I was switching from source to source. It's like listening to two planets. One is planet earth. The other is planet Faux BS. The trouble is the sources with the realism are all scattered over the net, and the unreality is mainstream TV, Radio, and yes Faux news.
Stupid is as stupid does. And when an entire society acts like goose-stepping lemmings we are all in real trouble.
The Corporatists are going on about Cap and Trade as if it were a 'job killer." They still are maintaining that we aren't in the middle of climate change. They insist that California is an example of Democracy gone wrong, and that Californians pay too much taxes and have too much democracy. The debate devolves between a "Democrats are responsible!" No "Republicans are Responsible."
Well stupid is as stupid does, and right now both the Democrats and the Republicans are still acting as marionettes to the same hidden manipulators -- the large corporations. We have a few large organizations, large corporations really, which have something to gain from manipulating perceptions.
The trouble is, stupid, we did Cap and trade to reduce sulfur emissions. It's not such a bad idea. The big corporations endorse it, so it gets passed. It's also a good way to put off reducing C02 emissions for another 20 years -- they like that too.
Some of them win if they can get "cap and trade" changes. Some win if they can prevent "cap and trade." The stupid arguments in California are a sideshow for them. They don't care about whether property taxes are capped and new people moving into new homes are zapped -- just so long as the share of property taxes paid by large corporations falls from 65% to 35% and they can make out like bandits. Similarly, they are all for healthcare "reform" as long as they can continue ripping off patients, workers, and the taxpayer -- all at the same time. And they so cherry pick the notion of "socialism" that bailouts for wallstreet are okay (or the Democrats fault) while doing things to keep jobs in this country are "infringement on freedom", or "against free market principles" or will cost US workers jobs. Finally, they were all for Cap and Trade, or "FDA regulation of Cigarettes" -- as long as they control the regulations and can make money from them.
So its okay for China or Italy to impose "Buy in my country" restrictions on their bailouts, but we have to buy our goods from Mexico. Well, behind all that are some hopelessly duped small business people in chambers of commerce all over the country. Between the propaganda from the right wing "think tanks" and from so-called libertarians (fibbertarians) you'd think that corporations were championing freedom and free trade -- even as the giant banks use bailout money to buy small banks that had no role in creating the current mess and were actually doing well.
If these lies and more lies were only a problem of politics and water-cooler fights, I'd just shrug my shoulders, but we are in big trouble and fascism is where all this is headed. And of course it could all be stopped. The insurance corporations will gladly rush to provide stop-gap insurance if we had a genuine "public option" -- and their non-insurance brethren would breathe a sigh of relief. If we "bought american" all the people who currently believe the garbage about "violating free trade principles" would be happy to have new contracts building wind-turbines. The Sturm and drang is stupid. Corporations do fine in Social Democracies. Fascism, in the long run, doesn't really do much for corporations. It does something for creating aristocracies based on kleptocracies, but it destroys business. For their own good we need to resist them and educate people.
However, my Democrats are acting spineless at the worst possible time. Ms Feinstein complains about "not letting herself be pressured from the left" -- she forgets that the "left" is where the center used to be and to the right of her are people who'd like to do her in for being "pro choice."
And of course the Republicans are salivating at coming in on the betrayals. The Yoo's and other Torturers are salivating at coming back to power (some in the Justice Department never left) and then finding some excuse to depose Obama, and prosecuting a war on Liberals, "baby-killers", mothers, loud-mouths, and freedom -- all in the name of freedom, democracy, mom and apple pie, profits and "free enterprise." We could have a Government as good as Honduras, where a few people decided to change it. I don't put it past them. They did it in 2000.
Stupid is as stupid does, and this is incredibly stupid. Some of the smartest people I know are showing themselves as idiots too. And some "nice people" are being spineless fools when they need to fight.
Chris
Our Scrooge-McDucks on the right would have you believe that squeezing out malpractice claims, fighting individual medicaid fraud, or Individual Medical Savings accounts would solve our problems. They would have you believe that paying attention to Christmas Future, Christmas Present, and Christmas Past, would cost more money and be "socialism" -- but all of that is a pack of lies and deceptions. Still it might work. GOP analyst Frank Luntz wrote up an article that has been a source for goose-stepping attack ads, columns, and orchestrated attacks on health care reform, designed to keep the corrupt in line, scare the moderately corrupt (the real meaning of "moderate") and make it difficult for the majority of the people of the country to get the kind of basic health care that they need and deserve. It's simple really, he advises using scare words, and seizing on the language used by liberals in such a way as to make them scare words.
The idea is to divide the people up into a "us versus them" mentality. Those who have lousy health insurance, to be convinced they'd lose that to even worse insurance. Corporations who might actually benefit from a Federalized Single payer program to be convinced that they'd lose money from their insurance investments. Those who have good insurance, to be convinced that they'd have to pay more. And those who have no insurance to be painted as evil, lazy scofflaws. Result? People voting against their own best interests convinced that they are protecting their pocket books.
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/05/06/luntz-memo/
Basically the liars and Tazmanian spin devils of the far right will tell you "I'm all for reform, but not for the Gubbornment taking away people's insurance and making them go to a State Run system." The idea is to scare people into thinking that the Government is going to "Socialism."
As Igor Volksy of the "Wonk Room" writes:
"The memo is titled “The Language of Health Care 2009″ and it lays out the argument for “stopping the Washington takeover” of health care.” But if fully implemented it may very well stop health care reform."
And he quotes:
"This document is based on polling results and Instant Response dial sessions conducted in April 2009. It captures not just what Americans want to see but exactly what they want to hear. The Words That Work boxes that follow are already being used by a few Congressional and Senatorial Republicans. From today forward, they should be used by everyone."
"Luntz warns that “if the dynamic becomes ‘President Obama is on the side of reform and Republicans are against it,’ then the battle is lost and every word in this document is useless.’” The trouble is, it already is useless. Because rather than challenging the tenets of American reform proposals, Luntz establishes a straw man argument against a non-existent health plan."
"Buried amongst the usual rhetoric about government-run health care is Luntz’s predictable contradiction: he instructs Republicans to “be vocally and passionately on the side of REFORM” but then urges GOP lawmakers to misrepresent and obstruct any real chance of passing comprehensive legislation. "
So the idea is to either defeat health care reform. Or if that doesn't work, to take over the language and turn it into anti health care reform; as they did with Medicaid, welfare, "right to life" and other issues. It could work. Which is why the rest of us need to wake up and pay attention so we "won't get fooled again!"
First, most of the medicaid fraud we are seeing is systemic. It is designed to ad to the profits of the giant megacompanies that currently run our Health Care system as a series of fiefdoms in which our employers
Second, we no longer have large numbers of medical providers unless you count all their shell companies, subsidiaries and offshore subsidiaries. We are down to a few megagiants.
Third: We have rationing with the system we have now:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/119471.php
Fourth: Medical Malpractice insurance rates have more to do with bad investments on wall street and insurance greed than with Medical Malpractice Claims. Universal Medical protection availability would reduce the volume and severity of those claims. Having health care reform with defined best practices would also help reduce malpractice. Capping claims won't do anything except provide impunity to bad doctors.
Fifth: Medical Savings Accounts seems like a good idea until one realizes that it is simply a scam on employers. If the money doesn't get spent by the end of the year the "account" vanishes. If one relies on it to pay large medical bills one will soon go bankrupt.
As the right has learned to do. They don't need to listen to the three Ghosts of Christmas at all. All they need to do is to pretend they've had a change of heart. The kid with the crutches will still die, but everybody else will be convinced that they made a major change for the better.
[Sorry I have 4 years of Scrooge sermons to do before Christmas to make up for holding back]
To my previous post Robin responded:
"There are some fundamental flaws. Insurance is, by definition, a transfer of a risk. You pay an insurer a premium; they assume your risk. Put another way, we buy insurance "just in case." Forty years ago, people bought health insurance 'just in case' they had an accident or caught as serious disease. It was intended to pay for hospitalization and the medical treatment of disease or injury."
and:
"I am not saying we should not finance routine care. I am saying that insurance is probably the most expensive possible way to finance it."
You are right on this. We went to insurance to provide health care because it is a public good that benefits society in manifold ways. Our conservatives have traditionally conflated 'public good' with socialism. It has been tremendously difficult for almost the entire history of our country post Civil War to accomplish anything for the public good. Private good no trouble. Public good verboten. Nevertheless we have accomplished setting up a few programs that actually benefit the public good. When our powerful interests can't sabotage such programs they generally seek to loot them.
"Consider some of the things we insure. We buy home owner's insurance just in case our house burns down. We buy liability insurance just in case we get sued and lose. We have unemployment insurance just in case we lose our job. We have disability insurance just in case we lose the ability to work. We insure a package just in case it gets lost or damaged during shipment. We buy life insurance just in case we die prematurely."
When we buy home owners insurance, it isn't meant to substitute for having a fire-house nearby. The problem with our current system is that we have a system analogous to the privatized fire-system that Crassus created in ancient Rome. His fire-houses were akin to modern Mafia. People had to buy "insurance" or the fire-department sometimes would never show up. Right now our insurance companies are treating medical insurance as a similar scam. Only even if people buy the "fire plaque" from the insurance mafias, it's not enough to guarantee the mafia will pay the fire company to show up and put out the fire.
