The Best Political Writer

The Best Political Writer…Victor Davis Hanson

In this election season, and as a student of American (conservative) political thought, a must read on a regular basis are columns by Victor Davis Hanson.    Especially this week as he summarized the voter frustration with big government in the Washington and the Obama socialistic presidency.

His insight, wit and historical perspective (in terms of political history) are unique among the political writers of our day.

He is featured on Pajamas Media  http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson

Enjoy!

© 2010, Jasper Welch, Four Corners Media, www.jasperwelch.org   

Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare

The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare

Eight things we can do to improve health care without adding to the deficit.

By JOHN MACKEY      Editorial from the Wall Street Journal

"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out 
of other people's money."

—Margaret Thatcher

With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people's money. These deficits are simply not sustainable. They are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation, or they will bankrupt us.

While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone:

• Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs). The combination of high-deductible health insurance and HSAs is one solution that could solve many of our health-care problems. For example, Whole Foods Market pays 100% of the premiums for all our team members who work 30 hours or more per week (about 89% of all team members) for our high-deductible health-insurance plan. We also provide up to $1,800 per year in additional health-care dollars through deposits into employees' Personal Wellness Accounts to spend as they choose on their own health and wellness.

Money not spent in one year rolls over to the next and grows over time. Our team members therefore spend their own health-care dollars until the annual deductible is covered (about $2,500) and the insurance plan kicks in. This creates incentives to spend the first $2,500 more carefully. Our plan's costs are much lower than typical health insurance, while providing a very high degree of worker satisfaction.

• Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. Now employer health insurance benefits are fully tax deductible, but individual health insurance is not. This is unfair.

• Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines. We should all have the legal right to purchase health insurance from any insurance company in any state and we should be able use that insurance wherever we live. Health insurance should be portable.

• Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. These mandates have increased the cost of health insurance by billions of dollars. What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual customer preferences and not through special-interest lobbying.

• Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These costs are passed back to us through much higher prices for health care.

• Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost. How many people know the total cost of their last doctor's visit and how that total breaks down? What other goods or services do we buy without knowing how much they will cost us?

• Enact Medicare reform. We need to face up to the actuarial fact that Medicare is heading towards bankruptcy and enact reforms that create greater patient empowerment, choice and responsibility.

• Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren't covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care—to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals. While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter?

Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That's because there isn't any. This "right" has never existed in America

Even in countries like Canada and the U.K., there is no intrinsic right to health care. Rather, citizens in these countries are told by government bureaucrats what health-care treatments they are eligible to receive and when they can receive them. All countries with socialized medicine ration health care by forcing their citizens to wait in lines to receive scarce treatments.

Although Canada has a population smaller than California, 830,000 Canadians are currently waiting to be admitted to a hospital or to get treatment, according to a report last month in Investor's Business Daily. In England, the waiting list is 1.8 million.

At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits they most want the company to fund. Our Canadian and British employees express their benefit preferences very clearly—they want supplemental health-care dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments. Why would they want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have an "intrinsic right to health care"? The answer is clear—no such right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K.—or in any other country.

Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.

Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity—are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices.

Recent scientific and medical evidence shows that a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most degenerative diseases that kill us and are expensive to treat. We should be able to live largely disease-free lives until we are well into our 90s and even past 100 years of age.

Health-care reform is very important. Whatever reforms are enacted it is essential that they be financially responsible, and that we have the freedom to choose doctors and the health-care services that best suit our own unique set of lifestyle choices. We are all responsible for our own lives and our own health. We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health. Doing so will enrich our lives and will help create a vibrant and sustainable American society.

Mr. Mackey is co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc.

www.wsj.com            © 2009, Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company

Doctor Rationing Emanuel

Doctor Rationing Emanuel:

With nationalized health care on the discussion table in the US, the topic of rationing and who goes to the back of line continues to dog the proponents of Obamacare. Dr. Ezekiel (Rationing) Emanual, health advisor to the President, clearly supports turning our present Hipprocratic Oath based medical care delivery system over to rationing by bureaucrats and decree. Rather than the doctor & patient relationship being sacred, the needs of society would trump the medical needs of the individual. The Wall Street Journal Editorial below makes it clear that Obamacare is focused on socialism goals and societal change, not actually improving health care for US citizens. www.onlinewsj.com

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health adviser to President Barack Obama, is under scrutiny. As a bioethicist, he has written extensively about who should get medical care, who should decide, and whose life is worth saving. Dr. Emanuel is part of a school of thought that redefines a physician’s duty, insisting that it includes working for the greater good of society instead of focusing only on a patient’s needs. Many physicians find that view dangerous, and most Americans are likely to agree.

