HELTHКAЯE ЯEFORM (Part 3)

I created no small amount of controversy with Part 2: some accused me of claiming that doctors are somehow more important as humans than are mechanics. Nothing could be further from the truth and I am sorry that some misinterpreted my comments that way. I guess I could’ve calibrated those words differently. All human life is equal and no one person is any more valuable than another; although, if we were all stranded in the Andes and the group was starving, I do believe the doctor would be sitting in a safer position than the mechanic. Hey, don’t feel bad… I’m just a writer. That means I’d be eaten before the dog.

Speaking of furry four-legged animals, today’s focus is going to be on cats… cats of the fat variety. You may not realize this but there are people in this country that make more money than anyone really needs to survive. And these Fat Cats are just the ones that Congress is targeting to fill in some gaps in the Healthcare Reform tab. What they’re looking for from these folks is another $200 billion. Now, everyone knows that rich people are loathe to relinquish money to help other people, so Congress is going to use taxes, once again, to pry some of it out of their greedy little clutches. These tax revenues are going to add another 20% to the healthcare reform funds.

Given that so much of our healthcare monies are going to come from these people, perhaps we need to get to know a little more about them. First of all, who the heck are the rich? Well, Barak Obama suggested that they are American households earning more than $200,000 a year, but Congress politely corrected him, defining them as people who earn $350,000 or more per year. Congress did show the good taste not to belabor the President’s gaff by pointing out the shear coincidence that the Speaker of the House rakes in $223,500 per annum. Lucky for her they aren’t following Obama’s guidelines!

So, rich people are non-public servants who make more than $350,000 per year. And now they are finally going to be held to the flame and forced to help out the little guy, and frankly, I can think of no better group to target. I’ve known one or two of these “Fat Cats,” and the things I could tell… Even though these people make money hand-over-fist, it seems to be the only thing they can think about. I mean, they’re always at work, so much so that it’s rare anybody but the cleaning crew gets to the office earlier or leaves later. Even when they aren’t at work they think about business: on the golf course, during skiing vacations, at the Lexus dealership, over breakfast, in the car. Even when they were younger and all their friends were going out, running up credit card bills and buying big houses, these entrepreneurs were squirreling away every penny they had, and for what? To invest in some dream of theirs. Furthering their education, starting a business, expanding a marketing campaign. All to make more money.

During all that time what were they doing for society? Ever see them march in protest at a G-8 Summit? No. Ever see them at the homeless shelter or hanging out at Starbucks? Nope. Bump into them at a sea turtle rally? As if. No, these greedy people were too busy at work, filling out paperwork, signing paychecks for dozens, hundreds, or thousands of employees (before their own), shopping for less expensive health insurance, trying to find more efficient work methods for their people, negotiating with unions, tweaking the company retirement plan to maximize returns, investing their time and personal income into their business, facing the consequences of the risks they have taken, dealing with politicians and regulators, fretting over finances, negotiating with the banks, watching the Fed bailout poorly managed financial behemoths while turning a blind eye on entire industries – and being forced to finance the scheme, looking for a return on their personal investment, and seeking ways to expand and provide jobs to even more people. That’s the type of stuff they were doing. Oh, I’ve seen the Fat Cats at work… usually at the office when I show up in the morning.

So we’re going to hit these people with a surtax of anywhere from 1 to 5.4% of their income, depending on how successful they’ve been in their professional careers. (If this seems unfair to you, that no one should tell another person how to spend their own money, just remember that it’s their own fault for earning such a ridiculously large sum. Nancy Pelosi and I are both glad our incomes are low enough that no one can step in and tell us how to spend our money.) Adding this new source of government income to the 5% of the healthcare reform expense that the drug industry will somehow conjure, and the 15% that the medical industry will offer up gives us a total of 40% of the bill, which is estimated to be $1.5 trillion now. (I will remind you later that this is in addition to the estimated $4.6 trillion Congress admits has been spent thus far in the bailout. For perspective, the Gross Domestic Product of the entire country is about $14 trillion.) Several of my liberal friends assured me that 40% would cover the entire bill, but my calculator keeps coming up 60% short. What if my calculator is right?

Not to worry: Congress has considered this possibility. They will merely get the rest of the healthcare expenses from businesses, small and large. Sure, there will be money coming in from a few other sources (2.5% of your salary in the event you refuse an offer of affordable health insurance, for example), but the bulk of that 60% remainder will come from corporate America. The good news is that corporate America can get its hands on enough money to support just about any socialist program that Washington can dream up, in the short-term anyway. The bad news is that you may not be fully aware of where corporate America gets that money. I’ll give you a hint: corporations create neither money nor value. I’ll cover that in detail in Part 4.

