Health Care Policy

OK, here is my long-promised attempt to summarize the health care policy options of the two candidates.  Below I will list my "executive summary" but I've prepared a longer review of the issues so follow this link to read the full account.

Summary
This may well be (I think is) the single most complex policy issue of them all. There is no simple, easy solution that I think we would be happy with.

That said, something needs to be done - for various reasons the current system is inadequate.

Both candidates have some good ideas as to lowering overall costs, improving health care overall nationally, and getting more Americans covered by insurance.

Where they particularly differ is in their approach to increasing the number of Americans covered by insurance, and in what portion of the overall health care system would be paid for and managed by the government.

Obama would still leave current options basically in place but would open up the government run insurance company to all Americans (currently just for federal employees).

McCain would basically work through the states on programs (currently operating fairly effectively in several) that would insure all Americans eventually, and would give people who are applying as individuals for insurance a tax credit/rebate to help pay for premiums.

McCain’s program is more decentralized (coordinating with the states) and likely would take some time to work out, but in its essentials I think would ultimately work.

Obama’s program I think sets some important standards and gives new options for getting insurance, but I believe will lead us in the direction where the government pays for and directly controls more and more of the overall health care system, which I think would have very negative consequences down the road.

My overall opinion: both have some good ideas, but I fear any policy that significantly expands the direct government involvement in determining and paying for health care benefits.

Update: It may be that the current expenditures being decided on to stabilize the financial system make it impossible to have a very large increase in expenditures on health care, which would impact plans for both candidates, but more so for Obama since his proposals are much more costly.

Follow this link to McCain's proposals.

Follow this link to Obama's proposals. 

President Bush Speech on Financial Crisis

I thought President Bush's speech to the nation tonight on the financial crisis was very good.  I copied the text to my supplemental blog, just follow this link.  

Key portions: 

"With the situation becoming more precarious by the day, I faced a choice: To step in with dramatic government action, or to stand back and allow the irresponsible actions of some to undermine the financial security of all.

I’m a strong believer in free enterprise. So my natural instinct is to oppose government intervention. I believe companies that make bad decisions should be allowed to go out of business. Under normal circumstances, I would have followed this course. But these are not normal circumstances. The market is not functioning properly. There’s been a widespread loss of confidence. And major sectors of America's financial system are at risk of shutting down."

"Fellow citizens: We must not let this happen. I appreciate the work of leaders from both parties in both houses of Congress to address this problem — and to make improvements to the proposal my administration sent to them. There is a spirit of cooperation between Democrats and Republicans, and between Congress and this administration. In that spirit, I’ve invited Senators McCain and Obama to join congressional leaders of both parties at the White House tomorrow to help speed our discussions toward a bipartisan bill."

I'm a PC

Unrelated to politics, but this is too funny.  Microsoft recently started a new ad campaign to counter Apple's well known "Mac vs. PC" ads.  Well, it turns out that Microsoft's new ads were created on Macs!  Hilarious.  

So Much for Sincerity

We've had e-mail discussions about the relative distortions of the ads of each campaign towards the opposing candidate.  This Manchester, NH editorial discusses what Obama's ads and claims about McCain say about his claims to be a "different kind of candidate."  

A quote from the editorial: "Obama's greatest strength as a candidate, aside from his oratorical skill, has long been his apparent sincerity and decency. Voters attracted to him think of him as that rarest of things: an honest politician. He has claimed himself that he would never engage in the sort of deceptive politicking that he says has tainted Washington for so long.

Yet here he is violating his own professed standards. This is not the Barack Obama so many voters in New Hampshire and elsewhere thought they knew. But it is the real Barack Obama. For despite his rhetoric, he is in fact campaigning so dishonestly that even The Washington Post and The New York Times have called him on it. Which means that he is in practice no different from those regular politicians against whom his entire campaign has been built."

Theory vs. Practice

I have had this recurring thought as I watch the ongoing contest between McCain and Obama.