"Consider some things we do not finance with insurance. We do not buy food insurance just in case we might need to eat. We do not buy clothing insurance just in case we need to get dressed. The needs for food and clothing are not insurable risks. Think about it. What would happen if we paid for food with an insurance card? You do not know the price of anything; you just get your food, give them a card, and they bill the insurance company."
However, for years we used to keep food costs with policies aimed at keeping down the cost of food. We used to tax imports of clothing so that we could make it domestically. We have programs for redistributing used clothing so the poor need not go naked. Medical services are as important as food and clothing, yet we have set up a system that pays for delivery in such a way that only a few people do well from it, and a lot of people are cut out of getting vital health care. People die from this system. People suffer and die from this system needlessly. It is a killer system.
"At some point, we decided that insurance should cover more than the risk of having an accident or getting sick. We decided it should cover pregnancy; which is not a sickness. We decided that it should pay for medical exams as preventive medical treatment. This probably started with pre-paid medical care; which evolved into the Health Maintenance Organization. That evolved into something real ugly called "managed care. " We have frigging insurance company bean counters rationing health care."That is because medicine is a service. The original purpose of companies like bluecross blue shield was to ensure that everybody participating could afford to pay their medical bills. The first Bluecross Blue Shields were all private, but non-profit. They were organized by doctors to make sure their bills were paid in the absense of a single payer system. Eventually a few well connected people (such as the Frist and Hastert clans) discovered that they could make a lot of money by "managing" health care -- and arbitraging the difference between what public and private persons pay in premiums and the actual delivery of health. It is murderous stuff. More than half our bankrupsies are people who can't pay their medical bills, and thousands of people have died because they couldn't afford treatment. Even more never would have gotten deathly ill in the first place had they had access to reasonably priced health care.
"I understand the rationale of an HMO. Preventive care was going to catch things early, and reduce costs in the long run. Has it worked out that way? Proper diet and exercise probably actually does as much or more to prevent disease than doctor visits. Maybe health insurance should cover spa memberships? I think it does or did in some European countries."
In most European countries private insurance is like the old "medigap" payments. It is designed to pay for those optional, non life-threatening things, that make life easier for the ill and hospitalized. The purpose of public health care is to ensure that people with infectious diseases are treated so they don't spread them around. To ensure that preventive care is delivered so that workers remain healthy, people are more productive, and folks live more secure and safe lives. That is security, not putting spy cameras in every living room.
blockquote>"The thing is you can not effectively insure against the risk of preventive health care, because it is not a risk at all, it is not a 'just in case.'The risk is in not providing prventive health care. The risk is that our society is committed to not letting people die of disease simply because they can't afford it; and therefore we either prevent disease, or we end up having full emergency rooms that bankrupt our remaining non-profit Hospitals and state Governments. If we don't ensure that routine care is provided for everybody the costs are magnified on a power curve.
If we pay for routine care with insurance, the cost is dollar for dollar; plus administration. Circa 1988, the first 1000 in a zero-deductible, fee for service, hospitalization & major medical plan, cost about $1200. That was the rational for deductibles. At that time, a $1000 deductible reduced the premium by $1200. Also, since we do not know the price or fee, they bill whatever they want. We wound up with five dollar charges for a Q-tip. That was the rationale for co-payments; to make the patient more cost conscious."
Well if we pay for routine care with private, for profit insurance, the cost is indeed as you say, with the administrative costs inflated by high executive salaries, and people whose job is to triage benefits and transfer them from one pot of cash to another. Since the real market is health care, not insurance, private for profit insurance just ads a layer of bureaucracy and administrative costs at best. At worst it actually creates dysfunction and allows a few well placed individuals to skim money off the system. For example, right now the health care companies are spending more money on advertizing and lobbying than on almost anything else. They want the current privateering system.
Later:
"I am not saying we should not finance routine care. I am saying that insurance is probably the most expensive possible way to finance it. The concept of what I used to call Medical Spending Accounts makes more sense. You set up a cash account to pay for preventive care, then pay as you go. That eliminates any possible reason for a co-pay. Then, you buy a high deductible catastrophic major med plan; 'just in case' you have an accident or catch a serious disease. You eliminate most claims processing costs. You are insuring a risk, not pre-paying for services. So the premium is relatively cheap."
If we still had a functional middle class in our country MSA's might make a good supplement to the system. But that assumes that Insurance makes sense in the first place, which you already argued it doesn't. Single Payer should function similar to MSA's as one is creating a pot out of which people can pay for routine expenses. We don't have a free market because we don't have an open market where doctors can come and go freely (they have to be licensed), and where consumers can come and go freely (when someone is sick one's specialist is a monopolist). This is a public good. Even better is to have Single Payer.
"If we had gone to that twenty years ago, we might not have the mess we have now. The costs are so high now, it is hard, maybe impossible, to design anything affordable for mass markets. There are some limited, poorly structured, Health Savings Account {HSA} plans available. Finally, using insurance to finance routine care is not the only thing that drove costs up; but I think it was the biggest factor. "
That is "mallarky" Robin. If we'd gone to MSA's 20 years ago, all that would have done would have been to drive up costs and drive poor people out of the market. What has driven up costs are a number of things:
>>>We band together as a society to provide for the general good; ... community swimming pools, ..., in order to afford things for the public good that most individuals (except economic barons) can't afford on their own. We buy fire insurance, but we also provide for the public good of fire-departments.
If you think about it, you have understood the point. We go not pay for the swimming pool with insurance.
No we pay for it with taxes and/or membership fees.
>>>As you note, insurance is inadequate to provide for what should be a general public good,
"No, that was not what I noted. The point is that insurance is the wrong way to pay for routine services. Insurance is to protect against risks.
Most Government sponsored programs and activities (regulation is a great example) are also aimed at protecting against risk. As I noted in the example of the fire department. We build fire stations in order to guard against the risk of fire in a proactive way. A tax is appropriate.
>>> You have made my point; "I am not saying we should not finance routine care. I am saying that insurance is probably the most expensive possible way to finance it." But not because the concept is bad. On the contrary, the concept of spreading risks and costs across the broadest spectrum of people is the best way to finance health care.
"Your point, my point. Is it who or what? This not about me. The concept is bad. Preventive Health care is simply not a risk. It is a routine service."
The risk is in not providing it.
One thing we could do, is to set up some kind of universal socialized medicine to cover routine and preventive care. Then we could allow insurance companies to get back to their proper business of insuring against the risk of an accident or serious sickness. A health insurance policy, in this economy, should probably have at least a $10,000 deductible. Riders could be added to reduce or eliminate the deductible for accidents only. Basic, universal care would also reduce burdens on companies that are supposed to make and sell things; not provide employee health & welfare benefits.
Again you have the right idea with 'universal socialized medicine' but your idea of a 10,000$ deductable discriminates against, about 95% of Americans -- and if instrumented would simply be another way to fleece and bankrupt working people -- even ones with medical insurance. Right now some (approximate) 50% of bankrupsies are driven by people with insurance not being able to pay medical bills.
That might require federal legislation to regulate insurers. Trouble is, the States regulate them. So we have 51 sets of regulations. The most practical way to fix that is 'open borders.' The only other ways would be federal mandates {ugh}, stretching the commerce clause even further {ugh}, or a constitutional amendment {tough to do}.
If insurers only operated in the state they were chartered in, then this might be a constitutional question. But this question was settled by the courts years ago. There is no reason the Feds can't regulate State Insurers. The question is do we really want them to. I think the best thing to do is to set up 51 State Medical Service non-profit Trusts and put them in the business of collecting and paying for basic medicine.
It will be interesting to see what kind of mess the Democrats come up with.
Right now the Democrats are working with the insurance companies, so whatever they come up with will probably be a frankenstein monster.
* Maybe a federal mandate requiring parents to insure their children. * A sliding scale medicare buy in. * Removing the childless adults medicaid exclusion, * Some kind of cap on what is a double tax exemption for employer paid health care benefits.
Mandates don't create a free market. That is why this is a public good and has to be managed as a utility. Universalizing Medicaid might be the answer. At least we'd have some minimum coverages and catastrophic coverages. The mandate should be that all persons working have medical insurance; that nobody be excluded from such insurance arbitrarly, and that those not working should either be covered by someone who is working. I'd also make employers pay the insurance for people they lay off as part of unemployment insurance. But I don't think private insurers are competant to administer such a system.
Single Payor will not pass now. Obama's 'public option' is a back door, incremental approach to Single Payer. I do not see how private insurers can compete with a public option.
I'm crying crocadile tears. Considering that they are in a kept Government sponsored market now, they shouldn't have been providing that service in the first place. They've had a good run. They'll find other ways to fleece consumers. We should have done this back in 1947. We'd be in better economic shape. Health care drains billions of dollars from ordinary folks to the very wealthy every year --- and kills people.
I doubt that President Obama can even ram through a new public option. A combo of Medicare buy-in and Medicaid expansion does the same thing. I might be wrong on that. It might make sense to consolidate Medicaid, Medicare, & the Federal Employee plan into a public option? There might be constitutional issues. Medicare is tied to Social Security. Medicaid is technically a state program.
I don't expect this fight to be won in one year. Right now they are simply going to impose some changes on the general public that won't make anybody very happy because the insurance lobby, the AMA, and the big boys are opposing any real change. I expect to have to fight about this for the next 10 to twenty years, and I'm not giving up until I die or we see an equitable system.
I also doubt he can get mandatory insurance for adults, we shall see. Way back when, during the Hillary Care debate, I predicted that Democrats would eventually call for mandatory health insurance, and was laughed at. I made the same prediction in 2007, and was laughed at again. Obama might get it for kids.
