Health-care in 3,200 Words or Less

The Democrats still have the upper hand. If they don’t support a bill it can’t pass, but their total control over the legislative process has been broken by the election of a Republican senator from Massachusetts. So those we elect to represent us now have a choice. What we have had for the last year was World Wide Wrestling. Now it is time for chess. My question is, are the Democrats and Republicans going to play politics or statesmanship?

Both parties acknowledge we need health-care reform. There is a legitimate issue as to whether now is the time to pursue it. We have an unprecedented budget deficit, severe unemployment and a shaky economic recovery to deal with. All three of which are arguably more urgent than health-care reform, unless you don’t have health insurance and are or become sick. On the other hand, health-care is on everybody’s mind now. This may be the time to pass a reasonable plan to improve the health-care environment. But are the members of either party willing to set aside extreme positions and pass something reasonable, at the risk of giving the other party a partial victory? I have a few suggestions.

First of all, there needs to be some kind of tort reform. Between malpractice insurance premiums and the need, whether perceived or real, to practice defensive medicine, the cost of litigation drives up the cost of health-care. Actual damages certainly need to be covered, but there ought to be a limit on punitive damages.

Drop the barriers to cross-state purchasing of medical insurance. Let the money flow to where the best coverage, services and prices are. The market will reward those who do well and punish those who don’t.

Make all health insurance premiums tax deductible to the payer of those premiums.

Make it illegal for an insurance company to drop somebody for other than non-payment of premiums, or to deny coverage.

People need help in paying for medical care, but if they are responsible for the cost of care, they will make better health-care decisions. Therefore, make it easier for anybody to buy a high deductible health insurance policy in conjunction with a Health Savings Account (HSA). For those below a certain income level have the government make an annual deposit into their Health Savings Account equal to the premiums plus a portion of the annual deductible. As their income increases above a certain threshold phase out the government paid deposit into their HSA at the rate of $1 lost for every $4 earned over the threshold. Mandate that health-care providers accept payments at low or no interest from patients below some specified income level. These provisions will address the adverse selection problem posed by the mandate to take all comers, as well as eliminate the need to force people to buy insurance that is in the current bill.

Allow insurance companies a reasonable and generous profit, but require that they pay out a certain percentage of revenue in benefits in order to participate in the cross-state sale of their products.

Get rid of the absurd taxes that have been proposed on health-care devices and insurance plans. If you want to hold the cost of something down, you need to lower the cost, not increase it.

There you go. In less than 3,200 words I have just written a comprehensive health-care plan that addresses cost and availability. It does not put the government in the health-care business and it does not gut a system that has produced many of the greatest advances in health-care anywhere in the world. I don’t know what the cost of this would be. It is possible that it could not be implemented until we get the economy rolling better, but it is a whole lot better than what has been proposed to date.

Politically Correct Racism

In January, 1988, Jimmy the Greek Snyder said, "The black is the better athlete. …and he's bred to be the better athlete because this goes way back to the slave period. The slave owner would breed this big black with this big black woman so he could have a big black kid. That's where it all started." The comment, which was supposed to have been off the record, stirred up a great deal of controversy and got Jimmy the Greek fired from CBS.

In December 2002 then incoming Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, speaking at Strom Thurmond’s 100^th birthday party said that the United States would have avoided "all these problems" if Thurmond had been elected president in 1948. Thurmond had been a supporter of segregation, though that was clearly not one of the problems Lott was assuming would have been avoided. Despite Lott’s apologies to Jesse Jackson and the black community, and the fact that few people, if any, really thought that Lott was referring to racial issues when he made the statement, his career was effectively ended because of a kind remark to an old man.

In 2003, Rush Limbaugh worked briefly for ESPN on their NFL pregame show. He gave his opinion that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated. He expressed his belief that McNabb’s status was due to the fact that there were those in the NFL and the media who wanted to see a black quarterback succeed. An uproar developed and, under pressure, Limbaugh resigned his position with ESPN. Last year Limbaugh was part of a group seeking to buy the Rams, and was swiftly chased out of the hunt.

In February, 2007 Joe Biden said, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy, I mean, that's a storybook, man.” The statement was labeled as racist because Biden, it was argued, meant that it was unexpected for an African-American to be articulate. Biden was forced to apologize for the insensitivity of his statement.