The health bills being pushed through Congress put important decisions in the hands of presidential appointees like Dr. Emanuel. They will decide what insurance plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have, and what seniors get under Medicare. Dr. Emanuel, brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research. He clearly will play a role guiding the White House's health initiative.

"Principles for Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions" The Lancet, January 31, 2009

Dr. Emanuel says that health reform will not be pain free, and that the usual recommendations for cutting medical spending (often urged by the president) are mere window dressing. As he wrote in the Feb. 27, 2008, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA): "Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality of care are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change."

True reform, he argues, must include redefining doctors' ethical obligations. In the June 18, 2008, issue of JAMA, Dr. Emanuel blames the Hippocratic Oath for the "overuse" of medical care: "Medical school education and post graduate education emphasize thoroughness," he writes. "This culture is further reinforced by a unique understanding of professional obligations, specifically the Hippocratic Oath's admonition to 'use my power to help the sick to the best of my ability and judgment' as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of cost or effect on others."

In numerous writings, Dr. Emanuel chastises physicians for thinking only about their own patient's needs. He describes it as an intractable problem: "Patients were to receive whatever services they needed, regardless of its cost. Reasoning based on cost has been strenuously resisted; it violated the Hippocratic Oath, was associated with rationing, and derided as putting a price on life. . . . Indeed, many physicians were willing to lie to get patients what they needed from insurance companies that were trying to hold down costs." (JAMA, May 16, 2007).

Of course, patients hope their doctors will have that single-minded devotion. But Dr. Emanuel believes doctors should serve two masters, the patient and society, and that medical students should be trained "to provide socially sustainable, cost-effective care." One sign of progress he sees: "the progression in end-of-life care mentality from 'do everything' to more palliative care shows that change in physician norms and practices is possible." (JAMA, June 18, 2008).

"In the next decade every country will face very hard choices about how to allocate scarce medical resources. There is no consensus about what substantive principles should be used to establish priorities for allocations," he wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine, Sept. 19, 2002. Yet Dr. Emanuel writes at length about who should set the rules, who should get care, and who should be at the back of the line.

"You can't avoid these questions," Dr. Emanuel said in an Aug. 16 Washington Post interview. "We had a big controversy in the United States when there was a limited number of dialysis machines. In Seattle, they appointed what they called a 'God committee' to choose who should get it, and that committee was eventually abandoned. Society ended up paying the whole bill for dialysis instead of having people make those decisions."

Dr. Emanuel argues that to make such decisions, the focus cannot be only on the worth of the individual. He proposes adding the communitarian perspective to ensure that medical resources will be allocated in a way that keeps society going: "Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity—those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations—are to be socially guaranteed as basic. Covering services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic, and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia." (Hastings Center Report, November-December, 1996)

In the Lancet, Jan. 31, 2009, Dr. Emanuel and co-authors presented a "complete lives system" for the allocation of very scarce resources, such as kidneys, vaccines, dialysis machines, intensive care beds, and others. "One maximizing strategy involves saving the most individual lives, and it has motivated policies on allocation of influenza vaccines and responses to bioterrorism. . . . Other things being equal, we should always save five lives rather than one.

"However, other things are rarely equal—whether to save one 20-year-old, who might live another 60 years, if saved, or three 70-year-olds, who could only live for another 10 years each—is unclear." In fact, Dr. Emanuel makes a clear choice: "When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get changes that are attenuated (see Dr. Emanuel's chart nearby).

Dr. Emanuel concedes that his plan appears to discriminate against older people, but he explains: "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination. . . . Treating 65 year olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not."

The youngest are also put at the back of the line: "Adolescents have received substantial education and parental care, investments that will be wasted without a complete life. Infants, by contrast, have not yet received these investments. . . . As the legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin argues, 'It is terrible when an infant dies, but worse, most people think, when a three-year-old dies and worse still when an adolescent does,' this argument is supported by empirical surveys." (thelancet.com, Jan. 31, 2009).

To reduce health-insurance costs, Dr. Emanuel argues that insurance companies should pay for new treatments only when the evidence demonstrates that the drug will work for most patients. He says the "major contributor" to rapid increases in health spending is "the constant introduction of new medical technologies, including new drugs, devices, and procedures. . . . With very few exceptions, both public and private insurers in the United States cover and pay for any beneficial new technology without considering its cost. . . ." He writes that one drug "used to treat metastatic colon cancer, extends medial survival for an additional two to five months, at a cost of approximately $50,000 for an average course of therapy." (JAMA, June 13, 2007).

