Why the Left and Right Wings Make Me Sick

I think I’ve finally identified the difference between the right wing and the left wing and why both these wings make me sick. On the right wing best represented by Fox Television we have people like Sean Hanity, who for the last 8 years as far as I can tell has supported virtually every policy and decision the right wing republicans have supported. For instance, I never saw him criticize George Bush in a significant way on any decision he made. It’s just not possible that any person can be right about anything. To construct your public life in such a way that you are always supporting a particular ideology or a particular group requires incredible mental compromise. Nevertheless, the absolute assertion that one set of ideas is always the right set of ideas is very powerful for those of us who are too busy to look deeper.

On the left, characterized by MSNBC we now have people who severely wack President Obama and desperately debate the policies of the left. The presented choice of the media is between mental Hillbillies and insecure whiners; people who are so self-assured that they combine arrogance and ignorance in a way that is lethal, and people that are so unsure that all they can do is create a world in which we share scarcity instead of create sustainable abundance.

These people are simply not who we are. We are seeking for a higher center and for wiser solutions, ones that both reward self-reliance and discourage selfishness. One that promotes a sustainable future without demanding that we live tiny little lives in one-room shelters. This world exists. It is being invented. We all need to be part of it. There needs to be a voice that represents this third way of practical idealism–of hope based in reality, instead of business as usual.

Maturity of Open Mindedness - War in Afghanistan

I just read a long article about all the deliberations that President Obama took to make the decisions he did about the war in Afghanistan. I was impressed that he invited all sides of the issue to make comments throughout a long period of time. In the end, the article said all of his Chief Advisors said that almost no one held the same exact opinions at the end as they did at the beginning. It shows the maturity of open mindedness. This is one of those situations where no one knows what the outcome will be because the factors that will determine success or failure are beyond knowing at this stage. I am at least encouraged that a lot of thought from a lot of people went into a decision, and the decision was based on deliberation rather than emotion. This is the basis of wisdom. Undoubtedly, it is going to be difficult, but I can hardly ask for more than people to hear all sides of an issue before they make a tough decision. And these days are days of tough decisions.

President Obama’s Leadership Lite Act

Watching Obama and his Leadership Lite Act around health care is very interesting. He seems very confident. As an independent voter, I actually favor a citizen co-op, and large personal deductions to drive personal responsibility. In any event, I think any thoughtful person knows that health care needs to be wrestled away from the special interests that control it, and that are currently driving our country to bankruptcy one person at a time.  Obama’s leadership on the issue seems to have an extraordinary light touch. Meanwhile his opponents have become raging parodies of Sarah Palin, if that’s possible. They seem to have been very successful in whipping up post 65 year old Medicare recipients, railing about government-funded medicine. That’s bazaar…a world on steroids. Meanwhile, Obama is the king of cool. We’ll see if it works. The strategy that Muhammad Ali used, allowing his opponents to punch themselves out worked in a boxing ring.  It will be very interesting to see if it works in politics.

Health Care Reform - Discouraging and Disapointing

It’s unfortunate that health care reform is seemingly either deeply wounded or it may even be dead altogether. There are outrageous commentators from the far right calling Obama a racist. I saw Glenn Beck on television say that he believed, “That Obama had a deep hatred for white people.” This is beyond bazaar. Not only is Obama half white, and most black people have accused him of not being black enough, nearly all his advisors are grey haired white men. I guess I’m not clear on how such a racist comment could just be overlooked by the public and the media. Other extremists have recently called Obama a Nazi. These people are obviously not familiar with the term fascism, which is the business take over of government. Socialism is a government taking over the economy. Obama is certainly no Nazi, but to accuse of such things is so over the top. I think most of us are just extremely disappointed. Republicans act like bullies, and Democrats act like sissies. There is something deeply wrong with both parties that are leaving the greatest needs for the common good unmet. When government was gridlocked before, Ronald Reagan went over the heads of Congress to become so immensely personally popular with people that they could not deny his agenda. Obama had that same opportunity, but seems to be frittering it away on using a leadership model that is unclear to me at this point. I think we all wish that he would be the change he promised. Few of us have given up on that happening, but this health care mess is certainly discouraging.

