The Grand Bazaar

The U.S has morphed from a producer to a consumer society, where everything is for
sale; office, honor, public opinion, taste, and intergrity. To stimulate consumption
the marketers expend huge sums of money on surveys to detect the vulnerabilities of the buyers, so they can be lured to become docile and compliant enough to buy whatever the vendor is selling, even if doing so defeats their self interest.

Politicians sell out to contributors, so holding office will become a career. The public interest is only incidental. Reporters, commentators, college professors
sell their opinions to the highest bidders. The public is bombarded with propaganda pushing the agenda of the marketers. The appearance of truth in the propaganda is rare, and only if it happens to serve the purpose of the marketer.

Many purchases are made on impulse, subliminably stimulated. Saturation advertising, much of it covert through respected pundits on Radio, TV and in the print media, couched in so called "objective" terms, intoxicates the public to the point where their decisions are based on emotion, not reason. As a result the nation is controlled by an oligarchy of wealthy corporations with the most resources to manipulate the public, and the media. Nothing in our educational system prepares the public to analyze and deal with the propaganda that bombards them. "Intelligent consumers" is most often an oxymoron. Nowhere is this more evident than in the current health care debate.

That Old "Can Do" Spirit

The late eighteenth century until the mid twentieth century was the era of the dominance of the American Dream. Our creative juices were flowing. There wasn't anything we couldn't accomplish. We conquered a vast continent and turned it into
a giant productive powerhouse with a booming population, burgeoning cities filled with huge business towers, museums, parks and universities. We made scientific discoveries that eliminated plagues, took us beyond the surly bounds of Earth to
other planets, and explored the unknown oceans. Along the way we accumulated a
small empire, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii, and a passel of small
islands.
There were some serious stumbles in our passage; the Civil War, a number of lesser
Imperialistic foreign wars, and the Great Depression. Those lapses were more than balanced by our participation in the two great World Wars, in which we were instrumental in defeating powerful dictatorial empires and assuring the flowering of prosperity and democracy in much of the world.
Something happened in the last half of the twentieth century that made us lose our "Can Do" spirit. We became embroiled in a number of conflicts in distant lands where we mistakenly assumed our vital national interests were at stake. Without
genuine public support for those ventures, we lost, and in the process we lost our optimism and faith in America's invincibility. The costs of the Korean, Vetnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars, in lives, treasure and international esteem are beyond measure and have contributed to the drastic economic decline of our nation. The huge national debt, and unsustainable deficits far into the future have constrained our capacity to invest in modernization of our educational system and maintenance of our infrastructure and manufacturing base, as well as provide universal health care to our citizens.
A public attitude that sacrifice is for someone else, that someone else can fight our wars and pay the costs of our past profligacy, will do nothing to halt our decline into third world status. We need a rebirth of the "Can Do' American spirit and resolve. Partisan bickering makes that unlikely--petty politicians make for petty citizens. We need our leaders, Republicans and Democrats, to be statesmen, to counsel together, not for party advantage, but for the survival of the American Dream!

Washington, keep your f....g hands off my health care (A Satire)

Any rational discussion of the health care financing problem has been submerged beneath a fog of propaganda, dishonesty and fear mongering. Lets get to the heart of the matter: As long as the PURCHASER of the health care is not the main PAYER for the care, there will never be effective cost control. Such a system is welfare based, not market based. The for-profit insurance companies make it market based
by controlling what care they will pay for. That includes provisions for overhead, advertising, profit, perks and costly claims administration. Reducing premiums under such conditions is an oxymoron. Cost control can come either from limiting treatment, or selecting only clients with little likelihood of using services for many years to come.

Here is a suggestion: Remove all cost sharing methods, including Medicare, from the medical care scene and require everyone to pay for medical care from their own resources. If there are no resources there will be no care. If lack of care increases mortality that conversely lowers the number of persons to be cared for.
To compensate citizens for their new responsibility, payroll taxes for Medicare will no longer be collected. Medicaid and state insurance for poor children will be eliminated so state and federal taxes will be further reduced. As private insurance will be ended, the billions in premiums, overhead and profits will reside with individual citizens. Government assistance will be limited to a burial allowance,
perhaps $500, as a reward for getting the government out of the health care business.

