–Read Dennis Byrne’s rational discussion of health care insurance.

Mitchell’s laws: The more budgets are cut and taxes inceased, the weaker an economy becomes. To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments. Austerity = poverty and leads to civil disorder. Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
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I thought the Supreme Court’s worry about mandatory broccoli had reached the apex of foolishness, but I was wrong. Dennis Byrne, a columnist printed in the Chicago Tribune has exceeded that mark. I publish excerpts from his article only because (alas) he echoes some commonly held sentiments.

Chicago Tribune
The imagination goes wild: Paying for the health care of the irresponsible
Dennis Byrne, April 3, 2012

One thing last week’s historic U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments about Obamacare clarified: You healthy people will be paying more for juicers, addicts, gangbangers, smokers, fatsos, drunken drivers and other assorted careless, thoughtless creatures.

There are more than 30 million people who can’t afford insurance and many millions more who have pre-existing conditions that all but prevent them from obtaining affordable insurance. The primary purpose of “Obamacare” is to cover these uninsured people and their children.

To Dennis Byrne, poor people, who can’t afford insurance, are “juicers, addicts, gangbangers, smokers, fatsos, drunken drivers and careless, thoughtless creatures.” Where he gets his data is not important; being a columnist, therefore needs no data.

Dennis wants all 30+ million to be punished for their misdeeds by early death, or to go to emergency rooms, where they will cost the paying public even more than Obamacare.

Tellingly, Obamacare does not affect those rich, who may be juicers, addicts, etc. They already can afford insurance. It just helps the poor and middle classes.

The central idea of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — the formal name of the Obamacare law — emphasized in the hearings is to spread the cost of health care to ever-larger pools of Americans. In particular, to those who pay low health insurance premiums, the young who choose to have no insurance and the healthy.

As Justice Samuel Alito pointed out, a typical healthy young adult annually may pay $854 for health care, but under the Obamacare mandate to buy insurance, he could end up paying $5,800 in premiums.

Pul-eeze! Does Justice Alito really believe Obamacare will give license to insurance companies to raise rates 680%? No, he doesn’t. He’s just being a typical extremist, tossing out all kinds of nonsense (remember “death panels”?) for political, not truthful, reasons.

Much of that money, of course, will fund such expensive services as end-of-life care. But will uncounted billions — trillions over a decade — be funneled into hospital emergency rooms to, for example, patch up Maniac Latin Disciples? To care for the increasingly large host of obese people?

Or for drivers who were ejected through a windshield because they refused to buckle up? For injured kids whose parents couldn’t be bothered with child-restraint seats? For helmet-less motorcycle riders whose brains were scrambled when their bike hit loose gravel at 70 mph? For those with repeated traffic violations?

For those whose reward for engaging in unsafe sex is a sexually transmitted disease? For alcoholics and the drug addicted? For smokers who won’t kick the habit?

Dennis, first allow me to deplore the obvious and contemptible, racial profiling bigotry of “Maniac Latin Disciples.”

Back to cases, I hate to break this to you, but Obamacare would decrease the use of those costly, hospital emergency rooms, which now are used by uninsured, poor people who know they cannot be refused service there. But never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

How will the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and her bureaucrats allocate those costs? How will the Independent Payment Advisory Board, created under Obamacare, resolve that problem when slicing $500 billion out of Medicare? What about Medicaid?

People who show up at a hospital emergency room without insurance go on other patients’ tabs. Obamacare advocates would assign the allocation job to omnipotent panels of unelected experts, unresponsive to marketplace realities and unaccountable to the public.

Dennis, you and others of your ilk, can’t have it both ways. You want to eliminate the cost of insuring “irresponsible” behaviour, but you decry “omnipotent panels” (aka the aforementioned “death panels”), who will judge what constitutes “irresponsible” behavior. Make up your mind, boy.

Consider what a cut in benefits might mean for irresponsible Americans who refuse to use certain preventive services. How would they handle intravenous drug users who continue to irresponsibly share needles? Send them to economy-class wards in the hospital?

Would the mandarins resort to trying to “incentivize” behavior change (further increasing everyone’s costs) or employ behavior modification methods that I’ll leave to your imagination? Would the mandarins begin asking people whether they used condoms when they are tested (also required) for HIV? Would single, pregnant women be asked if they used contraceptives? If not, will they have to pay their OB-GYN a higher deductible?