Will Marre’s Radical Solution to Health Care

How does paying $25,000 a year for health care sound?  According to the Consumers Union that’s what the average family will be paying in 15 years if we don’t do something now (See Myths on Health Care in USA Today).

Some issues that impact our lives and our children’s future are so big that it takes an extended article to say what needs to be said.  Health care is one of these issues.  I worked in the health industry for eight years consulting with two multibillion-dollar hospital groups with sterling reputations.  I worked with many great people who wanted to do the right thing in the right way.  But our health care system is so goofed up and so internally competitive with doctors, hospitals, drug companies and insurance companies all hammering each other for a piece of the hurricane of money blowing through health care.  I use the term ‘hurricane’ because the money we spend is a storm of waste.

According to the Consumers Union, $500 billion/year is wasted in ways that frequently hurts our health instead of helps us.

I present my idea as an idea-starter rather than a complete plan. One thing for sure, tweaking the status quo will not work.  We need something far more radical….

Yes, according to our Congressional Budget Office, the biggest threat to American’s quality of life is…you guessed it…our bizarre health care system.  We all know by now that the U.S. has the most expensive, least effective health care system among all developed nations.  In the richest country in the world, we all too frequently see canisters in grocery stores asking for hand-outs to pay for cancer treatments for a child whose working parents’ insurance doesn’t cover treatments.

With 47 million uninsured and at least 100 million more of us increasingly under-insured, no fair-minded person can claim our current system works.  The cost of inadequate coverage has reached the ridiculous.

My own family’s policy, which is a high-deductible monstrosity full of coverage limitations, has increased in cost by 40 percent in the past 2 years.  And no we haven’t had any major illness or accidents.

Although there are many players in health care we could blame for contributing to our problems, the private health insurance industry is the one that is most problematic. That’s because our large health insurers are worried that their core business model is ill suited to help today’s consumers.

They have already spent $22 million trying to scare the public into thinking that socialized medicine is coming with its inevitable mediocre care.

Meanwhile Congress is coming up with some super-expensive half-baked compromise that is likely to make things more complicated, more expensive and subject to future corruption in ways currently unimaginable.  Either way, the middle class is likely to wither due to massive taxes or massive direct costs that may even be more than taxes.

What’s needed is something far more radical, daring innovation that revolutionizes health insurance as it reduces cost and complexity.

