Losing The Health Care Argument

One suspects that President Obama's handling of the Health Care issue is not indicative of his lovemaking ability. If it were, he would be facing a divorce hectored by Rush Limbaugh on top of the daunting issues already sitting on his desk.

President Obama built his brand with an outreach to the political center. He has done a poor job of that lately. We have detailed the President's passed ball on green energy. That one went all the way to the backstop in a different stadium. Mr. Obama's agenda is getting savaged by a milquetoast presentation and what appears to be a fundamental lack of desire to reconnect with the people most responsible for his election.

For all of this criticism, one recognizes that the administration has done an admirable job of expressing itself responsibly and treating the debate (a bit too) thoughtfully. Regrettably, the Republican opposition has been very successful demagoguing the Rove-Atwater ankle-biting, testicle-punching, sand-throwing propaganda tactics. The President is not going to realize a reversal of current trends until he becomes angry, yanks his opposition up by the hair, and slams them into a turnbuckle at full force.

As stated in the discussion about Cap and Trade, empowering the liberal wing of the Democratic party with the details of presentation has proved to be a poor use of Obama's political capital. Obama's jury is in the center, and the entire presentation has been committed to people who drive Swedish cars and listen to NPR on their way to Whole Foods. That can be defined as converting the converted. Less fortunate for the administration are the Camrys and Accords catching right-wing screeds on the way to Kroger.

The President's first objective must be to narrow the term "socialist." For nearly anyone with a dictionary in the house, it would not be hard. The Clear Channel-Fox News axis is particularly fond of the term. In an instant, Roger Ailes' propaganda machine is able to hitch an idea coming from the Obama White House to unattractive little cars tooling between grimy concrete apartment blocks.

The pitfall for the right is that of any panacea which becomes abused. The effectiveness dwindles to nothing. A speech that puts some pavement between Health Care Reform which includes PRIVATE providers and Socialism is necessary. Should Mr. Obama defang the opposition's number-one favorite go-to word, there exists no equivalent, effective backup. Conservatives are only left with asinine portmanteaux.

President Obama is more than capable of delivering an optimistic message which takes the mischaracterization of socialism off the table for good. What can be achieved simultaneously is the contextualization of the current federal participation in health care. At the moment the United States and Canada spend the same amount per capita on the governmental level for health care. The Canadians have a functional, relatively transparent system of universal medicine, which approximately 90% of Canadians describe as good or excellent. (See enclosed link from CTV News in Toronto.)

We in the United States, on the other hand, are paying a sirloin price for stale chicken hot dogs.

The public-private duality of the Obama plan must be clarified on the President's terms. A private option, and the ability to move between public and private plans serves as a check on the growth of government. It also serves as a release for pressures to undo a public system by political means. A key motivator of many who preferred President Obama to Secretary of State Clinton in the primaries was his endorsement of a Universal solution which included Private insurers.

A single-payer public health care system in a diverse population of 300 million is unworkable due to its political vulnerabilities. The quasi-private system that exists is unworkable because it fails to cover one in six people, and thusly leaves the nation in a system of de facto rationing. This disproportionately affects less affluent and minority Americans by denying access to medicine, particularly those with chronic conditions which are factors of poverty.

The administration's preferred health care system requires a comparison of total cost to society as compared to the status quo. The best idea would be to have the estimates drawn by several partisan think tanks so as to provide a range of values which would not be impeachable by partisanship. Every group would be instructed to use the same criteria and methodology.

Similarly, the status quo offers the opportunity for some well-justified populism. While incessant populism quickly becomes tiresome, a short burst against a worthy opponent gives Obama's credibility a shot of painfully absent vitality. He could have given the What? Now they can't compete? discussion a bit more time, and saved himself the drama he finds himself in now. A seasoning of mild populism leverages appeals to small businesses and working class families.

Once equipped with independent, empirical data, the case in the president's favor hews closely to his usual style of cool reason. When armed with the tools of logic, President Obama is nonpareil in his ability to offer a clear, informed engagement as to how the average person will benefit from Health Care Reform. Taking the mantle from congressional master debaters and vitiriolic radio polemecists plays to Obama's greatest strength, analytical rhetoric that focuses upon the justification for a plan without the caprice of gratuitous emotion.

President Obama is well aware of Stephen Colbert's lesson: Reality has a well-known liberal bias.

When Right Is Wrong

As the worthy opposition in talk radio rants and raves about President Obama's economic recovery package, one wishes to suggest that the conservative talkers are spectacularly wrong about everything.

