The ever passionate Howard Dean, chairman of the DNC, spoke the truth this week in most welcome fashion. He admitted that the reason jackpot justice reform isn't in the Dem's healthcare overhaul is because the trial lawyers won't stand for it and they are too strong to challenge.
Doc Dean also said that the bill is "enormous." Ya think? 1,300 pages. Yep, that's a hella big and complex set of rules, regs, loopholes, committees, commissions, taxing authorities, inspectors general, special assistants, and other people from the government here to help.
So John Edwards and his fellow trial lawyers get to exercise their veto rights and we get 1,300 pages worth of enormous government. Who's the winner here?
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Why People Are Mad: Near Death Experiences and Sacred Cows
Obama supporters - convinced of the intellectual superiority of their left-side position - are aghast that the tools first used by Democratic operatives - MeetUp and community organizing - are being used against their man's initiatives, especially his epic attempt to reengineer 1/6th of the world's largest economy while simultaneously effecting a dramatic tax increase on energy - another fundamental swath of the economy - in the midst of the worst downturn in a century and trillion dollar deficits (TRILLION!!!). Why would anyone be concerned?, the President's supporters wonder. Must be a devious right wing plot. Or even a racial thing. Yeah, that's it, it's a racial thing (says a Nobel laureate).
Here's why people are downright livid over the healthcare coup: The President and his minions spent most of the summer declaring they needed the healthcare law - complete with Medicare for All - out of Congress by the August break that began last week. After this political near death experience, it should be no surprise that doubting Thomases amongst the citizenry are thanking their lucky stars they get a chance to weigh in AT ALL. (The aforementioned Nobel laureate seems to have missed this particular writing on the wall.)
The problem began well before Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid failed to deliver the corpse of our current healthcare system to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue prior to Nantucket time. The problem began when the President went all Nixonian by declaring two top priorities that in fact are not his top two priorities. Coverage for All and Cost Containment über alles he said. Witness nothing in those laudable goals about public options. Witness the fiscal rectitude. So far so good.
What then are the top priorities of the President and his minions? A public option and retention of two of the top fundamental economic distortions in the system. Woah Dude, someone just tried to pull a fast one on us! Ya think we might be a little skeptical going forward.
Skip the competition issue for the moment, public or private. Focus instead on the most important economic flaw of our entire healthcare system: People with jobs get government subsidized healthcare and people who work for themselves or are unemployed don't. This is arguably the most regressive tax treatment in the entire blasted system. And that's saying something.
There's no dodging - unless you're President of the United States - the need to remedy this fundamental distortion. Our alternatives are to eliminate the payroll deductibility of health insurance or provide a tax credit to everyone, or some combination of the two. Avoiding this choice avoids reality.
Another fundamentally huge economic distortion is the jackpot justice and defensive medicine that are the bitter fruits of malpractice shysters run wild.
Avoiding these issues brings us to the Democratic Party's sacred cows: unions and trial lawyers. Unions - especially government employee unions - don't want their benefits taxed, and won't even enter the debate to see if they can get the deduction returned to them in the form of a credit. They've gone to the mattresses on the issue, as have their ideological soulmates in the West Wing.
Trial lawyers are moneybags when it comes to Democratic party coffers. How do you think silver tongued John Edwards paid for his 102-acre estate, his run for President and hush money for his mistress? Trial lawyer extraordinaire, he sweet talked juries into megahuge pain and suffering awards. He's got other problems now but his fellow sharks will eat the head off anyone who tries to mess with their ability to sell a jury on a $50 million sob story.
And so we suffer on with malpractice premiums that cripple women's medicine, that cause massively expensive defensive medicine, and that generally suck the lifeblood out of the system.
The Left has at least finally come clean about their reverence for government funded healthcare. After all, don't seniors love Medicare? No doubt many do, but that doesn't make it any less a fiscal disaster. Remember The Day After Tomorrow, that ridiculous climate change scare fest from a couple of years ago. Massive snow drifts buried New York in that movie. Picture those drifts as the debt that Medicare and its ilk are piling on our country and you'll see the situation more clearly. If you're not shivering, you're delusional.
Now to competition: As it currently stands, you can buy California peaches from New York and Florida oranges from Chicago, but you can't buy health insurance from outside your state. What's more, each state gets to make its own rules about what kind of insurance gets offered and what must be covered. I assume the Public Option wouldn't have to play that states rights shit. After all, the Geniuses in the Obama Administration know best (so says Hollywood schmuck Bill Maher). So presumably the Public Option would have yet another fundamental competitive advantage over the money grubbing private sector, to go along with its statutory money grubbing (i.e., cheaply funding its operations on the public dime), the same model that failed so spectacularly at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. What could go wrong here?