The imagination reels at the possibilities.

Dennis, you call that imagination? Hah! It pales in comparison to the crazy inventions of the Supreme Court extremeists who imagine mandatory broccoli as an outcome of an Obamacare decision.

Sure, you can say I’m scare mongering; no government would resort to such extremes.

Right, Dennis. You’re scare mongering. Proud of it?

Unless the government is in the hands of those hated right-wingers who would “impose their morals on America.” Who, in the interests of the greater good, would drag single women to “abstinence only” classes to be eligible for maternal benefits?

Who, indeed? Congratulations Dennis, on creating the most ridiculous straw men in the history of irrational debate. Maybe your imagination really is as good as that of Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito.

Should the government force responsible people to pay more for health insurance so that irresponsible people can pay less?

That phony issue is no issue at all. Define “irresponsible.” Who will make that judgement? Out of the total number of uninsured people in America, how many are “irresponsible”?

Here, for your convenience, I have created a sample, Dennis Byrne, “irresponsible” definition test, for readers to answer:

1. Have you, or anyone in your family, ever smoked?
2. Has there ever been a time when you did not have a working fire alarm and burglar alarm in your house? (Same question for radon and CO detectors.)
3. Have you, or anyone in your family, ever not worn a seat belt while in a moving car, truck, bus or airplane?
4. Have you, or anyone in your family, ever ridden on a motorcycle while not wearing a helmet and/or leather clothing?
5. Have you, or anyone in your family, ever taken any recreational drug or taken too much of any drug, legal or otherwise?
6. Are you, or anyone in your family, overweight or underweight?
7. Have you, or anyone in your family, ever been diagnosed with any disease or disability, that continues today?
8. Have you, or anyone in your family, ever become inebriated?
9. Have you, or anyone in your family ever climbed a mountain, flown an airplane, bungee jumped, zip lined, had a fight or committed any traffic violation like speeding, illegal turn, burned out light bulb, etc.?
10. Have you, or anyone in your family, ever done anything that anyone might consider irresponsible, like having sex without a condom, eating fatty foods, not washing your hands before dinner, failure to have a flu vaccination, failure to have a shingles vaccination, living in a high-crime neighborhood – that kind of stuff?
11. Can you afford health insurance?

If you answered “yes” to any question, 1-10, you are guilty of “irresponsible” behavior, and deserve no insurance. You and your kids can die early, for all I care. However, if you answered “yes” to question 11, don’t worry about 1-10. You’re our kind of people.
Sincerely, Dennis Byrne
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Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com

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No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia. Two key equations in economics:
Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption + Net exports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–This is an appeal to America’s clergy. Please do your job.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, so you know what that makes me, for I am about to rush in to a discussion of (yikes!) religion.

I suspect that virtually all religions are based, at least partly, on morality, and morality usually is based on the Golden Rule. Despite what fundamentalists sometimes do, the fundamentals of religion are not how you dress, but how you act toward others – not how many prayers you recite, but how many people you help – not how often you attend a house of worship, but how often you put the welfare of others before your own.

In the previous post, How President Obama surrendered the principles of the Democratic Party, and lost the health care battle, I criticized the President for not emphasizing the morality of Obamacare, but rather being diverted into a discussion of cost. Yet, what is the real purpose of the program?

The real purpose is not to cut costs. We easily could do that by reducing coverages. Rather, the purpose is to care for people who otherwise would have difficulty caring for themselves. The purpose is to aid people who have pre-existing conditions, or sudden, unexpected health events. The purpose is to help our fellow Americans who need our help.

And that is why I am so disappointed in the religious right. If anyone should understand and empathize with the desire to help the poor and the sick, it should be the religious. And the most religious should understand and empathize the most. Yet, it is the religious right who object most strongly – most selfishly, I should add – to the program.

And they object for the thinnest of excuses: Because a few people don’t want to “be forced to” buy health care insurance, and would rather . . . I don’t know what. That’s the reason?

Charity is a foundation of most religions. And yes, I know; charity begins at home. But it doesn’t end at home. And I simply can’t get it through my mind that people who pride themselves on being God-loving and God-fearing, could be so callous toward their fellow human beings.

