Tag: legislation

No Individual Mandate. Period.

Post author By David
Post date September 23, 2009
8 Comments on No Individual Mandate. Period.

Warning: Undefined array key "adf" in /home4/hpvcxhmy/public_html/wp-content/plugins/similarity/similarity.php on line 69

Warning: Undefined array key "sim_pages" in /home4/hpvcxhmy/public_html/wp-content/plugins/similarity/similarity.php on line 70

photo credit: wstera2

When I responded to Obama’s Health Care Speech I said the following about the potential inclusion of an individual mandate in whatever health care overhaul bill is eventually debated in Congress:

In a nod to the necessity of compromise and political expediency (I do have a pragmatic bone in my body – somewhere) I will keep it out of the non-starter category and say that if it is extremely limited, as liability-only car insurance is, I could accept an individual mandate.

Scott challenged me on that position and I defended it as politically expedient. Now that I have had more time to think about it I believe that I can conclusively demonstrate why the president wanted to rush the health care legislation through before the August recess. His reason was that he understood that the longer people have to process the issue the more people will realize how little government can legitimately do to address this issue and how dangerous it is to allow Congress to employ tools that are not legitimately theirs in order to “fix the system.”

Tags Elevated, health care, legislation, reactions, thoughts

National

Takeaways From the Health Care Speech

Post author By David
Post date September 10, 2009
22 Comments on Takeaways From the Health Care Speech

photo credit: sgroi

Let’s pretend that we are starting from scratch on the health care overhaul push – that none of the existing proposals will be used as the template for a reform bill. In other words, let’s assume that the plan outlined in President Obama’s speech is the primary blueprint for the reform bill that Congress will have to consider. As I predicted he tried to strike a balance between being bold and rocking the boat too much calling both better and worse plans than his “a radical shift” that would be too much for something as economically large as the health care industry.

Now that I have read the entire speech I have four non-starters, one gem, two contradictions, and five questions after his speech that deserve public reaction. I’ll start with the non-starters because they are not non-starters put together, each one must be addressed before anything he proposes can be considered in any degree.

Tags current events, Elevated, health care, legislation, Obama, questions, reactions

General

Predictable

As a political junkie you would expect that I would be endlessly fascinated by all things political and that I would be very excited to listen to a speech by the President (even if only to find things to contradict when I disagree with him). Once upon a time that would have been true, but not anymore. While I am still anxious to be engaged in politics and the political dialog I find that too much of politics is very formulaic and predictable. I can easily say what the speech by the President will be like without even listening to or reading the transcript or any report about it.

In his speech tonight the president will talk about the importance and of Health Care reform. He will take time to rebut some of the more ridiculous rumors that have been circulated by his opponents and he will make his approach to health care seem perfectly reasonable – in fact he will be trying to strike a balance of being bold while not rocking to boat too much. The overall effect of the speech will be to make many people more comfortable with the approach he is taking while conveniently masking the fact that nothing in the current Health Care reform proposals actually addresses the real issues that plague our system of health care.

The only thing I can’t predict is whether enough people will be assuaged (or lulled into a false sense of security) to get a health care bill passed as the President hopes. While I will always hope for every president the best of success for the nation, this effort by the President shows no indication of promoting what is best for the nation (except in his words) and so I continue to hope that this effort flounders until the leaders of the country are ready to look at the actual problem and craft a solution to that problem within the limits of their authority rather than looking at their political goals and trying to convince the rest of us that their goals will solve real problems.

Tags change congress, current events, health care, legislation, Obama

culture National

Wash Your Hands

[quote]Dr. Peter Pronovost sought to reduce the incidence of hospital-borne infections by promoting a simple checklist of ICU procedures governing physician hand-washing and other sterilization procedures.

Hospitals implementing Pronovost’s checklist had enjoyed almost instantaneous success, reducing hospital-infection rates by two-thirds within the first three months of its adoption. But many physicians rejected the checklist as an unnecessary and belittling bureaucratic intrusion, and many hospital executives were reluctant to push it on them.

When David Goldhill learned of this very shortly after his own father died from just such an infection he began to investigate the real problems in our health care system. As a grieving son, he wished for a culprit only to find that there really is no bad guy, no incompetent doctors, greedy insurance or drug companies, or any other scapegoat. The problem his research exposed was a system of perverse incentives and unrealistic expectations (like expecting that hundreds of thousands of deaths per year from hospital infections is acceptable or unavoidable and expecting someone else to pick up most of the cost of our care). Like Goldhill, anyone wishing to tackle the issue of health care must wash their hands of pre-programmed political prescriptions and rampant half-truths being promoted by people on all sides of the debate.

Tags connections, Elevated, health care, issues, legislation

General

The Politics of Fear

photo credit: ag2r

I was listening to NPR this morning on the way to work and they were discussing the use of fear as a political tactic. The story was not what I would consider fair and balance as they asserted that only those who oppose health care reform are making use of the tactic, but one of the people being interviewed about why fear is such an effective tool in blocking legislation stated that fear has the effect of causing us to focus on the problem and divert our energies to addressing the cause of our fear. Of course the implication is that we stop being rational when we are motivated by fear.

As I thought about that it really irked me that they paint people as nothing more than animals – it’s all biology. The truth is that while we are prone to act less than rationally when we are consumed by fear we also have a heightened capacity to think clearly in many high-pressure situations. The key to thinking clearly is that we must not let the fear overwhelm us – let the adrenaline enhance our senses without letting go of our capacity to look at the evidence and make deliberate choices.