During the effort by Hillary Clinton to get a debate going, a massive advertising campaign painted white as black and black as white and demonized her every word. There was no alternative offered, it was just an attempt to demonize any plan the Democrats might come up with. We are already seeing the same kind of campaign. I hope people are starting to see through all the tasmanian Devil spinning by the corporate media and Faux news.
I love Buddhism. But I'm no more attached to any particular religious solution offered by modern Buddhists than I am to any Judeo-Christian-Moslem religion. I am attached to basic Buddhist Principles -- where they validate.
Religious practices are many. Basic principles are few. We only need one vision.
The following is a rough draft of a basic idea:
One core principle is that one should use principled thinking to guide one's words, deeds, and actions. The benefit of this is that principles are distilled from experience and represent distilled wisdom about what goals are worthy of pursuing and what objectives constitute an integral life. People who live by principles can look themselves in the mirror and see someone worthy, "integral" (with integrity), and with self worth (not measured by false measures). Integrity is setting boundaries and a main path, and then focusing ones efforts around that main path. Principles tell us where to set those boundaries (objectives and goals are boundaries in time, values are boundaries, properties are the area within those boundaries -- see earlier post).
A second principle is that one has to identify one's real principles, validate their integrity (boundaries), and then connect them to ones behavior so one can apply them; or one is not engaging in genuine principled thinking and behavior. Many people talk, preach or advocate principles. They often don't really believe what they are talking about. [This is demonstrated when you fact check an assertion and find the person is lying]. They use principles as a tool for controlling (or fooling) others but not themselves. We all know people who talk about free markets but are merely shills for giant corporations. We all know people who don't practice what they preach. When someone talks about the importance of family while fooling around on and divorcing a wife, one is noticing a person whose principles are shallow and not really worked out.
A third principle is that one has to take principles and validate them. That means one has to identify what those principles mean. There are no real absolute principles. Absolute simply means abstract. A principle applies meaning when it is privileged with behavior. For example; Having the right to freedom in the abstract is meaningless to a prisoner in a penitentiary, or a person struggling to stay alive in the streets. Principles acquire meaning when they are applied. They have to be weighted, connected to other principles, validated against "where they apply and where they don't." If a principle is not "real" then it is not really a principle. Above all principles should be truthful in an abstract sense and map to truthful realities.
Fourth; Principles have to be tied to vision and empowered. Principles without vision are empty. A person just doesn't have a clue on how to make principles real without some overarching image of what it means for those principles to be real. For example the Vision of Isaiah still guides Jews and non-Jews alike:
"The sword shall be beaten into a plow... Man shall not lift up hand against his other man, And nations shall not wage war on nation...." The lion shall lie down with the lamb and both shall eat straw together...." Each vision puts together a set of principles; "peace" with some image of how to realize that vision. The elements of the vision also set forth the attributes necessary to the full realization of it. For example, the lion merely lying down with the lamb is not peace. The vision of peace involves the lion giving up the appetite for meat and being able to feed on grain alongside the calf or lamb. The vision of peace is all of these. To implement it are very clear tasks: beating swords into plough shares. Reducing human conflict. Forbidding nations to attack other nations.
Fifth: Principles should be ethical and guide morality. Visions are "higher truth." That means they start out as narratives that can remain fiction or become real. My vision of the "Cathedral" is an example of this. A cathedral can be a holy beautiful place. But the same rocks and stones, concrete and steel that can build a cathedral can build a principle. Ethics is about setting boundaries that include the needs, wants and aspirations of other human beings. Selfish principles are at best amoral, and at worst, immoral.
Unethical or Immoral principles in the long run don't produce net value. Because principles are about setting reasonable and negotiable rules, limits, boundaries for behavior. If one doesn't accept the principle of the value of the concept of the "greatest good", "common good", and that "no man is an island" one can very well set up that one's own good is all that matters. Then ones concept of boundaries with others will become murky. What was wrong with Bernie Maddoff taking investments from one person to pay another? He made a lot of money for himself. The problem is that it was unprincipled and caused harm to others. Unethical behavior is setting up "win/lose", "war" and other games as ethical as long as they pay off for the self. Machievelli talked a lot about these kinds of principles and calculations. He also showed how they work and don't work in the short run -- and an examination of history shows how they degrade happiness even for the "winners" in the long run. Principles should be ethical.
Summary:
To take a principle and make it reality requires vision. An enumeration of principles is not enough by itself. A great leader should lay out a vision for what the world will look like if that vision is implemented. It is against this vision that principles can be weighed and measured.
Sometimes one has to pander and sometimes one has to fight. Knowing when to fight and when to negotiate; when to compromise and when not to, is the mark of a great leader; but is also the mark of a principled person. To make that decision one has to tie ones efforts to the vision one is operating under.
Some people missed their chance for genuine greatness because they betray their principles. When someone betrays principles "for the wrong reasons" that is a result of not having really developed a consistent set of principles in the first place. It is easy to adopt false, distorted, excessively rigid, or even evil principles. It is also easy to develop principles that
But most failures in business, politics and the international spotlight come about because people don't use their principles intelligently. They don't do so because they don't tie them explicitly to their vision of where the enterprise is going, what it is about, and what it should look like and behave like.
I was going to talk about Obama's principles and how he could be more effective if he would tie them to principle. Bush was effective because he laid out visions. He failed because his vision was founded on unethical principles. Obama lays out principles. To be effective requires both ethical principle and vision.
The Right is waging a massive, well financed, campaign to demonize the Obama administration, to rule out single payer, and to paint reform efforts as "socialist", but the fact is that the biggest drain on our medical system is its for profit members. At the very least we should require all basic insurance companies to be non-profit. If you want to have genuine reform support HR 676. If you want to see these things improve, call your Congress-critters. If you don't do it, you might be able to get up on a pitty pot later, but you can only thank yourself for the state off affairs when Congress proves it is the best Congress money can buy once again.
It is up to us to make Democracy work. We have to fight/struggle against those who have declared themselves enemies of democracy whether they are corporatists, economic royalists, or simply shills for anti-democratic groups.
The battle isn't "socialism versus capitalism" -- the health care insurers and big businesses don't want competition, they don't want free markets, they want to profiteer and get paid by both the taxpayer, out of our payrolls, and by denying us benefits, treatments, and providing shoddy service. The Government can run the insurance portion of our health system cheaper, more economically, and better than for profit businesses. It is as simple as that, they want to loot the commons.
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2003/june/tax_subsidies_for_pr.php
The highest medical costs in the US are in McAllen Texas, where Malpractice payments are capped at 250,000, and lawsuits are almost non-exstent:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all
However, what is operative is corporate greed to such an extreme that it filters down to the physicians ordering procedures simply for the sake of boosting revenues. As an alternative, we could pay physicians a salary (a good salary) and go to the Mayo Alternative; not for profit. Single payer is best, but if we can't have single payer we need trust busting and non-profits.
"Something even more worrisome is going on as well. In the war over the culture of medicine—the war over whether our country’s anchor model will be Mayo or McAllen—the Mayo model is losing. In the sharpest economic downturn that our health system has faced in half a century, many people in medicine don’t see why they should do the hard work of organizing themselves in ways that reduce waste and improve quality if it means sacrificing revenue."
"In El Paso, the for-profit health-care executive told me, a few leading physicians recently followed McAllen’s lead and opened their own centers for surgery and imaging. When I was in Tulsa a few months ago, a fellow-surgeon explained how he had made up for lost revenue by shifting his operations for well-insured patients to a specialty hospital that he partially owned while keeping his poor and uninsured patients at a nonprofit hospital in town. Even in Grand Junction, Michael Pramenko told me, “some of the doctors are beginning to complain about ‘leaving money on the table.’ ”
"As America struggles to extend health-care coverage while curbing health-care costs, we face a decision that is more important than whether we have a public-insurance option, more important than whether we will have a single-payer system in the long run or a mixture of public and private insurance, as we do now. The decision is whether we are going to reward the leaders who are trying to build a new generation of Mayos and Grand Junctions. If we don’t, McAllen won’t be an outlier. It will be our future. "
"
I wrote this back before 1999. It has been on my website since then. I don't recall the exact date I wrote it.
The Metaphysical Elephant
The blind fleas were all gathered,
around the Elephants behind,
they probed and climbed all over him,
to see what they could find.
"I have here a giant parasol"
"Oh, no this is surely a dragon or snake."
And one poor chappy found himself,
wondering if he'd found a cesspool lake.
They argued and they clamored,
and then they jumped out of their skins!
As a trumpet call sounded,
and the Elephant began to shake!
"Is this world we live in a Quake?
Is it coming to an end?
Woe as me, this is more than I can take!"
One of them whispered in the parasol,
"what are you?"
But the answer he couldn't hear.
For the sound was so loud and resounding,
that it filled all present with fear.
But then one of them understood what the elephant said,
as he drowned in an elephantine tear.
The elephant was saying to the fleas;
"Would you please stop biting my rear."
Chris :-)
This foolish person who attacked the Holocaust Museum is an idiot. We all can be idiots from time to time. Heck I do my share of idiocy from time to time. But a real idiot digs a hole, constructs a box, climbs in it, and then starts poking with his shovels at the side of the hole. I don't feel sorry for him. He hardened his heart and made himself a tool of forces of hate and greed, a long time ago. I do feel sympathy for those he killed, and for those he terrorized.