Listen to Obama, and you hear him talk in terms of what he "would do" or "can do" and generally of "hope" and so on.  

When you hear his supporters, they emphasize feeling excited about him, his demeanor, his ability to speak effectively, and so on.

This is not to say he does not have policy proposals and ideas - he certainly does and we have been discussing these.  

But when it comes to actual accomplishments, the cupboard seems stunningly bare.  

So as I was scanning a few blogs, this segment on "Riehl World View" stood out to me.  He's talking about his impression from the recent 60 Minutes Obama interview:

"In essence [the interviewer asked], "Why are you the guy to be elected President?"

I've heard Obama's answer in any number of interviews I've conducted over the years and always from people I eventually didn't hire. It was, "I'm the guy (or gal) who can ..." It was not, I'm the guy who did.

Obama's entreaty was along the lines of I'm the guy who can get people who strongly disagree in a room and mediate to find some common ground. What was totally lacking in Obama's answer was, I'm the guy who did ... much of anything, for that matter.

Some people, likely driven by ego, have a sort of magical view of themselves. They believe that if they just get the chance they know they are the right person to make certain things happen, to make a difference somehow. Yet, at every step of their lives they mostly avoid any opportunity to prove the point. Just think about Obama's argument juxtaposed to John McCain.

When has Obama ever gotten people who "almost violently" disagreed politically into a room to reach consensus? He certainly never did it in the US Senate, though he might have had he ever shown up as opposed to immediately launching his Presidential bid.

Were there people who disagreed when Obama was state Senator back in Illinois? Sure, most likely about how much to raise taxes, how much to regulate - absolutely nothing as compared to what he would find as President in Washington, DC.

As best I can tell, in role after role when Obama had a chance to step up and actually lead, he voted present and preserved his political ambition over everything else.

Disagree with him or not, cantankerous as he might be, John McCain is a man who has done that very thing. He doesn't live in some magical world where he simply believes he can. Yes, he has angered the Right because of McCain - Feingold, McCain - Kennedy, etc. But isn't that the proof in the pudding of someone who can get people who disagree in a room and bring about some consensus? I'd argue it is."

That is the point I keep coming back to.  Where are the actual examples in Obama's past that show he can do what he claims?  Again, there is a reason Barak is ranked as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate.  To me, it suggests a man who is not willing to break with the liberal line, not willing to challenge the status quo of his world (politically, the liberal world).  You can argue that some of his words/speeches give cautious respect to the "other side" but when push comes to shove, has he ever bucked liberalism and his party?  Has he really led vastly divergent views to a consensus?  Has he ever really accomplished significant reform or major legislative accomplishments?  

What does this say about a man who would be President of the United States?  

"Credit" - if you will - Where Due

This link is to a US News article about how we may have avoided "Great Depression 2" with the quick action of those with their hands on the financial wheel at this time.  The problem is that we can never "know for sure" where things would have gone had not the US Treasury and the Fed stepped in like they did.  But if this analysis is even close to right, $0.7-1.0 trillion is a bargain compared to what we would have faced.  

Given how quick we are with our criticism - maybe we ought to be willing to give credit where it's due as well.

Back to the Bull Moose Party!

Financial Crisis Upon Us

It seems that there are certain key events during an election season that give us a real demonstration of how the candidates would govern if elected.

The past weeks series of dramatic stock drops and government bail-outs of financial institutions seem to be one of those key events for this election cycle. 

The issue, it seems to me, is not that hard to understand.  Over the past 10-15 years, housing prices in many markets were climbing sky high.   People still wanted the nice houses in the locations they wanted to live, which continued the upward climb of prices.  At those prices, many were pressed into mortgage options which enabled them to get into the house (barely) but with the time bomb of adjustable rate mortgages ahead.

