What a Fine Mess

I really wanted to address the Great Affordable Health Care Debate, and I will try to to a very limited extent, but I am telling you right now after two weeks worth of study and research I am just flat not smart enough to understand what the intricacies of this whole mess add up or subtract down to.

And since I personally know many of the faithful readers of my blog, and while I respect you all and value your opinions and friendship—even those of you whose new hobby is hating me—I don’t think any of you are smart enough to understand it completely either and at least one of you is one of the smartest human beings on the planet with stuff hanging on his wall that says so.

                How did it get to be such a mess?

 Obamacare did bring 10,000,000 people into the world of health care that weren’t there before whether they wanted to be there or not.  I know the more popular number is 24,000,000 but that is a made up estimate that we weren’t supposed to hit until 2020 and even the CBO’s current numbers of 18,000,000 people who will be tossed to the curb and left to die in the cold includes at least 8,000,000 people who don’t exist yet.

And that’s part of the problem: both sides are using “alternative facts,” “fake news,” and a dump truck load of rhetoric that avoid the tangible issues, obscure what really are facts to the point you can’t tell what’s real and what’s estimated and just generally confuse the public to the point nobody knows what the heck is going on.

I recently watched a PBS debate (I know, I can’t believe it either) between two alleged experts—Lanhee Chen (pro-republican health care bill) and Dr. Ezekiel Emanual (anti republicans being on his planet)—and after I watched it I went on line and read the transcript.  I am convinced I am even dumber on the subject than I was before I listened to these two clowns interrupt each other for 15 minutes.

It all seemed so simple when President Trump laid it out in his address to Congress:

             1.       New health care legislation must protect and benefit ALL Americans.

2.       Pre-existing conditions should be covered.

3.       Tax credits on a sliding scale and HSA’s made available to all if they so choose.

4.       Medicaid should be all-inclusive and be administered at the state level.

5.       Protect patients and doctors from artificial costs by bringing down inflated drug costs for the former and putting torte limitations in place for the latter.

6.       Allow insurance buy-ins across state lines to bring down the cost of insurance and increase the amount of health care an individual gets for his or her dollar.

So how did we get to nothing getting cheaper until 2020; subsidies for insurance companies; insurance premiums for those over 55 being four to eight times higher than youngsters; threats about Medicaid shutting out needy folks (again, the rhetoric on that one drowns out what may actually be real and dangerous) and everybody being mad at everybody else?

And quit screaming, “Because Donald Trump hates poor people,” if you’re on that side of the fence.  Your factless, meaningless noise is just contributing to the problem.  Produce an actual, thoughtful answer and quit parroting what Bill Maher says on his comedy hour or whatever his show is supposed to be.

Personally, I don’t think the problem is the cost of health care for most people as much as it is the cost of health insurance. That may be a horrible answer to anything but it is thoughtful and carefully considered.

Let’s say you just had a hip replacement and the total bills came to around $50,000. (Except for the sneaky bastard anesthesiologist who bills you 30 days after you think you’re safe and you owe him $1100 more that your insurance isn’t going to pay.) If you look at all your statements $50,000 is one of the most made up numbers in this whole debate because your insurance will only allow about $10,000 and the medical providers (except that a-hole anesthesiologist) all say, “OK.”

You then are left paying $1500-$2500 (or $6500 if you had Obamasurance) plus 10 or 20% of the balance up to whatever your maximum is. Oh, unless you belong to a union or work for the government in which cases you have never seen an insurance premium or paid anywhere near those numbers for anything and don’t understand what the fuss over Obamacare is all about in the first place.

It sucks, but providers will work with you and you can handle it. Or you could if you weren’t paying so much for your insurance premium so that you had enough cash to pay your part of the bill.

I think for most Americans the real problem has been the cost of the premiums, but this issue is so complex and multi-layered I totally understand and expect there are those who disagree with me. My wife and I pay $6,156 out of pocket more per year (over and above what our employers can afford to pay) for less health insurance coverage than we did two years ago and at that time it included our daughter. That is enough money it affects other areas of our lives and we don’t like it.

I don’t want to sound selfish and say that we shouldn’t be helping out those who need it but it seemed like we were already paying plenty in taxes, most of which goes to one entitlement program or another in this country and $6100 hurts.

Now our legislators are looking at reform that doesn’t mention HSA’s or make clear how tax credits may work; doesn’t mention torte reform or the ability for insurance companies to compete across state lines; and does raise premiums for older folks, continues to subsidize insurance companies and screws with Medicaid if you can believe the talking heads on TV and even though I am predisposed not to do that I’m hearing enough of it it frightens me.