Medians, of course, obscure the individual cases where the drug significantly extended or saved a life. Dr. Emanuel says the United States should erect a decision-making body similar to the United Kingdom's rationing body—the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE)—to slow the adoption of new medications and set limits on how much will be paid to lengthen a life.

Dr. Emanuel's assessment of American medical care is summed up in a Nov. 23, 2008, Washington Post op-ed he co-authored: "The United States is No. 1 in only one sense: the amount we shell out for health care. We have the most expensive system in the world per capita, but we lag behind many developed nations on virtually every health statistic you can name.

This is untrue, though sadly it's parroted at town-hall meetings across the country. Moreover, it's an odd factual error coming from an oncologist. According to an August 2009 report from the National Bureau of Economic Research, patients diagnosed with cancer in the U.S. have a better chance of surviving the disease than anywhere else. The World Health Organization also rates the U.S. No. 1 out of 191 countries for responsiveness to the needs and choices of the individual patient. That attention to the individual is imperiled by Dr. Emanuel's views.

Dr. Emanuel has fought for a government takeover of health care for over a decade. In 1993, he urged that President Bill Clinton impose a wage and price freeze on health care to force parties to the table. "The desire to be rid of the freeze will do much to concentrate the mind," he wrote with another author in a Feb. 8, 1993, Washington Post op-ed. Now he recommends arm-twisting Chicago style. "Every favor to a constituency should be linked to support for the health-care reform agenda," he wrote last Nov. 16 in the Health Care Watch Blog. "If the automakers want a bailout, then they and their suppliers have to agree to support and lobby for the administration's health-reform effort."

Is this what Americans want?

Ms. McCaughey is chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a former lieutenant governor of New York state.

Madison Slow Down Obamacare

US Founder Madison Slows Down President Obama

So what exactly happened in the health care debate this summer? The founding fathers, wary of kings and divine rulers, and willing to sacrifice their own personal gain for the formation of a fledging democracy, wrote a Constitution that featured checks and balances. And their vision for a system of American government for the people and by the people has withstood the onslaught of Washington insiders for over 225 years. The founding fathers created a document; known as the US Constitution that has guided our Republic. Our Constituion includes the 10^th Amendment (1791): The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. It could be argued that the nationalization of health care by the government is prohibited based on this amendment. Exactly where does it say that health care is within the exclusive jurisdiction of the US Government? Just being the President, doesn’t make it so. Not in America.

During this national debate on health care, a rookie President with a majority of the Congress has failed to fully understand the American process. And now he is blaming the American people for being…. well American.

To put Madison’s work into the modern perspective, we feature the work of Peter Wehner, a former presidential advisor and current think tank fellow, who wrote the following in the Weekly Standard:

But Madison has thwarted others who possessed grand, even utopian, designs. And so we are now getting the debate on health care Obama desperately wanted to avoid--with the result that support for his plan is sinking like a stone in the sea. Whatever plan finally emerges, if any plan emerges, will be quite different from what Obama originally had in mind.

None of this is going down very well with our chief executive. The man who promised us a new style of politics, civil and uplifting, is now unleashing his top aides and congressional allies to "punch back twice as hard" against critics. They are attempting to paint opposition to Obamacare as the work of fringe elements, mercenaries, and automatons. If Team Obama actually believes this explains the groundswell of public concern about its health care plan, they are living in a White House even more hermetically sealed than usual.

But the fundamental problem is the Obama view of politics--romantic and even quasi-revolutionary--in which men of zeal remake the world. This is not the American way. Ours is a system of government in which, as Madison noted, "ambition must be made to counteract ambition," where there are more brakes than accelerators, and where massive overhauls and centralized control are discouraged and most of the time defeated. Whatever its limitations, the Constitution remains, in the words of Gladstone, "the greatest work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." It does not bow before a president in a hurry--even a young, charismatic, and impatient one. Excerpt from the Weekly Standard online at www.weeklystandard.com

Peter Wehner, former deputy assistant to President George W. Bush, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

© 2009 Jasper Welch, Four Corners Media, www.jasperwelch.org

ObamaCare Equals Healthcare Rationing

Obama Care Equals Healthcare Rationing

There is a great article on the www.americathinker.com  written Dr. Zane Pollard regarding the reality of ObamaCare:  it will lead to rationing, less quality of care and a shortage of doctors.    Not convinced?    Here is Dr. Pollard's article on American Thinker  

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/obamacare_and_me.html

If socialized medicine is not what you had in mind with Obama Care, contact your Congressman or US Senator.  They are back home for the August recess.    Attend a town hall meeting or show up at the local Congressional office, and let them know you concerns.