LET'S HEAR FROM YOU: Who should pay for your healthcare needs?

Whose healthcare needs are your financial responsibility?

Do you find it curious that Congress wants to force you to get health insurance (through the 2.5% penalty mentioned above)?

HELTHКAЯE ЯEFORM (Part 2)

At this point we’ve seen that the drug companies are willing to do their part to make this healthcare reform a reality, but we’ve also seen that their contribution is just not going to be enough. In fact, as much as they’ve promised to help - $50 billion dollars over the next 10 years – it only comes out to about 5% of the total bill. If we’re going to get universal healthcare, if every man, woman, and child in this country is going to be insured, someone else is going to have to step up to the plate. And someone has. The medical industry has opted in for another $150 billion. Way to go, guys!

And let me be the first to point out that it is about time, too. I’ve been in the hospital on several occasions having my knees surgically repaired. And do you know what? They took advantage of the fact that I had messed up my knees lifting weights and playing football and subsequently wanted them to work again in a normal way. The medical folks charged me all sorts of money for surgeons, anesthesiologists, radiologists, various pictures, nurses, facilities… everything but the kitchen sink, I guess. Heck, they even charged me $12.00 for an aspirin. (That is to say, they charged my parents’ insurance carrier, but you get my point.) Because I expected to be healthy – or made so again – the hospital and doctors took me for a ride!

And I know I’m not the only one. My step-son has been in and out of hospitals a number of times. The ONE consistency? They charged us money. All we wanted was for them to make him healthy and happy. He deserves that. We all deserve that. Why should the medical community make bundles of cash over our right to be healthy and happy? I’m sure you’ve experienced it. Ever look at your medical bills? “$600 for defibrillation and a ride to the hospital??!!” you might shout. “All because I had a heart attack? Ridiculous!” I feel your pain, even if the medical community doesn’t. So I’m glad they’re finally being taken to task on this issue. It’s high time they start working for us and our well-being.

I haven’t really heard any specifics on how the medical community and drug manufacturers are going to contribute their $200 billion share of the healthcare reform bill. In fact, I don’t remember hearing that they’re really going to pay anything; there was just talk of foregoing some profits… which I guess is the same thing. It’s all kind of confusing and ambiguous. At any rate, I feel we all should look for ways that the medical community can cut costs and forego profits for the sake of all of us who want nothing more than good medical attention.

First of all I think the hospitals can trim some facilities costs. Let’s start with the rooms – get rid of them. Not all of them, but with the advances in surgical techniques they should get rid of most of the beds and just send more people home after surgery. And reduce the sizes of the emergency rooms. When everyone has health insurance there won’t be as many people going to the emergency room in the middle of the night with stomach cramps or tooth aches. Hospitals should eliminate meals (nobody likes them anyway). And what’s with all the “oxygen” connections in the hospitals? There’s plenty of oxygen in the air already. And to fill all of the rooms and spaces in the hospitals that will be emptied, I say we rent them out as doctors’ offices. It’s silly for doctors to be spread out all over the city: put them all in one building.

And speaking of doctors, I think this is where the medical community can do the most significant and needed trimming of all. Have you ever seen what a doctor makes per year? It’s quite a lot I can tell you. These guys are driving Porsches and luxury cars, taking exotic vacations, and living in the proverbial “mansion on the hill.” Why should they get all that money when the rest of us don’t? What makes them so special that they should get paid so much more than the rest of us? Do you know that an average doctor makes around 10 times as much as an excellent mechanic? For what? Let’s take a little look at the two similar professions with very different compensation scales.

Professional Description:

Mechanic – works with complex systems to repair, maintain, and improve performance.
Doctor - works with complex systems to repair, maintain, and improve performance.
Mechanic – makes a mistake and you have to find a ride to work.
Doctor – makes a mistake and you get a ride to the morgue.

Education:

Doctor – valedictorian in high school, 4.0 GPA, student government, and various social organizations.
Mechanic – showed up for enough classes to graduate… possibly.
Doctor – 7 to 10 years of undergraduate and medical school and completion of a doctoral thesis, all to answer his calling to be a healer.
Mechanic – called a technical institute whose commercial aired during Jerry Springer.

Professional Training:

Doctor – 2 to 6 years of residency; low pay, 36-hour shifts, 120+ hours per week.
Mechanic – 40 hours per week at the shop, beer and football at Jeb’s (alignment guy) on Saturdays.

