Ken Nelson

 
Aerial shot of Kansas City schools

Between 1985 and 2003 Federal Judges took over Kansas City, Missouri and channeled 2 billion dollars to the school district. 

Not only did they double property taxes to pay this huge bill, but they imposed an income tax surcharge on everyone who lived or worked in the city.

…

Despite this massive effort, litigation failed either to improve the quality of education or to reduce racial isolation. Test scores continued to drop, and the percentage of minority students continued to rise. Eventually, black parents—who had long opposed the court’s heavy emphasis on "magnet schools" designed to draw whites into the school system—insisted upon a return to neighborhood schools.

Yesterday, the district voted a plan to shut down half their schools and fire 700 of their 3000 employees.

Why, exactly, do we think the Feds can run our health care any better?

Maybe he’s talking about Medicare
when he tries to scare us about those “insurance companies”?

I love my insurance company (Intermountain Healthcare). They’ve paid through the nose for me over the last two years. Other than a brief scuffle trying to get a rheumatologist, they been very supportive and helpful through two years of expensive health struggles. They have denied one procedure, recently, and… it turns out they were right.  The referred doctor found the problem was another part of my hip.

My wife mentioned yesterday that for all the Obama griping about “insurance companies” the actual insurance that rejects the highest number of claims is….

MEDICARE

They reject 6.85% of claims.  Aetna came in close – so I doubt many folks are “glad they met ya Aetna”. But I suspect that many of the rejections in the private insurance come in their Medicare gap insurance – or in other words the “no” originates from government rulings.

Now to the OBVIOUS here… when we are all under the government, who will we compare them too, who will we turn to when they decline us – which they will?

SEIU is also exempt from anti-trust rules. How about changing that?

The House voted to remove antitrust exemptions that health insurance companies have.

I’m not sure, exactly, how the exemption helps companies that are largely state based. The industry claims removing it won’t matter a whole lot.

I’ve got two problems with this. The first is that I don’t like Congress aiming at a particular industry, especially when they largely have political aims not the merit of the actual proposal as their goal.

The second problem is that the anti-trust exemptions unions have causes far more havoc in the economy.  Why not just get rid of anti-trust exemptions – period???

Well, we know that the Democrats don’t do anything for the country as a whole, they operate for their constituencies – unions, unproductive, bought off minorities, and terrorists.  And we know that the Republicans are too stupid, or timid, or both, to fight for the country.

What a bunch of maroons we have “leading us”. We probably deserve the thumping the next decade is going to give us. 

"Have you no shame?" he asked Anthem president Leslie Margolin at a special hearing.

Democratic Assemblyman Dave Jones
California Assembly

Dave… you and your colleagues have wrecked the most vibrant state in the Union in just 15 years. And you ask about “shame”?

You don’t want to get into one of those… believe me!

In statements and letters, Anthem and WellPoint have explained what the industry calls a recessionary death spiral: as unemployment and declining wages prompt healthy people to drop their insurance, the remaining risk pool becomes sicker and more expensive to insure, which in turn forces up prices and pushes more people out of the market.

I’m sure that Anthem is screwing its customers as much as it can get away with. But the ONLY reason that happens is that California and the Federal Government have driven out most insurers from California.

If Anthem is screwing you, switch. Ooops… nobody home?  Well, bitch to California, not to a business trying to earn a buck.

I don’t understand how business works.
I do know how to write moronic letters.

Lets start with three facts:

• an insurance company spent $9.5 lobbying
• the CEO of that company earned $10 million
• the same company raised rates 39% on those it insured in California

The letter writer, Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, bitched to its CEO:

Your company’s strong financial position makes these rate increases even more difficult to understand. As you know, your parent company, WellPoint Incorporated, has seen its profits soar, earning $2.7 billion in the last quarter of 2009 alone.

Highlighting that she is a complete moron lacking, like most Obama administration members, any understanding of business and the purpose of profit.

Ms. Sebelius, profits are not earned to reward customers. Profits are earned to reward shareholders. If more Obama administration members understood this FUNDAMENTAL principal of business they might actually craft “jobs” bills that would help jobs, or at least not hurt them.

Insurance companies that do not rate customer pools based on their risks do not remain insurance companies for long. Instead, they end up like AIG, Freddie Mac, and other government bailed out failures.  Companies that waste profits do not remain profitable long, nor do their shareholders value them.

Anthem Blue Cross should be congratulated on its performance, not chastised.  Its customers can choose to punish the company if they don’t like the new prices and the Department of HHS has no business threatening a private company.

As to the writer of this “news report”… he exemplifies the liberal bias of the modern journalist.

