I just thought this was very interesting and worth sharing. Know the facts. Deal with the facts.
I saw this article today and wanted to share it. I cannot believe that they are even having this conversation... where we have to raise the debt by 1.9 trillion dollars to make interest payments on debt already contracted. I know it would be painful to live within our means but I believe it will be even more painful when we have to face what we have created for ourselves... We will have to say no eventually - now is a better time than tomorrow. Let's pay our obligations, constrict (not just limit the growth) government, and be responsible. The decisions of our elected officials over the past several decades have proven their inability to make hard choices and to put America on a course of honor, security, and domestic tranquility. We can no longer say that they do what is best.
I urge you to call your congressman today about this measure.
https://writerep.house.gov/htbin/wrep_findrep?HIP41324885.24673.7133
WASHINGTON – Facing a politically excruciating vote, House Democratic leaders are counting on new budget deficit curbs to help smooth the way for a bill allowing the government to go $1.9 trillion deeper into debt over the next year — or about $6,000 more for every U.S. resident.
The debt measure set for a House vote Thursday would raise the cap on federal borrowing to $14.3 trillion. That's enough to keep Congress from having to vote again before the November elections on an issue that is feeding a sense among voters that the government is spending too much and putting future generations under a mountain of debt to do it.
Already, the accumulated debt amounts to $40,000 per person. And the debt is increasingly held by foreign nations such as China.
Passage of the bill would send it to President Barack Obama, who will sign it to avoid a first-ever, market-rattling default on U.S. obligations. Democrats barely passed it through the Senate last week over a unanimous "no" vote from GOP members present.
To ease its passage, Democrats attached tougher budget rules designed to curb a spiraling upward annual deficit — projected by Obama to hit a record $1.56 trillion for the budget year ending Sept. 30. The new rules would require future spending increases or tax cuts to be paid for with either cuts to other programs or equivalent tax increases.
If the rules are broken, the White House budget office would force automatic cuts to programs like Medicare, farm subsidies and veterans' pensions. Current rules lack such teeth and have commonly been waived over the past few years at a cost of almost $1 trillion.
Skeptics say lawmakers also will find ways around the new rules fairly easily. Congress, for example, can declare some spending an "emergency" — a likely scenario for votes later this month to extend jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed.
And, indeed, there already are exceptions to the new rules, such as for extending former President George W. Bush's middle-class tax cuts past their expiration a year from now. That would add $1.4 trillion to the federal debt over the next decade.
In agreement with Obama's budget earlier this week, there is no exception for taxpayers in the two highest tax brackets whose marginal rates are due to rise by 3 percent or 4.6 percent to a pre-Bush maximum 39.6 percent next January.
But some new White House initiatives, such as doubling the child care tax credit for families earning less than $85,000, also would have to live within the rules, as would continuing subsidies for laid-off workers to buy health insurance — unless lawmakers make another exception.
The so-called pay-as-you-go rules have been a mantra with conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats in the House, who insisted they wouldn't vote to raise the debt ceiling without them.
"We don't have a choice," said Rep. John Tanner, D-Tenn. "We are on an unsustainable march toward a fiscal Armageddon."
Obama's budget projects the government's debt doubling to $26 trillion over the next decade. It offers few solutions for seriously closing the gap other than promising to appoint a bipartisan commission to come up with a plan to address the problem.
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The bill is H.J. Res. 45.
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On the Net:
Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov
There have been times in the past 12 months where I have felt that I would lose friendships over my political views because they have differed at times from the President’s. This is a very sad thing for me because, above all, I wish to always show myself to be a true friend to everyone – no matter their political ideology or theology.
I therefore wanted to take a moment and say, in all kindness and respect, that not only is it my right to disagree, it is my duty to not be supportive of everything a politician wishes to accomplish.
It is the ritual of governments of conquest and superstition to require submission to the ruler – not that of Democratic Republics. All of the popery of those governments with their jewels, parades, propaganda and wars is about the rulers and aligning the people with the One. Such governments are empty in their ability to protect and preserve the Rights of Man for their citizens and their posterity because they are contingent upon the imperfect, mortal men that lead them. There are times when there are just kings and leaders and the people are blessed. But there are more times when the leaders are not just and the people mourn.
