Freemarket Healthcare

This week several provisions of the new healthcare bill come into effect. All that I have heard about are limitations on the deniability of various costs to health insurance providers. I guess that is as progressive as a muslim socialist radical gets these days.

I had health insurance once. Twice actually. Once as a generous benefit from my wife’s government job and once on my own tab. My productivity contributed over $1,000 pre-bailout dilution USD to a well known health insurance provider who shall remain nameless because I don’t room in my head to store such meaningless things. My wife became pregnant and around that time my employer switched providers to cut costs. The pregnancy was then considered a pre-existing condition and therefore not covered.

The doctor was not pleased and wrote a letter to the insurance company detailing her grievances. Within a month we received a short letter to inform us that we had been dropped. Eden was over two years old before we were able to finish paying the hospital, doctor, anesthesiologist, lab ect… For a long time we got bills nearly everyday.

The whole thing reminded me of a little saying I once heard from my Father, “when a mouse and an elephant sleep in the same bed, the mouse gets hurt no matter how nice the elephant is.” The balance of power in the customer/insurance provider relationship is out of balance. They have all the power and you have none. While I was dutifully paying my monthly “premiums” as they are called, they were using the money to hire lobbyists to write favorable legislation into law in Albany and Washington, build tall building in downtown areas and fill those buildings with lawyers to find ways to deny claims. I was paying them to undermine my standing. I could have paid the healthcare costs if I had not given them over $14,000 over the previous year. I can either pay insurance companies or hospitals but paying both is hard work. So I decided to just pay the hospital when the need arises.

If the American people want a more rational healthcare bill, they can certainly have one. Here is one way I think would work. Everyone stop paying health insurance premiums for a month or two. Write a nice letter saying that you are uncomfortable with the influence the health insurance industry had in writing the latest healthcare bill and you don’t want your money being used to make the lives of others difficult but once a new bill is through the senate, you will gladly resume payment. I believe in this so much that I have started already.

Lately I have heard the president speak proudly of all the good his healthcare bill has done. I haven’t read all the provisions of that bill but it seems to me that meat of it is forcing me to back into purchasing health insurance products I have already tried and rejected. With a little luck, I should be able to get the same provider who dumped me three years ago.

Lest the Terrorist Win

A day or so after the attacks on the World Trade Center President Bush suggested that we “go shopping” lest “the Terrorists win.” I was taken by the strange logic and the phrase has echoed in the back of my mind ever since. I’m beginning to understand it.

The Barnharts recently spent sixty hours or so strapped in a confined space exactly the shape of a minivan. To keep my mind from spinning out of control and self destructing, I listened to several books on cassette tape, including “Sitting Bull and his world” by Albert Marrin. It is a full account of the last days of the “Plains Indians”, including the Sioux. I learned the demise of the American Buffalo was purposefully engineered by Washington to starve the Sioux out of Canada and confine them in concentration camps, called reserves. The US army supplied weapons to marksmen and thrill seekers to maximize buffalo casualties. Cavalrymen rode organized patrols to turn back or shoot any herds that might wander north and become food for 19th century terrorists. When Sitting Bull and the last of the starving Sioux moved off the Canadian Prairie to become wards of the state, they numbered less than 200, men, women and children.

One event caught my attention especially. In 1873, the economy of the US was jeopardized by collapse of over-leveraged investment banks. President Grant was advised that salvaging the investments would require an increase in gold production. Coincidentally, the undeveloped gold fields lay in the Black Hills of Dakota, the crown jewel of the Sioux reserve. Without the game rich Black Hills, the Sioux were left with Buffalo free Prairie and no hope of sustaining a hunter-gatherer society. As you can imagine, the Sioux ended up mostly dead and the Black Hills became a commodity. This time around there are no Indians to expend in the interest of “recovering” the economy, so it has been decided to steal from the future. Capital and its economic machinery must be protected.

A co-worker periodically attempts, in Spanish, to convert me to various conspiracy theories. I told him the conspiracies I am afraid of are not hidden, they are written in business plans, mission statements and quarterly reports, they are in the President’s speeches. Allow me to interpret that cryptic Presidential message of 2001: “Our enemies will try to convince you their war is with the economic system of the West. Do not believe this. They are just bad people who hate freedom. They fight for no reason. Go buy something or the industrialists will lose.”

Mission Statement

Here is a rather revealing quote from a recent press conference.

"We need to get more Afghans into the fight." - President Obama

Now we know what "our" objectives are.

Dogbert gets honest

This has been hanging on my desk for nearly two years. Like expensive wine or cheese, it seems better with age. Sorry about the poor scan quality. Here is the dialogue.

Investor: "I'm thinking of investing in the Dogbert Hedge Fund. Can you explain how it works?"

Fund Manager:"It's simple. I take your money and then use math to turn it into my money while destroying the overall economy."

Investor: "Is that legal?"

Manager: "more so than you'd think.

Investor: "What's in it for me?"

