The Front Page Cover
Featruring:
Two Modest Health-Insurance Suggestions . . .
by Myron Magnet
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Let's Not Miss the Health Care Forest for the Trees
This week could mark a historic turning point for health care reform. Or maybe not. The outcome is contingent on how House conservatives decide to cast their votes on the American Health Care Act. For his part, President Donald Trump is rallying the troops. In Louisville, Trump declared, "This is our long-awaited chance to finally get rid of liar-nObamaCare." He reminded Americans that "the alternative is what you have, [and] what you have is nothing." Emphasizing the magnitude of this undertaking, he reportedly also told the bill's fiercest opponents, "I honestly think many of you will lose your seats in 2018 if you don't get this done."
Earlier this week, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows said support was meager at best: "Currently there are not enough votes to pass the legislation." Which is why House Speaker Paul Ryan and Trump are working so tirelessly to persuade naysayers like Sen. Rand Paul, whom Trump even offered an olive branch, saying, "I look forward to working with him so we can get this bill passed — in some form." Certainly it's a critical issue, and the reasons for apprehension are understandable. As Hot Air blogger Allahpundit argues, "Given how hugely unpopular the bill is across the political spectrum, it may also be true that House Republicans will lose seats if the bill does pass." Fair point.
We should note that the bill likely has the necessary support, at least in the House, and that what's left before Thursday's vote is backroom dealing over who gets what in return for their vote.
But the harsh reality is laid out in the words of a Wall Street Journal editorial: "If conservatives fumble this repeal and replace moment, they won't get another chance. And they'll have squandered their best opening in a generation to control the size and scope of the federal Leviathan." Columnist Cal Thomas adds, "Failure to at least take the first step in replacing a deeply flawed, government-mandated insurance program will leave a stain on the Republican Party that even the strongest and purest 'detergent' will not be able to remove." Though it can be extremely difficult, sometimes you have to take victories where you can find them, as underwhelming as they may be. That's the nature of compromise. Let's tackle what we can now and move forward with other things later. Otherwise, as Trump articulated, we're left with nothing. ~The Patriot Post
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Fox News Reports The NSA Has “Smoking Gun”
Proving liar-nObama Spied on Trump
by Onan Coca and Jeff Dunetz
{lidblog.com} ~ Fasten your seatbelt and get the big bag of popcorn–this is getting interesting. According to Fox News’ James Rosen there is a “potential smoking gun” coming soon that PROVES that liar-nObama spied on Trump... well actually the liar-nObama administration spied on the Trump team and perhaps even the President-elect himself. The information will supposedly prove that when the liar- nObama Administration spied on Trump they made it seem as it was an incidental collection. For those of you thinking, “Didn’t Fox News say that Britain was liar-nObama’s tool for spying on Trump and that was withdrawn?” The answer was yes, but that was Judge Napolitano, a good guy but a commentator, not a reporter. James Rosen is an “old school” reporter, in that he relies on proof not conjecture. The possibility of a “smoking gun” should set the media ablaze tonight and into tomorrow. There is already enough circumstantial evidence for us to surmise that the government did at least monitor some of the communications going on inside the Trump team, but to finally have definitive proof that the liar-nObama administration misused our intelligence assets would be a game-changer... http://lidblog.com/fox-news-smoking-gun-proving-obama-spied-on-trump/
China Positions 1,500 Missiles
Aimed at US military Bases
{endtimeheadlines.org} ~ Tensions are increasing and War Drums are pounding louder as now reports are indicating that China has positioned an arsenal of missiles within strike range of US army bases... as its war chiefs ready “military hard power” for total conflict. Sources indicate that Military leaders from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are aiming these missiles at Taiwan as part of an escalating military threat to the island. This is of great concern considering, US military bases in Okinawa are within range of the DF-16 ballistic missiles – which can strike targets with “pinpoint precision” from 1,500km away. The Chinese defense minister Feng Shih-kuan reportedly has issued the shock announcement as tensions over the disputed South China Sea territory threaten to spill over into war. These comments follow Taiwan’s revealing of it having missiles capable of reaching Chinese shores last week. http://endtimeheadlines.org/2017/03/war-drums-china-positions-1500-missiles-aimed-us-military-bases/
.liar-nObama Was Almost Certainly
Illegally Spying on Team Trump
by Alex Newman
{thenewamerican.com} ~ Former President Barack Hussein liar-nObama and some of his top officials may be in serious trouble, analysts suggested, as it appears increasingly likely that they played a key role in illegal surveillance of Donald Trump and his team for the apparent purpose of sabotaging his presidency... But despite Democrat efforts to muddy the waters, the explosive scandal may be just getting started. Various players in the saga continuing to throw out fresh allegations, some of which, if true, could potentially land prominent current and former officials in hot water or even behind bars. And now, despite the FBI refusing to cooperate on the investigation, reports suggest there is “smoking gun” evidence proving that the liar-nObama administration illegally spied on team Trump... https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/25685-obama-was-almost-certainly-illegally-spying-on-team-trump?utm_source=iContactPro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TNA+Top+Daily+Headlines&utm
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Christians Urged to
Pull Children From Public Schools
by Alex Newman
{thenewamerican.com} ~ The warning was clear: Christian parents should pull their children out of public schools, now, to protect them from spiritual damage, extreme indoctrination, and other serious problems... Pastors and churches should work to encourage that “exodus,” helping and encouraging families to put their kids in homeschools or private Christian schools as quickly as possible. The alternative will be the continued decline of the church in America and an acceleration of the nation's decline. That was the explosive message of an evangelical ministry leader speaking as a guest this week on one of America's top Christian radio programs. Dr. James Dobson, one of the nation's most influential Christian leaders and a former public-school teacher, hosted the discussion on his national radio program focusing on the spiritual danger of allowing children to sit in secular or even anti-God public schools for over a dozen formative years... https://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/25675-christians-urged-to-pull-children-from-public-schools?utm_source=iContactPro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TNA+Top+Daily+Headlines&utm
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Hawaii Jihadi Judge Derrick Watson
Receiving Death Threats...