Our Republican form of government, however, is a blessing to us because it is about the laws and the justness of them that we are to support – not the people we elect to write those laws. No matter how much we may love one leader, we should not entrust to him or her those powers we would not entrust to someone who would/could abuse them because our government rapidly changes hands and the future is permanently damaged when the short term is mistaken as what will always be.
Jefferson said, “Let no more be heard [the] talk of trust in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.”
I am no more an Obama supporter than I was a Bush supporter, a Reagan supporter or a Clinton supporter. I am an American and a supporter of Law, Liberty, Justice, and Freedom and all those measures intended to support such principles. Because this is the kind of person I am, I will disagree with the President and Congress. However, I will support every one of their policies that adhere to the principles of Freedom - regardless of the party and name of the politician.
No man deserves our full faith and support - to question is our duty and obligation as that is the last check on government power. Dissent is the greatest form of patriotism. We shouldn't be afraid to speak the truth and criticize our elected officials – even if we voted for them – especially when we voted for them. We the People cannot afford to be or do otherwise.
So, am I an Obama supporter? No, I am a Freedom, Justice and Liberty supporter. And when Obama supports Freedom, Justice and Liberty he and I are aligned.
This was another article I thought was telling about the security of the overall financial system at the present. It doesn't mean that things won't turn around - it just means that presently the insurance company that insures the banks needs some insuring itself...
From the New York Times
The government-administered insurance fund that protects depositors fell into the red for the first time since the fallout from the savings-and-loan crisis of the early 1990s as the pace of bank failures accelerated.
The fund had a negative balance of $8.2 billion at the end of the third quarter, federal regulators said Tuesday. Bank customers, however, should remain confident that their deposits would be protected since most of the amount reflects money that Federal Insurance Deposit Corporation has already set aside to cover the losses from future bank failures.
Officials of the F.D.I.C. said in October that the deposit insurance fund had been depleted, but the third-quarter report card on the banking industry issued on Tuesday was the first time that hard numbers had been released. Even amid early signs that the economy is recovering, the report suggested that the country’s 8,100 lenders remain in fragile condition.
In its state of the industry report, the F.D.I.C. reported that banks posted a $2.8 billion gain in the third quarter, after a $4.3 billion loss in the previous period. Meanwhile, the number of “problem banks” that run the biggest risk of collapse increased to 552, from 416 in the second quarter. The number of bad loans of nearly every stripe — credit cards, mortgages, small business and commercial real estate — continue to grow, albeit at a slower pace.
“The credit adversity we have been discussing for some time remains with us, and we expect it will be a couple of more quarters before we see a meaningful improvement in that trend,” said Sheila C. Bair, the F.D.I.C. chairwoman. “I am optimistic that if we address these problems head on, we will see clear signs of improvement in bank earnings and lending in 2010.
Even so, the number of bank failures will probably keep climbing. So far, the F.D.I.C. has seized and sold 124 banks in 2009, and analysts expect hundreds more to collapse in the months ahead. That has put significant pressure on the F.D.I.C. fund, which posted a negative balance for the first time since 1992 when regulators cleaned up the carnage from hundreds of failed thrifts and other commercial lenders.
Federal officials have also taken action to replenish the fund. The agency recently approved plans calling for industry to lend money to the insurance fund by ordering banks to prepay annual assessments that would otherwise have been due through 2012.
That move is expected to add about $45 billion to the fund, which stood at $34.6 billion a year ago, but should avoid straining bank earnings because of favorable accounting treatment. It also averts the political risk of tapping an emergency credit line from the Treasury Department, although some banking experts say they believe that such action may still be necessary.
The industry report card also showed how the banks’ troubles have spread. Two years ago, the problems seemed to be contained to a handful of big banks, which took large markdowns on the value of complex mortgage assets and other securities.