Manager: "My inflated claims will give you false hope. That way you won't stress out until after you retire and discover you're penniless."

Investor: "But I..."

[scene of dinosaur violence]

Investor: "I don't remember the last five minutes."

Manager: "I was just telling you that my hedge fund will earn you 520% per year."

Fighting for the American Way of Life

Soon after the 911 attacks the president addressed the American people and instructed us to "go shopping" lest the terrorist win. That set an alarm bell that is still ringing in my mind and has only grown louder with the more recent economic events. It is a little dangerous making bold statements about economic issues to Darren as he has actually read important thinkers like Malthus, Smith, Marx, Kaynes ect... none of which I have read, except for some Marx. My thoughts on this topic are relatively unencumbered by the educational process. (All that I have read of Marx made a lot of sense with the exception of men holding wives in common). Even so, in light of all the "economic news" of late, I have a few uneducated questions.

What IS a jobless recovery? What is recovering and for whom? If speculation drives the markets up but there are no jobs, how can the consumers afford the "junk from the man"? Isn't that what drives the whole thing?

If I remember correctly FDR pushed the US into a new era of economic management by borrow/spending on infrastructure investments. The idea was that there would be a short term gain of increased economic activity, and a long term investment which would eventually pay back through increased productivity. Ronald Reagan gave us the idea that increasing the take home pay of the capitalized was the best way to help the poor and middle class. No need to focus on where the investment actually goes, the act of freeing it from government control will unleash magical vibes. Today we have eliminated the “voodoo” aspect of Reaganomics and just focus on subsidizing the capitalized without looking for any further benefit. Is it the right thing to do? Could there be wiser options? Who cares, they are too big to fail.

We have lost the vocabulary to differentiate between the consumptive economy, the productive economy and the parasitic economy. Not that parasites are a bad thing, no one could live without a colony of bacterial in the gut to digest food, but their survival is not the primary measure of the health of an individual. If I went to the emergency room with broken legs from falling off a scaffolding and the attending physician focused on the survival of the bacteria in my system and ignored everything else, we might assume there is a problem. Yet the doctors overseeing the economy have eyes only for the players who have never produced a single item needed by a human being or delivered any of those products to a population where they are needed, the aptly named FIRE sector, Finance, Insurance and Real Estate. Lets pour a little more fuel on.

Here’s a random thought. Is it ethical to create the economic machinery to turn housing into an investment market, the foundation of the FIRE sector? Are there such things as basic human needs which everyone should have without bearing the burden of profit creation? What if water systems were operated this way? Police and fire protection? Healthcare seems headed that way with mandatory insurance coverage looming. This is a topic for another post/rant.

is an idea an idea if there is no one to hear it?

With the exit of the Bylers, I have been left without an appropriate audience for rambling rants. What is an appropriate audience?
(1) the propensity to listen and remember. Asking pertinent questions is a plus as is an occasional summary. Example: "So you don't feel good about selling your future descendants into economic servitude by saddling them with Chinese debt to ensure the steady growth curve of the investment portfolios of the capitalist overlords and their subsidized libertarian lackeys on wall street?" An easy laugh and a short beard to pull on are also recommended.
(2) THEY MUST LIVE NEAR BY. Or relatively near.
(3) The audience must demonstrate a working knowledge of science, journalism, bob dylan, the history of western civilization, economics, anti-globalism, the history of western china, mormonism, blue collar jobs, editing, mandarin, ethnography of the amish, photography and composition in various media.
(4) They must have time to come visit. This is the short list.

So, what happens to an unheard idea. Does it dry out like a raisin in the sun, or simply go away? On the odd chance anyone is listening, here are my recent ideas.

How to live in a "bad economy"

Try to be paid less than you are worth. It might not sound flashy but when times get tough, you are not first on the expendable list. Another way to say this might be; make sure you are worth more than you are paid.

Try not to work at anything that can be unionized. Not that I object to unions. Submitting to a union is accepting that you are a small, easily replaced, cog in a big wheel. For example in a hospital the people who clean are unionized, the people who feed patients and perform routine assistance are unionized, the people who read and make charts are unionized, the people behind the desks are unionized. Who is not unionized? The people making the actual decisions, the Doctors. If you make yourself replaceable, you probably will be. The economic ground may shift under your feet and people in China or immigrants from a less economically developed country than yours may be available to take your place. When was the last time you were in a hospital without nurses from the Philippines. The proud unionized GM workers who thought they were organizing a secure future are now panhandling the taxpayer. Learn to do what others cannot, not what they can.

Avoid management. If you have a longing to manage someone, be self employed and manage yourself. Management is a passport to the land of the mundane, meetings and creativity crushing boredom.

Avoid debt and consumption. Contrary to the ideology of the last two administrations, mindless consumption is not the path to anything positive. Do not "go shopping so the terrorists won't win." Do not buy a car you cannot pay for because of a federal subsidy. If the President sends you "stimulus money," stimulate your own economy by paying down debt. Avoid debt and consumption, it only encourages them.