(c) 2009, Jasper Welch, Four Corners Media    www.jasperwelch.org

What Does a Left Turn Look Like?

We know that the American electorate is ready for a change, but exactly what “Change We Can Believe In” are we looking at?   While Presidential Bush still remains unpopular (27% approval rating), the US Congress (12% approval rating) is competing with lawyers, used car dealers and mortgage brokers for popularity.   Over the past two years of the new Congressional Democrats, the only political check on the Congressional move to the “progressive left” has been GOP Senators (with a solid filibuster firewall) and a weak GOP President.  

While many in the Main Stream Media (MSM) would lead us to believe that Obama is a centrist, his liberal voting record, his radical left wing friends, his “ spread the wealth around” socialism and his class warfare rhetoric on the campaign trial indicate otherwise.   But are the American people ready for a sharp left turn politically into European style socialism?

            Peter Dupont, in his editorial piece in the Wall Street Journal listed seven major policy shifts from an Obama administration with the backing of the Democrat controlled Congress http://online.wsj.com He makes the strong case for the Europeanization of America.   In other words a trend towards socialism with full support of a Democratic President and Congress, (aka “one party rule”).  To quote Mr. Dupont in his Wall Street Journal opinion piece, “So where is the new Obama administration likely to take us? Seven things seem certain:

1)    The U.S. military will withdraw from Iraq quickly and substantially, regardless of conditions on the ground or the obvious consequence of emboldening terrorists there and around the globe.

2)    Protectionism will become our national trade policy; free trade agreements with other nations will be reduced and limited.

3)    Income taxes will rise on middle- and upper-income people and businesses, and individuals will pay much higher Social Security taxes, all to carry out the new president's goals of "spreading the wealth around."

4)    Federal government spending will substantially increase. The new Obama proposals come to more than $300 billion annually, for education, health care, energy, environmental and many other programs, in addition to whatever is needed to meet our economic challenges. Mr. Obama proposes more than a 10% annual spending growth increase, considerably higher than under the first President Bush (6.7%), Bill Clinton (3.3%) or George W. Bush (6.4%).

5)    Federal regulation of the economy will expand, on everything from financial management companies to electricity generation and personal energy use.

6)    The power of labor unions will substantially increase, beginning with repeal of secret ballot voting to decide on union representation.

7)    Free speech will be curtailed through the reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine to limit the conservative talk radio that so irritates the liberal establishment.

These policy changes will be the beginning of the Europeanization of America. There will be many more public policy changes with similar goals—nationalized health care, Kyoto-like global-warming policies, and increased education regulation and spending.” Opinion Page, Wall Street Journal, October 26, 2008

Is American ready for socialism?   Apparently, polling data from Tipp On-Line

  www.tipponline.com/social.html in August 2008 indicates that while the majority of Americans are not supportive of socialism, higher taxes and government ownership of industry, the Obama supporters appear to support a socialist approach.   This socialistic approach is confirmed in Senator Obama’s liberal voting record as an elected official.

“Since ADA's founding in 1947, the Annual Voting Records have served as the standard measure of political liberalism. Combining 20 key votes on a wide range of social and economic issues, both domestic and international, the Liberal Quotient (LQ) provides a basic overall picture of an elected official's political position.”   Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) www.adaction.org  on voting records, which ADA has tracked since 1947.   US Senator Barack Obama ranked as a 95% liberal (out of 100%) on 20 issues in 2006.  Essentially, Mr. Obama is a certified liberal, as rated by the ADA “gold standard” for political liberalism in the United States.

So if the junior Senator from Illinois, (who is the least experienced and most liberal Presidential candidate in modern history), is actually elected, what is the probability that he will track to the political center and provide any challenges (vetoes) to a Democrat majority in Congress?    Or rather will Obama following his previous voting records and lead the US on a sharp turn to the left on political issues, with the full support of the majority of the Democratically controlled Congress?

As for many Americans,  “Change We Can Believe It” is a platitude that sounds good on the campaign trail.    In a year or two, under the liberal approach taken by an Obama Administration, those same Americans may be saying “Change We Can’t Stand For” as their President and his Democrat operatives in Congress turn the country sharply to the political left.

© 2008, Jasper Welch, Four Corners Media,    www.jasperwelch.org