of continuing to teach classes about the music business, since there is no longer a need for one?  I can now see how Music Business 101 might soon be replaced by Musical Aspirations 101. Of course I won’t be teaching it – Pelosi said I don’t have to.  I guess some poor schmuck non-creative, non-musician faculty person will be stuck teaching it.  Instead I’m going to stay home only doing what I want to do – focusing on my skill, my passion and my aspirations.  Now that I don’t have the pressure of having to work a job I can let my creativity run free.  In the mean time be sure you all keep paying for my health insurance.  Oh, and by the way one of my creative aspirations is for taxpayers to also buy me a new car and pay for me and my family to take a 6-week vacation every year in Hawaii.  Believe me, I’m REALLY gonna focus on that.

Many thanks to the current administration.  I think things are going really well.  Finally we musicians are going to be getting the recognition and support we so richly  deserve.

May 13 2010

A shocking admission?

Category: Congress,economy,government,healthcare,legislation,media,politics — harmonicminer @ 8:10 am

Health overhaul law potentially costs $115B more

President Barack Obama’s new health care law could potentially add at least $115 billion more to government health care spending over the next 10 years, congressional budget referees said Tuesday.

If Congress approves all the additional spending called for in the legislation, it would push the ten-year cost of the overhaul above $1 trillion, an unofficial limit the Obama administration set early on.

The Congressional Budget Office said the added spending includes $10 billion to $20 billion in administrative costs to federal agencies carrying out the law, as well as $34 billion for community health centers and $39 billion for Indian health care.

The costs were not reflected in earlier estimates by the budget office, although Republican lawmakers strenuously argued that they should have been.

Say it isn’t so! You mean, a newly minted government program is really going to cost more than they said it would?

I’m shocked and appalled. Mostly appalled.

Appalled that there is anyone, anywhere, who doesn’t think that the program is likely to cost 2 or 3 times as much as estimated, at a minimum… and maybe much more.

Of course, there are people in the world who know nothing of history.

Apr 08 2010

Young adults, with less money, will pay more

Category: Democrat,economy,election 2008,government,healthcare,legislation,liberty,Obama — harmonicminer @ 8:25 am

I just want to say thank you, once again, to all the young adults who voted for Obama. The fact that you volunteered to pay more for my health coverage and retirement is a sign of real respect for your elders.

Health premiums could rise 17 pct for young adults

Under the health care overhaul, young adults who buy their own insurance will carry a heavier burden of the medical costs of older Americans, a shift expected to raise insurance premiums for young people when the plan takes full effect.

Beginning in 2014, most Americans will be required to buy insurance or pay a tax penalty. That’s when premiums for young adults seeking coverage on the individual market would likely climb by 17 percent on average, or roughly $42 a month, according to an analysis of the plan conducted for The Associated Press. The analysis did not factor in tax credits to help offset the increase.

The higher costs will pinch many people in their 20s and early 30s who are struggling to start or advance their careers with the highest unemployment rate in 26 years.

Consider 24-year-old Nils Higdon. The self-employed percussionist and part-time teacher in Chicago pays $140 each month for health insurance. But he’s healthy and so far hasn’t needed it.

The law relies on Higdon and other young adults to shoulder more of the financial load in new health insurance risk pools. So under the new system, Higdon could expect to pay $300 to $500 a year more. Depending on his income, he might also qualify for tax credits.

At issue is the insurance industry’s practice of charging more for older customers, who are the costliest to insure. The new law restricts how much insurers can raise premium costs based on age alone.

Insurers typically charge six or seven times as much to older customers as to younger ones in states with no restrictions. The new law limits the ratio to 3-to-1, meaning a 50-year-old could be charged only three times as much as a 20-year-old.

The rest will be shouldered by young people in the form of higher premiums.

Higdon wonders how his peers, already scrambling to start careers during a recession, will react to paying more so older people can get cheaper coverage.

Of course, these people who are telling you that your premiums will go up by 17% are just trying to break it to you gently, to let you find out the truth in stages.  But this IS the government we’re talking about, and this IS an entitlement program, so you know, don’t you, that the real cost is going to be more.  Much more.  Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc., all cost much more than anyone dreamed they ever would.   So will this.

And, of course, for the many young adults who could afford health insurance but have simply chosen not to buy it themselves (something like 1/3 of the currently “uninsured” if memory serves), their cost under the new regime will be much more than they currently pay…  which is nothing.  But we really need to grab these deadbeats and shake some money out of them.  Don’t they know that their turn will come later, to have the generations after them pay for their healthcare?