I can’t get it through my mind that a guy who is apoplectic about pornography, is unmoved about real human suffering. I can’t get it through my mind that people who are angry about the illegality of aliens care nothing about the immorality of preventable sickness. I can’t get it through my mind that people incensed about gay marriage, are not equally incensed about dying children.

Who is at fault? It begins with the clergy. They are our teachers, the moral leaders of our community. Yet, where are their voices? Where are the demands that our underclass be helped? Where are the marches for the poor? How can the clergy stand before their flocks, preach goodness and mercy in the abstract, yet not care that people are sick and dying needlessly?

Did the recession make us cold? I think not. When other forms of misery occur in America – floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, fires – we rush out to help the misfortunate. Why not now? Is it politics? Is winning an election so important that it overrides compassion and human decency?

This is an appeal to America’s clergy. If you know a better way to help the sick and handicapped, fine. What is it? Speak up, now. One way or another, let the world hear your voices. Let the world see America as a kind, generous, religious nation, not just a pious one.

Clergy, please do your job. And if you don’t know what that is, ask your god.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–How President Obama surrendered the principles of the Democratic Party, and lost the health care battle.

I urge you to read this excellent, short article,

How Liberals Killed Universal Health Care, by Paul Andersonin, at Policymic.

Here are some excerpts:

The most striking thing about the Obamacare oral arguments was the absence of a moral argument in favor of universal healthcare. Liberals’ quest to cover everyone spans almost three generations. They weren’t pursuing universal coverage to grow government, increase efficiency, punish insurance companies, or “bend the cost curve.” Their case was much stronger than that.

As T. R. Reid put it in his book The Healing of America we have an “ethical obligation — as a matter of justice, of fairness, of solidarity — to assure everybody has access to medical care when it’s needed.”

Instead of making that argument, Obama and liberal activists focused on overly wonky gibberish and ideological sideshows. In doing so, they deprived the final bill of the moral justification that might have blunted the arguments of its opponents.

As has happened so often in President Obama’s administration, he has allowed the Tea Party to set the terms of debate. Thus, anything that expands government or increases the deficit is automatically bad, without any discussion of why this philosophy may be wrong.

When the healthcare debate began early in the summer of 2009, what’s the first thing you remember? For me, it was the unfortunate phrase “bending the cost curve.” After inheriting a deficit of $1.3 trillion, Obama apparently decided that he could only win the heathcare debate if he framed it as an exercise in long-term deficit reduction.

Unfortunately, by focusing his initial public messaging on the flawed mechanics of healthcare markets instead of their inherent cruelty, Obama stripped away the moral urgency of his message and let his opponents demonize him without even being forced to admit his good intentions. Here we had a President proposing the largest program for the poor in a generation and spending all of his political capital on it, but very few on the Left or the Right ever said “at least his heart is in the right place.” That’s a failure in messaging.

Everywhere, people march for the poor. The #Occupy groups, all over the country, demand reduction in the gap between the rich and poor. Yet these same people have been sucked into angrily rejecting Obamacare because . . . well, they’re not sure why, but by gosh, they know they’re angry, because the government is “forcing” them to do something . . . something bad.

Millions upon millions of people, who otherwise could not afford adequate health care, would now receive it, and they’re angry about that. And people who otherwise are moral, caring and charitable — they’re angry, too. And what is President Obama talking about? The immorality of a great nation not providing adequate medical care for its less fortunate? No, he talks about cost reduction, as though he were a Tea Party stalwart.

Not only is it the wrong argument, but it’s a phony-baloney argument. You can’t massively increase coverage while decreasing costs. Nor do you need to, in a Monetarily Sovereign nation, where the federal government easily can support Medicare for everyone.

President Obama, through ignorance or some sad quirk in personality, has forsaken the basic principles of the Democratic party – the warm party of the people, the party of unions, Social Security, Medicare and Civil Rights – while the Republicans have been the cold party of money.

Where are the “bleeding hearts” when we need them? Where are the caring Americans, who take justifiable pride in the words, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” No other people could say that. Only Americans.