1. First we must bury the idea that health insurance is an “industry” or a business. The profit motive works great for giving incentive to commercial genius to create iphones but it gives incentive to all the wrong behavior when we’re trying to create an all citizen access to health care.This isn’t hard to understand.  Profit arises from the difference between premium income and overhead costs and health claims.  Thus insurers are rewarded for only insuring the healthiest people and paying as few claims as possible.  So that’s exactly what we get.  Today our health is brutally rationed by the insurance industry.  Increasingly numbers of people simply can’t get health insurance ironically because they need it.  We also get claims denied and benefits arbitrarily limited after we’re ill by armies of insurance company employees who earn bonuses by keeping payouts limited.  It’s called mis-aligned incentives.  The companies selling insurance profit the most when they deny me the benefits I thought I was buying.  That is unfixable.  No amount of regulation will match the problems that mis-aligned incentives cause.
2. Government cannot effectively administrate an expanded Medicare-like bureaucracy to cover all American’s in an effective way. Government bureaucracies grow proportionately less efficient and effective with size.  Costs will soar and service decline.  Government bureaucracies are exceptionally poor at promoting high operating performance because individual workers are not systematically incented to excel. We all know this.  I am not suggesting all government workers are lazy, rather that all bureaucracies, public or private, are poor at rewarding merit.
3. The solution is something new.  Something called Civic Enterprise. A Civic Enterprise uses the efficient disciplines of business to achieve social goals at the highest possible quality at the lowest cost.  This is achieved through totally aligning incentives.  Here’s how.A Civic Enterprise for American health care would function as an all citizen non-profit co-op we all own.  It would operate the way large corporations self-insure.  Every citizen would be eligible for a universal level of humane benefits.  Every person would have a deductible equal to 3 percent of their income so they would seek the lowest cost provider for minor sicknesses and injuries.  This would motivate low-cost, high volume free market providers like Minute Clinics to thrive.  (This 3 percent is not a tax.  It wouldn’t be a cost to people who didn’t get sick or injured.)The co-ops insurance benefits would be administered by regional centers whose employees would be incented to get the most people enrolled and well served with the specific treatments that conform to best practice guidelines.  Six sigma measures for quality and efficiency would be embedded into the system so co-op employees could earn substantial bonuses for providing excellent and timely service.  Good performers would be rewarded and poor performers weeded out. The main business driver would be to provide the best coverage to the most people to increase citizen health.
4. All citizens would have the opportunity to take online or in-person health education classes. Doing so would result in lower deductibles.
5. Funding would come from dismantling our Medicare bureaucracy and new health taxes on all products that contribute to poor health. These include manufactured food and beverages whose primary ingredients make us fatter, clog our arteries or trick us into thinking we’re hungry.  Also taxing polluters who contribute to lung disease and cancer also puts the tax on the modern sources of environmentally caused illness.

Yes of course there will be screams from the businesses that profit and prosper from promoting risky behavior, make fake food or foul our air and water.  These taxes are not anti-business.  They simply reflect the real economic costs of producing certain products.  Government’s legitimate responsibility is to tax private companies for the social costs caused by their operations.

In a market economy everyone needs to take responsibility for their impact on the health of the total marketplace and that means the impact their product or their production process has on society’s health.  It’s only fair.  So go ahead and make your cigarettes, Twinkies and coal plants, but you and your consumers must pay for the health consequences you are creating.  That’s as pure a market-based economy as I can imagine.

The bottom line:

Let’s all get on the same page.  If we align our economy and our incentives toward promoting health, self-reliance and taking responsibility for all our actions, we can solve our health care crisis.  We need to focus on performance rather than profit.  If we let business-as-usual cut off real innovation that we need, we’re headed into a Grand Canyon of quick sand.

What’s the best thing we can do? Get in our Senator and Congressman’s face and demand real solutions that improve effective care, universal access and hold down costs. ( Write Your Representative or Contact Your Senator.) Engage with the White House and President Obama in today’s Town Hall on Health Care Reform.

Postscript:
Some Things that Make No Sense

1. That we get health insurance through our employment.  It’s a burden to our economy and few of us work for companies that provide insurance.  Get employers out of the health insurance system.  We need to get our insurance directly and everyone should be covered.
2. Don’t pass a law requiring we individually buy health insurance from a private, profit-motivated insurance company.  None of them put my interest first.  Comparing this to mandatory car insurance is absurd.  I choose not to have a car.  I can’t choose not to have a body.  Enroll me in an effective non-profit Citizen Enterprise plan.

So what do you think?  The more constructive ideas that bubble up, the better our solutions will be.  So let’s hear your ideas.

You can also read some of your ideas/comments on my previous post, “Who Will Pay for Healthcare.”  Thank you for your insightful thoughts.

Engage with us by posting your comments/ideas.  Engage with us on Facebook and Twitter

How to Cure Our Own Healthcare

I know the title of this blog is overly ambitious.  But it’s undeniable that America’s health care system is on life support.  I just came from a private meeting of Johnson & Johnson “wellness” executives that was inspiring.