The young musician in the article above, Nils Higdon, is a perfect representative for your demographic, because even though he’s about to be soaked, he is willing for it to be even worse, by being for single-payer health care (you can read about it at the link above).  Very generous of him.  And you, since I’m sure you agree, being a young Obama voter who really respects your elders, and wants to take care of them even more.

I suppose it’s just a good thing for me that most young drummers haven’t read Adam Smith, or F.A. Hayek, or Milton Friedman, or Thomas Sowell.  Undoubtedly, the screeds from these promoters of the greed motive would have poisoned their young, impressionable minds.

I see that Mr. Higdon is a self-employed drummer.  In the real world, in this economy, that sometimes means he makes most of his living as a golf caddy.  I’ve always thought that golf caddies should pay more for the health care of the old duffers, er, golfers, that they serve.  I mean, since the caddies already fund their retirement via social security and incompletely funded government pensions and so on, it just seems reasonable. 

If you’re going to carry their clubs, you may as well carry them, too.

Mar 25 2010

The whitewash in the media continues #2

Category: government,healthcare,media — harmonicminer @ 8:27 am

And the beat goes on….

Obama, Democrats Begin Reaping Political Benefits Of Reform

Only hours after the president signed health care reform legislation into law on Tuesday, the immediate political benefits for the Democratic Party are already coming into focus.

According to a Gallup/USA Today poll conducted the day after health care legislation passed the House of Representatives, 49 percent of the respondents think the passage of reform is a “good thing,” compared to the 40 percent who think it is bad. The numbers are a welcome relief for a party and a presidency that had been bleeding popular support over the course of the past six months.

We’ll see how many other polls confirm THIS result. I’m guessing they mostly won’t.

I expect to see each and every day a mainstream media attempt to do damage control for Democrats.

I don’t think it will work.

On another front, did you know that newspaper advertising revenue has dropped by over 25% this year? That’s because somebody has to be reading it for advertisers to bother with it.

Most people who buy newspapers are using them to paper-train puppies and start fires.  Which is about right, I think.

In the meantime, I conclude that mainstream newspapers are so in favor of Obama-care because most of their employees are in justifiable fear of losing their jobs, and they hope it will give them some help.  Maybe some of them can be part of the 16,000 new IRS workers that will be required to enforce the mandatory health insurance enrollment, administer fines to scofflaws who don’t buy health coverage, etc.

There are going to be a lot of scofflaws, once the young folk figure out that the fine is cheaper than the insurance coverage, and that they’re going to get health care regardless.

Jan 02 2010

Putting the “New” in New Year!

Category: capitalism,Congress,global warming,government,healthcare,legislation,Obama,taxes — amuzikman @ 1:37 am

John Updike once said, “Americans have been conditioned to respect newness whatever it costs them”.  I think he’s right – after all, newness is a part of our heritage.  For one, we live in what was referred to by Christopher Columbus as “The New World”  We’ve got several states and cities given names that are a combination of the word  “new” with names brought by the pilgrims  from the “Old World”.  New Jersey, New Hampshire, and New York are on the “new” list of states.  The cities list includes New Orleans, New Haven and New Brunswick.  Yes we do seem to be attracted to all things new.

Our music is saturated with references to newness.  We all remember the big Disney hit, A Whole New World.  And can you imagine even for a minute that James Brown would have sung, Poppa’s Got A Slightly Used Bag?  You Make Me Feel Brand New, Brand New Day, New Kid On The Block….the list goes on and on.  In fact there is an entire genre of music known as “New Wave”.  Of course classical composers have jumped on this bandwagon too.  Dvorak penned the New World Symphony and he wasn’t even American..go figure!

Our politics (The New Deal), our literature (Brave New World), our advertising (“new & improved!”), and our vernacular speech (“turning over a new leaf”) all attest to our love of new. We compliment others when we say, “it’s the new you!” And when someone has been ill we give encouragement by telling them that in no time they’ll be “good as new”.

Nothing displays our love of new more demonstrably than the celebration of New Year’s Day.  We mark it as a fresh start, an annual genesis, a time to initiate personal improvement.  We make New Years resolutions, we begin a new calendar year.  It’s “new” at it’s best.

Politicians understand Americans and their love of “new”, and they use it as a very effectively campaign tool.  With each election cycle and with debate on major issues like health care, taxes, banking, finance, the military, etc, we are told new is good and old is bad.  Political candidates who successfully market themselves as a part of “new” and completely disassociate with “old” usually stand a pretty good chance of being elected, especially if “old” is unpopular.

In many instances we embrace “new” and equate it with “better” even though most of us have had experiences with new versions of something that does little more than make us long for the old version (software!).  And who hasn’t picked up a familiar food product in new packaging to note that there is now less of the product inside the package, but it costs more!