Privately-based solutions to issues facing the public are infinitely preferable to those coming from the public sector. However, the state of the private sector is such that the catastrophic collapse of large segments of the private intellectual infrastructure has occurred. Free markets can only survive when both the production and consumption sides function as equals.

In the case of the US banking and finance industries, the lack of public oversight left the consumer at a disadvantage to the producer. Ultimately liberties were taken which could not be supported by the market, leaving the production side of the equation with a handful of well-intentioned wishes which were legal and worthless tender simultaneously. Whether we like it or not, the public sector has a role in assuring that the practices of the production side do not overmatch the capabilities of the consumption side.

This goes the same for petroleum companies not gouging the price of gasoline and unions not gouging the price of labor.

At a moment when the economy is shrinking, government has a role as as a parallel conduit for capital improvement. If progress is blocked by large dead obstacles on the normal private path, then it is the necessary role of the public sector to ascertain that the well being of the nation continue to progress regardless.

President Obama's plan appears to have a functional system of mechanisms which appear to promote at least an illusion of rewarding initiative and empowering incentive for enterprises which accept risk. This is not Socialism, which attempts to restrain risk through planned production and scheduled shortage to perpetuate an underserved market receiving inferior product protected from competition by legislative fiat. Socialism isolates a nation behind walls, holding its people incommunicado from new ideas, ultimately enslaving multitudes by appealing to atavistic mistrust of the unknown.

Frankly, the cultural practices of socialism reflect more those of conservative talk radio than the last-resort leveraging of the public sector by a President faced with an economic crisis not of his making. We appreciate the thought that a strict orthodoxy of lower taxes, smaller government, and minimal reliance upon the public sector are keys to the nation's prosperity. Unfortunately, a sampling of large nations indicates that this is not true.

The tax burden in Germany is 42%. Norway's burden is 29%. The USA, Canada, and Australia are all at 24%. Mexico is at 8%. So far, if this wisdom holds constant, Mexico should be the most affluent of all of the countries.

A review of hourly incomes in manufacturing jobs after taxes in Germany, the US, Australia, and Canada has all four countries hovering between US$17-19. The Germans are at the high end, US$18.86, while the US, Canada, and Australia hover within about a quarter of US$17.60. The Norwegians smoked everybody drawing US$24.59, and the Mexicans came in at US$2.30.

Wait a minute, I'm confused! The Mexicans, with the lowest tax rate, the greatest local control of schools, the smallest presence of labor unions, a stricter emphasis upon border security and the strongest structures impeding imported goods, came in DEAD LAST? But, AM talk radio has been telling us that these things would lead to prosperity for twenty years!

Okay, well, Mexico has a heavily deregulated and completely private health care system. They should be the best cared for people, and the life expectancy should reflect that. The Mexican people only spend 6.2% of their GDP on medicine. Men can expect to live to 72.6, women 78.3.

Americans spend 15.2% of their GDP on a private health care system, over US$5700 per person, and get 74.8 for men, 80.1 for women. But this is supposed to be the best health care system in the world. So how come Norwegians, Germans, and Canadians pay less per capita (9-11% of GDP) but get over a year more life expectancy from their nationalized public health systems than we do in the United States? The average dollar outlay is even more dramatic, hovering at half(!!!!!) of what we pay for our health care as Americans.

One country would be a fluke. Two would be questionable. But a view of industrialized nations with nationalized health care shows a consistent per capita cost of between US$2500 and US$3200 per person. One may not speak for a gentle reader, but it looks like Americans are getting the raw end on this one.

After further review...the ruling is such...talk radio is lying to their listeners. The leveraging of public resources for the good of the population paying for them may qualify as socialism under a very broad interpretation of the term. However, the lesson of other industrialized countries, including our next door neighbors in Canada and Mexico, indicates that a certain level of taxaton is necessary and a certain level of publicly-based solutions are necessary for the continued wellbeing and prosperity of the nation.

For those who have invested their faith in the Portly Pundit and Hannie Pie, go get a World Almanac and prove me wrong. Utopianism, be it through a Capitalist or Socialist economic model, is spectacularly unworkable.

Imitating the practices of the Mexican Government is most likely to produce the same results as Mexico. We would be well served by taking our lessons from the neighbor which does not have millions of people risking their lives for a better existence as the object of scorn and prejudice.

Nobody is trying to deport Mike Myers, no matter how little they liked The Love Guru.