Maybe I'm just thinking too much.

OPB told me I "can't not think" though.

"We know what a failure to act would bring: More of the same. More of the same exploding costs. More of the same diminished coverage. If we fail to act, the crisis will grow. More families will go without coverage. More businesses will be forced to drop or water down their plans."

-President Barak Obama

"Democracy is talking itself to death. The people do not know what they want; they do not know what is the best for them. There is too much foolishness, too much lost motion. I have stopped the talk and the nonsense. I am a man of action. Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. You in America will see that some day."

-Bennito Mussolini

"I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House."

Obama

"The importance of the State is rapidly growing. The so-called crisis can only be settled by State action and within the orbit of the State"

-Mussolini

"Here I wish to reaffirm with no weaker energy, the formula I expounded at the scala in Milan: everything in the state, nothing against the State, nothing outside the state.

-Mussolini

“We’ve been debating this stuff for decades. It’s time for us tomove forward.”

-Barak Obama

"It has never been easy, moving this nation forward. There are always those who oppose it, and those who use fear to block change."

Obama

"A nation, as expressed in the State, is a living, ethical entity only in so far as it isprogressive. Inactivity is death. Therefore the State is not only Authority which governs and confers legal form and spiritual value on individual wills, but it is also Power which makes its will felt and respected beyond its own frontiers, thus affording practical proof of the universal character of the decisions necessary to ensure its development. This implies organization and expansion, potential if not actual. Thus the State equates itself to the will of man, whose development cannot he checked by obstacles and which, by achieving self-expression, demonstrates its infinity."

-Mussolini

"In America, we have this strong bias toward individual action. You know, we idolize the John Wayne hero who comes in to correct things with both guns blazing. But individual actions, individual dreams, are not sufficient. We must unite in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations.”

-Obama

"It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of the nation, that the position of the individual is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole."

-Adolf Hitler

Conservatives are always labeled as "fascist" and "Nazis" while in fact, Progressives are much closer to fascism than conservatives or libertarians.

But maybe I'm just thinking too much.

Media Misinformation on Health Care

Recently I saw an article in Newsweek by Johnathan Alter that was a snarky hit piece on those who disagree with the Federal Government's plan for heath care.

He said: "Why should I be entitled to the same insurance that members of Congress get? Blue Dogs need a lot of medical attention to treat their blueness. I'm just a regular guy and definitely deserve less." The current health care bill is not the same as the Congress's. Not hardly. In fact, the committee crafting the bill voted against holding themselves under the plan. Congress actually has the choice of several private insurance. See: plans.http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090730/hr3200_blunt_1.pdf "I like the fact that if I lose my job, I won't be able to get any insurance because of my illness." This is false. There is already a government sponsored plan that covers people in this situation. See The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1997. As long as you had health insurance for 62 days prior to changing jobs. "I like the absence of catastrophic insurance today." I have no idea where they got this. Simply search "catastrauphic health insurance." I do know that government regulations make these plans somewhat hard to get. The government does not like insurance companies to offer plans only covering catastrophic health care. And you definitely will not be able to get it once the government undercuts and drives private companies out of the heath insurance business. "The good news is that the $8,000 a year per family that Americans pay for their employer-based health insurance is heading up." It has been documented that the three top reasons that health care costs are going up so fast are: Covering non-emergency health care for illegal aliens, excessive malpractice lawsuit judgments (one of the reasons Europe's health care is cheaper is that there are limits on malpractice lawsuit amounts), and government mandated coverage. If we reformed just one of these, costs would come back down considerably. Some experts say the "health care crisis" could be solved simply by ceasing to cover non-emergency services for illegal aliens. Moreover, almost every objective audit of HR 3200 finds that costs will skyrocket, not go down, if it passes. Conservative estimates range from 1-7 trillion dollars. "And how could the supporters of these reform bills believe in anything as stupid as a "public option"? Do they really believe that the health-insurance cartel deserves a little competition to keep them honest?" The author calls HR 3200 "capitalism." This is anything but. In every single area the government gets involved, the private "competition" goes away, service goes down, and costs go up. Look at the Post Office, or AMTRAK. It's the same when government colludes with private companies to artificially produce a monopoly, like garbage service and cable T.V. The reality is that the government does not play by the same rules as the private sector. In this issue, it is the government that heavily regulates the private insurance sector. It sets up a lack of competition by outlawing insurance companies to operate inter-state. It artificially inflates costs and reduces choice by mandating coverage. For example, here in Oregon I cannot get a plan that does not include prescriptions. I have not had a prescription since I was about 12. I don't need it, but I have to pay for it because the government says I have to have it. Oregon also mandates coverage for: Contraceptives, Alcoholism Treatment, Drug Abuse Treatment, Breast Reconstruction, Cervical cancer/HPV Screening, Mammograms, Mastectomy, Maternity Care and Stay, and PKU/Formula. I don't need any of those, so why do I have to pay for them? Shouldn't I decide if I don't want coverage for something I am never going to use? The author cites the "USPS versus UPS" as evidence of competition between the government and private sector. This is quite humorous given that the USPS has an artificial monopoly on daily letter mail. UPS CANNOT compete in that area of mail service because it is against the law. The USPS is insolvent due to decreasing demand, and their answer is to raise their prices continuously, which they can do because every letter sent "through the mail" goes through them. There is no choice. "You know what part of the status quo I like best? It's a longstanding system for paying doctors called "fee for service." That's where doctors get paid for each procedure they perform..." The alternative is pay-per-patient, where doctors are paid for how many people they see per day (as in HMO's). The service you get from that kind of system is even worse. Obamacare has proposed an even more insidious plan that was abandoned a decade ago: patient pools, where doctors are paid for how many patients they have, no matter how much they see them. Oh yeah, and they are penalized when they refer someone to a specialist. In summary, our healthcare system is the best in the world. It has problems, but there is a reason why people flock here to get medical care, rather than the rest of the world. There is a reason why there are more medical innovations here than anywhere else, including those big bad pharmaseudical companies who have been so terrible as to cure everything from polio to acid reflux. Further, even if we use the dubious number of 47 million who do not have health insurance, that means about 85% of the population is covered, and about 89% of the population is happy with their health care. So why are we going to spend $7,000,000,000,000+ to fix a problem that effects (at the very, very most) 15% of America (BTW, that's almost $150,000 for each of them)? And what's with the headlong rush? Obama wanted this thing passed before anyone could read it in Congress, let alone the American public. That always should make us very nervous. Now that Congress has decided they won't move on it until after the recess, people are becoming increasingly disapproving of HR3200. I think there needs to be reform (see above), but I don't think this is it. Alter employed bumper sticker slogans and short propaganda rallying points, and each one could have been an entire research project. Unfortunately, there are no counter arguments offered in the article. However, there is hope. People are beginning to stand up against this government takeover of another area of our lives.