What happens when union leaders threaten to derail a major piece of Democratic legislation over a tax that would hit union health benefits hard? Obviously, Democrats will reject special interest politics and stand firm in defense of what they believe to be sound policy, whoops sorry that is only during campign time. They will hand out a bribe and cut a deal that panders directly to the special interests.

There very well could be two Americans receiving the exact same benefits, but one American may be taxed and one wouldn't, and the only difference would be one of them being a member of a union. Welcome to the new health care reality, where some people are more equal than others! It just depends your political connections or the power of your vote in the senate.

Perhaps in their mind it is only special interests when they are for the other guys. Where is the outrage about rampant special interests taking over Washington? This was a constant theme during the Bush years, but now when Obama does similar things all we hear is silence from the left.

Now the right is no better, they are up in arms about this but they have no credibility on the issue either after 8 years of political pandering to their favored interests.

It is sickening to say the least and is just another bribe to grease the wheels of this horrible piece of legislation.

The following is from a New York Times article on Health care reform:

People at old-line organizations tend to rationalize the usual ways of doing business and to worry about the downsides of change. I.B.M. didn't invent Windows or the Mac. Newspapers didn't invent Craigslist

I think that this is an interesting thought about innovation and incumbancy. Incumbents do not innovate, and when it comes to health care in the United States, government is the incumbent. They control over half of health care spending and dictate a lot of decisions through regulations. To me, this suggests that real health care reform requires reducing the role of government.

What are your thoughts on this?

If you are still deluding your self into thinking that the current health care bill is fighting the special interests consider the following news.

The race to replace Ted Kennedy's senate seat is closer than many have expected, so in response the Health Care loby has come to the rescue of the Democratic canidate Martha Coakley. If Coakly were to lose it would put health care reform in seroius jepordy as the Democrats would lose their 60 seat majority.

In response, an army of lobbyists for drug companies, health insurance companies, and hospitals has teamed up to throw a high-dollar Capitol Hill fundraiser for Coakley next Tuesday night.

The people that stand to gain from this "reform" are fighting to make sure it happens.

All the leading drug companies have lobbyists on Coakley's host committee: Pfizer, Merck, Amgen, Sanofi-Aventis, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Astra-Zeneca, and more. On the insurance side of things, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Cigna, Humana, HealthSouth, and United Health all are represented on the host committee.

Those HMOs (like Aetna) or drug companies who don't have lobbyists in Coakley's top tier of fundraisers? They're covered, because the host committee includes four lobbyists representing the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), two representing America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), and one representing the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO)

So think of these top donors to health-care reform's 60th vote next time President Obama claims that he's battling the special interests in this battle. The army listed below is on Obama's side, and these clients will all benefit from "reform."

If this is still a suprise to you, than you really haven't been paying attention to what has been happening in this battle. The people who are left out are the American people who are getting shit on by this crappy expensive piece of legislation.

I believe that Kauclair in her Diary titled "A view into the Conservative mind" made a statement along the lines of "And as for MassHealth bankrupting the state of Massachusetts, I've heard the rumors but no one has supplied me with the evidence yet."

Well I came a across this story that goes into how it has definitly put starins on the States budget and has long term funding problems.

For the state's policymakers, rapidly rising health-care costs are the central problem with the plan. Since 2006, the cost of the state's insurance program has increased by 42 percent, or almost $600 million. According to an analysis by the Rand Corporation, "in the absence of policy change, health care spending in Massachusetts is projected to nearly double to $123 billion in 2020, increasing 8 percent faster than the state's gross domestic product (GDP)."

The system in place has done little or nothing to control insurance costs. The State has the highest insurance premiums in the Nation and among the fastest rising.

Meanwhile, the cost of insurance premiums in the state is the highest in the nation, and double-digit rate hikes are expected again in 2010.

There is bipartisan concern about the future of the program from advocates of a single payer to libertarians.

The worry, shared across the political spectrum, is that the state's health-care spending will overwhelm the state's budget. Already, it has forced service cuts that have irked those on both sides of the aisle.

Physicians for a National Health Plan, a doctor's group that supports a fully socialized, single-payer health-care system, warned in a February 2009 report that the new system had failed to reduce medical spending, and has subsequently drawn funding away from crucial health resources such as emergency room care.

Michael Tanner, a health policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute notes that huge deficits and skyrocketing public expenses already have resulted an increased cigarette tax of $1 a pack, as well as $89 million in new fees on the health-care industry.

