Who Will Pay for Healthcare?

FREE DOWNLOAD:  The 4th American Revolution by Will Marre

As the debate on health care rages on in Congress it is sobering to watch the gears of politics grind slowly through the constant dump trucks of sand delivered by the powerful economic interests of the health industry.  The incentives of the industry are often contrary to health.  Insurance companies make money by charging small companies and individuals who have no bargaining power exorbitantly higher rates than employees of the government or large companies who do.  Insurers make more by denying claims of the seriously ill and excluding people who are afflicted with a pre-existing condition.  In short, they prosper and please their Wall Street analysts by limiting benefits, which is a cruel way of rationing health care.  That’s the very term the far right uses who oppose universal health care.

The economics of drugs is also a labyrinth of questionable practices.  Many drugs come as the result of taxpayer-supported research at the National Institutes of Health.  Drugs’ retail cost varies greatly based on what country you live in or health plan you have.  Again those who have no bargaining leverage pay the most.  And most strangely the drug companies spend much more on consumer advertising than on research.

On the cause of the illness side of things, we have cigarette makers who don’t want to be regulated by the FDA even though their product kills 400,000 Americans a year and will kill over a billion people worldwide in this century.  That’s 15% of the entire world population currently living.  And the fake food industry continues to design, package and sell high calorie low value foods to people most unable to find affordable fresh food.  Of course these industries massage their collective consciousnesses by telling themselves we only make what people want.  If that logic absolves them from the death and suffering caused by the common use of their products then I guess it’s hard to blame cocaine and meth. dealers who are only meeting the demands of the market.  It all carries an economic logic that relieves everyone of his or her social responsibility until your mother or sister starts suffering from diabetes or your father dies of lung cancer.

So we have Congress and their mighty lobbyists trying to sort out an affordable health care plan.  I am pessimistic because today we need leadership not compromise.  Compromise which ends up with a little of this or a little of that produces a lot of nothing for consumers and new revenue streams for those who see this as an economic exercise.

There are many brilliant solutions to our many health care challenges.  And yes, they would overall cost all of us less money, but we have no voice in this debate because there is nothing to be economically gained.  So the gears grind on.  Who will pay?  We will.  What are your ideas/solutions?

For more on my views of health care, read the 4th American Revolution.

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Economies that favor the Middle Class — The Path Forward?

I grew up in a pretty conservative family.  We were ranchers after all.  We weren’t rich but felt strongly middle class.  We had a pickup truck and a station wagon.  My mom bought clothes for us children twice a year.  Once for school and once for summer.  My play pants sported patches to go with all the grass stains.  Oh yes, we were happy.  One reason was all our friends were pretty much in the same boat.  The middle class society of the 50’s and 60’s didn’t happen by chance.  It was the direct result of public policy that made bank deposits safe, state college education free, 30-year mortgages available, a GI bill and a manufacturing economy that made the best stuff in the world.  It turns out these middle class building public policies were very good for society.  Now we know.

The Economist magazine, capitalism’s public voice, recently reported research that economies that favor the middle class are not only the healthiest economically, they are the most free and democratic.  They report that where government policy helps the growth of the middle class through education, affordable health care, infrastructure and access to capital we see an increase in tolerance, a reduction in violence, more free speech, religious freedom, free press, equality under the law, a concern for the environment and more happiness and optimism.  Period.  (A Special Report on the Middle Class). Not only that, middle class societies also create more jobs and invent more useful technology.  What’s insightful about the research is that it’s not capitalism that fosters freedom; it’s middle class building.  The Economist also advises us that America needs to change course because our real middle class has been shrinking since 1979.

That’s right.  According to the OCED America has the smallest per capita middle class of the 20 most developed nations except Russia!  We’ve pursued policies that have created a bipolar society not only of rich and poor but also of asset owners and debtors.  And it’s getting worse.  The children of the wealthy usually start adult life without college debt, a free car and a big down payment on a house in a nice neighborhood.  The rest of our children have a very difficult time ever catching up.  So wealth turns into privilege and privilege into political access and influence, which becomes aristocratic power.