Tags civic participation, discourse, Elevated, health care, legislation, NPR

National

Big Government = Big Solutions

Post author By David
Post date August 25, 2009
11 Comments on Big Government = Big Solutions

photo credit: angel_shark

If you want to walk a thousand miles you do it one step at a time. If you want to eat an elephant you do it one bite at a time. The genius of big government is that Congress believes that since there are more than 500 of them they can swallow any elephant-sized problem in one bite time after time. They forget that putting two geniuses to work on one problem does not double their IQ nor guarantee that their solution will be twice as good. Not only do they forget that but they go further and assume that 100 Senators must produce legislation that is 100 times as good as what any one of them would propose, that 400 Representatives will produce a law 400 times as good as what one of them would come up with, and that the combined efforts of the House and the Senate will generate results better than what either chamber had passed in isolation.

Tags change congress, Elevated, government, legislation, money

National technology

White House Viral Email

The White House has decided to use a viral email (or at least an email they hope will go viral) to spread their health care reform message. In it they offer:

8 ways reform provides security and stability to those with or without coverage, 8 common myths about reform and 8 reasons we need health insurance reform now.

It think it is important to get a non-spin version of their 24 points (really only 21). I will assume, as much as possible, that their claims are true and show what those claims really mean to the nation. As usual it’s not nearly as straightforward as any partisan claims would have you believe. (For example, they only offer 7 unique ways reform provides security, 7 unique myths – including one I had never heard, and 7 reasons for reform now – plus one generic platitude.)

Tags current events, health care, legislation, media, Obama, reactions

National

The Opposite of Progress

I was just thinking today that there are two bills currently introduced in the House that clearly demonstrate how Congress acts in opposition to real progress. One is H.R. 1207 (text) and the other is H.R. 3200 (Table of Contents). Let’s have a look at some facts related to these two bills and what those facts illustrate.

H.R. 1207 was introduced just under 5 months ago. The full text of the bill easily fits on one page so every member of Congress could read the bill anytime they have two minuets to spare (admittedly members of Congress are not long on spare time). The bill currently has well over half of all members of the House listed as co-sponsors and yet there is no indication of when it will be voted on in the House Committee on Financial Services (more than half the committee members are co-sponsors but the committee chair is not among them). The Senate version of the bill now has co-sponsors and might well exceed 50 co-sponsors before it comes up for a vote.

H.R. 3200 was introduced two days ago. The table of contents for this bill is longer than the text of H.R. 1207. The bill is more than 1000 pages long (does anyone have that kind of spare time?) and there is every indication that the bill will come to a vote within the three weeks before the August recess (possibly within one week) – well before the vast majority of the members of Congress will have been able to do more than scan it briefly.

If history is any guide (which it generally is) this massive bill being rushed through Congress without adequate deliberation (just like the Patriot Act and TARP) will very soon be the cause of new government intervention (by 2016 at the latest) as we try to clean up the mess that it will leave in its wake.

Tags change congress, Elevated, legislation

State

Too Little Too Late

I was not sure whether to gag or chuckle when I heard the news that Senator Bennett wants to prevent the use of TARP money for the auto industry. To me that just sounds like he’s shutting the barn doors after the cows have escaped while insisting that there’s nothing wrong with leaving the stalls open.

Bennett said he also adding wording that would ban using Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailout money to help bankrupt car makers.

“The TARP money was sold to the Congress as acquiring assets, not as acquiring stock positions in various companies, particularly not in acquiring stock position in a bankrupt manufacturing company,” Bennett said.

“When we approved TARP the first time around, we did it with the understanding that it was dealing with the credit crisis,” he said. “Instead, the TARP money has gone into these bankrupt companies.”

It’s clear to see that Bennett is doing everything he can to show his opposition to federal overspending and government overreaching in the economy while maintaining his position that the original bailout was necessary. I don’t see any reason to even begin to pay attention until he has come out and directly stated that his vote on TARP was absolutely wrong from the beginning. Even if he does, he is wrong if he things that his TARP vote is the only thing dragging on his chances for re-election.

Tags 2010, bailout, Bob Bennett, Deseret News, legislation, senate

culture General National

Change Done Right

With the news yesterday that New Hampshire passed a law to allow gay marriage I sincerely hope that the proponents of gay marriage may begin to see the right way to bring the change they seek – especially when put in context next to Vermont’s legalization of gay marriage, Maine’s legalization, the setback in the California Supreme Court ruling on Prop. 8, and the reaction to Massachusetts’ Supreme Court decision in 2004. While there has been little if any reaction to those three states that legalized gay marriage through the legislative process there was a large push to overturn the Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts through a state constitutional amendment, and the same approach in California succeeded in rolling back the original Supreme Court decision in California that legalized gay marriage temporarily in 2008.

The point is that the right way to enact these changes is to take the time to educate and convince people so that the change may be made through the legislative process and be accepted rather than simply trying to ram “equality” down the throats of your fellow citizens based on an unwillingness to trudge the long path of education and debate.

Although it may seem quicker to use the courts, we should all remember that cutting off the debate through judicial action has not led to any resolution on the abortion issue even after more than 30 years. It may be that 30 years would be enough to take the “slower” route of education and persuasion to peacefully achieve your goals.

Tags California, gay marriage, legislation, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York Times, Prop 8, Vermont