Tag: health

Wake Up America!

The current rampant complacency to occurrences, which would have stirred outrage a few decades ago, has its global genesis in the many events and experiences we’ve been subjected to in the last 20-30 years.  The collective glaze over everyone’s eyes, the compunction to respond to dramatic stimuli, is a direct result of the constant bombardment our collective psyches have endured from a myriad of sources.  It is in essence PTSD.

It started with 9/11.  Yes, there was an essentially unsuccessful attempt to destroy the World Trade Center in 1993.  But the scale of the success of 9/11 was an immense shock to the American and global psyche.  Not since the War of 1812 had the United States suffered such massive damage on our soil at the hands of a foreign aggressor.  The ensuing War on Terrorism, and no real terror attacks here of any scale since, helped to restoke Americans belief that were, once again, the world’s dominant military power.  The defeat of Al Qaeda, the death of Bin Ladin, the defeat of ISIS, among other successes, reinforced this confidence.  Yet, deep psychological scars remain and the fear of a potential, very personal experience with terrorism has us wishing we had eyes in the back of our heads.

Then COVID struck the world.  A different type of attack, many attribute COVID to a planned release of the virus by China to strike a crippling blow to President Trump’s chances for reelection.   Trump had stood up to China like no other president and had the American economy roaring presenting many threats to China’s global ambitions and accension to dominance.

COVID brought over seven million deaths, cost hundreds of billions in economic impact and again left deep scars in our psyche.  President Trump responded well by bringing government and industry to bear dramatically in an attempt to reduce the potential COVID had to wreck greater havoc.  He appeared on television every day explaining his actions, in concert with other world leaders, in an attempt give us confidence that all that could be done was being done.  Thankfully, American’s greatest medical minds successfully employed the resources supplied by government and industry to bring to bear knowledge and technology to significantly shorten COVID’s reign of terror on the world.

During, and after, these shocking global events were traumatizing America and the world, innumerable less news-worthy events and “attacks” were taking their collective toll on our psyche.  The good and the bad of the internet were expanding their effect exponentially in our daily lives. Social media, in its attempt to positively affect our lives, has created an infinite number of vexing societal problems.  Most critical among them is the proliferation of “news” reports of (true and untrue) violence, scandal, corruption, war, among many other negative events with a wide blast radius in our psyches while bombarding us hundreds of times a day.  Combine this with the knowledge that our children are like lost lambs as prey for the massive number of hungry wolves, in the form of sexual predators, that await them around every turn on the web.

 Now add to this boiling cauldron the endless political reports and vitriol constantly spuing from our screens at all levels from the very local to the national and global.  It stokes the fires of anger and hatred leading to senseless acts of violence through the bloody hands of the most angry and depraved.  Recently, political leaders have contributed to this foul mood with foul language.  Where has decorum gone? 

The evidence of these seismic pressures are spuing out of societal fissures virtually everywhere you look.  Road rage, once rarely heard of, occurs many times a day, often with a violent end.  Political rallies and college speaking engagements are ended by a sniper’s bullet. The very fabric of American society, the constitutional tenets of which we hold dear, the beacon of the world for freedom, as it should be, are at risk of collapse. Too many members of society are allowing these pressures to alter their thinking and causing them to act illogically, even criminally.

Even our personal relationships are impacted as friendships fracture over political differences.  Where, once, those friendships were a safe place to openly speak, to be heard and to listen.  Now, the tremendous pressures of modern life have even prevented us from exercising “free speech” in what once was a safe haven among friends.