But as the big banks have regained their swagger from big trading profits over the last three quarters, the problems afflicting the bulk of the industry’s lenders — soured loans made to consumers and property developers — have grown considerably worse. Over all, banks charged off $50.8 billion in the third quarter, or 2.71 percent of assets. And lending dropped by the largest percentage since the government began collecting data in 1984.
More banks have also collapsed because of the bad debts. Federal regulators seized 50 banks in the third quarter, including regional ones like Colonial Bank of Alabama, Guaranty Financial of Texas and Corus Bankshares of Chicago. That was approximately the twice the total number of banks that failed in 2008.
The high cost of the failures has strained the deposit insurance fund, which thousand of banks support by paying quarterly premiums. As of the end of the third quarter, its balance stood at negative $8.2 billion. The bulk of the fund’s losses stem from money that regulators set aside to cover future failures, allowing it to operate in the red.
F.D.I.C. officials expect that bank failures will cost the insurance fund $100 billion over the next five years. More than half of that cost has already been accounted for, while the new prepayment plan is expected to cover the rest. If losses grew considerably worse, officials might have to impose additional special assessments on banks or draw on the Treasury’s backup credit lines.
In late August, Ms. Bair said she did not anticipate having to immediately tap that line of credit, although she did not rule it out. “I never say never,” Ms. Bair said at the time.
A version of this article appeared in print on November 25, 2009, on page B4 of the New York edition.
Accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/business/economy/25fdic.html?sudsredirect=true on December 14, 2009WASHINGTON — The United States government is financing its more than trillion-dollar-a-year borrowing with i.o.u.’s on terms that seem too good to be true.
Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed.
Even as Treasury officials are racing to lock in today’s low rates by exchanging short-term borrowings for long-term bonds, the government faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages.
With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher.
In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The potential for rapidly escalating interest payouts is just one of the wrenching challenges facing the United States after decades of living beyond its means.
The surge in borrowing over the last year or two is widely judged to have been a necessary response to the financial crisis and the deep recession, and there is still a raging debate over how aggressively to bring down deficits over the next few years. But there is little doubt that the United States’ long-term budget crisis is becoming too big to postpone.
Americans now have to climb out of two deep holes: as debt-loaded consumers, whose personal wealth sank along with housing and stock prices; and as taxpayers, whose government debt has almost doubled in the last two years alone, just as costs tied to benefits for retiring baby boomers are set to explode.
The competing demands could deepen political battles over the size and role of the government, the trade-offs between taxes and spending, the choices between helping older generations versus younger ones, and the bottom-line questions about who should ultimately shoulder the burden.
“The government is on teaser rates,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates lower deficits. “We’re taking out a huge mortgage right now, but we won’t feel the pain until later.”
So far, the demand for Treasury securities from investors and other governments around the world has remained strong enough to hold down the interest rates that the United States must offer to sell them. Indeed, the government paid less interest on its debt this year than in 2008, even though it added almost $2 trillion in debt.
The government’s average interest rate on new borrowing last year fell below 1 percent. For short-term i.o.u.’s like one-month Treasury bills, its average rate was only sixteen-hundredths of a percent.
“All of the auction results have been solid,” said Matthew Rutherford, the Treasury’s deputy assistant secretary in charge of finance operations. “Investor demand has been very broad, and it’s been increasing in the last couple of years.”
The problem, many analysts say, is that record government deficits have arrived just as the long-feared explosion begins in spending on benefits under Medicare and Social Security. The nation’s oldest baby boomers are approaching 65, setting off what experts have warned for years will be a fiscal nightmare for the government.
“What a good country or a good squirrel should be doing is stashing away nuts for the winter,” said William H. Gross, managing director of the Pimco Group, the giant bond-management firm. “The United States is not only not saving nuts, it’s eating the ones left over from the last winter.”
The current low rates on the country’s debt were caused by temporary factors that are already beginning to fade. One factor was the economic crisis itself, which caused panicked investors around the world to plow their money into the comparative safety of Treasury bills and notes. Even though the United States was the epicenter of the global crisis, investors viewed Treasury securities as the least dangerous place to park their money.