Now we’re told that perhaps the most sensible and necessary part of bringing down the cost of health insurance which was to allow insurance companies to compete across state lines is going to be part of “Phase III” of health care reform. A phase most “experts” don’t think we’ll ever get to.

I think somebody should think again and instead of offering the insurance companies subsidies, say, “Sorry Blue Cross, you are now subject to the laws of capitalism and a free market. Figure it out.”

If you let the free market set the price of health insurance I don’t think we’ll even need tax credits to help people afford it. Capitalism left alone will fix most issues of cost.

                I think portable HSA’s should become as incentivized and encouraged as IRA’s and 401k’s (these are pension alternatives for the rest of us in case you’re in a union and don’t have to deal with our reality). I think states probably should have control of Medicaid but someone needs to tell us what that really means without letting Nancy Pelosi talk for just a second.

                I think pre-existing conditions should be covered but should be stripped out of the affordable health care act so it quits hanging up the rest of the bill which we need to deal with now.  Handle pre-existing conditions in their own bill in a way that doesn’t break the backs of insurance companies but which doesn’t cause them to need subsidies either. Yes, we’ll have to subsidize it another way, maybe even as another (may God forgive me) entitlement program.

                And I think there should be a torte cap on malpractice lawsuits that brings down one of the largest and scariest costs for most medical providers as well as enforcement of anti-trust regulations upon drug manufacturers to keep epi pens and such from costing more than a car. (And yes, I know I am hypocritically suggesting we take big Pharma out of the realm of the free market, but if they’re going to be poop heads that’s the way life goes.)

                I told you I’m not smart enough to understand all this. But I am smart enough to be angry when I’m being hurt. And this is all just what I think, which once again my liberal friends, qualifies me to be an Associated Press hard news reporter but does not obligate you to believe or agree with me.

Women's Day For Real

                Last Tuesday was “Women’s Day” as declared by somebody. Sounds like a good idea for an annual thing. Mother’s Day doesn’t catch everybody. I’m all for honoring women as there are a few of them in my life that I regard as pretty special and I respect almost all others.

                Turns out though that the day sort of got hijacked by a group promoting “A Day Without A Woman,” which reminded me at first of some lonely weekends in college but the object was instead to apparently make us realize how awful the workplace would be without them…if I got the message right which may or may not be the case.

                So instead of going to work a bunch of women marched at various state capitols and other places, seemingly peacefully. News accounts boasted far fewer numbers than the Women’s March thingy right after Trump’s inauguration. As far as I noticed Madonna and Ashley Judd were too busy to lend voice to this particular “protest.”

                It took me most of the day and several newscasts to realize it was supposed to be a protest. I thought we were still on the honoring women thing.

                Trying to figure out what the protest was about got a little frustrating for me as it seemed even more nonspecific than the earlier Women’s March. One woman said she was marching for the voices of women that could not be heard. I’m not exactly sure what that means but it sounds noble and doesn’t raise any objection from me.

                Another woman gleefully announced that Tuesday marked her eighth protest since Donald Trump was inaugurated, so for some people I guess this is just a hobby now. Another said she was there to help make sure employers appreciated how valuable women were in the workplace.

                I kind of thought that was obvious or they wouldn’t have been hired in the first place but I’m sort of thick skulled sometimes. Maybe it was a statement about pay discrepancies v. men or something.

                Many said they were just protesting Donald Trump. Well that is specific, I guess, without having much of a point.

                If my prior research is applicable, however, many of them are really afraid they are going to lose the right to an abortion granted them under the Roe V. Wade decision. Even though the resulting law has stood since 1973.

 

               Even though President’s Reagan, H.W. Bush and G.W. Bush (20 years of dreaded Republican White House Rule) were all personally opposed to the decision and weren’t able to get it changed. I don’t think they even tried. Reaching way back I’m not totally sure ultra-religious Jimmy Carter (D-GA) was ok with abortion, but whether he was or wasn’t that right has been on the books for 43 years.

                Trump has already said he thinks it should be a state-level decision rather than a federal-level decision which isn’t the same thing as calling for abortion abolition. Planned Parenthood may lose it’s federal funding. That may be a legitimate gripe for some women. But paying for abortions through Planned Parenthood with federal tax dollars has also been a legitimate issue for those opposed to that.