Racism is garbage. Tribalism is "divide and rule." Classes exist largely because they are convenient to the wealthy and powerful. Overthrow the rich and powerful without changing attitudes and laws just makes it easy for new wealthy and powerful people to emerge and dispossess and take the place of their predecessors. War is the work of people trying to get wealth and power. War is politics by violence. It is also lose lose. It literally burns the pie and singes it so that nobody eats well except for the few profiteers who profit from it.
This jerk who attacked the Holocaust Museum was waging war because his own heart was at war. All around him things changed and he couldn't adapt. Fighting for this fake group? His concept that "white folks" have to defend themselves against "black folks?" Since when have "white folks" done much for other white folks, much less deserved to set themselves up as superior to anybody else? Individuals are good or bad. Groups can act benevolently or vilely. This is a universal fact. Nevermind that the only color that matters in our modern world is green or gold.
This guy was in his 80's and had nothing. He fought in World War II and was destitute. And he was angry at blacks and Jews? Sorry, but it's been (us) mostly white WASPY (I'm part WASP -- I have relatives who are Millenialists and can't understand the things I've done) folks, maybe friends of his, the people he wanted to protect, who have been blocking real reforms while recarving up our pie so that all we have left is the crust. They weren't doing anything to help him -- and so who was he angry at? Folks he barely knew? Why? Displaced anger. It's easy to get angry at people who seem alien.
If he was fighting (figuratively) for health care, for better benefits for veterans, for a better world, maybe his anger might have been transformed into something useful. Anger can be a good thing. It's just important to be angry about the right things so one can transform the energy of anger into something more useful. Anger is blinding, it makes us stupid. Anger combined with enlightenment, or with the higher emotions, can pervert them -- or it can be transformed into a motivation to seek justice. It can be transformed into love.
But what is justice? Is it finishing the work started by the Nazis, while denying that the Nazis did anything? Is it really the fault of Jews that our economic system is such a mess? No. We done this to ourselves. This guy probably hated Roosevelt. All these comfortable "Chamber of Commerce Types" have been busy claiming they could run the government, should be the Government, and should be left alone to do whatever they want. The result was what? Free Enterprise raising the admin costs of health care and funnelling money into a few corrupt pockets. Free Enterprise borrowing money to dump our manufacturing overseas and deciding that they could live on the interests from leveraged income. Admittedly many Jews have taken advantage of the system, but the numbers are much exaggerated, and they aren't the ones perverting it. They have plenty of help. Most Jews are like me, barely getting by. It's not our fault.
And nobody has any cause to get on a high horse. Jeremiah Wright sounds like this guy when he expresses his anger at Obama not calling him. We've moved into a world where class, cast, race and money interweave in complex ways. Getting angry at groups is stupid.
No, Anger has to be transformed into love. Why do away with bankers when they help so many people? We need to transform banking into something that really helps people, not do away with bankers. The problem isn't banks, it is the banking system. It is the greed of the bankers, but that isn't going to be done away with except through changed policies and individually and generally applied law changes.
No, we all need "truth and reconciliation," all around. Folks need to see that play that jerk interrupted. We need a society that takes care of its poor and doesn't dispossess anybody. We need to stop unreasoning hatred, and direct our oppobrium to its practitioners.
The trouble with the focus on Al Qaeda, is that our most dangerous terrorists are all home grown; more likely to be connected with the military (McVeigh and the Anthrax attacks), fundamentalist Christian Taliban then to be Arab or "leftist."
The irony is that the people in this country promoting terrorism all claim to be promoting a war on terrorism. The targets; Jews (just now) (forever and always a target for left and right), Obstetricians (Tiller) as O'Reilly calls him "the baby killer", Arabs (Cheney's campaign, Faux news), "Gays," people charged with enforcing the law (McVeigh again) and "liberals" (the anthrax attacks).
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/06/01/oreilly-tiller/ And yes Faux has it half right, they are to blame for that incident.
I used to think the security at the Holocaust Museum was excessive, now I see it is just enough.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/livecoverage/sections/metro/ James Von Brunn
Too bad we have instigators and propagandists inflaming already delicate and angry people. This fool who just opened up on the Holocaust Museum was 80 years old and had been in jail a good part of his life. This was a fool who should have learned something, but never learned anything except resentment and more hate. A lot of penitence he's been practicing.
The man who killed Tiller was financed for years by people calling that doctor a mass murder, and the man who egged him on, only commented that he was sorry the man hadn't prepared his soul for his maker. We can call these people lone gunmen, but they are supported by networks of hateful, violent fanatics; People who pose as full of love and charity but whose hearts aren't much different from Bin Laden's. "Right to life" is an oxymoron in their hands.
Forgive me I'm pissed. I'm just glad some friends of mine weren't at work. One of them is as old as the gunman and still works there at least twice a week. Some people I'm very close to work there doing research from time to time.
And I've known and admired some Obstetricians and OBGYN nurses. Never met one of them who was a baby killer, even when he/she performed abortions. When love and open mindedness are met with fanaticism and anger, the result is death and madness.
This was an act of terrorism. And it is working. Tillers clinic shut down along with a few of the other remaining ones.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,523803,00.html
http://socialistworker.org/2009/06/09/pro-life-terrorists
Chris
I was listening to David Horowitz justifying his persecution of Social Sciences departments. He made a comment that a particular course was not factual, but expressed opinions. He justified his attack on the professors truthfulness on the grounds that the views expressed were "false". He claimed that the views were false because they were similar to ones expressed by Karl Marx. His reasoning was that if the view was discredited that the view must therefore be false.
I can't find the URL or I already would have posted on this earlier. His reasoning is wrong and his facts are wrong.
However, I'm glad I waited, because it turns out this is a larger issue than some right wing (or left wing) ideologue playing ad-hominem politics. After chewing on it a while I'm glad I couldn't find the URL because it doesn't matter the exact wording of his attack, this is a much larger issue that goes to the heart of how Science and human understanding march forward.
This all goes to the classic "blind man and the elephant" conundrum.
In my opinion; David Horowitz acts like a man wearing blinders. Like a donkey with a carrot dangling in front of him, and blinders to block any other view, he's charging ahead on his crusade to "get back" at all the people he thinks lied, betrayed, or hurt him, and he doesn't even realize that the issues are larger than the carrot dangling in front of his face and the faceless people hitting him with a stick as he moves forward.
The mistake he makes is to assume that if the conclusions of a view are incorrect that the view is incorrect. But science doesn't advance that way. A view is like a blind man encountering an elephant, or a human being encountering God, The Universe, everything. If something is "too big" to describe adequately then any one view is likely to be false by itself.
To describe this para-mathematically. If a system consists of a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p,q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,z....etc. Any temporal description of the view that consists of less than all the members will be incorrect (false). A person who says that the alphabet is only a and b, has it wrong, even if literally he is on the money (alpha=a, beta=b). Therefore most views of complex systems; science, philosophy, politics, economics, history, are by themselves false views in the aggregate. That doesn't mean that a detailed description of "a" or "b" is wrong.
However, a person who describes a-f, has done the world a great service, if limited. A view is any description of a complex system that is less than complete. This can be either from focusing on a small region's details, or from focusing on describing the entire system in generalities. In either case information is sacrificed in order to form the view. In the overall view detail is lost. In the detailed view, connectedness, and overall information is lost. An expert on the Elephant's ear may see a parasol. Another expert may see a snake. The person generalizing may see a zoo.
Each view is a listing of attributes and actions, (a "scenario") and involves descriptive "approximations" of what is seen. A person looking at an Apple tree might draw a circle when he actually saw an apple. Each view contains falsifiable information. A circle only approximately looks like apple. A person (like Horowitz if he were more honest) might come along and say "that doesn't look anything like an apple!" The criticee should respond to criticism with improvement. That is the difference between science and Dogma. With practice, eventually that person might draw a good apple. His view of the forest may still be limited, but it is getting better. Eventually he might even see the worm chewing through his model. His drawing will never be good enough to eat, but it is still a apple from the tree of knowledge.
To get at the "whole truth" about life, therefore, one relies on increasingly accurate approximations or descriptions of reality. The information in those views is falsifiable, but that doesn't falsify the entire view. A painter drawing an apple on a hill can draw tiny circles for apples (or spots) and come up with a highly accurate view of that tree on the hill. A camera might not be able to do better, because views are limited, even when they are mechanical.
General descriptions depend on views too. Usually views that involve some kind of transformative description. For example, a view of a universal electronic health care record imagines some guy or gal going to a hospital and not having to tell his or her history all over again, the doctor having all his records at his fingertips so he doesn't have to redo X-rays taken the day before, and travelors and others being able to get needed health care without much more delay than if they were visiting their own doctor. The views result in a series of idealized actions.
A view in which one constructs an idealized scenario is called a "thought experiment." These kinds of thought experiments guide most generals when they are fighting a war, Einstein when he was figuring out relativity, and unfortunately defined Marxian and other economic views. A whole tree of apples is approximated by a "symbol" for a tree. The symbol couldn't exist without the tree, but once it is turned into a symbol it can be used to "abstract" or generalize about the subject "tree." An example of how to be environmentally friendly might image "Johnny Appleseed" who in the story planted apple trees all across the country for future travelors.
Since science flows by views. One improves them by falsifying the elements in them or by falsifying the results of the scenario and then looking to see which elements caused it to fail. An improved view of the apple is recorded in a progression from circle, to still life, to the wax apples in a restaurant advertisement, to Monsanto genetically engineered apples. Science is about describing reality. It is our blind attempt to "image" a massive elephant called life.