On top of that, the Fed used almost every tool in its arsenal to push interest rates down even further. It cut the overnight federal funds rate, the rate at which banks lend reserves to one another, to almost zero. And to reduce longer-term rates, it bought more than $1.5 trillion worth of Treasury bonds and government-guaranteed securities linked to mortgages.
Those conditions are already beginning to change. Global investors are shifting money into riskier investments like stocks and corporate bonds, and they have been pouring money into fast-growing countries like Brazil and China.
The Fed, meanwhile, is already halting its efforts at tamping down long-term interest rates. Fed officials ended their $300 billion program to buy up Treasury bonds last month, and they have announced plans to stop buying mortgage-backed securities by the end of next March.
Eventually, though probably not until at least mid-2010, the Fed will also start raising its benchmark interest rate back to more historically normal levels.
The United States will not be the only government competing to refinance huge debt. Japan, Germany, Britain and other industrialized countries have even higher government debt loads, measured as a share of their gross domestic product, and they too borrowed heavily to combat the financial crisis and economic downturn. As the global economy recovers and businesses raise capital to finance their growth, all that new government debt is likely to put more upward pressure on interest rates.
Even a small increase in interest rates has a big impact. An increase of one percentage point in the Treasury’s average cost of borrowing would cost American taxpayers an extra $80 billion this year — about equal to the combined budgets of the Department of Energy and the Department of Education.
But that could seem like a relatively modest pinch. Alan Levenson, chief economist at T. Rowe Price, estimated that the Treasury’s tab for debt service this year would have been $221 billion higher if it had faced the same interest rates as it did last year.
The White House estimates that the government will have to borrow about $3.5 trillion more over the next three years. On top of that, the Treasury has to refinance, or roll over, a huge amount of short-term debt that was issued during the financial crisis. Treasury officials estimate that about 36 percent of the government’s marketable debt — about $1.6 trillion — is coming due in the months ahead.
To lock in low interest rates in the years ahead, Treasury officials are trying to replace one-month and three-month bills with 10-year and 30-year Treasury securities. That strategy will save taxpayers money in the long run. But it pushes up costs drastically in the short run, because interest rates are higher for long-term debt.
Adding to the pressure, the Fed is set to begin reversing some of the policies it has been using to prop up the economy. Wall Street firms advising the Treasury recently estimated that the Fed’s purchases of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities pushed down long-term interest rates by about one-half of a percentage point. Removing that support could in itself add $40 billion to the government’s annual tab for debt service.
This month, the Treasury Department’s private-sector advisory committee on debt management warned of the risks ahead.
“Inflation, higher interest rate and rollover risk should be the primary concerns,” declared the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, a group of market experts that provide guidance to the government, on Nov. 4.
“Clever debt management strategy,” the group said, “can’t completely substitute for prudent fiscal policy.”
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Accessed on December 5th at http://s.nyt.com/u/C9O
When President Obama visits China for the first time on Sunday, he will, in many ways, be assuming the role of profligate spender coming to pay his respects to his banker.
That stark fact — China is the largest foreign lender to the United States — has changed the core of the relationship between the United States and the only country with a reasonable chance of challenging its status as the world’s sole superpower.
The result: unlike his immediate predecessors, who publicly pushed and prodded China to follow the Western model and become more open politically and economically, Mr. Obama will be spending less time exhorting Beijing and more time reassuring it.
In a July meeting, Chinese officials asked their American counterparts detailed questions about the health care legislation making its way through Congress. The president’s budget director, Peter R. Orszag, answered most of their questions. But the Chinese were not particularly interested in the public option or universal care for all Americans.
“They wanted to know, in painstaking detail, how the health care plan would affect the deficit,” one participant in the conversation recalled. Chinese officials expect that they will help finance whatever Congress and the White House settle on, mostly through buying Treasury debt, and like any banker, they wanted evidence that the United States had a plan to pay them back.
It is a long way from the days when President George W. Bush hectored China about currency manipulation, or when President Bill Clinton exhorted the Chinese to improve human rights.