                Listen, I don’t want to get into a discussion of abortion pros and cons with only 500 words left in my blog but I can understand people with religious or moral objections to abortions not wanting to pay for them. I can also understand women who can’t afford to pay for them needing somewhere to go for help. But Planned Parenthood doesn’t have to go away. It just may not get any federal funding anymore which will mean private sources will have to put their money where their mouths are and step up and keep PP afloat. And, if a young lady has the means, she just may have to pay for her own abortion.

                But I think to work one’s self into hysteria over the safety of Roe V. Wade is a fool’s errand.  If Justice Scalia didn’t tip the scales in abolishing Roe V. Wade, Justice Gorsuch isn’t going to either. I don’t think any combination of justice’s will but as I said, that’s enough discussion here.

                I guess some women also don’t like Trump because his personality reminds them of something sinister or evil or worse. Ok, I get that. He did get caught on a mic talking about grabbing a woman’s vagina in some guy talk. That is both a disgusting and disappointing thing for the President to have said and or done.

                I’ve got news for you though ladies, most of your fathers, brothers, husbands, male cousins, classmates and friends have all said things about women to their guy friends that they would never have said in front of you ever, ever, ever.  If you don’t believe me see if your husband looks up and to the left when you confront him with this question, if he can even make eye contact at all.

                Sorry fella’s.

                It doesn’t make it right or excuse it, I’m just sayin’. And the more vehement you liberal guys who want to pretend it isn't so are about denying it the more suspect I am of your chaste purity.

                Plus we all seem to have survived Bill Clinton’s sexual assaults, dalliances and questionable judgements and figured out what to tell our daughters for goodness sake. Not that two wrongs make a right but I’m not even sure we’re comparing apples to oranges here.

                Trump never had to write Hillary’s staffer of five years a check to get her to shut up about the alleged groping on a plane like Bill did for several of his accusers. No, she just kind of went away when the election was over. Nor did the lady who said Trump assaulted her at a Stevie Wonder concert in San Francisco that Wonder says never took place get any Trump bucks.  In fact she went away before the election when her story about the concert got blown.

Were there others? Were they any more credible? Good grief.

                By the way, it is not a defensible argument to say one is “so tired of hearing about Bill Clinton’s indiscretions. He wasn’t running for president.”

                Well not this time. But because you don’t care doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I mean semen on a dress is kind of evidentiary. And by most household definitions that would be a result of sex of some kind. I asked.

                So we could bat this stuff around all day but the whole doggone point I wanted to make before I wasted my thousand words is this:  We should have honored women on Tuesday.

                I wish I had heard more about it and known it was coming. I’d have taken my wife a chai latte at the office or something.

                I think we owe a round of applause, gratitude and respect to every single woman who went to work last Tuesday like she always does. Or to class or who took care of her children or who simply graced us with her presence.

                God bless you ladies, and thank you for being part of our lives.

                We are darned lucky, unappreciative, chauvinist, misogynistic, ungrateful bastards. And I hope those of you who matter to us know that I don’t think we are any of those things. We love you and we are so very, very grateful for you.

 

             For you, Tuesday should have been a bigger deal.

Thank you.

We're Still Here, Comrade

                I have never seen a human being’s head spontaneously explode but the left has me thinking that could change. The national temper tantrum by a smaller and smaller group of alleged adults and their frightening (in a how-did-they-live-past-puberty kind of way) millennial offspring continues.

                Trump delivered a magnificent speech last Tuesday in his first address to Congress. That is my statement but unlike an Associated Press fact I can back it up with CNN’s own post speech poll showing 7 out of 10 Americans felt Trump was trying to move America in the right direction.

                In a rare coincidence Fox News even backed CNN up with a positive number of 76%.

                That seems incredible given how badly the howling press would like us to believe that more than just them, the Hollyweirdos, the state of CA, the five boroughs of NY and a few other scattered pockets of resistance around the country hate the President.

                My own theory of any move made by a leader at any level of anything is that one-third of the people affected are going to love you; one-third are going to continue to hate your guts no matter what; and one-third could care less if you flip, fly or float unless your decision impacts them enough favorably or unfavorably that they look up from their oatmeal and do a double take.

                I’d say the President hit something of a home run with that last group Tuesday.

