Single Payer Health Care

When it comes to choices in healthcare in this country, why should we have to make a choice about what we pay to have covered and what we don’t? Why can’t a proper single payer system cover all necessary costs? Why are people forced to pick and choose their health benefits like they are optioning out a car? Why should a better quality of treatment and therefore one’s resulting quality of health be lessened or improved solely due their financial status? Why should billions be spent on advertising year round when open enrollment is for a brief time once a year? Why do insurance companies have different claim forms and codes when a universal system would save billions each year?

I can see certain luxuries such as private rooms costing extra but are they really necessary? No! Do they have anything to do with the quality of care a person receives? No!

Personal options such as these can and should be left to the supplementary private insurance market as should all the extra luxuries not critical to the needs of quality health care.

Current Republican proposals for any type over voucher system for medicare fail to address the differing needs of medicare users. In my experience, most people do not understand the details of their health insurance now. How are they expected to be able to make an informed decision about what to purchase if they can’t understand the intricacies of the system they have now? Can we really trust a bunch of agents trying to make commissions to really explain all the options to millions of new customers and do what is truly best for the consumers? After working in that industry several years ago, I would say no. While most agents may be honest, the few who are not could bring the whole system down. Face it, insurance agents are trusted about as much as used car salesmen.

A true single payer system is called socialist by many but it really is not. If Doctors and Hospital staff become state employees it is but if they remain in private practice and the Hospitals are run privately it cannot be socialist. All who work should pay and all employers should pay the same amount per employee. No exemptions for small businesses can be allowed. For all to receive, all have to contribute and should contribute equally if able to do so.

What would it do for the competitiveness of business if healthcare cost were effectively taken out of the equation because the cost per employee was a fixed and know quantity? The result would be an even playing field for all. Small business could more easily compete with large and grow. Is that not what fair enterprise is about? Doesn’t a truly level playing field result in more competition, not less? Would this not fuel growth? And would not healthier workers be more productive also leading to better business competition?

I keep hearing people complaining that they don’t want to pay for someone else’s healthcare. Guess what? They are anyway. If you pay and never get sick and file a claim but your neighbor does, guess what? You’re paying for him! It’s called shared risk. It is the principal behind all insurance. If you pay car insurance for your whole life and never make a claim you don’t get your money back. The money pays others who do make a claim. Health insurance is no different. You pay and hope you don’t need it for any major health issues because what the insurance company has to pay out will by far exceed anything you have ever paid in.

If everyone pays equally then the risk is shared equally. Why should you pay more because of some possible risk factor and never have an issue related to that factor? Human lives are not property. They cannot and must not have a dollar value assigned to the as is done in the current private market system. Human life should never be valued in this manner.

A government which proclaims that all men are created equal should never allow the type of devaluing of human life that the present system promotes.

Conservatives say that everyone should look after themselves and work to meet their own needs. If that is the case why do we even have governments? Any government which is truly for the people, by the people, and of the people is by necessity a definition of people looking after themselves and looking after their neighbor. To provide proper single payer healthcare, this principle must be understood. The government cannot be viewed as something apart from each of us. It must be considered to be inclusive of us, a part of us, and we a part of it. Good health and therefore healthcare should be a right that we guarantee to ourselves through our government in order to allow all of us to realize the founding fathers’ dream of the “pursuit of happiness”.

More Hypocrisy?

Republicans are supposedly all for small government, states rights and free enterprise yet one republican senator seems to be asking for the opposite. He wants more federal control over the smart grid and a slowing down of its implementation by private sector energy companies. I don't get it! Read this article and let me know what you think.
http://www.intelligentutility.com/article/11/05/us-senator-richard-burr-slow-down-smart-grid-technology-deployment?utm_source=2011_05_10&utm_medium=eNL&utm_campaign=IU_DAILY&utm_term=Original-Member

Xenophobia

Xenophobia is defined as the "hatred or fear of foreigners or strangers or of their politics or culture". (Wikipedia)

“Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”(Franklin D. Roosevelt 1932)

Why is it that the conservatives of this country seem to become more xenophobic by the day? They seem to have a constant yearning for the America of their youth? What exactly does that mean? Do they wish to return to the days of McCarthyism and its paranoid searches for a communist under every rock? Do they want a return to segregation and its terrible human rights violations? Why do they preach fear of immigrants, different economics philosophies and different cultures and religions? Are they so insecure in their own beliefs that the feel that they must impose those beliefs upon everyone else through legislation? They speak of individual rights but seek to deny those rights to those who do not believe as they do. They preach freedom yet they are trying to repress those freedoms at an alarming rate.

Many states are seeking to remove the collective bargaining rights of public workers. They also seek to weaken or eliminate many long held labor laws and want to overturn years of progress in environmental legislation and policy simply in order to help their corporate campaign donors increase their already grossly inflated profits and executive salaries.