This also should make us take pause for the current health care bill in Congress is largely based on this model. We should especially be wary of the cost estimates which in hindsight tend to be very rosy and unrealistic. Take MassHealth for example:

One problem the state has faced is that it failed to accurately anticipate the true cost of the program. At the time the program was signed into law, estimates indicated that the cost of Commonwealth Care, which is responsible for the program's biggest single cost, its health insurance subsidies, would be about $725 million per year. But by 2008, those projections had been revised. New estimates indicated that the plan was to cost $869 million in 2009 and $880 million 2010, an upwards increase of nearly 20 percent.

Another example of estimates being a little less than accurate predictors of future expenditures:

In his campaign to be President Barack Obama promised to Shine the Light on Federal Contracts, Tax Breaks and Earmarks

Sunlight Before Signing: Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.

I took the time to check up on how things have played out so far this year. According to my calculations there have been a total of 124 bills passed and signed by the President this year. Of them 90 have had the 5 day waiting period between the date they were presendted and sigend. 53 have been posted or linked to on whitehosue.gov for 5 days before signing. And only 42 have have had both conditions met.

So a quick break down 72.58% have had a 5 day waiting period between presentation and signature.

42.74% have been posted or linked to for 5 days before the presidents signature.

And only 33.33% have been posted or linked to 5 days after presentation and had the five day wait peroid for the siganture.

There certainly could be some fo these that might be classified as "emergency" but I think that saying that explains why only 33.33% have fulfilled his full campign promise is pretty weak.

This should be a relativly easy thing for the President to make sure happens and I am displeased that it is not happening. We were promised more transparency and for the most part we have gotten more of the same with only marginal improvement. I want what was promised and that is not too much to ask.

Data on bills signed into law

I wanted you all to be among the first to have access to my latest ecominc research. It is a paper that explores the caues and responses to the financial crisis of 2007-2009. I have added in the graphs to the paper, there are still some formating problems with diferent spacing and all of that good stuff so maybe I will get around to fixing that sometime later.

 

The Financial Crisis of 2007-2009: Causes and Response

 

SW: I am writing this diary in response to a comment by Faultguy in the diary about what we would do if we were president. He brought up some very interesting points that at the time I did not have the time to address. So this is more or less addressed at him, but if anything of written strikes a nerve with anyone or if any of the people who said that they thought what he wrote was a good idea this is at you (specificly: JustinConley, spiral115, aneonvortex, but not limited to you all)  as well.

I have edited this so it reads more or less as a conversation and if I have taken anything out of context or misrepresented ideas I am sorry for that. A warning this is long, but please don't let it discourage you. Faultguy comments will be in bold, mine in a regular font.

How can this not be considered bribery? I understand that this is the political system but it doesn't make the fact that this is blatant paying someone to vote for something any less disgusting. From ABC News (HT: Café Hayek)

On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for "certain states recovering from a major disaster."  

The section spends two pages defining which "states" would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that "during the preceding 7 fiscal years" have been declared a "major disaster area."  

I am told the section applies to exactly one state:  Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill.

In other words, the bill spends two pages describing would could be written with a single world:  Louisiana.  (This may also help explain why the bill is long.)

Senator Harry Reid, who drafted the bill, cannot pass it without the support of Louisiana's Mary Landrieu.

How much does it cost?  According to the Congressional Budget Office: $100 million.

The worst part is also that instead of using a person's own money to buy this senator off Harry Reid uses all of our money. This is considered good politics for some reason, to me it is unprincipled special treatment for a State that has a Senator that is important to pass legislation not because it is filling a need for the National Welfare.

This is simply disgusting, I am writing a few letters in protest about this.

An interesting* tid bit from the Congressional Budget Office regarding the tax treatment of equity financing (stock offerings and other direct invetment) and debt financing.

The resulting [tax] rate on equity-financed corporate capital income is 36.1 percent and that on debt financed corporate capital income is -6.4 percent, a difference of 42.5 percentage points. The rate on equity financed corporate capital income is higher than the statutory corporate tax rate because of the extra tax imposed on dividends and capital gains at the individual level.(pg 8)

Basicly in simple terms if companies raise money through stock offerings any income from that is taxed at 36.1% if they borrow the money instead it is taxed at -6.4%!!!!