Mr. Obama has struck a mollifying note with China. He pointedly singled out the emerging dynamic at play between the United States and China during a wide-ranging speech in Tokyo on Saturday that was meant to outline a new American relationship with Asia.
“The United States does not seek to contain China,” Mr. Obama said. “On the contrary, the rise of a strong, prosperous China can be a source of strength for the community of nations.”
He alluded to human rights but did not get specific. “We will not agree on every issue,” he said, “and the United States will never waver in speaking up for the fundamental values that we hold dear — and that includes respect for the religion and cultures of all people.”
White House officials have been working for months to make sure that Mr. Obama’s three-day visit to Shanghai and Beijing conveys a conciliatory image. For instance, in June, the White House told the Dalai Lama that while Mr. Obama would meet him at some point, he would not do so in October, when the Tibetan spiritual leader visited Washington, because it was too close to Mr. Obama’s visit to China.
Greeting the Dalai Lama, whom China condemns as a separatist, weeks before Mr. Obama’s first presidential trip to the country could alienate Beijing, administration officials said. Every president since George H. W. Bush in 1991 has met the Dalai Lama when he visited Washington, usually in private encounters at the White House, although in 2007 George W. Bush became the first president to welcome him publicly, bestowing the Congressional Gold Medal on him at the Capitol. Mr. Obama met the Dalai Lama as a senator.
Similarly, while he was campaigning for the presidency, Mr. Obama several times accused China of manipulating its currency, an allegation that the current Treasury secretary,Timothy F. Geithner, repeated during his confirmation hearings. But in April, the Treasury Department retreated from that criticism, issuing a report that said China was not manipulating its currency to increase its exports.
While American officials said privately that they remained frustrated that China’s currency policies lowered the cost of Chinese goods and made American products more expensive in foreign markets, they said that they were relieved that China was fighting the global recession with an enormous fiscal stimulus program to spur domestic growth, and added that now was not the time to antagonize Beijing.
China is not viewed as a trouble spot for the United States. But this administration, like its predecessor, has had difficulty grappling with a rising power that seems eager to avoid direct clashes with the United States but affects its interests in many areas, including currency policy, nuclear proliferation, climate change and military spending.
In that regard, two members of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy team said that the United States’ interactions with the Chinese had been far too narrow in past years, focusing on counterterrorism and North Korea. Too little was done, they said, to address China’s energy and environmental policies, or its expansion of influence in Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa, where China has invested heavily and used billions of dollars in aid to advance its political influence.
One hint of the Obama administration’s new approach came in a speech this fall by James B. Steinberg, the deputy secretary of state, who has deep roots in China policy. He argued that China needed to adopt a policy of “strategic reassurance” to the rest of the world, a phrase that appeared intended to be the successor to the framework of the Bush era, when China was urged to embrace a role as a “responsible stakeholder.”
“Strategic reassurance rests on a core, if tacit, bargain,” Mr. Steinberg said. “Just as we and our allies must make clear that we are prepared to welcome China’s ‘arrival,’ ” he argued, the Chinese “must reassure the rest of the world that its development and growing global role will not come at the expense of security and well-being of others.”
The Chinese reaction has been mixed, at best. The official China Daily newspaper ran a column just before Mr. Obama’s arrival suggesting that the United States needed to provide some assurance of its own — to “respect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” code words for entirely backing away from the issues of how China deals with Taiwan and Tibet.
In the United States, the phrase “strategic reassurance” has been attacked by conservative commentators, who argue that any reassurance that the United States provides to China would be an acknowledgment of a decline in American power.
In an op-ed article in The Washington Post, the analysts Robert Kagan and Dan Blumenthal argued that the policy had echoes of Europe “ceding the Western Hemisphere to American hegemony” a century ago. “Lingering behind this concept is an assumption of America’s inevitable decline,” they wrote. White House officials shot back, insisting that it is China that needs to do the reassurance, not the United States.
In China, Mr. Obama will meet with local political leaders and will host an American-style town hall meeting with students in Shanghai. He will then spend two days in Beijing meeting with President Hu Jintao.