Johnson & Johnson is one of those all-too-rare companies that is serious about their social responsibilities and have been for over 100 years.  Yes, I know they are not perfect.  What $65 billion enterprise is?  But their annual direct contributions to human health exceed a half a billion dollars.  Once more, their famous operating credo points customers first, employees second, community third, and share holders last.  It was written in 1943 by their only shareholder, General Robert Woods Johnson.  Remember, they took Tylenol off all the store shelves in the world when a few capsules were found laced with poison in a deadly prank. What other company has handled a recall with such concern for our safety?

Well let’s just say J & J is serious about making our wellness and healthy aging a big strategic priority for the next 150 years.  They talk in 50-year terms, which is breathtaking in an age where most executives think long-term means a week or 10 days.   Yes of course they plan to make good health a profitable business.  That’s what makes their plans sustainable.  It’s what I call socially strategic leadership…business that makes money by benefiting humanity.  That’s the good news.

The challenge is that American health care is completely compromised by the intense lobbying culture in Washington.  Today we have over 200 ex-congressmen lobbying for their special interest instead of our common good (See Stuck in the Revolving Door in the Washington Post).  When asked why lobbying had become such a huge business in Washington, Robert G.  Kaiser, former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee said, “There’s just so damn much money in it.”  That’s not funny.  Lobbyists actually write many of the bills that become laws.  For instance, they wrote the drug Medicare benefit passed by George Bush’s congress in 2003, which made it illegal for the government to negotiate with drug companies on the price of the drugs Medicare now pays for.  It’s called corporate welfare, reverse wealth transfer, or as Jack Abramoff called it, “legalized bribery.”

So, where has this gotten us?  In very deep yogurt, that’s where.  The U.S. spends 50% more on health care per person than the next highest spending country (Norway).  We have the fastest growth in health care spending in the world.  Yet we have below-average life expectancy, the largest number of uninsured in any industrialized nation, higher infant mortality here than in Poland and 3 times higher than in Japan, and a growing obesity epidemic caused by our lifestyles.

So who’s going to fix this?  Well, Tom Daschle was presented to us as the most knowledgeable man in America to fix our system.  But it turns out his part of this Washington D.C. culture of I’m-so-special I-don’t-have-to-pay-my-taxes.  Damn.  (Unlike Rush Limbaugh I am rooting my brains out for President Obama to succeed.  But please.  Paying one’s taxes is a very low standard for anyone who’s going to serve in our nation’s cabinet to reach.  It’s disappointing the corrupting influence of Washington has made even that standard too high for some of our best potential public servants.)

Our health care problems are astoundingly complex.  Solutions are beyond government alone or the so-called free market to solve.  Greed, incompetence, demographics, and complexity are causing costs to skyrocket while causing massive unnecessary suffering.  So what’ the best thing we can do?  Well, first, today begin to make the changes in our lifestyles that are known to promote our and our family’s health.  If you could do just one thing, what would it be?  Get moving.

According to Dr. Jim Loehr of the Human Performance Institute of Johnson & Johnson, if Americans just got our large muscles (legs) moving more, we would begin to get healthier.  I know a business leader who lost 30 pounds over the past 18 months simply by wearing a ped-o-meter on his belt to make sure he walks a total of 5 miles a day.  Usually he does half of this on a 40-minute walk in the morning or evening.  The rest he does by moving throughout the day.  He takes the stairs, walks to other people’s offices and takes every other opportunity to walk he can.  The payoff Loehr says is that getting moving changes our blood chemistry, our muscle tone, our strength, our energy, our blood oxygen levels and jacks up our motivation to make other changes with our diet, our sleep, and our stress resilience.  I was going to suggest a few more things we could do to reduce our personal vulnerability to our broken health care system but let me stop with this.  Get moving.  Today.  We’ll all be healthier for it.

So what do you think of our health care mess?  Obama’s blunder with Tom Daschle?  Your personal advice on how we can live more healthy?

