Addendum to HCR (next post)...

The job of state government in Health Care:

1. Make sure that there is sufficient educational capacity to train: doctors, nurses and all the support staff.

2. Make sure there are sufficient facilities, including mobile units for rural areas (the vast majority of Texas is rural), for routine health care.

3. Make sure sufficient health care personnel are available to serve everybody in the state.

These services are aided by everyone having health care, including the choice of a strong, public option.

Why Health Care Reform has stalled…

The party of ‘NO’ (a.k.a., Republican) is throwing up all manner of obstruction to stop Health Care Reform (HCR) legislation.

Why?

Because they are terrified of success!

If HCR was going to fail the ‘NO’ party would have feigned misgivings, then grudgingly allowed the legislation to pass. The whole debate about HCR is to prevent a Democratic Party success prior to the 2010 election. If HCR legislation barely passes just before the elections the ‘NO’ folks could use scare tactics about the new programs while voters go to the polls.

If one looks at all the industrialized and developing countries of the world, you’ll find that they all have at least a strong, public, health care option, cover nearly everybody and pay no more than half what Americans pay for their current health care coverage, if they can get it.

The ‘NO’ say HCR will cause restricted access to health care. If you have done every preventative measure since you were developing in the womb, then you require less treatment for medical surprises; problems were prevented or treated earlier and easier (appears to be restricted access).

The ‘NO’ say the HCR will cost more. When medical professionals are paid, generous, appropriate salaries, instead of billing per incident (our dominant current practice), the incidences of overdoing everything, at least twice, will stop.

If a public health option was not a good idea, our legislators should not have single (tax) payer, health insurance; an even more socialist option.

Outsourcing manufacturing...

Today I am starting with a quick quiz.

Ready?

Question 1) What do you get when you move a factory from inside the USA to a location outside the USA?

Question 2) What do you lose when you move a factory from inside the USA to a location outside the USA?

Question 3) What is the name of this process?

Answers:
1) You get a reasonably equivalent product made less expensively.
2) You lose people that can afford your product (a.k.a., customers).
3) This process is known as: Saving Too Much Money!

Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company (not known as a working class hero), understood that an employee who could afford to buy the product that he or she helps to make increases one’s customer base (a.k.a., growing the business).

A question to promote discussion:
1) How does one’s vendor manufacture an equivalent product for less money, even after shipping costs are factored in, while still making a profit?

Answers may be found in an old post on this very blog!

Continuing… We are in a recession where jobs are disappearing by the millions! How is it going to help the consumers, who are approximately 70% of the economy, when their jobs continue to reappear outside of our country?

If you are angry when you think about what you’ve just read, then you understand the problem and need to discover how you might become a part of the solution; every little contributory effort counts.

If you don’t see a point to this post, then you are probably part of the management teams sending these jobs overseas and need to remember that your job is also able to be done by folks in countries that have pay rates significantly lower than yours.

What are we to do?

It was reported, in the New York Times, that a letter was sent by seven former CIA directors asking President Obama to stop the Justice Department’s investigation into past abuses… These issues have, they stated, already been investigated. So, reviewing these events will not produce any new, more embarrassing, information about illegal activities. Will they?

The former directors don’t seem to understand that the rule of law must apply to everyone to be effective. The people at any government agency must evaluate how best to do their jobs and if they feel it is necessary to operate outside the law, there will be consequences.

The directors say that there will be disclosures that will help al Qaeda elude capture… Like Osama Bin ‘Forgotten?’

We are a nation of laws that encourages others to follow our lead. Are we to become hypocrites? Do we want others to follow that lead?

Remember, “People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.” That is a quote from a former President of these United States: Bill Clinton.

Thoughts for today...

“Blue Dog” Democrats, and others, say that they want to make sure that health care reform controls cost.

Every other industrialized country in the world has at least a public health insurance option, cover nearly everybody and pay less than half (per capita) of what we pay.

The only folks who don’t understand this simple fact are those looking for an excuse to do nothing.


In the meantime… don’t forget to re-regulate the financial services (a.k.a., the market, Wall Street) industries!

