Miscellaneous
Single Payer rears its ugly head again.
A fellow I’ve known slightly for many years is editor of the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honorary society magazine, The Pharos. He has a lead editorial in The current issue It is titled “Now is the time to enact a US Healthcare System.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Dick has had a more successful career than I have. Many years ago I knew him and he read his acceptance letter to USC medical school in my apartment. He did well in medical school, almost as well as I did, but his wife agreed to go to New York for a high status internship and residency, setting him on a path to great success. He became a Professor of Medicine and eventually President of the University of Colorado. I have not seen him in years and suspect very little of his time has been spent in the delivery of primary health care “in the trenches” so to speak.
My wife refused to leave Los Angeles and I have, as a result, had a less prestigious career but satisfactory as anyone who has read my Memoir will see. I did harbor some resentment and the marriage ended in divorce after 18 years.
Now let us consider what this academic authority proposes. First, we are now ten years after Obamacare and some level of practicality has crept in.
The “federalism” response to the COVID-19 pandemic, medicine, health care, and the profession of medicine is not working well and needs to change. A serious societal and public review and plan of action for change is needed with regard to why and how the U.S. must improve overall health care and create a new health care system for all Americans. The U.S. is the only developed country in the world that has not determined that health care is a fundamental human right. Universal health care should be considered by all as a social good and a national priority.
There is, of course, no such promise in the US Constitution of a “right” to healthcare although we do have an Amendment forbidding involuntary servitude. Section 1
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Shall the federal government have the right to compel doctors and healthcare providers to provide services ? Right now Medicare pays about 13% of billed charges. This produces ridiculous fees on paper but what is the uninsured to do ? Pay 87% higher prices ? At my last understanding, a doctor may not offer a service for less than his/her/xir Medicare price. Anyway, let us see what is proposed.
The long-standing federalism approach to health care is associated with a lack of leadership, the absence of a solid plan, setup, or organization to manage our national health care. Also it is slow to respond to national and international issues. It has not worked well and leaves the country’s health care system disjointed, confusing, and expensive. The federalism approach, in which all 50 states and five territories each have their own rules, regulations, and financing, has been a barrier to providing health care for every U.S. citizen, regardless of where they reside.
I frankly don’t see the Federalism handicap but suspect nationalization appeals to some. Those darned Red States again.
One option that is often discussed is a single payor system in which the government is the only payor through tax and other revenues and manages health care as a public and social good. Currently in the U.S., the Military Health Care System, Indian Health Services, Veterans Health Administration, and Medicare are all government single payor systems. Medicaid and the Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP) are jointly funded by the federal govern-ment and state governments. All totaled, these government funded programs provide health care coverage for nearly 50 percent of the U.S. population.4
The success of the VA and the Indian Health Service is doubted by many. Both have seen repeated scandals.
The other half of the population is covered under their employer-sponsored health plan; is self-insured; or receives coverage through individual market health plans, including ACA-compliant plans; or completely lack any type of health insurance. Through the private health insurance programs, private insurance companies are re-sponsible for paying claims for their members. Hospitals, physicians, pharmacies, and other health care providers each file claims independently. Obamacare is responsible for a significant segment of the uninsured as small group plans were devastated by Obamacare.
According to Jerry Bonenberger of Babb Insurance in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, “small employer groups with less than 50 full-time employees are experiencing an extraordinary increase in their insurance premiums for 2015. In one case, a professional services firm with 42 full-time employees received an 87% increase in their premiums for next year.”
Through the development of the quasi-independent, apolitical National Health Reserve System (NHRS) pro-posed in the Summer 2020 issue of The Pharos,(1) the U.S. would have a health care system modeled after the Federal Reserve System, allowing for government funded care for half, and private insurance for half. The role of the NHRS would be to govern, integrate, coordinate, and manage a nationwide system of health care, both private and governmental. It would be far more extensive operationally than the Federal Reserve and would be governed and managed by experts, including physicians, health professionals, and others using data, experience, evidence, and planning to operate a national health care system independently with transparency and quasi- independence from politics.