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ The odds of it being anything more than an opportunity for some Federal Marshals to get out of the cold for a few weeks or however long it takes and into Hawaii are slim... If those making threats had been serious about carrying them out, they would likely have done so without running their mouths and providing warning ahead of time. Still, government criminals must be protected, and, as the official notes in the opening “It’s a federal crime to make a threat against a judicial officer.” The law allows for no distinction or deviation in the case of anti-American, usurping globalist tools acting at the behest of the shadow government of Hussein liar-nObama. The “so-called” judge is the scum of the earth, but he’s still going to be protected. liar-nObama still gets his Secret Service protection despite his laundry list of offenses against this nation. That’s how they get away with their crimes and offenses against the Constitution. The victims pay and provide the mechanisms and personnel which protect the perpetrators from justice... http://rickwells.us/hawaii-jihadi-judge-derrick-watson-receiving-death-threats-targeting-americans/
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Two Modest Health-Insurance Suggestions . . .
by Myron Magnet
{city-journal.org} ~ The unintended consequence of a World War II policy mistake distorted the U.S. health-insurance system, and reformers have been trying patchwork solutions to solve those unanticipated problems up until liar-nObamacare dumped yet another layer of misguided policy onto what was already a mess. The tangle is now so perplexing that perhaps, once Congress takes the necessary first step of passing the House health-insurance reform bill tomorrow, legislators might consider further reforms that erase the original error instead of merely papering it over.
As World War II raged and competition for scarce labor grew fierce, what with so many able-bodied men in the military, legislators, worried about possible runaway inflation, imposed wage controls in 1942. In response, employers began enticing workers by offering rich benefits in lieu of increased wages, and, as these benefits were not income, they were exempt from income and payroll taxes, a subsidy to workers and employers alike. Chief among these benefits was health insurance, whose cost was originally modest.
But as the cost of health care rose in the 1950s, retirees and the poor found insurance unaffordable, and President Lyndon Johnson, who never saw a problem he didn’t think big government could solve effortlessly, injected Medicare and Medicaid into the health-insurance business. Prices continued to rise, in part because of spectacular advances in medicine, such as the development of coronary bypass surgery in the late 1960s, and by 1980, corporations found their medical-insurance costs increasingly burdensome. They tried all sorts of schemes to bring those costs under control, from health-maintenance organizations, which added in layers of administrative costs, to employee wellness programs, which turned out to keep workers living long enough to develop the diseases of aging, with the result that employer costs went up instead of down. Corporate-financed gyms disappeared from the scene. It saved corporations money to have employees die before their health problems could become financially burdensome.
Aside from all this lay a great inequity. People with corporate jobs got relatively affordable group insurance, subsidized by the two tax exemptions. People without such jobs had to buy unsubsidized and therefore more expensive individual insurance. So future reforms ought to get employers out of the health-care business entirely, since they are there by accident and add nothing of value to the health of the nation. Either remove the tax-deductibility from employer-provided health insurance, or else give everybody who buys health insurance an equivalent tax deduction. Insurance companies will prove intelligent enough to promote the formation of groups of those who buy their own insurance, so as to give them the benefit of the group-insurance discount. And as every commentator has observed, the freedom to sell insurance across state lines and to design a multiplicity of plans would spur a cost-controlling competition.