It is not a surprise that so many companies rely on debt financing now than in the past, this also has some bad incentive effects as people who are owners of a company usually have better control over what goes on then do the people that lend them money.

Another interesting and probably negative distortion due to the oh so complicated tax system. Yeah for Washington!

*I may be playing it a little fast and loose with the word "interesting" but it is at least to me and it is none the less important.

fixed broken graph image-sjw

Don't get me wrong I have made a lot of graphs and charts in my day but they can be very misleading and you must be carefull with them.

I bring this up because the data that drives them is not always clear at first glacne.

You must be very carfefull not to draw conclusions from them without critically examining them.

I will use this example.

This was from JZ.

This one is from myself.

They both use the same information from the same sources. However it would be really stupid to make any conclusions based on these charts. There are some very bad mistakes made in both of these that heavily distort the information.

Both of these are percentage change from the begining of the prosidents term.

The debt is percentage change from the begining not by month and same for unemplyment.

The debt is not adjusted for size of the economy, which is a representation of ability to pay it off.

I would also like to say that is government debt a good indicator of misery? I do not think so, at least not in the short run. It is most definintly not something that we should encourage but it is possible to have strong gorwth with high debt.

The more respected or widely used misery indexes are inflation plus unemployment which to me is a much better representation that the ones presented above.

I saw this from Mises.org (Which describes itself as the world center of the Austrian School of economics and libertarian political and social theory. For full disclosure) and it is an analysis of the implicit marginal tax rates.

I did a previous diary that dealt with the implicit marginal tax rates of the health reform legislation. There are some very nice charts that I have borrowed because really why re-invent the wheel. I will include the original analysis by the author Clifford F. Thies. All of my comments and analysis will be in italic.

To say that antipoverty programs in the United States are perverted may be an understatement. When you take into account the loss of means-tested benefits (e.g., cash assistance, food stamps, housing subsidies, and health insurance), and the taxes that people pay on earned income, the return to working is essentially zero for those in the lower two quintiles of the income distribution.

For many of the working poor, the implicit marginal tax rate is greater than 100 percent.

I was very surprised by this, in my opinion this is something that should come to light more and should get much more attention. I think that it doesn't because well it is pretty wonkish and not very interesting to that large of a population. I think that people are more interested in just trying to help to poor but not paying attention to any of the consequences that happen from this action.

The long-run consequence of undermining the positive incentive to work is, of course, the creation of an underclass acclimated to not working; the supplement of cash and noncash benefits with income from crime and the underground economy; and the government resorting to negative incentives such as mandatory work programs.

Below, I (the author) show the relationship between earned income and after-tax income plus subsidies for a hypothetical Virginia family of three, consisting of one adult and two minor children. As you can see, the relationship is essentially flat from $0 to about $40,000 in earned income.

So I have a little bit of time this morning to write and it came up in a post from our friend that Obama has done everything wrong to get the economy growing again and that he knew all of the answers to make everything right. I was hoping to see something at length about certain policies he would like to see under taken and why he thought that they would work to get things growing again. I was highly skeptical that this would be forthcoming and I was not disappointed because it has yet to appear.

So to not be one who just criticizes others without giving my own thoughts on what can be done I will offer this, I encourage you all to offer your own ideas or to point out any problems you see with my ideas. I am actually doing research for a paper on the causes and reactions to the financial crises which I should be finished with around the end of December that I will post here if anyone is interested.

The rest of this is going to be after the break here so I hope that people actually take the time to read it. Warning it is long.

This is from Greg Mankiw who has taken the CBO review of the health reform bill and figured out the marginal tax rate that is implicit in the health care reform bills. I was pretty surprised by how high it was and I think that this could quite possibly create some bad incentives. The costs not bracketed are for the senate bill the bracketed numbers are for the house bill.

A family of four with an income, say, of $54,000 would pay $9,900 [$6,200] for healthcare. That covers only about half [a third] the actual cost. Uncle Sam would pick up the rest.

Now suppose that the same family earns an additional $12,000 by, for example, having the primary earner work overtime or sending a secondary worker into the labor force. In that case, the federal subsidy shrinks, so the family's cost of health care rises to $12,700 [$10,000].

In other words, $2,800 [$3,800] of the $12,000 of extra income, or 23 [32] percent, would be effectively taxed away by the government's new health care system.