The 1% Solution

We are living in a puzzle of paradox.  On the one hand we are staring at the single light of an oncoming train barreling down the tracks of a collapsed economy.  On the other we are giddy with optimism that President Obama’s leadership will usher in a new era of inventive solutions that will bind us together in a new future.  As recent national New York Times/CBS News Poll declares, 80% of Americans believe Barack Obama will lead us to responsible prosperity and world peace.  Wow.  That’s hope on steroids.  But just below our optimism are nagging questions.

We are all upset about bailouts without accountability.  Banks who seem to have no trouble tracking every transaction on my debit card suddenly can’t tell us where they stashed or how they used $350 billion.  It’s all co-mingled with all the rest of their assets in a giant money bin they tell us.  Right.

Next we gulp when we’re told that the government has to spend a trillion dollars to stimulate our economy.  Hey, they are going to build roads and bridges and get us back working on high paying union jobs.  Yea…that’s good I guess, but how come every time I drive down the freeway by a construction zone all I see are lots of people standing around and a few people working?  And why do these projects take so long to complete?

It seems to me that flushing billions down the sewer of our giant broken banks without any accountability and huge public works projects is like treating cancer with aspirin; it may be necessary, but it’s not a cure.  The problems our bombed out economy is dealing with are far deeper than bank balance sheets and a new freeway interchange.

One massive game-changing problem is that globalism and technology has stopped our incomes from growing.  Don’t get me wrong.  Global trade and technology aren’t bad in and of themselves.  But when they are primarily used as tools to increase the wealth of a few, their toxic side effects are potent.  A global workforce has radically swelled and depressed wage growth in developed nations.  This combined with automation and software has rendered lots of well-trained and educated people’s skills irrelevant.  A recent side effect to no wage gain is the decline of consumption so our markets can no longer sustain the rapid industrialization and output growth of Asia and Eastern Europe.  Of course there is a silver lining to the collapse of the old economy.  We’ve been way too wasteful.  We bought stuff, lots of stuff, we didn’t need, and we gravely abused our planet.  It was all unsustainable.  But since the old economy paid our bills, its collapse comes with a raging river of human suffering.

So here comes the cavalry.  The bugle blows and Obama rides to our rescue.  Well maybe.  I hope so.  He’s intelligent, reasonable and inspiring.  But is government the right tool to fix what ails us?  Our own government’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently estimated that one-third of our annual $3 trillion in taxes is wasted.  We receive no value for it.  That’s just the way it is.  A trillion gone.  It’s true that some things government does best.  But mostly what I want government to do is make and enforce laws that promote fairness and justice.  I want them to keep the playing field as level as possible.  I want them to prevent corruption.  I want them to take the “special” out of special interests.

But one thing they are not good at is valued job creation.  The fundamental problem of government employment and government contracting for services is non-existent accountability.  When there are no consequences for under performance, underperformance is usually what we get way too much of.  Helping big business is not much better.  For the past 30 years they’ve been in the business of cutting jobs, not creating them.  For instance, General Motors has shrunk its global workforce by 75% over the past three decades as its market share shrank.

So what’s the best thing we can do?  Let’s try something completely simple and completely radical.  Before I propose it let me be clear there are lots and lots of details to work out.  So I need your help with creative solutions to all the ways this could fail.  But just hear me out.

Our core economic challenge we have is to create reasonable paying, needed jobs.  Jobs that create value.  Jobs that have performance accountability.  Jobs that build a sustainable future.  Jobs that make our nation stronger and benefit the world.  And we need to create these jobs not through a government bureaucracy but through ingenuity of millions of citizen entrepreneurs and professionals working with local, national, and global business.  Here’s how.

Our federal government can issue a tax credit equal to one percent of gross sales of all businesses with a business license.  So a $1 billion business would get a $10 million reduction on their taxes that they could carry forward if they had no profits.  A small business with $250,000 in sales would get a $2,500 credit.  However, this credit would only be valid if the money was directly invested in a new business that made money by benefiting humanity or healing the environment.  New businesses would qualify by meeting well-established Socially Responsible Investing Standards (SRI).  (This means no investments in cigarettes, vices, weapons or heavy polluters.) There are also many standards to judge socially responsible enterprise used in social venture capital competitions held throughout the world.   A simple annual audit form would have to be submitted by the new business to qualify for further investment in future years.