But “new” is NOT always “better”.  And we need to learn that lesson once and for all. I think John Updike is right.  However, this time the price tag on “new” is costing us more than we or our children can ever afford to pay.

Nov 21 2009

Bribery, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Category: Congress,healthcare,legislation,politics — amuzikman @ 11:57 pm

Imagine you are a police officer who has just stopped a vehicle for speeding.  When you make it clear that you intend to write a ticket, the driver offers you $100 to change your mind.  This action, a felony, is called Bribing a Peace Officer and carries a maximum penalty of $10,000 and two years in jail.

Now imagine you are a United States Senator from Louisiana who is unsure of how to vote on the so-called health care bill.  Another Senator tells you they will see to it that your state receives $100 million dollars to ensure that you vote “yes” on the aforementioned piece of legislation.  This action is called political hard ball, is apparently legal, and carries no fine or threat of imprisonment if found guilty.

it would seem that our political leadership has abdicated any real responsibility to deal with the issue, let alone the merits of this 2000+ page monstrosity of a bill.  It has become entirely about politics and money.

Is there anyone out there who can say with a straight face they truly believe this is at all about improving the health care system in this country?  If so, why don’t you hop on your unicorn, fly over and meet me at the end of the rainbow.  I’ll introduce you to a lovely little leprechaun who’ll point out the pot of gold we can use to pay for government-sponsored health care.

Read the details.  Senatorial votes are for sale to the highest bidder.

Nov 03 2009

Sometimes it’s cheaper to just pay the fine

Category: government,healthcare — harmonicminer @ 9:44 am

Here is a young man who currently buys his own health coverage, who saysWhat He’ll Do If We’re Forced To Buy Health Insurance.

If the Max Baucus iteration of health care reform eventually becomes law, then as soon as the federal mandate for individuals to carry health insurance goes into effect, I will very likely defy the mandate, cancel my health insurance, and pay the $950 annual fine. It will not be done out of protest, but out of sheer rational cost-benefit calculation.

And so it goes.

The primary fallacy of government (and most other bureaucracies) is that when they create a policy to try to make a certain group of people act a certain way, they change the circumstances for everyone, not just the group that is targeted by the new policy.

When a national health care program along lines currently proposed by Democrats gets enacted, we will see floods of people changing their behavior to get the most they can from the new situation.   That’s why Obama’s promise that “you can keep your coverage if you like it” is laughable when the government has created incentives for business to stop offering coverage and simply dump employees into the government plan.

And in the meantime, a lot of young people are going to simply pay for the fine for not being covered and then use the free government health care, right up until they start having age related issues that the government plan won’t manage so well, at which point they’ll take advantage of new laws requiring private insurers to take anyone, regardless of previously existing conditions.  In other words, they’ll game the system.

Bureaucracies are always beset by unintended consequences when they try to get people to do something that they don’t want to do for other reasons.  That’s because when you change the rules, everyone will act out of self-interest, and no one is smart enough to foresee all the creative ways people will have of doing that.

The classic model of this is the IRS code, which is so huge and complex because of attempts to try to “game the system” by tax payers when the code was simpler.  The Social Security code and regulations isn’t much better.

Prediction:  if health care is nationalized, we’ll see a whole NEW profession.  It will be the profession of people who help other people navigate the health care system.  It will be modeled after the tax preparation industry.  Expect to see TV ads for services to help you get the “health care your entitled to.”  And expect lawyers to make a lot of money “fighting the government” to get them to pay up.

And expect a lot of creative people to find all kinds of ways to game the system.

Oct 24 2009

Punishing the “haves”: and, cancer survival rates in Canada and Britain

Category: Congress,healthcare — harmonicminer @ 9:37 am
Keep in mind that these cancer survival rates are for the full population, not just “insured people,” which means that the total survival rate of cancer patients for the entire US population, which INCLUDES those without insurance, is better than the total rates for Canada and Britain.

Oct 11 2009

A Democrat speechwriter figures it out… the hard way

Category: healthcare — harmonicminer @ 1:23 pm

Health Care Speechwriter for Edwards, Obama & Clinton Without Insurance Now

For the first time in my life, I am without health insurance and it is a terrible feeling.

In the past, I paid attention to the health care debate as a speechwriter who prepared speeches, talking points, op-eds, and debate prep material on the topic at different times for John Edwards, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and others. Now, I’m paying attention because I’m a citizen up the creek without a paddle.

Much more at the link about the realities of socialized health insurance in Massachussetts, by a former true believer in nationalized health care who was a Democrat speechwriter for Edwards, Obama and Clinton. 

Sometimes reality intrudes.

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