But now, what has happened to us? Where are the truly religious? Why have they been outshouted by the fake religion of the cruelly pious? Where is our human leadership? Where is Obama?

Again, I urge you to read the article in its entirety.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–The myth of private enterprise superiority, reduced government and Ronald Reagan.

Let me begin by saying that much of America’s greatness comes from private enterprise, and I do not, nor ever have, recommended Marxism, socialism or any other “ism” in which the private sector is trivialized. The problem facing communist (for instance) regimes is not only that they devolve to totalitarianism, but they lack an incentive mechanism to improve, which is why communism always has failed and always will fail.

The single, most powerful, proven economic, incentive mechanism is the attainable profit motive. To be a motive, there must be a profit, either in money or power, and it must be attainable – a combination uniquely provided by private enterprise.

Having said that, I also am puzzled by the popular belief that private enterprise always is better than public works, and that our government is a burden on us.

The Tea Party’s misguided, nation-damaging efforts to shrivel the public sector, have made sneering at the government and government workers oh-so-fashionable. When the right wing casually cuts federal payrolls, too many of us think, “To hell with those people. They aren’t doing anything anyway.”

And the word “socialism” has become so pejorative, it’s the epithet of choice anytime anyone suggests the government provide some service. It seems, the primary goal of conservatives is not to grow the economy or even to maintain the economy at its current quasi-recession levels, but rather to reduce the size of the federal government.

This is a goal ??

I believe the myth of universal private-sector superiority took hold when President Ronald Reagan included in his first inaugural address, the magical line, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” It became an addictive slogan, a mantra for those who would rather not suffer the agony of thought and evaluation (though Reagan, himself a government worker, set records for increasing the size of government — but hey, why worry about facts?)

The reality of the public vs. private debate: Some industries are better run by the private sector, because the profit motive supports efficiency, creativity and service. But some industries are better run by the public sector, because the profit motive would support greed, lawlessness and hardship for many. It depends on the industry.

Merely to focus on the reduction in government is to ignore one basic fact: We have governments only because there are some things governments do better than private enterprise does. Wisdom requires knowing which things to render unto the public sector and which things to render unto the private sector.

It was private enterprise – private ownership of banks — not the Fed or Congress, that caused the recession, and if we recover, it will have been the government, not private enterprise, that got us out of it.

I personally am glad the government runs Social Security and Medicare. I’d hate to see those programs left to private sector insurance companies (i.e., eliminate the programs). And, while Medicare supplements and Medicare Part D involve private insurers, they follow strict rules set up by the government.

This demonstrates the perfect public/private program. The government creates the plan and the ground rules, and the private sector executes it. Both parties are necessary for its success.

For instance, anyone who wishes to purchase Part D – which comes from private insurance companies — can go to a wonderful web site run by the federal government, that is superior to anything offered by the private sector.

There, you can drill down through all the private companies offering Part D, exactly what medicines they cover, exactly what the charges are, the types of coverage, plus a terrific ranking system based on cost, your drugs, your drug store and even on the quality of each company’s service (!). I challenge anyone to show me a private insurance site that even comes close to providing this kind of service.

Recently, I answered a couple of comments, disparaging government work, and mentioning the postal service as a specific example of inefficient, lazy, uncaring government. Here is what I said:

The postal service is required to deliver the type of mail no one else wants to deliver, at low prices no one else wants to charge. For example: Advertising mailers and first class everywhere.

For about $.45 you can send a letter anywhere in America, including Hawaii and Alaska. Who else will do that, even for triple the price? For even less, you can send advertising mailers all over the nation, and have them hand-placed right in mail boxes.

Yesterday, I mailed four books for $2.35, total postage. Fed Ex would have charged me more than $10 for 3 day service. I can mail a 5lb. box anywhere in the country for about $5, two-day service. That same box will cost me at least $15 if shipped by FedEx 3-day service.

The belief that private industry always is better than the government – a belief that leads to the single-minded focus on reducing the size of government – is wrong-headed and destructive. Government exists because in some areas it provides superior service to the people.

In America, the left hand is the public sector and the right hand is the private sector. Our country was built by two hands, working together. Cutting off the left hand is no way to build a nation.

Now, if only someone could please inform the Tea Party “Patriots,” before they completely ruin America.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

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