Based on our total GDP this ought to create about $100 billion in private capital to go in a new company and job creation for sustainable solutions to our most urgent problems.  This money would not go through the hands of bureaucrats but would be our money directly invested by us.   If we maintained this for five years it would be close to $500 billion invested in our new future.  My view is this would stimulate innovation, job creation, and sustainable business thinking faster and more broadly than anything else.  Of course not every business would work.  But the efficiency of the market place would reward good ideas and competence and bureaucratic waste would be minimized.

Oh, one last thing.  We’d all be investors.  You see we, the taxpayers, would own 10% of any new business funded by our tax credits.  Who knows, our investment in the future may even help pay off our national debt.  No, this won’t solve all our problems…but it would spur new business formation in the businesses we need for our future right now.

So, what do you think?  How would you improve it?  If we can create a workable program, I am off to Washington.  Obama, you better buckle up.

Letter to President-elect Obama

Dear President Obama,

First of all, congratulations on your historic victory.  Your election is a vivid affirmation of the American Dream.  Anything is possible in America.  Truly.

Now let me offer you a word of caution.  Please don’t misread your election as a mandate for the traditional Democrat liberal agenda.  What we want is real change.  Change that is not a swing to the left.  We don’t want a refried “Great Society.”  We just want change that gives everyone an honest chance to be self-reliant and contribute to our common good. We want change from the increasingly narrow and corrupt view that creating a class of super-rich would somehow benefit all the rest of us.  We don’t want to have a foreign policy based on fear.  We don’t want an economy based on buying stuff made in China.  We don’t want to be lied to.  What we do want is a President we respect.  We need to trust your judgment and your character.  We hope we can.  Just be what you say you are.

Here is what I’ve heard from Americans across the country over the past five years:

1. We want an economy built on innovation, production and creating a sustainable future.  We want to lead the world in invention and quality.  (We are sick about leading the world into a world-wide recession based on a few people’s greed.)
2. We want universal health care for all Americans.  We don’t want a European or Canadian version.  We want a uniquely American best-in-the-world answer of quality, affordability health for all.  Of course it’s going to be hard, but that’s why you were elected.
3. We want a strong, wise and good foreign policy.  We want the world’s respect.  We want to be moral leaders with moral authority.  We want to respect all cultures and promote local solutions to local problems whenever possible.  We want real strength against terrorists, sound intelligence and a campaign to promote pluralism, tolerance and civilization around the world.
4. We want clean, renewable energy now.  We want you to promote a broad-based investment to create a world-wide solution.  We should lead the world to sustainable non-polluting energy.
5. We want a fair, legal and smart immigration policy.  We don’t want to exploit undocumented workers or build an economy that requires us to.
6. We want free, quality education for every child and every student in high school and college.  This is the greatest investment in our future we can make.  We want education that is efficient, relevant, and engaging.  We must have the best education in the world.  No excuses.
7. We want wise regulation to promote the healing of our environment, corporate governance, safe food and drugs and protection from financial corruption.  We want to trust our banks and business leaders.

Well, we are pretty sure you know what we want.  Now that you’re off the campaign trail and the immediacy of voters in your face, we want you to remember our voices.  Please resist the pressures of special interests.  Don’t listen to those who agree with you.  Least of all those who praise you.  Always reach for a higher solution.  Please bring us together to create a new future.  This could be a great new era for America if you make it so.

Please be the leader you’ve promised to be.  You simply must.  Our future depends on it.  If you do your part, believe me, we will do ours.  That’s something you can depend on.  “Yes you can!”

It’s a great time to be an American if we make it so!

Will Marre

Feedback or additions before I send it off?