10 Points On The Healthcare Situation

A few points on the healthcare debate:

1. If you are a private citizen, and your party membership determines whether you are for or against the healthcare bill... then shame on you. Inform yourself and make up your own mind.
2. If you are a member of congress, and your party membership determines whether you are for or against the healthcare bill... then I call on you to resign immediately.
3. Before you use the word socialism in a sentence or paint it on a sign... make sure that you know what it is.
4. If you're scared of socialism... walk over to your nearest post office because that's a government controlled business. Socialized! But it seems to compete just fine against FedEx and UPS. Also think public universities vs. private.
5. The Public Option is... an option. If it's an option it means there are other choices. Think: toilet paper. There are lots of options, some cost 3-4x the cheapest option, yet no one option dominates.
6. There are no death panels. There never were. To the people that used it in the media or still believe it... see point #1 (inform yourself) and point #2 (the party line). I was extremely disappointed to see Sarah Palin use this term in an interview. Same with Rush Limbaugh.
7. Please everyone stop making signs of Obama with a Hitler mustache. Obama is not Adolf Hitler. Hitler's policies murdered somewhere between 11 and 14 million people. Murdered. The core of Nazism was: (a) state/dictator control of the entire economy, (b) racism, and (c) world domination. This is not what the United States is about.
8. If you think Nationalized Healthcare is the first step towards the "state" taking control, then realize that this plan doesn't nationalize healthcare (see point 5). Also realize that Hitler didn't nationalize healthcare in Germany (Otto Von Bismark did in the 1880's http://bit.ly/dTVVn). So let's stop with the Hitler/Nazi comparisons please.
9. Lack of information leads to speculation. Speculation leads to worst case / extreme case thinking. Obama's team should have gotten a summarized version of the facts out to the public at the inception of their effort. Where was the marketing plan??
10. Democrats are watering this bill down to the point where it wont have anywhere near the needed impact. If you firmly believe in something, stick to it and improve it where you can. Don't just change your tune the second you get pressured.

Comments

[SS]

Great points! I wish more people in this country took your approach to the healthcare issue. Do you have any sites that provide the points and coverage that are unbiased? I've yet to find any. It's frustrating.

[Sif]

1. Agreed.
2. Agreed.
3. And if I know what the definition of socialism is and I still characterize federal government-provided healthcare to be socialist, then what?
4. The Post Office does not compete "just fine" with UPS and FedEx. It is operating at a huge loss- so much so that the Postmaster General recently recommended eliminating Saturday delivery.
5. Multiple Democratic politicians, Barney Frank et al have repeatedly, explicitly expressed their belief that SINGLE-PAYER is the endgame. "Competition" is a red herring.
6. I don't like the term death panels, either. It just sounds paraniod. I don't think liberals want "death panels"; however, you can't add 30 or 40 or 50 million people to the healthcare rolls and no new doctors or nurses and expect that rationing will not necessarily occur. I don't care if it's "in the plan," unless there are compelling provisions in the plan to vastly increase the number of doctors and nurses, rationing will happen as a matter of course.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT7Y0TOBuG4)- do you agree with Robert Reich's comments about the elderly and health care?
7. Bush was compared to Hitler numerous times- the Left needs to stop lecturing the right about civility- the hypocrisy is obvious- calling Tea Party protesters "Astroturf", "racist", "un-American", "Tea-Baggers" etc. Get over it- please. No moral high ground to be had here by the Left.
8. Bullshit- (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-bY92mcOdk)
9. Wouldn't it make sense that the Obama Administration, which did such a good job of creating the Obama "brand" during the campaign would have done an equally good job of quelling 'extreme speculation' if the truth were something more innocuous? Maybe the marketing plan failed because the truth is that the speculation is not far afield of the truth? By all appearances, the House version of the bill does provide coverage for illegals, federal funding for abortion, substantial cuts to Medicare, mandatory coverage, massive costs, tax increases, etc. Am I missing something? What of the 'extreme speculation' has been definitively proven to be mere speculation? This thing has lacked tranparency from day one- be honest.
10. On this point, I assume you would give the same advice to opponents of government-run health care as you would to its advocates- right?

[chris motes]

Hey Brian, good to hear from you. I'm going to try to respond to your points in a couple of separate comments.

"3. And if I know what the definition of socialism is and I still characterize federal government-provided healthcare to be socialist, then what?"

I'd say that the majority of people on both sides of this fence cannot define it, which is a shame. If you know the definition, you have the capability to have a rational, fact-based position.