It seems unlikely that Mr. Obama will get the same celebrity-type reception in Beijing that he received in Cairo, Ghana, Paris and London. China seems mostly immune to the Obama fever that swept other parts of the world, and the Chinese are growing more confident that their country has the wherewithal to compete with the United States on the world stage, analysts say.
“Obama is still a positive guy, and all over the world most people think he’s more energetic, more sincere, than Bush, more a reformist,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor and an expert on United States-China relations at People’s University in Beijing. “But in China, Obama’s popularity is less than in Europe, than Japan or Southeast Asia.” In China, he said, “there is no worship of Obama.”
For instance, during the Bush and Clinton years, China might release a few political dissidents on the eve of a visit by the president as a good-will gesture. This time, American officials say, they do not expect any similar gestures, although they say that Mr. Obama will raise human rights issues privately with Mr. Hu.
“This time China will agree to have a human rights dialogue with the U.S. on some cases,” Mr. Shi said, but “the arguments have changed compared to the past. Now we say, ‘We are a different country, we have our own system, our own culture.’ ”
Below is an article that is the best news those in favor of free market health care reform could hope for.
Depsite the move being retaliation against the insurance industry's recent report on the potential impact of the Senate Finance Committee's bill on health care costs, the move is welcome. Creating an environment where insurance companies compete is the the first step toward better coverage, and lower proces. Other important changes need to be made, but none would work without this one. Here is the article:
From the Associated Press
WASHINGTON – A House committee has voted to strip the health insurance industry of its exemption from federal antitrust laws as senators announced plans to take the same step.
The moves Wednesday signaled a growing determination by Democrats to punish the insurance industry for its criticism of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul agenda. The House Judiciary Committee voted 20 to 9 to repeal a 1940s law that exempted the health insurance industry from federal controls over certain antitrust violations including price-fixing.
Lawmakers said they wanted to include the legislation in a larger health care overhaul bill taking shape in the House. In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid announced plans to repeal the antitrust exemption as part of its health care legislation.
Over the past several weeks I have introduced to you various new options and choices that are necessary for creating a vibrant, free market system in health care – some of which are non-negotiable for creating a better America. To summarize what those recommendations are, they are as follows:
1. End the government sponsorship and protection of the insurance industry by removing the anti-trust exemption on the insurance industry forcing them to compete based on products, prices and services
2. Encourage and bring to an equal level Health Shares and non-profit Co-ops to provide additional options and alternatives for Americans to choose from
3. End the dominance of the employer sponsored health care plan which would promote private health insurance for all – the unemployed, the employed but with no insurance, the employed, and the retired
4. Introduce health care vouchers for employees rather than health care plans
5. Reform tax treatment of health care related expenses so they are all treated equally and do not favor one type of plan over another or one type of provider over another
6. Reform and increase the use of HSAs
7. Create a maximum on the amount the uninsured can be charged relative to the insured
8. Freeze Medicare & Medicaid at their current levels
9. Have the government provide vouchers for the low income and retired to purchase private health coverage that fits their needs
10. Introduce an increased tax deduction or credit for assisting family members with their health care expenses
11. Introduce a truly free and open health insurance exchange for all people and all health care related products
12. Pre-existing condition reform
13. Allow insurance plans written in one state to be sold in another state
14. Pay doctors for results and not only for services including the amount charged and warranties
These proposed reforms are not all inclusive. Some others that I have not focused on include:
1. Encouraging wider user of Health Savings Accounts for retirement health care. Health Savings Account contributions by any source would be tax deductible and never taxed upon withdrawal ensuring that health care expenses come first. If each American put aside between 2-4% of their income annually into an interest bearing account, they would be able to pay for most, if not all, of their health care related expenses after retirement (Footnote 1).
2. Freeing up doctors to be able to dictate their prices rather than the insurance companies. This would obviously create a market that truly competes based on price (Footnote 1).