                But not to be talked out of their rage, the left went on the defensive immediately. That seemed kind of ballsy to me after they weren’t able to clap at the notions of creating more jobs for Americans, increasing women’s entrepreneurship, improving the country’s safety and security, keeping promises to the American people, tax reform that would benefit the middle class, supporting our military, eliminating ISIS, reducing violent crime, and making education a priority, to name a few of the things our President hit on.

                I do get that they are a little touchy about securing their open borders, touching Obamacare (even though outside of the Beltway I think most liberals don’t understand they would benefit greatly from making the Affordable Health Care Act affordable), and putting victim’s rights ahead of the rights of violently criminal illegal aliens’ rights. But to sit on their hands (most of them) while the wife of a slain Navy Seal was honored? There’s nothing even humorous to say about that. I can’t even make fun of them, and you know how I like to make fun of them. That’s just loathsome and disgusting.

                You’d have thought the dems could have found someone who sounded a little less like he was reading a speech prepared days before the President’s to do their rebuttal other than former Governor Beshear (D-KY). The guy who was just replaced by a republican governor out of backlash for the poor job he did for the fine folks of Kentucky.

                And the following morning my old pal E.J. Dionne Jr. was back in the papers with his editorial on Trump’s speech claiming it was nothing but doom and gloom designed to scare the American people to death. I think you have to try really hard to be part of that 24% who weren’t encouraged by our President’s words.

                EJ’s takeaway was that he heard “the music of fright, dread and chaos.” Wow. I wonder if he wasn’t watching his DVR’d recording of “Madam Secretary.” I think ol’ EJ is still a little pissed at the President for telling him it would be ok to say “Merry Christmas.”

                And then we’re right into the Russian thing again.  What a sin and a shocker that Jeff Sessions, as Chair of the Senate Committee on Armed Services and a member of the Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security would meet with the Russian ambassador.

                Wouldn’t you be a little concerned if he hadn’t? (I’m only asking 76% of you.)

                Maybe we should have asked a different question than “Did you meet with any Russian operatives or enter into any negotiations with any Russian agents about the Trump campaign,” if that really wasn’t the question we wanted answered.

                By the way, what does the left think the Russians actually did to swing the election? All I can find on line is that some people suspect they hacked some emails of the DNC, specifically that Podesta clown. The DNC was also warned it was happening seven months before anybody thought it was a big deal according to online sources (which are only accurate, of course, when they are supporting the left). They didn’t think it was a big deal until HRC got her butt kicked, 306-232. (Sorry California, we count too.)

                All I can tell you is that when the Russians made me vote for Trump I had been convinced Hillary was a criminal and that liberalism is a disease for so long that they really wasted their efforts doing their Vulcan mind meld on me.

                You have to wonder how we got to the point where the chair of the ASC meeting with the Russian ambassador in a routine manner became more suspect than a presidential nominee while serving as Secretary of State, selling Russia one-fifth of this country’s plutonium after they made a huge donation to her Foundation For The Advancement of the Clinton Fortune and paid her hubbie $500K for a speaking engagement.

                Or I still shake my head at how he-whose-name-I-will-not-speak won the 2012 election after his open mic faux paus in which he asked PM Medvedev to let the left’s most feared human being, Vlad “The Impaler” Putin know that once he got elected it would be a lot easier to negotiate the disarmament of America.

                And now it seems to be a crime to have made eye contact with anyone with a Russian surname, but only if you happen to be a Trump supporter. There is still not one shred of evidence, in fact it is to the contrary, that Russia had anything to do with vote counts or voting machines in our electoral process.

                All there is is the left’s belief that those of us east of California and west of the five boroughs would never have come to the conclusions that HRC was a scumbag of the worst order, that liberalism was anything that deserved more than our disdain, and that putting Americans first was a good thing without the Russians releasing a fraction of the DNC’s dirty laundry to influence our mushy brains.

                Kiss my 76% ass.

                You wonder why the mind meld tricks didn’t work in California. I guess it’s because they’re so much smarter than the rest of us. That’s why Lindsay Lohan lives there.

                Here’s a thought for my liberal friends. In response to the notions that Michelle Obama or Oprah should be our next President it has been suggested Ivanka Trump should be the next republican nominee in 2024. I think Ivanka is a Russian name.

                Oh no!

                No matter how loudly the left wants to wail and cry about Russian boogeymen under the bed, 76% of us heard the President’s words and liked what we heard. No new poll means we went away but I’m glad if it helps the truly liberal sleep at night without self-medicating.

                We’re still here. We still believe. And we still won.

                And hey, EJ, Ruhzhdeestvoh, myaak.