These numbers are not small and when added to the other taxes on income could be quite large. So this family also is in the 15% tax bracket plus 7.65% for social security and 1.45% for medicare and you get an effective marginal tax rate of 47.1%[56.1%] plus any other state and local taxes. If they are in California like I am they fall in the 9.3% bracket and it pushes the marginal taxes close to 60+% plus here in the Bay Area our sales taxes are 9.25% which further cuts into the spending power of that marginal income so we are talking about a pretty small gain on that extra income.

It is not like these are wealthy people either, that is prety high I would have to say.

Links:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11...

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com...

Some random thoughts while reading the news this morning; It is pretty long but I think that there are some interesting things in here.

Dems Seek Cover to Boost Debt Limit

Link here.

The Senate must soon increase the national debt limit to above $13 trillion - and Democrats are looking for political cover.

Knowing they will face unyielding GOP attacks for voting to increase the eye-popping debt, Democrats are considering attaching a debt increase provision to a must-pass bill, possibly the Defense Department spending bill, according to Democratic and Republican sources.

Adding it to the defense bill would allow Democrats to argue that they voted for the measure to help troops in harm's way - and downplay that their vote also expanded the limit for how much money the country can borrow.

While I know that this is not just simply a Democratic strategy but instead is simply a political strategy, it doesn't take away any of the problems of combining unrelated and unpopular legislation to things that are sure to pass. I would love to see this practice end because it really leads to some bad sausage making in the legislative process where bills are filled with numerous unrelated amendments.

This is how we end up with some really bad laws, things like the ban on internet gambling or the Real ID. I would urge you to write/call your representative to stop this addition and say that they need to have each bill stand up on its own merits. It is really the least they could do, if it is really that unpopular than maybe some harder decisions need to be made.

Here is a funny little video that go's along with this deficit talk.

In Defense of Fox News

This one is more of a perspective and not so much news but I think that there are some good points to be made here. Especially in light of the diary that was posted on this site. While I am no fan of Fox News I think that an opposition news/media organization is important to keeping those in power honest. Sure they say some outrageous things and are not exactly 100 percent truthful but examples of this can be found at most news/media organizations but maybe not to the same extent. Here is the link to the full article.

Those of you paying even the slightest attention these days realize that President Barack Obama has been the target of a near-criminally biased and antagonistic mass media.

Someone had to put a stop to the madness.

The organization most persistently engaged in reporting on issues that put the administration in a poor light has been Fox News. Or should I say Fox "News." Unfair. Unbalanced. Uncooperative...

"It's not a news organization so much as it has a perspective," chief of staff Rahm Emanuel added. Mao enthusiast and communications director Anita Dunn claims that Americans should not "pretend" Fox is a "news network the way CNN is."

Dunn also asserted that when the president "goes on Fox, he understands he's not going on it really as a news network at this point. He's going on to debate the opposition." Who knew debating the future of the nation is such a ghastly thought?

Damn that debating of other opinions and ideas. Continuing on:

So what is the underlying rationale for this hypersensitive strategy of trying to delegitimize the voice of cable opposition? "We're doing what we think is important to make sure news is covered as fairly as possible," a White House official explained to Politico.

It's about time someone charged the White House with the task of "making sure" news coverage is "fair." It's "important" work, you see. After all, who better than the executive branch-supposedly in the business of representing the entire nation-to decide whether a station qualifies as a legitimate news organization?

Then again, does biased political coverage disqualify one from reporting legitimate and useful news stories? Fox News may not be able to unsheathe the intellectual rigor of Obama favorites David Letterman and Jay Leno, but it has covered numerous stories in the past few months that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.

Remember that ACORN's penchant for aiding the child-enslaving pimp set was a valid story. Uncovering the radical ramblings of Van Jones-a man tasked with creating "green" jobs even though he never had created a job for anyone but himself-was legitimate enough for the czar to abdicate his crown. The National Endowment for the Arts' attempt to politicize art was genuine enough to elicit a White House apology.

Now I will say that the organization probably blew these stories out of proportion relative to the real value of the news but this is also the nature of our news cycle and is not just something that you will find on Fox News. Sensationalism sells and our news organizations make everything as sensational as possible.

So while I don't care for Fox news, I think that the Presidents decision to stop giving coverage to the station will hurt the national dialogue (If there is even one left). I think that it will score some political points for him among his base and will strengthen the resolve of the people who watch Fox News. To me this is similar to refusing to have diplomatic relations with a hostile country, it will only radicalize things further and not move any more toward a common ground.