[chris motes]

"4. The Post Office does not compete "just fine" with UPS and FedEx. It is operating at a huge loss- so much so that the Postmaster General recently recommended eliminating Saturday delivery."

I pulled financial statements for USPS, UPS and FedEx for last 3 year-ends (most recent first):
+ USPS Net Income: -2.8B, -5.1B, +900M
+ UPS Net Income: +3B, +382M, +4.2B
+ FedEx: +98M, +1.1B, +2B

+ USPS Cash flow from operations: -439M, -2.6B, +3.7B
+ UPS Cash flow from ops: +8.4B, +1.1B, +5.6B
+ FedEx Cash flow from ops: +2.8B, +3.5B, +3.6B

My point in the original post was that the existence of the USPS has not appeared to stifle competition in this space. And your response was that USPS operated at a huge loss. Recently, they have. The USPS clearly has some things to work on, but it appears that with good management the USPS could operate at a profit (they've been profitable before). UPS and FedEx also appear to be doing quite well recently.

You may have implied that we are pumping money into that business to keep it running - from the financials I can't find any data that the government has put money into that business in the last 5 years. It runs on our stamp dollars.

So I don't think your comment was quite spot on... BUT it did make me realize one important flaw in my original point and portions of my response. I don't think that USPS has direct competition in the first class mail market, and the competitive overlap with FedEx and UPS is just in the parcels marketplace. So I'm not sure that USPS vs UPS is the best example to illustrate my original point.

A separate and interesting topic would be whether the government should have any part of the USPS at all. Besides requiring absolutely massive scale, I can't think of any reason why the government would need to be involved in this space. But I can't see where their involvement is hurting... perhaps stamps should be much cheaper? Or first class mail much faster?

[chris motes]

"7. Bush was compared to Hitler numerous times- the Left needs to stop lecturing the right about civility- the hypocrisy is obvious- calling Tea Party protesters "Astroturf", "racist", "un-American", "Tea-Baggers" etc. Get over it- please. No moral high ground to be had here by the Left."

No hypocrisy here. Left or right or middle, Hitler references are name calling. And name calling does not produce healthy debate or constructive negotiations. Just because dems said it about Bush doesn't make it ok to say it now about Obama. It wasn't OK when it was said about Bush. We need to hold ourselves to higher standards here.

[Ethan Prater]

I don't have a strong position on the health care bills, other than a general cynicism that they're so compromise-ridden and presided over by such doofuses that anything produced is likely to be worse on most vectors than the horrendous mess we've got now.

*But* the USPS doesn't compete with UPS and FedEx. In fact it's like Major League Baseball - it operates under certain legally-codified monopoly-style protections.

Specifically, only the USPS has the right to deliver first/third-class day-to-day mail. (This is why FedEx doesn't offer catalog delivery or other direct mail products to businesses.)

The USPS also has some powers - like eminent domain - that would generally be seen as frightening if possessed by other private entities that *were* competing in an open marketplace (imagine businesses "eminent domaining" their competitors' offices - or competitors' *customers'* property).

I quote from the world's most reliable source, Wikipedia:

"As a quasi-governmental agency, [the USPS] has many special privileges, including sovereign immunity, eminent domain powers, powers to negotiate postal treaties with foreign nations, and an exclusive legal right to deliver first-class and third-class mail."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service#Governance_and_organization

[Ethan Prater]

I don't have a strong position on the health care bills, other than a general cynicism that they're so compromise-ridden and presided over by such doofuses that anything produced is likely to be worse on most vectors than the horrendous mess we've got now.

*But* the USPS doesn't compete with UPS and FedEx. In fact it's like Major League Baseball - it operates under certain legally-codified monopoly-style protections.

Specifically, only the USPS has the right to deliver first/third-class day-to-day mail. (This is why FedEx doesn't offer catalog delivery or other direct mail products to businesses.)

The USPS also has some powers - like eminent domain - that would generally be seen as frightening if possessed by other private entities that *were* competing in an open marketplace (imagine businesses "eminent domaining" their competitors' offices - or competitors' *customers'* property).

I quote from the world's most reliable source, Wikipedia:

"As a quasi-governmental agency, [the USPS] has many special privileges, including sovereign immunity, eminent domain powers, powers to negotiate postal treaties with foreign nations, and an exclusive legal right to deliver first-class and third-class mail."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service#Governance_and_organization

[chris motes]

good point ethan. i corrected a bit of my thinking on USPS a few comments ago... my point there wasn't quite right

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