A second worthwhile reform would be to encourage the rebirth of the mutual health-insurance company, such as Blue Cross-Blue Shield used to be. Like the Victorian Friendly Societies, early American health insurers were just vehicles for pooling risk, with people knowing that they were all subject to serious illness, but not knowing whether or not it would ever afflict them, so it made sense, behind this veil of ignorance of the future, to pool their money to pay the expenses of those among them unfortunate enough to contract one of the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. In the forties and fifties, the owners of these insurance companies were the policyholders, and their employees were just administrators who calculated the risks, collected the premiums, and paid out the benefits. Blue Cross and Blue Shield were in the insurance business, not the investment business, and they needed no high-paid top executives to make investment decisions to enrich non-policy owning shareholders, because there were none. No insurance company presumed to tell a doctor how to treat his patient, because profit erosion through higher costs was not a baseline concern. The demutualizing of these companies was a huge policy mistake, vastly increasing the cost of health insurance in order to reward public shareholders and executives, not policyholders. Now the tail wags the dog.
I’ve said nothing about healthcare for the poor. I’d only point out that in mid-century America, nobody went untreated. There were always doctors who wouldn’t charge patients who couldn’t pay, always charity hospitals staffed by the same doctors who staffed the fancy hospitals, always union clinics and company doctors, always emergency rooms that would treat first and ask about ability to pay later. And all these delivery systems provided better care than Medicaid.
The ruling concept in America’s technology companies is continuous improvement. Health-insurance reformers, starting now, ought to make it their motto as well.
As World War II raged and competition for scarce labor grew fierce, what with so many able-bodied men in the military, legislators, worried about possible runaway inflation, imposed wage controls in 1942. In response, employers began enticing workers by offering rich benefits in lieu of increased wages, and, as these benefits were not income, they were exempt from income and payroll taxes, a subsidy to workers and employers alike. Chief among these benefits was health insurance, whose cost was originally modest.
But as the cost of health care rose in the 1950s, retirees and the poor found insurance unaffordable, and President Lyndon Johnson, who never saw a problem he didn’t think big government could solve effortlessly, injected Medicare and Medicaid into the health-insurance business. Prices continued to rise, in part because of spectacular advances in medicine, such as the development of coronary bypass surgery in the late 1960s, and by 1980, corporations found their medical-insurance costs increasingly burdensome. They tried all sorts of schemes to bring those costs under control, from health-maintenance organizations, which added in layers of administrative costs, to employee wellness programs, which turned out to keep workers living long enough to develop the diseases of aging, with the result that employer costs went up instead of down. Corporate-financed gyms disappeared from the scene. It saved corporations money to have employees die before their health problems could become financially burdensome.
Aside from all this lay a great inequity. People with corporate jobs got relatively affordable group insurance, subsidized by the two tax exemptions. People without such jobs had to buy unsubsidized and therefore more expensive individual insurance. So future reforms ought to get employers out of the health-care business entirely, since they are there by accident and add nothing of value to the health of the nation. Either remove the tax-deductibility from employer-provided health insurance, or else give everybody who buys health insurance an equivalent tax deduction. Insurance companies will prove intelligent enough to promote the formation of groups of those who buy their own insurance, so as to give them the benefit of the group-insurance discount. And as every commentator has observed, the freedom to sell insurance across state lines and to design a multiplicity of plans would spur a cost-controlling competition.
A second worthwhile reform would be to encourage the rebirth of the mutual health-insurance company, such as Blue Cross-Blue Shield used to be. Like the Victorian Friendly Societies, early American health insurers were just vehicles for pooling risk, with people knowing that they were all subject to serious illness, but not knowing whether or not it would ever afflict them, so it made sense, behind this veil of ignorance of the future, to pool their money to pay the expenses of those among them unfortunate enough to contract one of the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. In the forties and fifties, the owners of these insurance companies were the policyholders, and their employees were just administrators who calculated the risks, collected the premiums, and paid out the benefits. Blue Cross and Blue Shield were in the insurance business, not the investment business, and they needed no high-paid top executives to make investment decisions to enrich non-policy owning shareholders, because there were none. No insurance company presumed to tell a doctor how to treat his patient, because profit erosion through higher costs was not a baseline concern. The demutualizing of these companies was a huge policy mistake, vastly increasing the cost of health insurance in order to reward public shareholders and executives, not policyholders. Now the tail wags the dog.
I’ve said nothing about healthcare for the poor. I’d only point out that in mid-century America, nobody went untreated. There were always doctors who wouldn’t charge patients who couldn’t pay, always charity hospitals staffed by the same doctors who staffed the fancy hospitals, always union clinics and company doctors, always emergency rooms that would treat first and ask about ability to pay later. And all these delivery systems provided better care than Medicaid.
The ruling concept in America’s technology companies is continuous improvement. Health-insurance reformers, starting now, ought to make it their motto as well.
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