Not a heart doctor in sight

A rich dude from Canada, and also the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador Province, needed a heart surgery.  In the entire province, nobody does heart surgeries. Rather than wait it out elsewhere in Canada, he went to the U.S.

On February 1, 2010, Williams’ office confirmed that he would be undergoing heart surgery, and had already left the province for an undisclosed location in the United States for the procedure. According to his Deputy Premier, Kathy Dunderdale, Williams decided to go to the U.S. for surgery after weeks of consultation with his doctors. She said, "Having the surgery done in the province was never an option." She said she couldn’t comment on whether the type of surgery Williams is having was available elsewhere in the country. “Ultimately we have to be the gatekeepers of our own health and he has taken medical advice from a number of different sources,” she said. “He is doing what’s best for him.”

I agree, he should do what’s best for him.  But I betcha he could have his choice of doctors in Newfoundland if they didn’t have socialized medicine in Canada.

All 50 of our states have such capabilities.

A urology practice opted out of the insurance racket a few years back. They love it!

I can imagine how the old guys must have felt. This is what doctoring is all about…. it is like being free for the first time.

I’d like to see more of this. Even though procedures can cost larger money than most people can pay out of pocket, financing them over time could be cheaper than paying insurance ongoing.

Combining high deductible catastrophic insurance with this approach seems the only realistic way to cut healthcare costs while letting patients decide what they will do without.

I just had a back procedure disapproved by my insurance company. I’m not mad at them, they have a job to do, and they’ve certainly done right by me in the last three years. But as I imagine a government person denying me, and how little I could do about it, I’m glad that, for now, health care single payer isn’t happening.

H/T: Carpe Diem

We don’t need laws like this.             This is better.

Our government insists on “comprehensive” bills that cost a lot, do not work, permit pork, and are largely special interest buys offs.  This happens in Republican and Democratic governments, but is worse in Democratic ones because they do not have a philosophy as much as a group of constituencies allied to hose those not in the alliance.

Take, for instance, health care spending. Yes, all can agree the rise in healthcare costs will be a problem. I don’t think most agree that access to healthcare is a problem. Most people have access to great healthcare.  And it makes no sense to argue that $260 billion or so we spend a year on medical drugs isn’t money well spent. It is far less than we spend on professional sports ($400 billion) and public education ($560 billion) but with much better results. I’d rather demonize the hapless Dallas Cowboys and ineffectual public schools than the drug companies that keep me alive every day.

A reasoned look at health care expenses would look for inefficiencies and it would look at at where most spending goes.  It would look for levers.

The simplest way to reduce inefficiency is to have people pay directly for health care. There are any number of ways to do that, I favor tax free savings accounts for medical expenses combined with high deductible insurance.

Another way to reduce inefficiency is to permit health insurance to be sold nationally.

I go to a Physicians Assistant for most of my medical needs. They cost less and deliver excellent, timely, care.  Maybe we should have a lot more of this type of provider?

Did you know that diabetes accounts for 30% of federal spending on healthcare?  Might it be smart to focus on a cure for diabetes? Yes it would be.

So instead of one crazy take over of 1/5th the US economy “to fix” healthcare, why not a series of focused bills that we can read and understand. 

I’d like Republicans, and sane Democrats (if they remain) to come together to pass laws like these:

• Cut Defensive Medicine Costs Act – A one page law eliminating most malpractice lawsuits.  Here I defy my Libertarian roots… I’m not sure of the mechanism implementing this law, but I’m pretty sure 100% taxation would do it.
• Insurance Competition Act… A one page law permitting national insurance and denying any federal funds to any state that regulates national plans.
• Healthcare Personal Responsibility Act…short law that rewards those who have high deductible plans.
• More HealthCare Providers Act…. Deny all federal funds to states that do not simplify PA / NP requirements for work and schooling. Do not directly fund PA or NP education, the schools will just raise prices.
• Manhattan Project for Diabetes… focus federal R&D on short term plan to dramatically stem diabetes.

You get the idea…. simple, market based, one lever laws. No pork permitted. No earmarks. No “horse-trading” with Nebraska or Louisiana.  Identify a high impact, simple, “lever” solution, and do just that.

Republicans/Independents/Libertarians can take back the country if the combine resistance to Democratic craziness with proposals that the citizenry can understand and believes will help EVERYBODY.

I guess we are all scabs now

I’m not surprised that I get to pay a tax on my healthcare plan, but a union fellow with a better plan that he doesn’t pay for, doesn’t have to pay the tax.

And so it looks like they may have reached a deal sooner than otherwise expected: unions get a special two-year exclusion from the tax.

So not only does the healthcare bill kill our medical system it also kills any pretense that this government is of the people, for the people.

The Obama Administration really is the best money can buy.