Rep. Buyer's scholarship fund hasn't helped a single student

Here is another reason to despise politicians, the story of Rep. Steve Buyer (R-IN) five year old scholarship fund.

The biggest accomplishment so far of U.S. Rep. Steve Buyer's scholarship foundation has been to send the Indiana congressman to play golf with donors at luxury locales such as the Bahamas and Disney World.

The fundraising golf outings have raised more than $880,000 for the Frontier Foundation that Buyer founded in 2003. Almost all the contributions are from 20 companies and trade organizations that have interests before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on which Buyer serves.

The foundation has yet to award its first scholarship, and it has handed out only $10,500 in charitable grants.

Not sure what to say, my faith in elected officials cannot drop any lower and with things like this I don't see that changing in the near future.

Save the Planet: Eat a Dog?

This isn't really politics related but I still found it quite interesting. Link is here.

The eco-pawprint of a pet dog is twice that of a 4.6-litre Land Cruiser driven 10,000 kilometres a year, researchers have found....

The couple have assessed the carbon emissions created bypopular pets, taking into account the ingredients of pet food and the land needed to create them...

In a study published in New Scientist, they calculated a medium dog eats 164 kilograms of meat and 95kg of cereals every year. It takes 43.3 square metres of land to produce 1kg of chicken a year. This means it takes 0.84 hectares to feed Fido.

They compared this with the footprint of a Toyota Land Cruiser, driven 10,000km a year, which uses 55.1 gigajoules (the energy used to build and fuel it). One hectare of land can produce 135 gigajoules a year, which means the vehicle's eco-footprint is 0.41ha - less than half of the dog's.

They found cats have an eco-footprint of 0.15ha - slightly less than a Volkswagen Golf. Hamsters have a footprint of 0.014ha - keeping two of them is equivalent to owning a plasma TV.

For full disclosure, I have no pets currently. I don't think that this would discourage me too much from getting one in the future but it was a pretty interesting thing to read. It is definitely not something that I had spent a lot of time thinking about.

An Interesting Journal Aritcle

It has been a while since my last post; there may even be some new members to the site who have gone their entire existence without seeing a post or comment from me. The reason for my absence is not that I grew tired of the wonderful discussions that happen here but that I was getting married and took a much needed vacation. Since I have come home my RSS reader is overflowing with things to read and I have tried to catch up, I have read most of the 60 plus new posts that have been posted and there have been many very good and insightful things written and I am a little bummed I missed out on the discussions. Have no fear however because I have much more time now that I am no longer trying to get things organized for a wedding and my beloved San Francisco Giants season is over. I was perusing through Yahoo! News Politics section and a few things have caught my eye that I would like to comment upon.

AP Poll: Health care overhaul has a pulse

This is mostly a horse race style of news story and one of the type that I don't really call all that much about but there is some interesting things that are in the polling data that they report.

The public is split 40-40 on supporting or opposing the health care legislation, the poll found. An even split is welcome news for Democrats, a sharp improvement from September, when 49 percent of Americans said they opposed the congressional proposals and just 34 percent supported them.

This new polling hints that opposition for the bill is not as daunting as it was before but I am still a little skeptical that this if anything is passed will be a successful bill. I would like to see more polling information about the trends in which way the public opinion is moving, I will have to go check out fivethirtyeight.com later today to see if more information is out there.

$50B in high-speed rail applications submitted

This to me is quite depressing that politicians want to try to spend so much of our money on projects that are pretty much going to be 100% money losing ventures and that are underused and divert scarce resources to some pretty bad uses. It makes me a little sick to my stomach to say this but I am glad that there is only 8 billion out there to be divided and that most of these projects will not get funded.

Here is a sampling of the projects that want this money:

The fierce competition means most applicants are likely to go away empty-handed. The $4.7 billion application from the California High-Speed Rail Authority alone totals more than half the available funds. California is aiming for bullet train service to eventually extend from Sacramento to San Diego.

Pennsylvania is seeking funds for several projects, including a magnetic levitation train that would run from Pittsburgh International Airport to downtown Pittsburgh. A maglev train is suspended on a magnetic cushion above a magnetized track and so travels free of friction. There are none in the U.S.

Florida is seeking $2.5 billion for high-speed service between Tampa and Orlando. North Carolina transportation officials want to start work on a Southeast rail corridor between Charlotte and Richmond, Va. A slew of Midwest states have rail projects that aim to link to a regional system centered in Chicago.