I have no problem with someone accumulating wealth. What I do have is a problem with the questionable practices by which many have made their fortunes. When a hedge fund manager makes billions of dollars per year I have to ask several questions. Does a person really need to make more money than they can ever spend in a lifetime? How much more could the investors have made if the CEO’s salary was more reasonable? How much more could this abundance of cash accomplish if it remained in the economy instead of a bank account? Granted, there a few of these very wealthy who give back to society in amazing ways but I fear that they are in the minority.

With freedom comes great responsibility! The greatest of those responsibilities is to care for those less fortunate. Conservative philosophy says that individuals and not government should provide for the poor and the ill. In an ideal world this would be wonderful but this is far from an ideal world. Given that this is true, only the resources of the people as a whole, through their government, can provide properly for the needs of those in real need. Yes this is a “socialist” concept but in light of the imperfections and flaws of our capitalist and increasingly corporatist system, some forms of social welfare are needed and must be embraced.

The only way progress into the future is to embrace our fears and conquer them. FDR had it right. So many seem to be captive to their fear of change and that they will never allow the progress to come into their own lives let alone their country.

Remember, if you are not progressing, you are regressing. You have nothing to fear.

What Industrial Policy?

There is an expression that I have heard repeated ad infinitum in the business community that says if you do not set a goal you are bound to hit it. If this concept is so central to business success why is it that the government is so reluctant to establish environmental, energy and industrial policies with measurable goals to provide guidance and direction to private industry?

If the lead is left solely to the private sector will the outcome not be a fractured hodgepodge of differing and maybe incompatible standards and philosophies with no clear goals? How do we measure success without goals to guide us?

In the 1960’s President Kennedy set a goal for the nation of sending a man to the moon and returning him safely to earth by the end of that decade. That one goal set in motion a chain of events in technological development that has not been seen since. Without that goal we might not have the computer technology that enables me to write this piece today. Think about it, my little netbook has more computing power and memory than the Apollo spacecraft that went to the moon and back.

Other countries such as India, China, the European Union and to some extent Canada, have policies regarding energy production, transportation and manufacturing that are giving them the lead in environmental goals and projects.

We need national and international projects that push technology to that extent. We need goals and time targets for clean energy development and implementation. We need to set goals for sustainable manufacturing that minimizes effects to our industrial supply chain from natural disasters such as Japan’s recent earthquake. Public transport in urban areas must be better developed to cut pollution and travel costs for citizens.

Politicians in this country usually want private industry to take the lead in these areas but that philosophy has one glaring fault that never seems to be mentioned in public. Private interests will not invest on a large scale if there is not reasonable profit to be made within a date certain period of time. American business interests seldom seem to look much beyond the next year if not the next quarter and governments fail to look past the next election cycle. Both industry and government must coordinate on long term goals that will not be derailed by the fickle winds of party politics. Only long term stable policies can provide the solutions that this country needs to become the true world leader in the technologies of the future.

Governments must provide the policy goals and environments to guide private industry into a better future for all and to establish and maintain world leadership in these endeavors. The private sector lacks the inherent focus and coordination to provide the necessary vision and leadership to establish and meet the greater goals that our country and our world needs.

Thoughts on Clean Energy

The future of energy will have to become “greener” as will the rest of the world’s economy. However, this will not happen overnight. Many people want to see an immediate end to traditional sources of power generation such as coal and many other fossil fuels but that is not a reasonable position to take. Others want “green” energy ideas to slow down or go away. This position is not tenable either.

The coal industry sings the praises of “clean coal” and decries the idea of cap and trade to limit harmful emissions. First, clean coal, as a technology, is still on the drawing board and no plants have been built yet. Second, they maintain that cap and trade will kill jobs in their industry. This too is speculation as they ignore the fact that many new jobs will be created by the new technologies that cap and trade will require to be developed. Clean coal technology may create a few jobs in time but with no time table for implementation of these technologies who knows when these jobs would ever come into being. Cap and trade would impose timetables that the industry does not want. They would rather play with clean coal as a marketing term than be forced to develop and install it for the good of the environment.

Natural gas is a good alternative, although more expensive alternative to coal, however its methods of extraction are environmentally questionable. A new report released today also questions its "clean" status as far as green house gas emissions are concerned. Many countries are converting coal generation to natural gas. Time will tell if it's really cleaner than other carbon based fuels or not.