The market defines innovation as finding new ways to avoid: regulation, review and responsibility.

Wall Street spews tales of its own wisdom and the incompetence of government, while seeking bail-outs from said government (requiring enormous quantities of the taxpayer’s money) when they find they’re snared in a trap of their own making; accepting dollars while admitting no culpability.

Dear Progressive Democrats and Independents,

We’ve allowed others to control some of our issues, and it is well past time that we took control back.

‘Pro-choice’ and ‘family planning’ have been mislabeled as ‘pro-abortion.’ Ask any Republican you care to why they belong to the ‘retro-active abortion’ party. How is it acceptable to kill an adult, while claiming to be ‘pro-life?’

To those who say that the government should not be involved in anything, because the government can’t do anything right… How did we come to live in the country that is the only super-power in the entire world? It is the strength of the U.S. military; part of our federal government and state military reserves!

Heard of the Internet or GPS? They were developed by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency); a part of the military and federal government!

Only 66 years after the first, manned, powered flight one country landed people on the moon and returned them safely to Earth; NASA, a federal government agency, accomplished it. Efforts by NASA, DARPA, NSF, NIH, NSA, etc… have led to the computer on your lap, phone in your pocket, music and movies stored on media the size of a commemorative postage stamp, etc…

Have you heard of one of the world’s foremost cancer research and treatment centers? MD Anderson Cancer Center, a part of the UT system. How about the Scott and White clinics, hospitals and research center? These are a part of the TX A&M system.

Did you know that two, of three, top tier universities in TX are public universities? UT Austin and TX A&M College Station!

The roads, schools, emergency service providers, airports, seaports, post office, water, sewage, etc… The things one takes for granted, are brought to you by your municipal, state or federal governments, or by a contractor to same.

Is government perfect? No. Does it get everything right, all the time? No. Do you know of any individual or institution that can answer yes?

If someone tells you that there shouldn’t be a public health option, because the government can’t do anything right… Tell them that they need to be grateful that the rock they dwell beneath is here in the USA, because here they are free to choose not to understand the simple facts listed above.

The artificial dispute twixt science and religion.

There is an artificial conflict between science and religion being pursued and exacerbated by those whose intent is more feudal than religious. Religion has long explained the unknown to human society, because, “I don’t know,” is the most difficult pronouncement most people can imagine.

As people began to observe and understand the world around them, natural curiosity encouraged efforts to discover ever more. Knowledge became powerful, and some used it to accrue social power, status and/or material wealth. Some used what was known as a basis for learning more and others learned so that they might teach and encourage more folks to do the same… The groups are not mutually exclusive.

O’er the course of human development people have often associated knowledge with mystical or religious authority, and those who would leverage that for power and wealth tried hard to keep information to themselves. By the Renaissance period of the western world, knowledge had become too widespread and the genie was out of the bottle.

Losing control of knowledge was bothersome, but not overwhelming to the aristocrats (who were rapidly evolving into plutocrats of the post feudal period), because high social status was still largely limited to white, wealthy men and their entourages.

Events of the Renaissance had led to scientific and social experimentation that spawned a phrase which became the basis of a new nation: “…that all men are created equal.” That phrase was to lead to a society that would, eventually, resemble that remark.

There has always been (and always will be) a segment of the population that finds the aforementioned phrase, at best, distasteful. Now, as the phrase approaches near complete social acceptance and practice, we begin to see an increasingly restive movement of plutocrats, aristocrat wannabes, (and their sycophants) attempting the restoration of old ways.

Trying to return to the past has been an effort governed largely by civility, but as desperation rises civility often falls by the wayside. In population, we who are melanin challenged are due to become the largest minority in the USA. In positions of wealth and power, there is an ever increasing presence of women and less melanin challenged minorities.

Religion can be interpreted to appear as if it conflicts with science in a manner that allows it to be used as a lever against the social progress of the last millennia. That most scientists have religious beliefs, and most religions are comfortable with the progress of science specifically, and society generally, disproves the fantasy of those desperate for a return to anachronistic ways.