So Horowitz is practicing demagoguery not science, when he goes around attacking as "opinions" the analysis of professors in Social Studies and history. He is attacking views on the basis of their general failures, or failures in description. He doesn't realize (or maybe he does) that even though some of the conclusions of the original model might be false, the individual observations; the a,b,c,d... can still be true.
His unwillingness to falsify views based on their aggregate truthfulness is demonstrated by him claiming that "creation science" is real science while claiming that whole bodies of knowledge are false because some of the applications of its views are false. Rather than falsifying the individual elements or explaining why models as a whole are inadequate, he simply is engaging in the logically fallacious reasoning of saying that a system of a,b,c,d elements is false because it doesn't explain a,b,c,d,e,f. Worse he falsifies a system that describes a,b,c,d accurately because another system that posited a,b,c,d,e,f was false. It just doesn't work that way.
This doesn't advance anything except oppression, because he's simply laying the groundwork for others to remove those views (and the people who hold them) from the classroom. Horowitz isn't aiming at reducing or eliminating indoctination. He seems to be interested in replacing one form of indoctrination with another.
Marx was a thinker of the early to mid 19th century. His economic ideas are basically generalizations from observation, and they are still true, no matter how badly his opinions about those generalizations proved to be. It turns out that working people are more akin to Orwell's Horse (Animal Farm) than to the noble person that Marx thought he was championing, and that "class, cast, and tribal identity" are more intractible than he imagined them to be. But that doesn't mean that an analysis that employs some of this terminology is false, which he maintained in that speech I heard. The professor he attacked was probably more interested in recent work than Marx anyway.
The sad thing is that guys like Horowitz are practitioners of a kind of logic that is deadly to thinking, progress, and social peace. It masquerades as criticism, but it because of its cleaver/hammer mentality it actually simply muddies understanding. It is as if the various scientists studying the Elephant fell to fighting over who is right based on the adequacy or inadequacy of their explanations, even though all their views were each limited and incorrect.
Social Science and complex mathematical models are only as good as the assumptions and which factors are emergent at the time the view is taken. Views are like snapshots of reality. Combine enough of them and you can get a real narrative. One still studies Newton. His mathematics isn't falsified within the "view" it applies to. Right now large scale things are governed by "Einstein's theories" but small things involve quantum science. Clarifying the mathematics of the bridge between the two has proven a massive challenge because this is a complex system. It is even harder in other fields where the mathematics and experimentation aren't so easy to link.
Economics that relies on a stable banking system, for instance, is useless when the banking system is destabilized. A painkiller that works for you or me won't work for an addict already addicted to that painkiller. His attack on "science" is like attacks on "religion", "politics", "politicians". It is confusing the view with the elements of that view.
If he were genuinely interested in science he'd get involved in the debates.
Further reading:
http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/news/2702/a-universitys-decline
Chris
I read the screenplay and watched the play one time called "Waiting for Godot". The point of the play is that the main characters come together to wait for Godot every day, and he never shows. They then part saying "well, he'll come tomorrow." Personally I think waiting for Godot is about two very naive people, but of course, there are all sorts of reactions to the story and on some level it seems pretty profound. An author of a book on Kaballah once likened the Kaballist attitude towards God to that play.
(I saw it elsewhere but Its on Broadway:http://www.godotonbroadway.com/news.htm)
Well my attitude towards society, spirituality and religion is to not wait for Godot. It may be naive, but with most "Godot" types, they will never show up unless people take some kind of action and it is in their interest to show up. Those who teach religion without real life action are asking people to wait for Godot. They are telling folks "the savior will come if you just wait long enough." And usually "give me all your money and 'Godot' will return it to you." Then they walk away with people's money and leave them even poorer than they started.
Religion that teaches denial or other-worldliness is simply religion seeking to enslave people; you almost never see the leaders of such religions practicing what they preach. They usually have an esoteric understanding that such stuff is preparation for the "real deal" which they understand and which entitles them to do what they please. It's called "antinomianism" -- which means that the old law is no good, so in comes the new law and "I am justified in doing what I please."
The idea that one has to change before tackling the big stuff is a half truth. The fact is that spiritual development is necessary to achieving anything worthwhile in society. That achieving things in society is by definition a political realm of behavior, and that nobody will ever be perfect unless they get out there and get tested in the real world. It is easy to talk about love and "metawaves" when living in a monastery (actually its not so easy -- one has to live with the other monks) or a cave. To practice love and metawaves is a matter of social activism. Transforming society as we transform ourselves is a two but not two endeaver. There is no lasting transformation in a cave. At best it can lead to some awakening, eventually the Buddha had to take a meal and leave the shade of the Pipal tree for the real world. Those who walk in his footsteps need to practice among the people. Especially if their favorite teacher is Nichiren.
The force of transformation is enlightenment. And the force that drives enlightenment is truth-force. There is no enlightenment if a person is practicing the disciplines of lying, cheating and deception. Religious literature is true, not because it is literally true, but because it is spiritually true, nevertheless most religious stories are myths, fables and legends and if we regard them as historical events or guidelines to actual material powers we are missing the point of those stories and also engaging in self-deception. Defeating Mara is an ongoing battle because even the battle itself is a figurative thing.
Not only that, but even the negative emotions have their purpose. For example; in my observation, Judgmentalism is a reaction to apparent lies. If we accept falsehoods with the same equanamity as we accept truths, then eventually we won't be able to tell the difference. At the same time, we need to hone our judgementalism to accord to what is really true, because sometimes we are judgmental based on prejudice rather than reality. Judgmentalism is a problem because one is judging things one has no real awareness of. Real awakening involves letting go of false prejudices and judging based on reality. The symbolism of the blindfold and the scale is that the scale provides measures of reality. The blindfold is intended to prevent the judge from judging things on false appearances, on prejudice. In reality you never see a judge with a blindfold on. The irony of refined judgment is to let go of judgmentalism and to judge things based on truth and measures, and to not judge things that are outside the scope of our life.
I once redefined our soul as an Acronym, SOUL; the integral (Summa) of our whole. To retain the soul we need to retain our integrity. To retain our integrity we need to stay within the boundaries of our livelihood, our family and our role in society. That means cultivating appropriate judgment, appropriate participation, and a measured approach to life, so that we can take full ownership of our lives; It is appropriate to make money, to run a business, to be charitable, and to be involved. In a Democracy it is a duty to be involved. When injustice rears its ugly head if we are not involved in doing something about it then we are risking that others will violate our boundaries and that we as a society will violate the boundaries of others.
Our property is not defined just by the law, it is also the conceptual, spiritual, and relational tools we own. Our integrity is the degree that we control our own spiritual, action space, and our own properties. Oppression is when others take ownership of what should be our property. It is a reflection of the lack of integrity of those who violate our space, and our own lack of integrity when we lose control over our own space. We have a duty to resist oppression as part of our life. If we don't resist oppression we lose our integrity and when we lose our integrity we lose our soul.
So we can't wait for Godot. We have to act out our own space, find our own salvation, and find ways to control our own life, which means owning our own property, and finding a way to redeeme those of our possessions that we've been forced to borrow from others, or that others have taken from us. Dispossession is a spiritual as well as a material issue. When we let an imaginary "other" own us, then we have sold, loaned, or given up our own possession of our own space, our own integrity, part of our own soul, to that other. This is spiritual dispossession, and we have to resist this every bit as much as we have to resist political dispossession. Resisting material dispossession is our assertion of rights, our participation in politics. The two go hand in hand.
A person who violates the rights, the boundaries of others, is also someone who lacks integrity. Whether it is political, informational, spiritual, borrowed, stolen, or given, our integrity is a matter of rights and their franchisement.
The Good news is that this matter of personal/spiritual property is self defined. For example; If the trajectory of ones life were towards being a farmer, then it would be appropriate to acquire land, but for most of us the trajectory involves acquiring skills, knowledge wisdom, and various tools to function in society. If I can take a bus I don't need a car. To function in society I need a home, but it doesn't have to be a house. Property rights is about owning ones' necessities. Defining only houses as homes is a way of violating people's rights, of violating their integrity and denying boundaries. But we can "own" our apartment even if we have a landlord, if we assert the right. That is politics. I own my house, but if I don't pay my property taxes I'll lose it. That is politics too. We are the judges of our own property lines, and those property lines are the rights and privileges that form a residue that cannot be taken away by anyone -- only infringed on.
If one thinks about it this way then one soon sees that a homeless person is someone whose ultimate rights are being infringed on. Feudalism was a system that infringed on the rights of farmers. Human rights is about human properties, and these rights impinge on one another all the time. It takes judgment to see and define agreed on boundaries. This is the true function of justice. The Homeless person is forced to stake out a corner of the commons as his own, and then forced to move place to place by the police, because he doesn't really own anything and is a definitional outlaw.
To be in the law requires agreement, and that requires that we can agree with one another. It is appropriate that I make an agreement to buy my new car (when I finally do) and then pay back that loan. In this way I transfer to my possession and virtual ownership a vehicle, and the auto company makes money off my payments. When a person walks my sidewalk they are on my property and yet not on my property because the sidewalk is public property with an easement from me on my title. The Apartment owner owns the building, the hallways, and agrees to lease the space where the apartment dweller lives. That dweller "owns" that space figuratively and ought to own it literally for the duration of that lease -- unless the person violates the trust of the contract he/she entered in.