Nuclear power also has its challenges. Although it emits no greenhouse gases, its waste presents a problem for disposal. American reactors all or nearly all use refined or concentrated uranium as a primary fuel source. Fission of this fuel source results in highly radioactive waste. On the other hand, Canadian reactors use unrefined or raw uranium which produces a much less dangerous waste product. They also can burn the spent fuel that US and other reactors can no longer use. Perhaps we should contract with Canada to dispose of our spent fuels in their reactors? That could help the U.S. with a portion of its waste problem and provide Canada with a possibly cheaper source of nuclear fuel.

Wind and Solar are supplements but neither is reliable in and of itself for base load generation needs. Solar works find if each home has battery storage but it is not practical for grid applications. Wind may work at night when solar won't but it doesn't function in high winds or no wind. If wind and solar electrical generation does have one major advantage it would be found in the security of what is called distributed generation. A city full of small wind turbines and solar PV panels will always produce some power whereas the failure of one large base load generating station presents problems on a huge scale. An attack could take out a power station but not a city full of small solar and wind generators.

How much biological waste does this country produce? How much power could be generated by burning this waste instead of coal? Biofuels will be an answer for the future but they are still in their relative infancy. Corn does not produce enough sugar to make corn ethanol a good long term solution but naturally growing plants such as switchgrass have a high sugar content while needing very little artificial fertilizer like corn does. Being cheaper to grow, higher sugar content and not part of the food crop market like corn makes this a real alternative for ethanol production that is also just beginning to be exploited.

The real problem with developing these alternate and greener sources of energy is that the large energy companies seem resistant to change from what they know. Energy producers are more interested in the short term profits of the next quarter than they are with their long term success and the success of the planet.

American Exceptionalism

There is a concept within American culture known as exceptionalism. It is a belief that, as a country, the United States has a unique and “ordained” role and place in the world order. If this is true or not I neither know nor care. What I do see is that this philosophy breeds an arrogance that is both unearned and repulsive to other cultures in the world.

This arrogance leads to huge problems in international relations. One of those issues is present in today’s situation in Libya. U.S. politicians do not want any U.S. troops under the command of any other “foreign” military command. In a coalition such as NATO this is an extremely arrogant position to take considering that they want the sovereign forces of other countries to be subject to American command.

This my way or the highway attitude seems to pervade American culture to the core. It’s as if no ideas or products that originate outside of the country are considered to be of any value. Are American cars really better than those from outside of the country? Definitely not! Are American nuclear reactor designs superior to those of other countries? No! Is the American standard of living or quality of life the best in the world? Not even close.

This country needs a reality check.

There is a bumper sticker that says “Are you out of a job yet? Keep buying foreign.” I agree that too much manufacturing has been moved off shore and weakened the American economy but I challenge anyone who reads this to go to your local car dealers and read the content origin labels on the new cars. The so called American brands have less domestic content than many of the “imports.” One of Ford’s best selling models, the Fusion, is built in Mexico and has far less domestic (U.S. or Canadian) content than does the Honda Accord, Civic and many of the Toyotas manufactured and sold in this country.

The reality of the auto origin concept is really one of the cars being union made or not. Even that argument is not completely true. Many of the cars of the “foreign” manufacturer Mazda are union made in the Auto Union plant in Flat Rock, Michigan. If the “American” cars were truly domestic they would not but subject to the current supply chain problems due to the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami.

This is now a global world and there is no place in it for the concept of American exceptionalism. As the largest economy in the world and the strongest military power the United States must use its position in the world with humility and not arrogance. Leadership and ideas from the rest of the world must not be so quickly dismissed by the U.S. The Government and culture of this country must be more willing to listen to and accept the leadership of other governments and peoples to truly become a great power and the “greatest” country in the world.

Political Advertising Campaigns

If a business intentionally includes false or misleading information in their advertising they can be charged and held liable for publishing that information in order to mislead the consumer. Why is it that when politicians and political organizations do the same their actions fall under free speech and they are not held responsible for their lies?

If they have a legitimate difference of opinion, fine. All I ask is that they back it up with facts and not out of context sound clips and quotes. If your argument can"t stand up to the light of day and be backed up by facts don't attempt to make it. The practice of editing text or video to give a false impression of what was actually said should be held to the same standard as false advertising claims.

I've had enough of this B.S. If the political interests in this country really want the respect and the votes of the people the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth would be a welcome change.

Thoughts on Nuclear Power

In light of the ongoing situation in Japan many people are rethinking the safety of nuclear energy as a source of electrical power. Many fear it and many welcome it but most do not really understand it. All nuclear reactors are not created equal nor are do they all operate in same way. That they all use nuclear fission to create heat is all they have in common. Methods of capturing that heat, cooling the reactor, the types and quality of the fuels required and the internal configurations of the reactors themselves can vary greatly.

Please do not judge the entire industry by what you hear in the media. They are not explaining the differences between reactor designs and fuels at all.