Lifestyle:

Doctor – personal time spent reading periodicals like the Journal of the American Medical Association, and attending medical seminars all over the country.
Mechanic – personal time spent drinking beer and watching Pinks on the Speed Channel.
Doctor – depression brought on by daily life-or-death decisions results in suicide rate 2x that of the general population.
Mechanic - if the heart attack at the bowling alley is non-fatal, can expect to die of natural causes (lung cancer) around 66 years of age.

I really don’t see that big a difference here. Mechanics charge you an arm and a leg just so you don’t have to use yours. Doctors charge you an arm and a leg just to fix yours. But doctors get paid so much more. I guess we’re left to believe that the difference in pay is justified as it is merely a reflection of the differences in a lifetime of choices and sacrifices doctors have made, as well as the critical importance the work they do has in our lives. What kind of a system of economics is that??!! It sounds almost like it is based upon value. Values – how does one put values into a socialist healthcare system?

HELTHКAЯE ЯEFORM (Part 1)

While going over the numbers I discovered that this blog received its longest-distance hit last week: Moscow, and I’m not talking about Kansas. So I asked myself, “Who was in Moscow last week?” Coupling this with the several hits I have gotten from Washington, DC, and a complete absence of scientific inquiry, I am left with just one conclusion: Barak Hussein Obama reads this blog. With that kind of attention how can I not address Helthkare Яeform?

I’m going to jump right in and explain how the healthcare reform is structured. I know what you’re thinking: But there are already problems with the proposals, and it seems there is no way it will even pass. True, there is a good chance that the current proposals will not pass, but you must realize that the ball has begun rolling. Healthcare reform will come; today, tomorrow, several years from now… no matter. And there are elements being bandied about today that will be a part of it. So let’s take a look at the basic structure.

Democrats, gladhanders, socialists, bleeding hearts, and lawyers want every single individual in this country to have healthcare coverage. The only way to realise this is to demand it through governmental policy. This policy will require every person/family in the country have health insurance. Of course, many won’t be able to afford it so the government will offer “affordable health insurance.” In the event this coverage is refused fines and penalties will be levied. There you have it. Poof! Everyone’s insured. There is no more illness. We all live forever.

I know what you’re thinking: What about paying for this affordable health insurance the government is going to provide? Yeah, that’s a tricky bit. Congress knows it, too. And why shouldn’t they? Just look at the bang up job they’ve done with Medicare and Social Security. How on earth could they promise to provide even more coverage? I suspect that ultimately these insurance policies will be “offered” through various private insurance companies. I say “offered” because it won’t be voluntary on the part of the insurance companies – it will be required.

Governments already do this in states that require auto insurance. Let me explain. You see, there is such a thing as too many DUIs or accidents in the private sector, if not in Congress. At some point a driver becomes uninsurable. But in some states insurance companies (based upon a rotation) are forced to provide the minimal coverage. Of course, this comes at a premium, because driving an auto is optional. But living isn’t.

If the government is going to require insurance companies to “offer” affordable health insurance, it will have to make the coverage affordable for the insurance companies themselves. If the companies are limited in the premiums they can charge individuals for such policies (it’s hard to bill poor people for something they already can’t afford, unless you’re Walmart), the government will have to take a multi-pronged approach to lowering the effective costs of those policies. Let’s examine some of those prongs.

PRESCRIPTION: Cheaper Drugs

First, the government can try to lower the cost of prescription drugs. Now, as we all know, prescription drugs – especially new, and thus, exclusive drugs – are extremely expensive. And it takes a whole lot of them to survive previously fatal conditions such as heart disease, cancer, erectile dysfunction, and old age to name a few. In order to lower these costs the government will have to get the drug companies to lower their prices. This is not easy.

Pharmaceutical companies spend billions and billions of dollars every year developing new drugs. In the end most of the drugs that hit the market (the ones that aren’t dropped before the very expensive R&D is even completed) are financial losers. Patents and exclusivity rights help offset these expenses and provide a much-deserved profit. Capitalists will see the complications with the government stepping in and demanding that prices be reduced. But the government already has.

Pharmaceutical companies currently give the government discounts. Medicare, Medicaid, and vaccination inventories are already supplied at steep discounts. (How would one refuse a regulatory body a requested price reduction?) So, if this is true, why are the drug makers already lining up with Washington and agreeing to “forego” much of their profits, around $50 billion over the next ten years in the current proposals? There are two answers to this question and I will provide an example for each.