In 2008 we learned that for the past 20 years Barak Obama had been attending the church of a racist minister who has uttered innumerable anti-American and anti-white sermons. Obama told us that his minister, Jeremiah Wright, was a close friend and like a member of his own family. When confronted with the views of his pastor, Obama told us that he never heard those things said. Wright sells video tapes of his sermons in which, among other things, he blames white Americans for committing acts of terrorism and of creating the AIDS virus to kill off blacks. Obama continued to support and defend him until Wright accused Obama, on national television, of doing what he has to do as a politician; At that point, Obama severed ties with Wright. Obama was elected President later that year.

A few days ago we learned that Senator Harry Reid has written that among Barak Obama’s political strengths are the facts that he is a “light skinned “African-American who does not speak with a “Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Senator Reid’s remarks are being characterized as racist and some, particularly on the right, are asking for his head on a platter.

We see an interesting pattern here. Except for the behavior of black men, each example here is not actually racist. Senator Lott said nothing about race whatsoever, but because he said a kind thing while talking about a man who had had racist ideas a generation earlier, he was accused of being racist himself. Jimmy the Greek, Rush Limbaugh, Joe Biden and Harry Reid were merely acknowledging the elephant in the room.

Jimmy the Greek was commenting on the obvious fact that slave owners had treated their black slaves like animals. He was not condoning this despicable practice, but acknowledging that it existed and expressing his, not illogical, view that those practices of slave owners a century earlier resulted in certain physical characteristics in the decedents of their slaves.  Rush Limbaugh acknowledged that there are those who want to see black people succeed. Is there something racist about noticing that? Wasn’t that what affirmative action was all about?

If somebody refers to me as articulate, I assume I have been paid a complement. Characterizing Joe Biden’s comment as racist is racist in and of itself, because it presumes that we need to be sensitive to the lack of good speech present in the African-American community. Well, some black people speak well and some don’t. Much like every other group of people. Calling Ronald Reagan the “Great Communicator” was a compliment. What is the difference? The difference is that Barak Obama is ½ black and we have to pretend not to notice, except in the most glowing and least stereotypical terms.

Senator Reid was guilty of three things. One was to notice that Obama is a lighter skinned black man and to further notice that that will make a difference in the way some people see him. Do we not know that to be true? Is it racist to notice? Second was to notice that Obama does not, generally, speak like a black urban man from the streets. Third was to use a term that is no longer in use. When I was growing up, calling a black man a Negro was the polite way to refer to him. There are plenty of reasons Harry Reid should be replaced in the Senate, but his remarks, if dated, don’t sink to the level of racism.


 How careful do we have to be? Are we not allowed to notice what we all see and know? How does that help anybody? Why does it offend anybody? I am overweight and I stutter. I neither pretend nor assume that people don’t notice those things about me. If they are pertinent to a conversation about me, I expect them to be brought up.

Now the example of Jeremiah Wright and Barak Obama is another matter. We have previously looked at overreactions by the hypersensitive to innocent remarks or factual comments about a state of affairs. Wright, on the other hand, repeatedly made inflammatory remarks apparently designed at class warfare, while a future President used him as a spiritual leader. I was asked a while ago if I thought Obama was racist. I don’t know what is in the man’s heart, but when I see the people he surrounds himself with and the policies he espouses, and his rhetoric, it doesn’t look good.

In a climate when a white man can’t observe that some people might want to see a black man succeed in the NFL, how in the world did we elect a President who has so thoroughly immersed himself in a sea of racial divisiveness? Has political correctness brought us to the level of fulfilling George Orwell’s prophecies in “1984”?

Muslim Protesters

A group of Muslims gathered outside the federal courthouse in Detroit Friday to demonstrate as the Christmas day airline bomber was arraigned. They were there to demonstrate against radical Islam. They carried signs saying that Islam is a religion of love not hate. One demonstrator went on camera for a national news organization to say if the terrorists want to kill him, he is there and available.

Every news outlet in the country needs to make note of these brave Americans. They know, maybe better than most, the risk they take to speak out against the desecration of their religion by jihadists. The silence from Muslims has been a concern to me and a source of condemnation of the entire religion among many. If they haven’t been silent, if it has been the lack of news coverage that has made us unaware of their protestations, then the news media is largely to blame for much of the anti-Muslim sentiment in the country. Nobody thinks that white supremacists represent Christianity. We all know enough about the teachings of Christianity, and we know enough Christians (if we aren’t Christian ourselves) to know that the ideals of white supremacy are anathema to Christians. But that same distinction isn’t as clear for Muslims. It is people like these demonstrators that will isolate radical Islam from Islam as much as white supremacists are isolated from Christianity.

These brave people should be heralded and encouraged. Their being there to proclaim to the world their opposition to the use of their faith to promote hatred and murder will give others the courage to stand up and be counted. I thank them for letting me know they are out there.