Does anyone really believe that ? At least he wants to get rid of Obamacare although it is too late, as I have repeatedly pointed out. Doctors are no longer small business people but employees with the psychology of employees. Those that are opting out to go to a cash practice are a small minority but that seems the only realistic option. I submitted a rebuttal letter to the journal but doubt it will see the light of day. In it I suggested some reforms on the lines of the French system that I described in multiple blog posts ten years ago. I think the French system would have been a better reform but I doubt that will appeal to the academics who want control. When I was at Dartmouth in 1994-95 I met many of the people who designed Hillarycare, and they were also all academics. Pelosi and Reid who wrote Obamacare (I doubt Obama had anything to do with it) at least learned to include the insurance companies in their plan. In fact, I am sure it was written by insurance lobbyists and 25 year old staff lawyers.
The abysmal implementation of Obamacare suggests that big national scale programming projects are not the federal government’s strong suit. The federalism that my former friend, Dr Byyny, opposes allows for incremental reform and some level of experimentation. A national one-fits-all program failed spectacularly. Another one is likely to fail, as well.
That was 2015.
Tiananmen OSINT
“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” — Benjamin Franklin
[Readers are directed to the end of this post for an explanation of my timing and motivation.
UPDATE 6/5, 11 AM CDT: videos embedded!]
I. Anniversary Reconnoiter
At around nine in the morning local time on the thirtieth anniversary of the “June Fourth Incident,” I began a reconnoiter of Tiananmen Square in central Beijing to observe security measures and, if possible, witness any attempt at commemorating the massacre. I accompanied Dr. Andrew R. Cline, professor of media, journalism, and film at Missouri State University in Springfield. We were part of group of eleven people—four students, two faculty, and five others including me—comprising a “Study Away” program from MSU which had spent the previous twelve days in China, flying into Beijing and taking high-speed trains to Xi’an and Xining, then on via the Qinghai–Tibet railway to Lhasa before flying back to Beijing. Of all days, Tuesday 4 June 2019 was designated a free day for the group: no itinerary—and no guide. The remaining nine group members, as it turned out, had other ideas about what to do that day.
Andy’s motivation was broadly journalistic, garnished with a specific interest in whether any actual Marxists would show up. I went along out of a feeling that I had something of a reputation to uphold, and quickly decided during our approach that I would evaluate the security measures and write up a more quantitative report, although I will also pass along some thoughts about the organizational behaviors involved.
“Green” Energy: Materials-Intensive–And It Matters
There is now considerable momentum behind wind and solar power generation. In addition to the governments pushing these technologies, there are many companies intending to profit by manufacturing and implementing these systems–also companies intending to get “sustainability” points for using them–and a nontrivial part of the financing industry licking their chops at the prospect of raising the necessary capital.
While wind and solar systems do not directly consume fuels, they do consume capital, that capital representing the labor and materials (and also the energy, in various forms) necessary to manufacture and install them. Some of these materials are relatively scarce at present, and are sourced from problematic locations under questionable conditions.
Here is an interesting and quite detailed study on “green” materials and sourcing options, from the International Energy Agency. Worth careful reading for anyone interested in energy issues, technologies, and politics. Note that in addition to China’s development of its internal resources of the relevant materials, that country is developing strong trade and financing relationships…which may evolve to neo-colonial or even full-colonial relationships…with other countries possessing such resources.
And here are a pair of articles arguing that the only way for the US to acquire the requisite materials for a “green” energy transition will require close collaboration with China…that if the two greatest greenhouse-gas emitters on this planet can’t work together, we’re all going to be living in a more or less literal hell. The authors of these pieces don’t seem to be very concerned about the risks of US dependence on China for our energy supply; they seem more concerned about the risks of a cold war (anti-China) mentality. (It is also interesting that the word ‘nuclear’ doesn’t appear in either article.)