The solution - of course - is to remove artificial barriers to competition. Not between public and private. That boundary makes perfect sense and needs to be respected. Rather remove the barriers that keep the nation's hundreds of insurance companies from competing with one another. It'll be "Low Prices Everyday" in no time. But NOOOOOOOOOO says the President and his minions. Can't have companies taking the credit for saving peoples lives. That's what savior presidents from the Left Wing are supposed to do.
So that's why people are mad.
I ain't no Nobel laureate, but the situation don't seem to call for one neither.
Here's why people are downright livid over the healthcare coup: The President and his minions spent most of the summer declaring they needed the healthcare law - complete with Medicare for All - out of Congress by the August break that began last week. After this political near death experience, it should be no surprise that doubting Thomases amongst the citizenry are thanking their lucky stars they get a chance to weigh in AT ALL. (The aforementioned Nobel laureate seems to have missed this particular writing on the wall.)
The problem began well before Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid failed to deliver the corpse of our current healthcare system to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue prior to Nantucket time. The problem began when the President went all Nixonian by declaring two top priorities that in fact are not his top two priorities. Coverage for All and Cost Containment über alles he said. Witness nothing in those laudable goals about public options. Witness the fiscal rectitude. So far so good.
What then are the top priorities of the President and his minions? A public option and retention of two of the top fundamental economic distortions in the system. Woah Dude, someone just tried to pull a fast one on us! Ya think we might be a little skeptical going forward.
Skip the competition issue for the moment, public or private. Focus instead on the most important economic flaw of our entire healthcare system: People with jobs get government subsidized healthcare and people who work for themselves or are unemployed don't. This is arguably the most regressive tax treatment in the entire blasted system. And that's saying something.
There's no dodging - unless you're President of the United States - the need to remedy this fundamental distortion. Our alternatives are to eliminate the payroll deductibility of health insurance or provide a tax credit to everyone, or some combination of the two. Avoiding this choice avoids reality.
Another fundamentally huge economic distortion is the jackpot justice and defensive medicine that are the bitter fruits of malpractice shysters run wild.
Avoiding these issues brings us to the Democratic Party's sacred cows: unions and trial lawyers. Unions - especially government employee unions - don't want their benefits taxed, and won't even enter the debate to see if they can get the deduction returned to them in the form of a credit. They've gone to the mattresses on the issue, as have their ideological soulmates in the West Wing.
Trial lawyers are moneybags when it comes to Democratic party coffers. How do you think silver tongued John Edwards paid for his 102-acre estate, his run for President and hush money for his mistress? Trial lawyer extraordinaire, he sweet talked juries into megahuge pain and suffering awards. He's got other problems now but his fellow sharks will eat the head off anyone who tries to mess with their ability to sell a jury on a $50 million sob story.
And so we suffer on with malpractice premiums that cripple women's medicine, that cause massively expensive defensive medicine, and that generally suck the lifeblood out of the system.
The Left has at least finally come clean about their reverence for government funded healthcare. After all, don't seniors love Medicare? No doubt many do, but that doesn't make it any less a fiscal disaster. Remember The Day After Tomorrow, that ridiculous climate change scare fest from a couple of years ago. Massive snow drifts buried New York in that movie. Picture those drifts as the debt that Medicare and its ilk are piling on our country and you'll see the situation more clearly. If you're not shivering, you're delusional.
Now to competition: As it currently stands, you can buy California peaches from New York and Florida oranges from Chicago, but you can't buy health insurance from outside your state. What's more, each state gets to make its own rules about what kind of insurance gets offered and what must be covered. I assume the Public Option wouldn't have to play that states rights shit. After all, the Geniuses in the Obama Administration know best (so says Hollywood schmuck Bill Maher). So presumably the Public Option would have yet another fundamental competitive advantage over the money grubbing private sector, to go along with its statutory money grubbing (i.e., cheaply funding its operations on the public dime), the same model that failed so spectacularly at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. What could go wrong here?
The solution - of course - is to remove artificial barriers to competition. Not between public and private. That boundary makes perfect sense and needs to be respected. Rather remove the barriers that keep the nation's hundreds of insurance companies from competing with one another. It'll be "Low Prices Everyday" in no time. But NOOOOOOOOOO says the President and his minions. Can't have companies taking the credit for saving peoples lives. That's what savior presidents from the Left Wing are supposed to do.
So that's why people are mad.
I ain't no Nobel laureate, but the situation don't seem to call for one neither.
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