Requiring, similar to our regulations on public companies, that doctors and hospitals disclose their success and failure rate. Patients have a right to know the quality of care they will be receiving. Furthermore, this reform, combined with #2 above, would truly help to create a marketplace that competes on value – quality and price (Footnote 1).
3. Encouraging more direct interaction between doctors and patients through phone and e-mail consultations. Because insurance companies don’t reimburse for this kind of care, doctors don’t provide it. If doctors are freed in their ability to determine prices and services, the market can better take care of the needs of the people in it (Footnote 1).
4. Electronic Record Keeping to build an infrastructure wherein information is more easily passed, efficiently maintained and more productively used for the care of the patient
A free market agency that rates providers based on quality of care and value of services. Such an agency would be similar to the “Energy Star” rating on electronic products. The value of this is obvious.
To sum up the whole of this kind of reform, if all of these reforms were enacted, American health care would be entirely different. All citizens would be able to have health care tailored to their needs and desires – the young invincibles to the aged and infirm, the employed and unemployed or retired. Insurance companies would not only be forced to compete with each other for the first time in modern history, but they would also have to compete for customers with health shares, co-ops, and self insurance. Small businesses are able to help provide care to their staff through vouchers. There are incentives for private plans to emerge. Employers would still be able to compete for top talent by the amount they contribute to private plans through vouchers. The government’s funding crisis becomes minimized by freezing the number of enrolled members in Medicare and Medicaid and simultaneously stimulates the free market by providing vouchers for eligible Americans to purchase private health care based on their needs. Americans have sufficient funds at retirement to pay for their health care and the costs for everyone have been lowered by competition, electronic records, diverse products and options, individual policies written to their needs, public disclosures of performance levels, and “Energy Star” type ratings.
Essentially, the rich and poor, healthy and infirm, employed and unemployed, could all be provided for. Not only that, they would be more effectively and efficiently provided for than had the government done it. Future generations are not taxed to provide for our care today, our reforms bless untold millions of unborn and future generations, government credit is increased and the National character becomes a light of what free will, Justice and the American spirit intended. True reform would bring about true blessings that could benefit everyone.
Compare this kind of reform to that being debated in Congress. Insurance Companies keep their anti-trust exemption, Medicare, Medicaid and the employer sponsored health plan are further entrenched, choice and freedom is not expanded - on the contrary, it is contracted - government growth goes up, quality eventually goes down, government is forced into an unethical situation of injustice and inequity, certain levels and powers to ration care, ourselves and the future are burdened with an unbearable level of greater and greater debt, the family is weakened, the health care industry is crippled by certain elements of central planning, costs for everyone with insurance go up, and the people in the long run are the ones who are hurt. The future is not all dark with the government health care reform, however. There are still some bright spots such as greater access to health care, some insurance reform, and some efficiency and cost improvements which would be blessings for many. However, it isn’t as bright as they would like us to believe it is either.
In essence, the government would not be able to fulfill its role to promote and protect the unalienable rights it was chartered with protecting: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness through the protection of Property. Its good intentions would cripple its abilities to deliver the expected outcomes on every front - not just health care.
Freedom and Justice as the means leads to Freedom and Justice as the destination. Free market reform isn’t perfect but it is the only way for us to get as close to perfection as we can. The People can do that. The government can’t.
The possibilities of free market reform are as numerous as are individuals. That is the beauty of the market – we all work together, as free Americans, to fill and meet the various needs of every individual in the manner that is best - providing the best service at the best price. It is the invisible hand that moves to fill needs, provides opportunities, sparks ideas, enhances quality, removes barriers, and, where coupled with proper oversight, blesses the whole society. Some would say it is even guided by Providence – after all, free will was given by Him. The proper exercise of agency is a blessing to us all.
This is the best way for America to proceed. If we had no alternative then I would not be nearly so adamant about this kind of True Reform. However, we have an alternative to the status quo that works better than direction we are going in. Why then is it not going in this direction?
To answer that question, we will next briefly address the various forces and players influencing the health care reform debate.
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Footnotes
1. John C Goodman, “A Prescription for Americans Health Care” Imprimis, March 2009, Volume 38, Number 3
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