Sodium cooled reactors are perhaps the most dangerous design. Liquid Sodium is used as the primary coolant and if you remember what happened in high school science when you put a small amount of sodium, a liquid metal, into a beaker of water, you get the point. Boom! This is the type of reactor that was used in Chernobyl. This was also the type of reactor that Fermi 1 in Michigan was. It suffered a partial meltdown in 1966. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor

The Japanese design, along with most American designs is what is called a boiling water reactor. They are also called light water reactors. They are cheaper to build but need enriched fuel to operate. Should the water level over the fuel fall to low, that fuel will overheat and the resulting chain reaction can cause that fuel to melt and result in the "melt down" we all hear about and fear. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_water_reactor

Some reactors are called pressure reactors. Like the Canadian CANDU design, the reactor core heats water in a sealed high pressure vessel and produces super heated water but not steam. This super heated water is used to heat water to generate the steam to run the generator. In this case the water coolant used is often what is know as deuterium or heavy water. This design is more expensive to build due to the heavy water, but can operate on almost any fuel, even raw unrefined uranium. It can also burn the spent fuel from boiling water reactors. Because the fuel is generally a low grade it cannot sustain a chain reaction on its own and thus will not "melt Down" as in other designs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor

I don't pretend to understand the mechanisms of the fission process but I do know that some designs are inherently more safe than others and we must strive to develop and implement the safest technologies we can find.

Nuclear power is not the answer to our energy needs but it must be a part of the equation.

My opinions are not unique

Please Watch! Excuse some of the language. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx4GSlSt7Jc

Fascism in Michigan?

Are more rights being trampled on? Anyone with common sense would think so!

Michigan's Legislature and new Governor are trying to ram through major changes to Michigan law that could take away voter rights with regard to their city governments and school districts. Just because the Republicans control both houses and the Governor's office does not mean that they should be allowed to follow Wisconsin's lead and ram through any piece of garbage they want to!

This Financial Manager law rewrite would allow the Governor to appoint an Emergency Financial Manager to any city his administration feels is in financial trouble. This manager would have the authority to break union contracts, hire and fire any employee and dismiss the elected official of the affected cities and/or school districts at will, regardless of the will of the voters.

This is a blatant violation the the rights guaranteed in the Constitution and must not be allowed to stand. These actions fit what I read in the definition of Fascism found on Wikipedia or any where else. Please read my last post about this subject. Read the definition from the link I provided in that post and feel free make up your own mind and feel free to leave comments for all to read.

http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/politics/local_politics/michigan-senate-passes-emergency-manager-bills-20110309-mr

Wisconsin Fascism?

Many protesters during the federal healthcare debates, in the same breath, called President Obama both a socialist and a fascist. How little do they understand how opposed these two political philosophies really are. If you want to see fascism in action you need look no further than this evening's actions by the Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature.

Read Wikipedia's article on Fascism and make up your own mind on what you see. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facism

Conservatives and especially the Tea Party rail against what they term as Fascism while in reality their brand of conservatism is nothing more than the very philosophy that they purport to oppose. The rights of the people as defined in the constitution have been trampled on as never before. Let your state and federal official know that these actions can not be allowed to stand. The party that claims to stand for and defend the constitution does nothing but flout it at every turn. Their actions are both unconstitutional and indefensible.

Utility Lack of Regulation

Aside from food, shelter, transportation and health insurance, one of the largest houshold expenses is energy. My question today is why are some sources of energy subject to government regulation and others not? Electricity and natural gas are regulated while propane and home heating oil are not. Why not?

Should not home heating oil and propane also have some form of price regulation? When used for home heating why is propane treated any differently than natural gas? Home heating oil is likely the most the most volatile of these energy sources due to oil price fluctuations but should the consumer have some sort of protection from wild price swings in home energy costs? Often those affected the most by these swings are in older homes, the northeast states and rural areas. The residents of these areas who are poor or on fixed incomes are especially vulnerable to these commodity price swings. Even with various assistance programs available, this volatility can often still make these energy souces unaffordable to the people who are forced to rely on them.

The question is simple, can we or should we institute regulation on the prices of home heating oil, propane and other sources of energy, when used for home heating purposes?

Should Everyone be Armed?

I hear a lot of talk coming out of Arizona with regards to the arming of citizens. Some have said that if everyone at yesterday's shootings in Tuscon had guns, this incident would not have happened. I beg to differ. Given Arizona's new gun laws and the lack of tactical training of most civilians, more people would likely have died due to panic firing and the chaos these events produce in crowds. As the assailant came up from behind, no one would have seen him coming and the events would probably have transpired much as they did. You can arm every sane person in the world but without the proper safety and tactical training they might be just as dangerous as the criminals if not more so. Security in public settings would still be most effective when provided by trained law enforcement personnel.