Of course, such a radical change will have a severe impact on bureaucracies within government at all levels, on insurance companies, and health care providers. But we are an infallible Capitalist society, and we know the market, on its own, will adjust and set things right! And BIG, SOCIALIST, INTRUSIVE GOVERNMENT will have gotten out of a large part of our lives!

A Fable for our Time

One morning in the year 2009 a passenger ship set sail from Los Angeles on a cruise to Indonesia. Aboard were 400 passengers, and a crew of 200, and a Captain of color, with an unusual name. He had been hired by the shipping line after a majority of former and future passengers complained that they had lost confidence in the previous Captain because of his incompetence. The new Captain had been selected from a panel recommended by a number of Travel industry organizations, and former passengers.

Among the crew, some 80 were loyal supporters of the former Captain, and resentful of the new skipper, who they considered illegitimate. They vowed to sabotage his performance by disobeying his orders, even to the point of mutiny.

While in mid Pacific the ship struck a huge mound of mostly submerged debris, resulting from a Typhoon in Taiwan. The hull was breached and the ship began taking huge amounts of water, more than the automatic pumps could expel. The Captain ordered the crew to take turns manning the manual pumps, but the 80 recalcitrants
refused, intending that the sunk ship would destroy the Captain's career. As the pumpers became exhausted and were unable to continue, the ship foundered and sank.

As they sank beneath the surface for the last time, the leader of the mutineers was heard to exclaim "that black S.O.B. got what was coming to him", one of the pumpers exclaimed "we tried!", and one of the passengers cried out "you bastards were being payed to protect us!".

Moral: If you cut it off to spite your face, it becomes very difficult to blow your nose!

Life can be Beautiful!

Amidst the "sturm und drang" of the stressful political and economic era in which
we live, it is wise, from time to time, to stop and smell the flowers. It can restore some perspective and optimism in our lives.

In mid August I watched a recorded performance of Romeo and Juliet by the Royal
Ballet, music by Prokofiev. The music, dancing, costumes and production were superb.
To see the dancers defy gravity with such grace and power was sheer joy. They conveyed such deep emotion without a single spoken word that I watched through tears
of pure pleasure. After three viewings I am as much enthralled as the first.

On Sunday, August 9th I watched a live telecast of the Mostly Mozart concert from
Lincoln Center. The featured soloist was the virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell, playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, one of the most sublime compositions ever for the violin. His interpretation was powerful, lyrical and enchanting. Joshua, the orchestra and conductor merged into a single complex instrument. As the music washed over me, and poured into me I felt as if out of body.

Those two events renewed my belief that the human mind is capable of producing creations of superb beauty, and of solving any problem if allowed. But sadly, it is mankind's baser nature that holds the stage. Sadder still, there are many places on this earth where beauty never gets the spotlight because of the abysmal darkness which prevails there.

Why can't we devote more effort to planting flowers than we do to destroying them?

Fertilizing "The Age of Anxiety"

These are anxious times, and the pols in Washington are aware of the economic difficulties facing the almost 7 million citizens who lost their jobs in the past 18 months, and who have, or will soon exhaust their unemployment benefits.

It is weird that those very people in greatest danger are agitating against the only agency that can rescue them---big government! Standing on the brink of bankruptcy they are ranting against deficit spending, the only tool available in time to save them.

If big government is the enemy, is NO government their friend? In the name of reigning in the evil of big government, big business, in the last 8 years, succeeded in wiping out, or greatly curtailing regulations designed to control risky and dishonest business practices which could harm the public. They got their wish, almost destroying the world economy, and shafting Mr.& Mrs. Average American. The public bought the mantra and is paying the price. The malefactors were bailed out by money from the very public they screwed, and are continuing to harvest obscene bonuses, instead of being fired or in jail.

Even the lowest species in the biological pyramid retain a survival instinct. Why have the highest order, humans, in the U.S. apparently lost theirs? Has our educational system failed us? Are we so narcotized by packaged entertainment that we have lost our ability to reason? Can we no longer distinguish between propaganda and facts?