Last night as I shut down the house for bedtime, some moron came on the TV saying he was disappointed with the current health care reform because “it didn’t provide free healthcare to everybody”.

What an awful last thing to hear before attempting sleep. The guy owns a coffee shop, gets hit with outrageous taxes at all levels of government, and still thinks healthcare can be “free”.

What a moron… yet, he votes. It certainly is depressing knowing idiots like that are out there offsetting my vote.

What is really depressing about it is that he isn’t a moron because he disagrees with me. He is a moron because he IS A MORON who doesn’t recognize a rape even when its happening to him.

We got George, an 8 to 9 year old Black Lab, from Best Friends a couple of years ago. He was overweight when we got him.  We got some off, but it was hard because he just was having trouble exercising.   I’d actually given up taking him on walks because he couldn’t go very far, maybe 1/2 a mile. He looked to be in such pain, I didn’t think it was really doable. The Vet gave us medicine for him, but it seemed to do little good.

But this school break I decided to walk him, and me, twice a day. Going as far as either of us could manage. I’ve got lower back problems, walking hurts. And I’m  taking medicine for pre-diabetes, rapid heart rate, and high blood pressure. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I’m a wreck (largely due to an accident a couple years back).

But, I figured,  we will just see what either of us can do.  I had two goals… get George “frisky” again, and get me off my meds through diet and exercise.

This was George, this morning, about 3.5 miles into a river walk:

And once I took him off the leash, he led the way, ranging here and there. Like a dog. Two weeks ago, he would be on leash, 30’ behind, struggling just to move one foot in front of the other.

Congratulations George!

As to me…. well, the resting heart rate just before I wrote this was 101, the BP 190/87, and well… I’ve got a ways to go. I suspect, due to a broken pituitary gland (courtesy the afore mentioned accident) that my body chemistry is just screwed up and though I may be 45 years old,  6’, 180lbs, 13% body fat, my innards will not function well no matter what I do. 

C’est le vie!  I enjoy the walks and will continue to do them as long as I can.  I think this afternoon we will strap on the leash again and walk to Chili’s (about 2 miles) for dinner.

BTW: Fritz, our 2 year old dauschund, easily ranges 3 miles for every mile we walk. His legs may be little, but he has abundant energy.

My own Christmas miracle was that I wasn’t sick this Christmas, making this Christmas markedly different from the past 40 or so Christmases.  But on to a truly amazing story and actual Christmas Miracle…

A woman dies of cardiac arrest during labor. An emergency C-section, with no anesthesia, brings out a dead baby as well. At this point:

"Half of my family was laying there in front of me, there’s no other way to say it, but dead," said Mike.

But then the miracles happened, his wife revived after being dead for minutes, and:

After the delivery, doctors rushed Tracey to the operating room to complete the surgery. In the meantime, Coltyn’s tiny, lifeless, body was handed to his father Mike. Doctors still worked to get the baby breathing. "They actually got him started right in my hands. That is an amazing feeling," said Mike.

Pretty scary but a great result. I’m glad for their family.

Alas the comment sections descend into rants about if God is real or not, proving that even the stupid can figure out how to get on the internet these days.

Harry Reid, after the big vote 

Eliminating the guild of doctors, permitting insurance competition, and reducing the litigation that drives defensive medicine costs, would have cost the government nothing to implement, have saved them billions, and improved all our health.

So why didn’t we get that for Christmas?  Is it tacky for me to regift this to another country – say Canada?

From Britain comes encouraging news that scientists have fully decoded the cancer genome. This means:

Not only will the cancer maps pave the way for blood tests to spot tumours far earlier, they will also yield new drug targets, says the Wellcome Trust team.

That is terrific news – and keep it coming please!

But congratulations aren’t the purpose of this post. Scolding and reality check is.

Currently there are NO solutions to our healthcare cost dilemma.

Democrats try to play sleight of hand by sticking young people with more of the bill, and trying to hide cost cuts imposed on seniors, while using the huge bills to hide payoffs to constituency groups like the SEIU.

Republicans do a little better. Their market based proposals actually would defer health care “judgment day”  a bit.

But even sound proposals, like tort reform, and moving away from third party payment systems, can only push back, not defeat the aging population soon to swamp our healthcare delivery and finance systems.

The ONLY way forward is to fund science, reform drug and medical procedure approval systems with an eye towards SPEED, and hope it works.

Where to focus?  Diabetes currently takes up something like 40% of our healthcare system costs. Amazing isn’t it…. a War on Diabetes might be the best war we ever fought.

Right now, only science can save us, and the best thing we can do is give it the time it may need. The Democratic proposals hasten the end.  Republican plans help, moderately, and should be enacted.