Think back when you were young enough to “get in trouble” for breaking a rule, like staying out too late on your bike or burning down the neighbor’s cat. At some point an adult – could be a parent, a Sunday school teacher, or social worker – tried to bring you into the fold of responsibility by asking you what your punishment should be. Remember that? It was great! You’d assume a look of deep and serious introspection, let out a long and resolute sigh, and name the lamest punishment this side of Baretta. The drug industry knows how important it is to have input on one’s own punishment, so they are participating. Why not give up some “profit” over ten years if you can continue to enjoy exclusivity rights? Why not indeed.

Just like everything else in DC, there’s more to it than that. Let’s say, for example, your alcoholic uncle drove off a bridge, injuring himself and killing his young female passenger. He is prescribed medication for the pain. Sometime later you discover his abandoned OxyContin bottle in the trashcan next to his liquor cabinet. Now, if you were going to sell this on the street would you want the refill quantity to read 1 or 50? Fifty, of course. Again, the drug industry is counting on the fact that although they may have to reduce their prices for those with “affordable health insurance policies,” there will be more potential addicts- uh, I mean patients lining up for their prescriptions. Volume, baby, is not just for Vidal Sassoon.

So, Uncle Sam has the drug industry pulled into the game. And while $50 billion is a lot of money, it isn’t quite enough to offset the estimated $1 trillion cost of healthcare reform. In the next installment we’ll look at how the medical industry will have the glorious opportunity to contribute to the healthfare of their American Comrades.

My Name is Bruce (2007)

[This is a very difficult post for me to write. Not only am I a Bruce Campbell fan, I am also reading Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends & Influence People, which instructs me not to criticize, although, officially, I have not yet accepted Carnegie’s doctrine. What’s more, I consider Bruce Campbell to be very close to me. I used to be on the Burt & Kurt morning radio show. Burt Weirich of Burt & Kurt infamy was an extra in the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! Bruce Campbell appeared in a movie called Toro. Toro. Toro! So, as you can see, we’re practically blood brothers, he and I. Nevertheless, as a fan of ‘The Chin,’ I am obligated to offer this post for constructive purposes. With those justifications out of the way…]

My Name is Bruce is the latest offering from Mr. Campbell, outside of his costarring role in Burn Notice on some not-quite-primetime, not-quite-cable network. My Name... follows the misadventures of a fictionalized B-movie star Bruce Campbell as he is kidnapped by fans to defend their town from a Chinese demon and protector of bean curd. Pretty standard B-movie stuff, really. What sets this movie apart from others like it is its abject failure to meet expectations. On that note I accept all blame.

I’ve been a fan of Campbell’s for as long as I will admit here. Evil Dead was a ground breaking film, if not performance. Army of Darkness is a trans-generational favorite in my family. And as for the ‘Elvis’ movie? Well, to steal a line from My Name is Bruce: “Everyone liked Bubba Ho-Tep.” Everyone except my wife. But she loved The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.

With Man with the Screaming Brain I learned something: Bruce can act, and he might be able to direct, but he can’t do both at the same time. Kinda like chewing gum and PoliGripping dentures. He might’ve gotten away with it on the Xena series, and some other instances I’m equally unfamiliar with, but he really can’t pull it off with his movies. It’s as if he gets so caught up in doing a great directing job and a superb job of being Bruce Campbell that he misses the fact that the product he’s putting together is crap. It could happen to anyone trying to direct themselves, but it seems to happen more consistently with him. And I should have noticed that he is both the star and the director of My Name is Bruce.

Don’t get me wrong: the movie does have its moments. But they are too far and few between. There are the usual group of misfits to recognize in the crowds (both his brother and nephew are killed in the film), the hard-core fan gets to see part of the Campbell estate, the demon mask is pretty nifty, and there are some credibly good lines: “Consider yourself officially exempt from my wrath, sweetcakes. And if you're lucky, a little later I'll let you play with my boomstick.” In the end all of these are wasted in this film. Like putting Grey Poupon on a Slim Jim. Even the bonus features were hum-drum. (This strengthens my argument that all Bruce Campbell films should include a full length commentary by Elvis.)

So, to the would-be fan: give this movie a miss. Start off with Army of Darkness, Bubba Ho-Tep, or even Cave Alien 3.

To the established Campbellite: My Name… was so bad that I actually threw my back out just watching it. Not laughing, not chuckling, not even throwing things at the television. Just sitting there watching it. I think it may be a result of some impacted B-movie matter. Instead, check out They Call Me Bruce? It’s good, even if Ted Raimi isn’t in it.

And for Mr. Campbell, my blood-brother, who continues to try to direct himself: Peanut butter and jelly are both great, but not in the same jar. I don’t really know what that means, but I’ll bet you can make it a pretty cool line in your next movie.