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Health care for profit

In the rest of the civilized world, health care is not a profit-making venture. Oh, sure, doctors are well-paid, but your health decisions aren’t made based on money. While everyone else realized that making sure their citizens needed health care in the same way they needed fire departments, America moved in the opposite direction — and now we pay more for health care than anywhere else and don’t get any advantage from it.

Just look at this chart (click on it to make it bigger and easier to read) … you’d think with the amount of money we’re spending, we’d be the healthiest people ever. original But no, we have lower life expectancy and higher childhood deaths than any comparable country. Partially that’s because a ton of that money goes to insurance companies, who provide no health care whatsoever, and partially it’s because we don’t cover preventive care. Instead, the insurance companies only concentrate on treating you after you’re sick.

Capitalism does not solve everything. The market clearly does not solve everything. There are many examples of this, especially in the area of health care.

And that’s why I get so frustrated with people who say the government should stay out of health care. Are these people not paying attention? We’ve done that. It hasn’t worked. All the evidence is against you.

Mostly it’s just people who have this ridiculous libertarian view that all government is bad. If only the government got out of our lives, they think, we’d all live in a utopian paradise. This despite the fact that this has never happened in the history of the world and whenever these sorts of things are tried, we end up with an unhealthy and broke populace (like now) and with markets that collapse and go into recession every twenty years or so. Yet these idealists continue in their dream for a world that has never exist and never could.

Editorial cartoon of the day

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Oswald shot Kennedy — From Area 51!

It’s the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination and the conspiracy theories continue.

When I was young, I loved reading about conspiracies. kennedy ufo UFOs, the Kennedy assassination, the Loch Ness Monster — they all interested me.  I was completely skeptical about the official version of the story.

As I grew, I realized what a hypocrite I was being.  I was not subjecting the conspiracy theories to the same skepticism I applied to everything else.   Because I wanted to believe in these things so bad, and because they were often easy answers to complicated issues, I was nieve and accepted things without significant proof.  (Insert your own comment about religious beliefs here.)

I’ve also learned, as a lawyer, that every incident will have various stories that contradict each other and make things seem different than what they appear.  Anything you look at in enough detail will provide things that make it ripe for conspiracy theories.

Plus there are many conspiracy books out there that are just full of lies. Exciting lies that sell books. I used to love reading books by John Keel — “The Mothman Prophecies” was one of his. His books were with all the UFO books in the library and were presented as researched factual accounts. I later learned he was laughing all the way to the bank, and had made up most of his evidence. When they finally made a film of “The Mothman Prophecies” they made no pretense of it being anything other than fiction. But for a long time when I was a kid, I was sure it was all real.

Of course, there really are secret conspiracies.  Usually they are money-related conspiracies, involving insider trading, banks conspiring to sell worthless mortgages, and bribes to get around regulations.  But, as I pointed out before, huge conspiracies of this type are really hard to hide.

If Oswald was innocent, then why did he run after the assassination? Why did he kill the cop who confronted him? It’s not as if it is impossible for him to have done the shooting …

Does that mean there wasn’t something else going on? No, because there are still too many unanswered questions, such as why Jack Ruby, who really had no stake in this, would go out of his way to shoot Oswald. Looked more like a mob silencing to me.

But these days I won’t jump to conclusions without knowing for sure. Just because something is possible doesn’t mean I should believe it.

Editorial cartoon of the day

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The Nuclear Option

As you know, in a democracy, the majority rules. Unless you’re in the Senate where, because of some stupid rule, you need a Super Majority (able to leap tall precedents in a single bound!). public-law-congress

Senate President Harry Reid today used a parliamentary loophole to get around the rule that allowed a minority of Senators to block legislation without having to do a damn thing except say that they wanted to block it. This is why the current Congress has passed less laws than any Congress in the past 70 years. No jobs bill, no infrastructure bill, no tax reform — although they did try almost fifty times to repeal Obamacare. That must have kept them busy.

On one hand, I hate the idea of using these kinds of loopholes. On the other, this is getting ridiculous. We need judges appointed so that courts aren’t so overworked and justice gets done, and the Senate is blocking them for no good reason other than that they can. This move by Reid will allow our government to do the work it has to do. Well, at least regarding appointments. blocked In order to keep the minority from blocking legislation, another rule will need to be changed. Maybe in January.

It’s about time that we, the majority, took the government back from a group that actively is trying to destroy it. They closed us down during their childish crying fit when they didn’t get their way over Obamacare, and they’ve been doing everything they can to prevent anything from being accomplished in the meantime.

So Reid used the “nuclear option” to try to take democracy back. I am now having a difficult time not imagine him riding a bomb down to the ground like Major Kong…

Anyway, I’d say “let’s use the nuclear option to bomb the Republicans back to the stone age” but they’re already there.

Editorial cartoon of the day

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Illinois joins the 21st Century

It’s so nice to have to post welcomes to states that finally allow all citizens to get married, and Illinois is the latest to join when the governor signed the bill today.marriage

The sad news is that almost all of the states left are Republican states and many of them have Constitutional amendments the specifically prohibit gay marriage.  Those will take either another amendment to repeal it, or a decision from federal courts stating that these amendments are unconstitutional.

And then there is my home state of Pennsylvania again, the only state in the northeast behind the times. It’s also the only state in the northeast with a Tea Party governor and a legislature dominated by Republicans (thanks to gerrymandering, since more people voted for Democrats). Despite the fact that a majority of Pennsylvania citizens support gay marriage, it’s not going to happen until we get rid of the politicians who do not represent us.

Gay marriage (or as we like to call it “marriage”) will happen over the United States eventually.  It’s inevitable.   Deal with it.

 

 

Editorial cartoon of the day

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It’s Presidential Election Time!

Based on media coverage of Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz and everyone else, it’s time for a Presidential election!

Oh wait, the election isn’t in 2014, is it?

Hmm.  And it’s not in 2015 either.

Guess it’s almost exactly three years away, which makes sense because the last one was just a year ago.

But hey, might as well start discussing this endlessly on the news now, because what happens now is very important for what happens in the election three years from now!

After all, three years before the 2008 election, we all knew that the Democratic candidate would be Hillary Clinton and the Republican one would be Rudy Guiliani.  Clearly.  (And this State Senator named Barack Obama?  Don’t make us laugh!)

 

 

Editorial cartoon of the day