Then as the "housing bubble" burst (does any bubble not burst eventually? - hint to future economic planners), home values declined (i.e. now owners couldn't borrow so much against the value of their homes), and as ARMs came due, people couldn't afford their mortgage payments, so go into default and all that.  The cumulative effect of all this is that the lenders (and above them the insurers) have had both a decrease in income as people default on payments, and a dramatic drop in the value of their "assets" which were heavy on over-priced homes that were now worth much less).  And that, essentially, is what has brought "Fanny and Freddie" and AIG and others to the brink.  It has also made practically all "lenders of money" want to sit on their money and not lend it out, causing a major "credit crunch" throughout the economy.  

Because "Fanny and Freddie" and AIG and so forth are so key to the overall confidence in the US and world financial system, the US government has had to step in to support them with taxpayer dollars.  

So there's the problem.  So what do we hear from the candidates?

Obama: 'this is all the Republicans fault.  McCain is "out of touch" with economic reality and he is old (read: old thinking) so you need to have me step in with new ideas to get us out of this mess that, did I mention?, was the Republicans' fault.' 

McCain: 'this is the result of many years of both Democrats and Republicans looking the other way when real reform of the system was needed.  In fact, 3 years ago I specifically asked the Senate to approve a reform measure that would have gotten at the problems we are now seeing come to fruition today, and I predicted then that a failure to act would eventually lead to exactly what we are seeing now.  At the time I was working to get those reforms enacted, Senator Obama was silent on the issue.  Perhaps it was because he was getting more donations from Fanny & Freddie than any other senator except the Democratic chairman of the committee considering these reforms.  Certainly he has picked some of the key former executives of Fanny, Freddie, and AIG for key positions in and advisors to his campaign.'  

Of the comments I hear from the candidates on this topic the past few days, the one that seems most to the point to me is the fact that McCain was actually working several years ago to pass a reform bill in the Senate designed specifically to prevent the kinds of things that have led to this financial crisis.  At that time Obama was not saying or doing anything about it.  

So it's kind of easy for Obama to stand up now and complain, isn't it?  And yet it was McCain who saw it and was fighting to do the right thing - when nobody else was paying attention.  Now that it's a popular thing, we see Obama coming around to the same point, I guess.  

Follow the link above to read McCain's statement to his fellow Senators in 2005.  

And...Something About Sarah...

Something About Sarah by NRO's [Jay Nordlinger]: 
"Earlier this morning, I wrote that the attacks on Governor Palin — particularly the breaking into her e-mail — were making me sick. One reader wrote, “I, too, have been feeling a physical revulsion over the Left’s determination to destroy Sarah Palin, by any means necessary.” That reader spoke for many.

I myself have a tale to relate. An episode left me kind of shaken, honestly. Last week, I was talking to a friend of mine — a very warm and humane woman. We’ve been friends for years. I had been away, and we hadn’t talked politics — but then, we never do. We never had. She’s a liberal, of course — virtually everyone here in NYC is. And I never, ever bring up politics (with pretty much anyone — not worth the trouble) (and, of course, I do it professionally).

But she said to me, out of the blue, “What do you think of Sarah Palin?” And while I was drawing breath to answer, she said, “I hate her.”

That kind of took my breath away — because this friend of mine is no hater. But she said it with firm, horrible conviction. She said it with true emotion in her eyes. Frankly, I was too taken aback to reply, other than to say, “Well, my feeling is the exact opposite.”

I can see how you might disagree with Governor Palin — she’s a conservative, after all. I can see how you might find her unprepared even for the vice-presidency. But hate? Hate a woman who rose from a modest background to be governor of her state? Who is obviously a warm, civic-minded, talented mother of five?

Hate?"

Juicy, juicy...

Joe Biden may want to rethink his recent comment that "raising taxes is patriotic."  As McCain and Palin have both now replied: it's not about patriotism...raising taxes in the current economic environment is just dumb policy.  It will only cost jobs when we can ill afford it.  Again...tax business-->businesses have less money-->businesses raise prices on all of us and cut jobs.