There are none so blind as those who WILL not see. I am tempted to root for Congress
to revoke all stimulus legislation, just to administer a very basic, almost primitive lesson in economics. In a recession you don't reduce government spending,
you use it to revive a staggering economy.

Assisted Suicide

The tumultuous protesters at the health care town hall meetings have a death wish which was created within them by the skilled, completely unscrupulous health insurers.
Sadly, they don't recognize their peril, and the blatant contradictions in the propaganda they have swallowed. They have been indoctrinated with false fears. For example they are told that an OPTIONAL public insurance system will result in health care rationing. In reality it is the for-profit insurers that are at this very moment doing the rationing! They tell the physicians and hospitals what treatment they can provide, which and how many test procedures they will pay for. They even
will refuse to pay for life saving treatment if, in their opinion, the costs of treatment are not balanced by the value of the continued life!!!!!
And there is no regulatory authority that can hold them to account.
Also, is it not rationing to deny insurance to those who have a pre-existing condition, no matter how trivial or how long in the past? Or to price it out of reach of millions, who have no alternative?
In my career as an actuary, involved with the insurance industry, never have I seen such predatory practices as in the health care reform process, and never have I encountered such widespread public gullibility against their own best interests!

Duped Again!

In the Health Care debate we have seen the power of the new cummunication technology.
HARRY AND LOUISE have morphed into pundits and writers in the thrall of corporate
special interests, whose sole aim is to retain the profitable status quo, without regard for the damage done to the public and the economy.
These interests have embarked on a fear campaign that exceeds in scope the Harry and Louise strategy. Not only have they revived the bogey-man of Socialism, they have
upped the ante by the spurious claim that seniors will be "executed" in some manner
to control the costs of providing health care to everyone.
Particularly onerous is their use of the Big Lie technique, in which they present
a completely unlikely disaster scenario and employ so-called objective authorities
to make it sound plausible. By funding overwhelming amounts of fear propaganda, they enlist normally rational people into their campaign.
The facts are that for millions of our citizens the private health insurance system
has been a DISMAL FAILURE. Not only has it put many businesses into danger of failing, it has resulted in corruption of the system of dispensing care at all levels. As a side effect it has stimulated the growth of a tort system which in
turn causes the practice of defensive medicine, which inflates costs and malpractice insurance premiums.
Insurance is supposed to operate on the principles of spreading the risk and sharing the costs among large numbers. Is it insurance to deny coverage to millions who
may allready be in need, and to price it out of reach of more millions? No, that is
exploitation of a corrupt system. If it were otherwise would the nation be perpetually confronting a health care crisis?
How ironic that the victims of the system are enlisted in perpetuating it.

Paying for Health Care--Not a Zero Sum Problem

To understand the ramifications of any plan to finance health care, it would be helpful to explore the economic life cycle of most Americans. That cycle involves three phases. The first, an initial period of Dependency, begins at birth and lasts until the individual starts to earn a living. During that period he/she is a consumer, but not a producer.
The next period is Independancy. It is the period when he starts accumulating assets
and retirement benefits, from private and government retirement plans. It is also the period of high expenses for creating and raising a family with all the costs involved. During Independency he is both a producer and consumer.
The last period is again Dependency, supported by accumulated assets, retirement plans, and/or relatives. During this period he is still a consumer, but no longer a producer.
The purpose of health care is to improve the quality of life by reducing
Morbidity (illness and incapacity), and premature Mortality, and extending the life
span. A successful health care program will thus increase the length of
the final dependency period. It is in the final years of that period that the individual consumes the greatest amount of health care resources and incurs
the greatest expenses. Thus the dilemma.
There is another factor which is increasing the cost of health care to a large degree. Many of the more common ailments now have medications and treatments which
yield cures at modest costs. The more exotic and chronic ailments of age, such as Alzheimers, and degenerative conditions, do not respond to the most common medications. Much experimentation is ongoing for drugs for those conditions. Such
experimentation, and testing, is very costly. That cost must be amortized over a relatively small patient population, so the cost per patient is very high, and can continue over long periods, making those ailments very expensive to the health care
insurer, whichever type. That leads to proposals to limit treatment for such patients, a form of triage or euthanasia.
What plan we finally adopt will reveal a great deal about what kind of society we are, or pretend to be.