America must wake up and recognize the dangers of this new reality.  We must wipe the glaze from over our eyes and lean back to hold dear the things that truly matter.  First among them the principles upon which this nation was built.  Our founding fathers were essentially Europeans in their origin.  The core tenets of this nation came from generational adherence to Judeo-Christian principals and the fervent belief that man should be the determiner of his own destiny.  Not a monarch or a pope or some other ruler that holds power through force.  Love thy neighbor, do not kill, do not steal, do not covet, do not lie and so on. That leaders should be chosen by the people.  And, when they fail us, they are replaced by us.  These are the same principles that can be found in the core of other societies/religions.  Unfortunately, as our society has moved away from faith participation, we are no longer regularly reminded of these notions about conduct.  It is precisely when things seem the most bleak, as the cauldron boils over, that we must be reminded that this nation was founded on the principle of individual freedom, with guardrails. That violence is not the answer to every seemingly intractable problem you face or situation you don’t like.

No system is perfect.  The fact that so many from around the world wish to come here to work and live suggests ours is highly desirable.  That 250 years of incredible success should tell you the founding fathers design was genius.  So we should not tinker with it too much.  The pursuit of happiness are very special words.  Some tweaks, like love who you wish to love and marry, has brought happiness to some whose pursuit was not as successful as for others.

So let’s treat our collective PTSD with a medicinal course of love, kindness to others, truth and compassion.  Over these 250 years we’ve had many critical challenges, wars, economic depression, pandemics, among others like slavery.  We have always come through them with solutions that essentially made us stronger.  There are many things we can do better and we should constantly pursue those critical improvements.  Most importantly, we should chose our leaders wisely.

Single Payer is Fool’s Gold

Many intelligent observers and participants in the American healthcare system strongly propose a legislatively mandated, federal government run, single-payer healthcare system for this country.  On the surface it has many positive attributes that would attract admirers and proponents.

Many are saying how effective and efficient Medicare is for the growing population of seniors.  Seniors experience a system of healthcare that provides a robust set of services that, on the surface, seems cost effective and comprehensive.  That system, on its own, provides a broad range of services and covers a substantial amount of the cost associated with those services.  But, not all of the cost.  Often, 20% is left for the Medicare beneficiary to fund personally.

For those who can afford it, especially if you have chosen a “PPO-like” secondary insurance plan, a system of secondary coverage through private insurers is required to make up the difference between what the complete medical services cost and what Medicare covers.  For those who cannot afford secondary coverage, possibly they qualify for Medicaid.  Medicaid is the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) safety net system designed to provide complete coverage for those whose personal financial situation enables qualification. Is intended to cover those considered to be at or below official poverty levels. Or those who do not qualify for Medicaid might select a Medicare HMO-like plan commonly known as Medicare-Advantage plans.  Those in the gap are forced to forgo other quality of life expenses to pay for “medigap” insurance or risk bankruptcy.

The answer, according to many, is to legislate a transformation to a government-run, single payer system, often called “socialized medicine”, to ensure a completely equal system of healthcare for all citizens.  A noble concept.  Where it has been attempted, “first-world” countries like France and Great Britain, it has proven to have a fatal flaws.

First, those who have been “subjects” of those systems in France and Great Britian for example, understand that the lack of affordability, without bankrupting those countries, presents a quality of healthcare that is, frankly, substandard.  For example, wait times for care is unacceptable.  The pay to providers is squeezing the best and brightest out of the government run system fleeing to a system of “private insurance” that no-one wishes to talk about.  Both France and Great Britain have a system of private insurers.  Those insurers fund providers and facilities exclusively intended to service a class of patients whose employers are paying the premiums whose intent is to retain the best and brightest employees in their industries.  The system has created an environment of even greater inequity.

Secondly, a single payer system would present an irresistible force that would deplete the pharmaceutical industry of the profit motive necessary to fund years and years of research necessary for the sort of medical advancements we have enjoyed for many decades.  Investors would simply move on to a better alternative.  On the surface that system appears to represent greater fairness but would eventually starve the entire population of advancements intended to extend and add quality of life to many, many more.

A simple example is the currently popular set of drugs providing weight loss.  One could say the industry is just excusing an obese America’s glutenous behavior.  In fact, it is potentially extending the lives of millions for several years while improving their quality of life and self-image.  Would pharmaceutical companies have even invested in the years of research necessary to provide these options if the profit incentive was removed?