Even states not normally associated with passenger rail have submitted applications. Oklahoma wants a high-speed line between Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Ohio is seeking funds to start up service connecting Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati.

I am not sure if anyone has done a lot of travel around California's largest cities but it is rather hard to do with out a car because most of the places you would want to go are away from the city core. The only real exception may be San Francisco but even there taking the public transportation can be painfully slow and traveling outside of the city proper without a car is not a leisurely experience. Also air travel between the major cities is pretty cheap, with at least a two week advance booking you can get tickets from as low as $49 each way and get to any of these cities in less than an hour. So the bullet trains would have to have some very cheap tickets to compete and travel very fast to make it a viable alternative which I don't see happening without a lot of help or losing a lot of money.

I don't personally know a lot about levitation trains but it sounds really expensive. If it is comparable to a light rail systems that have been built in the US it will probably be a large money pit that serves a very small portion of the population. This would probably be the lowest on my list among the proposed projects listed here to get money.

Regarding the Tampa to Orlando proposal is $30 million a mile for track a good idea to connect Metro areas of 4 million and 2 million? I would say no again.

I could go on and on about why I think that this is a bad idea but I will stop now in the sack of length.

Court hears arguments about cross on park land

The Supreme Court appeared divided between conservatives and liberals Wednesday over whether a cross on federal park land in California violates the Constitution.

Several conservative justices seemed open to the Obama administration's argument that Congress' decision to transfer to private ownership the land on which the cross sits in the Mojave National Preserve should take care of any constitutional questions.

I don't normally get my panties in a wad over things like this because I feel that there are a lot more important things to discuss but I have to say that I agree that this is a sneaky way of trying to resolve this by simple transferring the area that the cross is on to a private ownership while not really addressing the problems or making any changes.

On another note it seems like the Supreme Court is going after some pretty intriguing and important cases this term, I look forward to there decisions.

I think that is enough ranting for this morning, I just want to say that it is good to be back and I look forward to some more lively discussions.

In a convervation with IndependentWF I brought up that when the health statistics are adjusted for lifestyle choices we are among the healthiest and longest living people in the world, Indy was curious to where this information came from. So I was poking around trying to remeber where I saw that information when I stumbeled upon this article from the NY Times.

Some interesting exerpts:

If you're not rich and you get sick, in which industrialized country are you likely to get the best treatment?

The conventional answer to this question has been: anywhere but the United States. With its many uninsured citizens and its relatively low life expectancy, the United States has been relegated to the bottom of international health scorecards.

But a prominent researcher, Samuel H. Preston, has taken a closer look at the growing body of international data, and he finds no evidence that America's health care system is to blame for the longevity gap between it and other industrialized countries. In fact, he concludes, the American system in many ways provides superior treatment even when uninsured Americans are included in the analysis.

No one denies that the American system has problems, including its extraordinarily high costs and unnecessary treatments. But Dr. Preston and other researchers say that the costs aren't solely due to inefficiency. Americans pay more for health care partly because they get more thorough treatment for some diseases, and partly because they get sick more often than people in Europe and other industrialized countries.

As it is, the longevity gap starts at birth and persists through middle age, but then it eventually disappears. If you reach 80 in the United States, your life expectancy is longer than in most other developed countries.

Overall it is a very interseting article and I encourage you all to take a look at it.

I found this which I found to be pretty interesting, it is a study that compare the care received at retail clinics for 3 acute conditions with that received at other care settings.

I see this as an example of innovations in care that should be incouraged and that should be spread through out the country. The study found that the costs of care were 30% less than the doctors offics and urgent care clinics and 80% less than emergency rooms while the quality is similar and superior to what is received in emergency rooms.

From the article:

Conclusion: Retail clinics provide less costly treatment than physician offices or urgent care centers for 3 common illnesses, with no apparent adverse effect on quality of care or delivery of preventive care.

While there certainly are limitations because of the number of treatments looked at this is something that I think should get further study. To me anyway it is an illistration that when people spend their own money they tend to get lower costs with the same or better quality.  

I have a few questions for people who support health care reform.

1)Obama and the Democratic leaders have said they are not interested in ideology, only what works. Economists Helen Levy of the University of Michigan and David Meltzer of the University of Chicago, where the President used to teach, have researched what works. They conclude there is "no evidence" that universal health insurance coverage is the best way to improve public health.