Contracts are not sacred. Human life is. Contracts, properties, goods and services are expediences. We make things so we can trade them. We do these things so we can live. Our integrity lies in owning our lives. Politics is about negotiating life, ultimately in a way that ought to be win win for everyone. Justice is when everyone agrees the outcome is just.
We can't wait for Godot.
Chris
http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_faq.php#socialized
My libertarian acquaintances will tell me that "Gubbornment" can't do anything right. Usually loudly and in a way that drowns out argument. I think they protest too much and too loudly. The fact is that in some areas the only organizations that can meet a need are those dedicated to meeting that need. Government, sometimes fails to meet needs because it is responsible for a wide variety of goals and objectives, and because it is often corrupt.
But private for profit companies have demonstrated their incompetence to meet such social goals as better education, delivery of health insurance, or even printing money; because their primary objective is not to deliver services well -- it is to make money. If a system is fashioned so that someone can only make money by delivering service, they will deliver that service. I only wish that were possible all the time.
But usually they will find a way to make money by not delivering that service. And that is the problem with our current health care system. It has all the worst attributes of socialized medicine without any of the benefits. The reason is simple. They currently think they have to pay their investors and executives large sums of money in order to deliver health care. Which means they skim anywhere from 25% to 50% of our insurance premiums and turn them into executive salaries or bureaucratic waste. And they make money by not delivering service.
Anyway, what we absolutely need is to fix Medicare and do away with private for profit companies in providing primary health care. They'll still make money; They can provide insurance to pay for single person recovery rooms or cosmetic surgery. But they will no longer be ripping us off and then telling us bald faced lies on the TV.
Here is what Physicians have to say:
http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_faq.php
Is national health insurance ‘socialized medicine’?
No. Socialized medicine is a system in which doctors and hospitals work for and draw salaries from the government. Doctors in the Veterans Administration and the Armed Services are paid this way. The health systems in Great Britain and Spain are other examples. But in most European countries, Canada, Australia and Japan they have socialized health insurance, not socialized medicine. The government pays for care that is delivered in the private (mostly not-for-profit) sector. This is similar to how Medicare works in this country. Doctors are in private practice and are paid on a fee-for-service basis from government funds. The government does not own or manage medical practices or hospitals.
The term socialized medicine is often used to conjure up images of government bureaucratic interference in medical care. That does not describe what happens in countries with national health insurance where doctors and patients often have more clinical freedom than in the U.S., where bureaucrats attempt to direct care.
Won’t this result in rationing like in Canada?
The U.S. already rations care. Rationing in U.S. health care is based on income: if you can afford care, you get it; if you can’t, you don’t. A recent study by the prestigious Institute of Medicine found that 18,000 Americans die every year because they don’t have health insurance. Many more skip treatments that their insurance company refuses to cover. That’s rationing. Other countries do not ration in this way.
If there is this much rationing, why don’t we hear about it? And if other countries ration less, why do we hear about them? The answer is that their systems are publicly accountable, and ours is not. Problems with their health care systems are aired in public; ours are not. For example, in Canada, when waits for care emerged in the 1990s, Parliament hotly debated the causes and solutions. Most provinces have also established formal reporting systems on waiting lists, with wait times for each hospital posted on the Internet. This public attention has led to recent falls in waits there.
In U.S. health care, no one is ultimately accountable for how the system works. No one takes full responsibility. Rationing in our system is carried out covertly through financial pressure, forcing millions of individuals to forego care or to be shunted away by caregivers from services they can’t pay for.
The rationing that takes place in U.S. health care is unnecessary. A number of studies (notably a General Accounting Office report in 1991 and a Congressional Budget Office report in 1993) show that there is more than enough money in our health care system to serve everyone if it were spent wisely. Administrative costs are at 31% of U.S. health spending, far higher than in other countries’ systems. These inflated costs are due to our failure to have a publicly financed, universal health care system. We spend about twice as much per person as Canada or most European nations, and still deny health care to many in need. A national health program could save enough on administration to assure access to care for all Americans, without rationing.
Who will run the health care system?
There is a myth that with national health insurance the government will make the medical decisions. But in a publicly financed, universal health care system, medical decisions are left to the patient and doctor, as they should be. This is true even in the countries like the U.K. and Spain (or in U.S. systems like the VA) that have socialized medicine.
In a public system, the public has a say in how it’s run. Cost containment measures are publicly managed at the state level by elected and appointed agencies that represent the public. This agency decides on the benefit package and negotiates doctor fees and hospital budgets. It also is responsible for health planning and the distribution of expensive technology. Thus, the total budget for health care is set through a public, democratic process. But clinical decisions remain a private matter between doctor and patient.
What about medical research?
Much current medical research is publicly financed through the National Institutes of Health. Under a universal health care system this would continue. For example, a great deal of basic drug research, for example, is funded by the government. Drug companies are invited in for the later stages of “product development,” the formulation and marketing of new drugs. AZT for HIV patients is one example. The early, expensive research was conducted with government money. After the drug was found to be effective, marketing rights went to the drug company.
Medical research does not disappear under universal health care system. Many famous discoveries have been made in countries with national health care systems. Laparoscopic gallbladder removal was pioneered in Canada. The CT scan was invented in England. The treatment for juvenile diabetes by transplanting pancreatic cells was developed in Canada.
It is also important to note that studies show that, in the U.S., the number of clinical research grants declines in areas of high HMO penetration. This suggests that managed care increasingly threatens clinical research. Another study surveyed medical school faculty and found that it was more difficult to do research in areas where high HMO penetration has enforced a more business-oriented approach to health care.
Finally, it appears that the increasing commercialization of research is beginning to slow innovation. Drug firms’ increasing reliance on contract research organizations (and for-profit ethical-review boards) has coincided with a sharp drop in innovative new drugs and a spate of “me-too” drugs - minor variations on old drugs that offer little benefit other than extended patent life.
Won’t this just be another bureaucracy?
The United States has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. Over 31% of every health care dollar goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. Because the U.S. does not have a unified system that serves everyone, and instead has thousands of different insurance plans, each with its own marketing, paperwork, enrollment, premiums, and rules and regulations, our insurance system is both extremely complex and fragmented.
The Medicare program operates with just 3% overhead, compared to 15% to 25% overhead at a typical HMO. Provincial single-payer plans in Canada have an overhead of about 1%.
It is not necessary to have a huge bureaucracy to decide who gets care and who doesn’t when everyone is covered and has the same comprehensive benefits. With a universal health care system we would be able to cut our bureaucratic burden in half and save over $300 billion annually.
How will we keep costs down if everyone has access to comprehensive health care?
People will seek care earlier when chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes are more treatable. We know that both the uninsured and many of those with skimpy private coverage delay care because they are afraid of health care bills. This will be eliminated under such a system. Undoubtedly the costs of taking care of the medical needs of people who are currently skimping on care will cost more money in the short run. However, all of these new costs to cover the uninsured and improve coverage for the insured will be fully offset by administrative savings.
In the long run, the best way to control costs is to improve health planning to assure appropriate investments in expensive, high-tech care, to negotiate fees and budgets with doctors, hospital and drug companies, and to set and enforce a generous but finite overall budget.
How will we keep doctors from doing too many procedures?
This is a problem in any system that reimburses physicians on a fee-for-service basis. In today’s health system, another problem is physicians doing too little for patients. So the real question is, “How do we discourage both overcare and undercare?”
One approach is to carefully control new capital expenditures. Once a hospital or imaging center purchases a multimillion-dollar CT scanner, it will try to generate enough scans to pay off the fixed cost. Explicit health planning should be done to assure that expensive machines and facilities are sited where they are needed and not where they are redundant and likely to generate overuse.
Another approach is to compare physicians’ use of tests and procedures to their peers with similar patients. A physician who is “off the curve” will stand out. A related approach is to set spending targets for each specialty. This encourages doctors to be prudent stewards and to make sure their colleagues are as well, because any doctor doing unnecessary procedures will be taking money away from colleagues.
In addition, expert guidelines by groups like the American College of Physicians, etc., can help shape professional standards - which will certainly change over time as treatments change. This really gets to the heart of “how do you improve the quality of health care,” which is a longer topic. Suffice it to say that single-payer, universal coverage provides a framework for achieving thoughtful quality improvement.
What will happen to physician incomes?
On the basis of the Canadian experience under national health insurance, we expect that average physician incomes should change little. However, the income disparity between specialties is likely to shrink.
The increase in patient visits when financial barriers fall under a single-payer system will be offset by resources freed up by a drastic reduction in administrative overhead and physicians’ paperwork. Billing would involve imprinting the patient’s national health program card on a charge slip, checking a box to indicate the complexity of the procedure or service, and sending the slip (or a computer record) to the physician-payment board.
How will we keep drug prices under control?
When all patients are under one system, the payer wields a lot of clout. The VA gets a 40% discount on drugs because of its buying power. This “monopsony” buying power is the main reason why other countries’ drug prices are lower than ours. This also explains the drug industry’s staunch opposition to single-payer national health insurance.
Why shouldn’t we let people buy better health care if they can afford it?