Comes now a Reuters article, which asserts that: The Biden administration is considering a plan to import the bulk of the materials needed to build electric vehicles and the batteries that power them instead of mining them domestically — a nod to environmental groups that make up a key part of the Democratic constituency, according to a report. The article goes on to quote an administration source as saying, referring to mining, that “it’s not that hard to dig a hole”…a comment which interestingly echoes Michael Bloomberg’s assertions about farming–“I could teach anybody, even people in this room, no offense intended, to be a farmer…You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn.” (Bloomberg also made similarly dismissive remarks about manufacturing jobs)
On the other hand, a post at the Seeking Alpha investment blog asserts that Contrary to Rumors, the Biden Administration is Not Abandoning Lithium–that on the contrary, they want to expand both domestic and international supply of this material. (The author of this piece also notes critically that the Reuters article did not reference a single named source.)
But even if the Biden administration does throw some money at domestic mining and processing, environmental objections and litigation are likely to slow things down considerably…a Trump-style president might be willing and able to blow past such constraints, but Biden/Harris, given their dependence on their party’s extreme Left, will likely find it easier to placate environmentalists by combining a US emphasis on vehicle electrification and “green” energy with a de facto sourcing policy of acquiring most of the relevant materials from outside the United States–including China–which allowing most US mining and bulk processing initiatives to bog down in red tape.
Here’s a follow-up article from Reuters.
As the IEA article notes, “green” energy represents a shift from a fuel-intensive to a materials-intensive energy system. Few of the prominent/influential advocates of such a shift seem to have given much thought to where those required materials might actually come from.
Wind and solar are more capital-intensive than are fossil-fuel power sources, and mining requires considerable capital as well. It seems likely to me that the worldwide push for “green” energy and electric vehicles will drive enough capital demands–whether via government or private financing–to have a material upward impact on interest rates.
Dr. Peter McCullough on the Response to Covid
The best thing I’ve encountered on the medical and governmental responses to Covid: An interview by John Leake with Dr. Peter McCullough.
Interview: https://vimeo.com/553060860 — leaves no doubt about what was known and when.
Dr. McCullough’s background: https://www.cardiometabolichealth.org/peter-mccullough.html
Interviewer, John Leake: https://www.coldalongtime.com/pages/about-us
McCullough is good on integrative medicine, as well as conventional.
A response by the interviewer to a question about motives for hiding effective treatments from the public:
“Dr. McCullough was careful to avoid speculation about motive. He encouraged investigative authors like me to try to figure out why extraordinary occurrences like the fake Lancet report occurred. What he has witnessed has led him to believe that there has been a coordinated effort to suppress early outpatient therapies like Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, even though they have long been FDA approved for treating other conditions. In an effort to ascertain motive, it is useful to consider the record of Pfizer, which pled guilty to US criminal charges and 2009 and has a long rap sheet of civil judgements against it for harmfully misrepresenting its products. The company booked $3.5 billion in revenue from its Emergency Authorization Use vaccine in the first quarter of this year. Following standard investigative practice, a logical inference can be drawn from these facts — namely, that inexpensive outpatient therapies were suppressed in order to pave the way for mandatory mass vaccination. To prove that this was indeed the case will require further investigation.”
Interview: https://vimeo.com/553060860 — leaves no doubt about what was known and when.
Dr. McCullough’s background: https://www.cardiometabolichealth.org/peter-mccullough.html
Interviewer, John Leake: https://www.coldalongtime.com/pages/about-us
McCullough is good on integrative medicine, as well as conventional.
A response by the interviewer to a question about motives for hiding effective treatments from the public:
“Dr. McCullough was careful to avoid speculation about motive. He encouraged investigative authors like me to try to figure out why extraordinary occurrences like the fake Lancet report occurred. What he has witnessed has led him to believe that there has been a coordinated effort to suppress early outpatient therapies like Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, even though they have long been FDA approved for treating other conditions. In an effort to ascertain motive, it is useful to consider the record of Pfizer, which pled guilty to US criminal charges and 2009 and has a long rap sheet of civil judgements against it for harmfully misrepresenting its products. The company booked $3.5 billion in revenue from its Emergency Authorization Use vaccine in the first quarter of this year. Following standard investigative practice, a logical inference can be drawn from these facts — namely, that inexpensive outpatient therapies were suppressed in order to pave the way for mandatory mass vaccination. To prove that this was indeed the case will require further investigation.”