Before enacting universal coverage, shouldn't you spend at least some of the $1 billion you dedicated to comparative-effectiveness research to determine whether universal coverage is comparatively effective? Absent such evidence, isn't pursuing universal coverage by definition an ideological crusade?

2) A draft congressional report said that comparative-effectiveness research would "yield significant payoffs" because some treatments "will no longer be prescribed." Who will decide which treatments will get the axe? Since government pays for half of all treatments (through Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, VA, etc.), is it plausible to suggest that government will not insert itself into medical decisions? Or is it reasonable for patients to fear that government will deny them care in these situations?

3) It has been said by the President tht the United States spends "almost 50 percent more per person than the next most costly nation. And yet ... the quality of our care is often lower, and we aren't any healthier."

Achieving universal coverage could require us to spend an additional $1-2 trillion over the next 10 years. If America already spends too much on health care, why are you asking Americans to spend even more?

4) "Making health care affordable for all Americans will cost somewhere on the order of $1 trillion." Precise dollar figures aside, isn't that a contradiction in terms? I thought affordable meant costing less not more.

5) The President claims to have found $600 billion worth of inefficiencies that he wants to cut from Medicare and Medicaid. If government health programs generate that much waste, why would we want to create another?

6) The President and his advisors argue that Medicare creates misaligned financial incentives that discourage preventive care, comparative-effectiveness research, electronic medical records, and efforts to reduce medical errors. Medicare's payment system is the product of the political process. What gives you faith that the political process can devise less-perverse financial incentives this time?

7) The Presidnet claims a new government program would create "a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest." Since when is having the government enter a market the remedy for insufficient competition? Should the government have launched its own software company to compete with Microsoft? Are there better ways to create more choices and more competition?

8) When government entered the markets for workers compensation insurance, crop and flood insurance, and disaster insurance, it often completely crowded out private options. Do you expect a new government health insurance program would do the same?

9) The Presidet has said there are "legitimate concerns" that the government might give its new health plan an unfair advantage through taxpayer subsidies or by "printing money." How do you propose to prevent this Congress and future Congresses from creating any unfair advantages?

Honestly I don't really think that I will get many real responses from my questions. For some reason my diaries lack that certain something that drives comments. Maybe it is just me sometimes I wonder if people even read what it is I write. I am working on some more philisophical posts that I hope to post in the coming days, just so you all know.

I wasn't really planning on posting something like this seeing as how just last week I did something similar but this was just too big to pass up.

The more things change the more it stays the same.

The Obama administration supports extending three key provisions of the Patriot Act that are due to expire at the end of the year, the Justice Department told Congress in a letter made public Tuesday.

Lawmakers and civil rights groups had been pressing the Democratic administration to say whether it wants to preserve the post-Sept. 11 law's authority to access business records, as well as monitor so-called "lone wolf" terrorists and conduct roving wiretaps.

The provision on business records was long criticized by rights groups as giving the government access to citizens' library records, and a coalition of liberal and conservative groups complained that the Patriot Act gives the government too much authority to snoop into Americans' private lives.

I understand that people will want to give Obama some room to wiggle because he was dealt a pretty crappy hand but I think that this falls squarely on his shoulders. How can it not? He is recommending to extend these provisions when it would be rather simple to let them expire.

The most egregious thing about Obama's extension proposal is that none of the provisions he wants to extend require a search warrant issued by a judge or even the existence of probable cause.

From anti-war.com:

Among those provisions the administration is seeking to extend is the infamous Section 215: the provision which allows law enforcement access to library and bookstore records, without probable cause, for "national security" reasons....

Another of the provisions the administration wants extended is the so-called "lone wolf" provision, which amends the FISA definition of "agent of a foreign power" to include people the government can't establish as having any link to a foreign government or terrorist organization.

Finally they would extend the "roving wiretap" provision in Section 206, which allows the government to wiretap a person and all devices they come into contact with, rather than having to get a warrant to wiretap a given phone or device.

I now that I am not very happy with this news and will be writing a few strongly worded letters to the president and my senators (unfortunatly for the time being I am without a representative).

I think that this one of the largest power grabs that was done under the last administration and is something that needs to be brought under control.

"Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren, America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership."

- Senator Barack Obama (Ill), 2006

We need to raised the debt ceiling above $ 12 Trillion.

- President Barack Obama, 2009.

I liked the 2006 Obama a lot more.