Whenever we allow the wealthy to buy better care or jump the queue, health care for the rest of us suffers. If the wealthy are forced to rely on the same health system as the poor, they will use their political power to assure that the health system is well funded. Conversely, programs for the poor become poor programs. For instance, because Medicaid doesn’t serve the wealthy, the payment rates are low and many physicians refuse to see Medicaid patients. Calls to improve Medicaid fall on deaf ears because the beneficiaries are not considered politically important. Moreover, when the wealthy jump the queue, it results in longer waits for others. Studies in New Zealand and Canada show that the growth of private care in parallel to the public system results in lengthening waits. Additionally, allowing the development of a parallel, private system for the wealthy means the creation of a permanent lobby for underfunding public care. Such underfunding increases the demand for private care.
What will be covered?
All medically necessary care would be funded through the single payer, including doctor visits, hospital care, prescriptions, mental health services, nursing home care, rehab, home care, eye care and dental care. We also advocate a sharp increase in public health funding.
What about alternative care, will it be covered?
Alternative care that is proven in clinical trials to be effective will be covered. For example, spinal manipulation for some lower back conditions would be covered. Antioxidant vitamins would be covered for people with macular degeneration, but not for the general population (where they appear to be harmful). In general, coverage decisions will be made by the health care planning board or another public body. New kinds of treatments will be added to the benefits package over time as they are shown to be effective, including “alternative” treatments. Similarly, ineffective or harmful care can be removed from the benefits package, such as high dose epo for cancer.
Can a business keep private insurance if they choose?
Yes and no. Everyone has to be included in the new system for it to be able to control costs, reduce bureaucracy, and cover everyone. In Canada, businesses can purchase additional private insurance that covers things not covered by the national plan (e.g. private rooms, orthodontia, etc.). However, we support a comprehensive benefit package for the single-payer program that would eliminate the need (and most demand) for supplemental coverage.
Insurance companies would not be allowed to offer the same benefits as the universal health care system, a restriction contained in the traditional Medicare program. Allowing such duplication of coverage weakens and eventually destabilizes the health care system. It undermines the principle of pooling the risk. Health care systems act as universal insurers. At any one time the healthy help pay for those who are ill. If private insurers are allowed to cherry-pick the healthy, leaving the public health care system with the very sick, the system will fail.
This, in fact, is what we see happening to Medicare through the Medicare Advantage program. The government pays Medicare HMOs 13% more than it pays traditional Medicare, yet the HMOs care for a healthier mix of seniors. This is leading to privatization of Medicare and funding shortfalls for the traditional Medicare program.
What will happen to all of the people who work for insurance companies?
The new system will still need some people to administer claims. Administration will shrink, however, eliminating the need for many insurance workers, as well as administrative staff in hospitals, clinics and nursing homes. More health care providers, especially in the fields of long-term care, home health care, and public health, will be needed, and many insurance clerks can be retrained to enter these fields. Many people now working in the insurance industry are, in fact, already health professionals (e.g. nurses) who will be able to find work in the health care field again. But many insurance and health administrative workers will need a job retraining and placement program. We anticipate that such a program would cost about $20 billion, a small fraction of the administrative savings from the transition to national health insurance.
PNHP has worked with labor unions and others to develop plans for a jobs conversion program with would protect the incomes of displaced clerical workers until they were retrained and transitioned to other jobs.
How will we contain costs with the population aging?
Studies show that aging of the population accounts for only a small fraction of the increases in health costs. Japan and Europe are already facing the problem of an aging population head-on and are doing fine. They have a much higher percentage of elderly than we do, and still spend far less on health care.
The best way to approach this is to regard it as a societal problem, one that needs a solution with everyone in mind. Germany and Japan recently adopted single-payer long-term care systems to cover the long-term care needs of the elderly at home and in specialized housing. Germany is pioneering a program that pays family members to care for the elderly at home.
What about ERISA? Doesn’t it stand in the way of states implementing universal health care plans?
No. ERISA (the Employees Retirement Income Security Act) prevents a state from requiring that a self-insured employer provide certain benefits to their employees. However, a single-payer plan would not mandate the composition of employer benefit plans - it would replace them with a new system that would essentially be “Medicare for all.” The state would require employers to pay a payroll tax into the health care trust fund, which is clearly legal.
How will the Health Planning Board operate?
A health planning board would be a public body with representatives of patients and medical experts. The representatives would decide on what treatments, medications and services should be covered, based on community needs and medical science, and allocate capital for major new investments based on assessments of where need is greatest.
Since we could finance a fairly good system, like the Norwegian, Danish or Swedish system, with the public money we are already spending (60% of health costs), why do we need to raise the additional 40% (from employers and individuals)?
There are three reasons why the U.S. health care system costs more than other systems throughout the world. One, we spend two to three times as much as they do on administration. Two, we have much more excess capacity of expensive technology than they do (more CT scanners, MRI scanners, and surgery suites). Three, we pay higher prices for services than they do.
There is no doubt that we do not need to spend more than we currently spend to cover comprehensive care for everyone. But the initial transition to a universal system would be very disruptive if we spent less. That is because we have a tremendous medical infrastructure, some of which would likely retain its excess capacity during the transition phase. Secondly, we would likely retain salaries for health professionals at their current levels. Thirdly, we would cover much more than most other countries do by including dental care, eye care, and prescriptions. And for these reasons we would need the extra 40% that we are already spending - but NOT more. We could cover all the uninsured and improve coverage for those who have skimpy coverage for the same amount we are currently spending!
How much of the health care dollar is publicly financed?
Over sixty percent (60.5 percent) of health spending in the U.S. is funded by government. Official figures for 2005 peg government’s share of total health expenditure at 45.4 percent, but this excludes two items:
1. Tax subsidies for private insurance, which cost the federal treasury $188.6 billion in 2004. These predominantly benefit wealthy taxpayers.
2. Government purchases of private health insurance for public employees such as police officers and teachers. Government paid private insurers $120.2 billion for such coverage in 2005: 24.7 percent of the total spending by U.S. employers for private insurance.
So, government’s true share amounted to 9.7 percent of gross domestic product in 2005, 60.5 percent of total health spending, or $4,048 per capita (out of total expenditure of $6,697).
By contrast, government health spending in Canada and the U.K. was 6.9 percent and 7.2 percent of gross domestic product respectively (or $2,337 and $2,371 per capita). Government health spending per capita in the U.S. exceeds total (public plus private) per capita health spending in every country except Norway, Switzerland and Luxembourg.
(Source: Himmelstein and Woolhandler, “Competition in a publicly funded healthcare system” BMJ 2007; 335:1126-1129 [1 December] and Woolhandler and Himmelstein, Health Affairs, 2002, 21(4), 88, “Paying for National Health Insurance - And Not Getting It.”)
more to come
The Republicans also had a list of legislative proposals that went along with the rest of their contract on America. Most of these were bad to middling.
1. THE FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT: A balanced budget/tax limitation amendment and a legislative line-item veto to restore fiscal responsibility to an out- of-control Congress, requiring them to live under the same budget constraints as families and businesses.
Balanced budgets in corporations mean that their assets = liability + Owners equity. In the Government, outsiders want it to mean that Governments can't borrow money. However, Gingrich and company defined this conveniently. He and his predecessor/mentor Reagan, didn't consider defense or military spending "out of control" no matter how out of control it was in reality -- as a result we've had out of control spending largely as fallout from a series of wars of choice and dumb military spending decisions.
To have long term balanced budgets Government can't put the costs on the common (where the Government gets it) while privatizing everything left and right. Gingrich's "balanced budget" idea was okay, but only if that is made a long term objective and balance is in terms of revenues and employs long term thinking. A company can justify an expensive investment and write it off over ten years or more, the Government gets pinged for being penny wise and later gets pinged for being pound foolish. This wasn't real reform.
2. THE TAKING BACK OUR STREETS ACT: An anti-crime package including stronger truth-in- sentencing, "good faith" exclusionary rule exemptions, effective death penalty provisions, and cuts in social spending from this summer's "crime" bill to fund prison construction and additional law enforcement to keep people secure in their neighborhoods and kids safe in their schools.
This law filled up our prisons, blew State and Federal Budgets, and was oppressive to ordinary citizens. Moreover, it has been unfairly enforced. It included the infamous "crack cocaine" provisions which confused crack cocaine with the Hellmouth and created the insane result of source dealers going to jail for less time than crack dealers.
3. THE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT: Discourage illegitimacy and teen pregnancy by prohibiting welfare to minor mothers and denying increased AFDC for additional children while on welfare, cut spending for welfare programs, and enact a tough two-years-and-out provision with work requirements to promote individual responsibility.
A real charmer this law. No need to comment.
4. THE FAMILY REINFORCEMENT ACT: Child support enforcement, tax incentives for adoption, strengthening rights of parents in their children's education, stronger child pornography laws, and an elderly dependent care tax credit to reinforce the central role of families in American society.
This turned divorced and non-custodial parents into outlaws, turned young men who read pornography into felons, and has destabilized poor and already dysfunctional societies. It turned already dysfunctional people into felons without doing anything to help anyone. It did help people trying to help their parents and make it easier for school systems to burn unpopular books.
5. THE AMERICAN DREAM RESTORATION ACT: A S500 per child tax credit, begin repeal of the marriage tax penalty, and creation of American Dream Savings Accounts to provide middle class tax relief.
Some of this made kinda sorta sense.
6. THE NATIONAL SECURITY RESTORATION ACT: No U.S. troops under U.N. command and restoration of the essential parts of our national security funding to strengthen our national defense and maintain our credibility around the world.
I kind of liked this one. It had a buy american provision, and forbade us putting our troops under UN command.