This is not new.  Policies that are designed to create a stratified society that concentrate wealth and power at the top and also suffering and fear at the bottom have been around since the invention of government.  In our nation’s history the competition for policies that promote the middle class versus an aristocracy of wealth was the driving force of our first American Revolution.  Consider this:

1.    During the first American Revolution the focus of the wealthy and the powerful mostly supported the English rule of America.  These were Tories who were in cahoots with the English industrial cartels who corrupted the British monarchy to keep the colonists peasants and the slave trade booming.
2.    After the American Revolution this group of bankers and city living industrialists supported the policies of Alexander Hamilton who insisted our national security demanded strong centralized power, a national bank and little true democracy.  He was adamant that the smart guys with all the money should run things because they were sure that common farmers were too stupid to.
3.    On the other hand, Thomas Jefferson valued equality, liberty and democracy over a monied aristocracy.  He saw virtue in the common citizen and the promotion of opportunity as great new American values.  He envisioned a great middle class of farmers instead of a bipolar society of rich industrialists, banks and plantation owners ruling over masses of ignorant factory workers, dirt farmers and slaves that knew no better.
4.    Lincoln believed passionately in ending slavery and creating universal opportunity by establishing free land grant colleges and large public works projects of roads, bridges, and railroads to spur mobility and commerce.  He was vigorously opposed to industrialists who wanted financial monopolies by building profitable toll roads but leaving out the rural farmers access to eastern markets.  He opposed the monied class who considered freeing the slaves confiscating wealth.  (That’s what you think when people are considered property.)  These voices also fought against universal education as a waste of taxpayer money and cried that the end of child factory labor would destroy our economy.
5.    Most people today forget these same Herbert Hoover loving industrialists who ran America after Teddy Roosevelt attacked Franklin Roosevelt as a socialist.  (Later these same people claimed Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist.)  These neo-aristocrats said famine relief and unemployment insurance in the Great Depression would turn America into a country of freeloaders and that regulating Wall Street would destroy both capitalism and personal freedom.  These attacks were vicious and unrelenting
6.    So today these same voices, these descendants of early American Tories who financially benefited from the concentration of power and wealth, are suddenly screaming for fiscal austerity and further tax cuts.  They claim that tax cuts for the wealthy and for big business will create market solutions to our collapse (caused by unregulated markets!).  These are the same table pounders who spent a trillion dollars on non-strategic war and played with our nation’s bookkeeping worse than Enron’s off-balance sheet debt and championed a bank bailout that was little more than welfare fraud of America’s richest bankers are now sanctimoniously calling for financial conservatism.

You see the voices of neo-aristocrats always say the same thing.  We can’t afford it.  We can of course afford wars, no-bid contracts and corrupt sweet heart deals made by multi-millionaire former Congressmen lobbyists, but we can’t afford to invest in our real future.  When these strident voices of fear are asked what policies created our current collapse they change the subject.  You see the theory of “trickle down” economics has little basis in fact.  Instead healthy, free and vibrant societies get that way by “move up” economics driven by high quality, universal education, good health care a strong infrastructure and reasonable access to capital.  These in fact are the public policies that give us the platform of life, liberty, and the opportunity to pursue happiness.

Does this mean the far left whose bleeding hearts and victim-centered view of reality have the answer?  Absolutely not.  In many cases they are as corrupt as their opponents.  Too often they indulge mediocrity and perpetuate dependence.  The ideologies of right and left are simply out of step with our future.  But in America’s great moments of crisis there has always been a higher middle way.  A way up that brings more.  Both more genuine opportunity and more responsibility for all.  If we want a sustainable future we must pursue a society that is both fair and wise.  One that works on the basis of common sense and uncommon morality.  Corruption, greed, fear and selfishness have brought us to where we are.  As long as “me” is enthroned above “we,” we will suffer.

–Will Marre, Founder American Dream Project & ThoughtRocket/REALeadership

So what’s the best we can do? Be a voice for common sense.  Be an advocate for the common good.  Don’t become fearful because of the shrill voices of the extremes.  So what do you think?  Am I right about the neo-aristocrats?  Do you support Obama’s vision? Do you believe it’s an investment in our future or a futile waste?  Or some of both?  Where do you find hope today?