The system in America as it stands is a graceful balance of a government provided safety net in Medicaid and Medicare plus secondary insurers for the balance of us who can afford a system that provides both the highest quality healthcare in the world and an incentive to pharmaceutical firms to continue their quest for cures across the complete spectrum of health challenges.  The governmental challenge is to create a means to discern and “insure” those who truly cannot afford a Medicare/private secondary scenario and grant a Medicaid-like solution without bankrupting a governmental fiscal situation that is already producing trillions in federal deficits each year.  This is a true conundrum. 

What one would prefer is a solution that combines equal amounts of spending cuts and revenue increase.  The major issue that must be addressed (and is in the forefront of the current funding crisis in Congress) is Medicaid support for illegals.  This is clearly a place to cut spending as the system was never intended to pay the entirety of the healthcare needs of non-citizens.  It is completely illogical to expect American taxpayers to support the entirety of the healthcare costs of tens of millions of non-citizens, while taxpayers themselves struggle to pay for the ever-increasing healthcare costs for their own families, with federal dollars that do not exist except in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of deficit spending.

This leads to another discussion of when will the deficit spending madness end?  I am certain the liberal, wokie version of reality is that the rich, billions and billions of billionaires, should just pay, not just a little more, but A LOT MORE, and, poof, the deficit is gone! 

These same wokie economic “experts” I’ve personally encountered believe that “trickle down” is the source of the income disparity in this country.  If these “experts” had actually taken some economic classes in college they would have learned that the entire American capitalistic economic system is based entirely on “trickle down”.  The wealthy, in order to make income from their wealth, invest in businesses that, simply, pay EVERYONES salary, healthcare, life insurance, 401K contributions, on and on, out of the profits they earn from their investments in all the businesses in this country and around the world!  They pay FOR ALL that, and then pay HALF A TRILLION IN FEDERALBUSINESS INCOME TAXES E-A-C-H YEAR!   And guess what, all those salaries they pay, each of those employees pay a total of 2.4 TRILLION IN FEDERAL TAXES EACH YEAR!  So, in reality, billionaires are already paying THREE TRILLION a year in just federal taxes before you add in their personal federal income tax burden.  This does not include what they pay in billions and billions in state and local taxes through employee and business tax burden.

In 2022, the top 1% of earners in America paid approximately $854.5 billion in federal income taxes, accounting for 40% of all individual income tax revenue. Their average effective tax rate was 26.1%.

The total wealth held by billionaires is approximately 13 trillion.  If a wealth tax collected the entirety of their wealth, it wouldn’t reduce the federal deficit BY HALF!  Not to mention it would totally collapse the world economy.

So what’s the answer?  Reasonable, AGAIN a reasonable plan, to significantly reduce spending and reasonably increases taxes so as to not significantly and negatively impact economic activity.  This is critical because significant tax increases that drive the economy into recession would lower employment, reduce income tax receipts and offset any deficit reduction achieved through tax increases.  Billionaires could pay more in tax.  But only to the point where it does not negatively impacts business investment thus reducing employment, worker incomes and stock market returns for many millions of Americans whose retirement plans rely on wall street success.

By the way, moderate Democrats understand this dynamic.   Its those who are ignorant of these critical facts, the wokie, “socialist democrats”, who believe significantly reducing economic success is a problem that big government can mitigate.  They say just give government all the money and they will make the world okay for everyone.  PA-LEESE, lets get real!  Check in with governments who have experimented with socialism, France, Great Britain, and ask the average citizen if they are better off?  Why their wealth taxes failed.  Why the working class riot in the streets because the systems is crushing them economically.

Why are Americans not fleeing this country for France, Great Britain, Mexico, Syria, Iran, (the list is long)? Because, the United States of America, with all its warts, is still the place in the world with the highest standard of living and the most individual freedoms than any country in the world!  But PLEASE, lets draw the line at funding healthcare for illegal immigrants, sign the clean CR and get back to the business of fiscally responsible governing.