7. THE SENIOR CITIZENS FAIRNESS ACT: Raise the Social Security earnings limit which currently forces seniors out of the work force, repeal the 1993 tax hikes on Social Security benefits and provide tax incentives for private long-term care insurance to let Older Americans keep more of what they have earned over the years.
This one made it so that my generation not only was to fund the previous generations (previously SS was pay to go) but would be trying to fund my own retirement and part of everyone elses. It had some good points.
8. THE JOB CREATION AND WAGE ENHANCEMENT ACT: Small business incentives, capital gains cut and indexation, neutral cost recovery, risk assessment/cost-benefit analysis, strengthening the Regulatory Flexibility Act and unfunded mandate reform to create jobs and raise worker wages.
This didn't really do much good.
9. THE COMMON SENSE LEGAL REFORM ACT: "Loser pays" laws, reasonable limits on punitive damages and reform of product liability laws to stem the endless tide of litigation.
Since the only litigation the Repugs were against was that of citizens, citizen groups, consumer groups and class actions, this wasn't a good law.
10. THE CITIZEN LEGISLATURE ACT: A first-ever vote on term limits to replace career politicians with citizen legislators.
This wasn't even a good idea. All it does is to cause career politicians to go from job to job to job like the rest of us. We need deputies who know their subject. That takes time.
Chris
Newt won election by creating a reasonable seeming list of propositions and gathering together a group of Congressmen to run on them as a plank. He called it is "Contract for America." We've called it his "Contract on America." The plank was a mix of good ideas and really conveniently bad ideas.
* FIRST, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress;
This actually makes sense.
* SECOND, select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse;
This was political posturing, an issue they used as a means to attack and defeat Democrats; and an issue they stole from "good government progressives" and perverted. Newt and company were after power, once they were in office they used this issue to bring down Speaker Wright and do a witch hunt on Democrats. Eventually Newt was charged with waste, fraud and abuse himself anyway for the way he used his GOPAC funds as a personal campaign war-chest. After Gingrich's fall the Republicans did their best to shut down the committees with the role and power to actually investigate waste, fraud and abuse allegations.
Upshot:
The country doesn't always need more laws, it needs to evenly, fairly and efficiently enforce the ones it has; and to ensure that the laws it creates don't make problems worse than they were before the law was created. Newt ran on a holier than thou attitude, but has consistently proved since his election that he was/is no paragon of virtue.
Attacking Congress for waste, fraud and abuse while representing the corporations whose bribes, lobbying, and blackmail pressure Congress to pass laws that suit their needs not only was not the way to achieve the stated goal, but made the stated goal both hollow and corrupt.
* THIRD, cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third;
This sounded good, but the way it was implemented turned the House into a tightly ruled organization where debates are often limited, the Speaker can ram-rod legislation, and minority members feel frustrated. This is still true with the Dems back in the majority.
Worse, reducing committees and staffing just moves the location of expertise to the Executive and to the numerous lobbyist groups. Congress depends on staffers to investigate issues, draw up rational and just legistlation, and do the right thing. When those staffers are not available, lobbyists or Government end up writing legislation.
* FOURTH, limit the terms of all committee chairs;
This got rid of seniority rules, but really didn't improve the House so much as reinforce the power of informal power and heirarchy. It also, again, reduces the level of independence and independent expertise in those committee chairs, again shifting power to lobbyists.
* FIFTH, ban the casting of proxy votes in committee;
This makes no sense to anyone who actually understands how incredibly demanding house and senate sessions can be. It does nothing for improving debate, or enabling Congressmen to actually understand or debate on the bills they are contemplating. It just helps staffers and lobbyists dominate the process.
* SIXTH, require committee meetings to be open to the public;
This was a good idea, except that in practice it never has been consistently practiced, as shown by the flap over whether or not the Intelligence committee was ever briefed about torture.
* SEVENTH, require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase;
This is one of those convenient for the wealthy, very bad ideas, that everywhere it has been practiced has hobbled government when it most needed revenue to operate and perform its mission. No problem for the wealthy, connected and well heeled, but a decided problem for those who work for a living and depend on services such as health care, edible and safe food and medications, functional transportation, and other things usually provided by Government in a functional (non third world) Government.
My observation is that Somalia or the average third world basket-case is the libertarian dream. I even read a half serious article making that case. I used to write an essay every year about "Scrooge" but my libertarian friends used to flame me so bad about it that for a while I've been cowed. Look for it again soon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QDv4sYwjO0&feature=player_embedded
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/06/somalia-libertarian-parad_n_197763.html
http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/7787.aspx
* EIGHTH, guarantee an honest accounting of our Federal Budget by implementing zero base-line budgeting.
This sounds like a good idea, in the "good years." The smart thing to do is to use the money produced by Government to invest in things that can fill up a treasury and be relied on during the "bad times" to keep ordinary people from starving to death.
On the other hand, an honest accounting of the Federal Government would allow us to declare assets, borrow against those assets, depreciate costly investments over their life-time, and do other accounting things that would demonstrate that a lot of what looks like stupid budget decisions are actually very wise, and that a lot of what looks penny wise is pound foolish.
Gingrich was exploiting the general ignorance and credulity of the voting public to offer up poisonous ideas by mixing them with artificial sugar.
Again, if one is a beneficiary of corporate welfare, or in other ways well heeled, wealthy, connected or otherwise privileged Contract on America was probably a good deal for you; but for ordinary folks this was a set of very bad ideas guaranteed to set up the power of lobbyists, Corporations and Republicans for as long as they could get away with it. Gingrich and company had no real imagination for genuine reform that would have made Government actually work for the benefit of common folks, but this stuff worked very well for them and their patrons.
Further reading:
Expresses my opinion:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2009/05/gingrichs_deranged_ethics_advi.html (see below PS quote)
Expresses his loyal avatars:
http://rightgrrl.com/carolyn/newt.html
Newt happily plays the money game now and lobbies for special interests. Anyone who claims that the GOPAC affair was an anomaly is whistling dixie, which is something he does whenever he can.
Chris
PS:
Let’s review. Gingrich was reprimanded by the House and had to pay a $300,000 penalty for improperly using tax-deductible money for partisan political gain and for submitting false information to the ethics subcommittee investigating his conduct. An investigation by the House Ethics Committee concluded that Gingrich’s conduct represented "intentional or…reckless" disregard of House rules and that there was “reason to believe” that Gingrich knew he was providing false information.
"The violation does not represent only a single instance of reckless conduct," a report by an investigative subcommittee concluded. "Rather, over a number of years and in a number of situations, Mr. Gingrich showed a disregard and lack of respect for the standards of conduct that applied to his activities."
To be clear, the ethics case against Gingrich was no partisan witch hunt. The investigative subcommittee that determined he had violated ethics rules was headed by Florida Republican Porter Goss. The vote to reprimand him and impose the penalty was 395 to 28.
And Gingrich himself admitted to the violations with which he was charged. “In my name and over my signature, inaccurate, incomplete and unreliable statements were given to the committee, but I did not intend to mislead the committee,” Ginrgrich acknowledged. “I did not seek personal gain, but my actions did not reflect creditably on the House of Representatives.”
All this, by the way, was before the married speaker was having an affair with a congressional aide during the Clinton impeachment proceedings.
Somehow I don’t think he’s in any position to be dispensing ethics advice.
The issue wasn't whether it was illegal in the eyes of the IRS. Congress wrote those laws. The issue was whether it was corrupt, something that goes beyond whether or not something is illegal or not. If the IRS clears him of IRS impropriety that has nothing to do with the impropriety of his general behavior, which is ongoing.
This is the typical insider who makes a career by playing the outsider:
http://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/rev_summary.php?id=8534
Jeremy Scahill reporting at http://rebelreports.com/ is covering all the things that I don't have time to cover. And unfortunately we elected a man who needs to be pushed to do the right thing. He wants to "move on."
Among others, stepping to the plate is Jimmy Carter (from Scahill's blog entry http://rebelreports.com/post/116356736/jimmy-carter-charges-obama-doesnt-want-to-punish)
The Democratic Party power structure’s least favorite ex-President is speaking out of school again. Jimmy Carter has some strong words about President Obama’s decision to fight the release of thousands of photos that reportedly show further US abuse and torture of prisoners and has weighed in on the debate over prosecuting former Bush administration officials for torture. In an interview to be broadcast tonight on CNN, Carter says this about Obama’s position on the release of new torture photos:
[M]ost of [Obama’s] supporters were hoping that he would be much more open in the revelation of what we’ve done in the past. But he’s made a decision with which I really can’t contend that he doesn’t want to resurrect the past, he doesn’t want to punish those who are guilty of perpetrating of what I consider crimes against our own laws and against our own constitution. And the revelation of those pictures might very well inflame further animosity against our country causing some harm to our soldiers, so I don’t agree with him, but I certainly don’t criticize him for making that decision.
Regarding calls for prosecution of former Bush administration officials, Carter says:
I think prosecuting is too strong a word, what I would like to see is a complete examination of what did happen, the identification of any perpetrators of crimes against our own laws or against international law and then after all that’s done, decide whether or not there should be any prosecutions. But the revelation of what did happen is what I think I would support.
At the Democratic National Convention in Denver last year, Carter was removed from a speaking position at the last minute in a move some considered to be a political snub.
Carter is still my man and so is Scahill. (see http://rebelreports.com/post/116356736/jimmy-carter-charges-obama-doesnt-want-to-punish)
Cheney and the others are putting out lies and spin. For more read, Johnathan S Landay: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/68643.html