Proponents of the status quo in the health care system, i.e. those entities that are capturing the billions of excess dollars that Americans are paying for ever-diminishing availability and declining quality, are portraying the proposed fixes as a typical tax and spend approach by liberals. The claim is that health care delivery will suffer and Americans will be worse off.

This argument is a gigantic red herring. America does not have a health care delivery problem – it has a health care insurance problem. The insurance industry, which is not regulated at the Federal level and is lightly regulated by most states, (especially Arizona, Connecticut, and Nebraska, where many of them are headquartered) is a succubus that has its fangs sunk into every food chain in the American economy. A good portion of the current economic crisis is traceable to the unregulated insurance industry – AIG being the poster child. But that is another discussion.

There are two core principles of insurance:
1. Spread the risk of losses.
2. Prevent adverse selection.

Spreading the risk means that coverage should be as broad as possible. Claims are statistically predictable; if one person will get cancer each year (but we don’t know which one), and it costs $100,000 to treat her, then an annual premium of $1000 from one thousand people will suffice. It is true that if the cost were lower, the premium would be lower, and this leads to a discussion of the efficiency of the health care system and the costs of treatment. But if we could spread the risk of one cancer across one million people, the annual premium would be only ten cents a year. Of course, the number of cancers would also go up, but at least for this disease, the overall incidence of cancer per 100,000 people has been falling since about 1992. (Source: http://progressreport.cancer.gov)

“Spreading the risk” inherently requires cross-subsidy. Those who do not get sick pay premiums that then pay for the treatment of those who do get sick; the premiums of those whose houses do not catch fire pay for the losses of those which do.

Like all cross-subsidy arrangements, an incentive exists for those who think they can beat the odds to drop out of the insurance pool. Men don’t want to pay for pregnancy coverage; the young don’t want to pay for Alzheimer’s treatment, New Yorkers don’t want to pay for earthquake damage in California. It also creates an incentive for profit-maximizing insurance companies to cover those who are less likely than average to place claims. The result is that those who remain in the insurance pool face higher and higher proportions of claims and higher and higher insurance premiums. This cycle creates an incentive for further “opting out” and the vicious cycle proceeds. This is the essence of “adverse selection” where the pool of insured individuals becomes increasingly riskier.

The policy implications are obvious:
1. To spread the risk as widely as possible, get the entire population into a single pool. That means “single payer.”
2. To avoid adverse selection, either make membership in the pool mandatory or require “Pay or Play” so that drop outs cannot avoid their contribution to the pool.

Note that this says nothing at all about the provision of health care services. While the current system of insurance creates distortions in the provision of health services, the insurance problem is separable from them. But the health care providers that live on those distortions have teamed up with the insurance companies to drag those smelly red herrings into the discussion. Watch out when they start waving their hands and turn up the volume.

I wonder how many op/eds W produced in 8 years? I found one from 2007 and it was published in the WSJ. Sort of like preaching to his choir. It does have a few laugh lines for those that are reality based. MC

Rebuilding Something Better

By Barack Obama
Sunday, July 12, 2009

Nearly six months ago, my administration took office amid the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression. At the time, we were losing, on average, 700,000 jobs a month. And many feared that our financial system was on the verge of collapse.

The swift and aggressive action we took in those first few months has helped pull our financial system and our economy back from the brink. We took steps to restart lending to families and businesses, stabilize our major financial institutions, and help homeowners stay in their homes and pay their mortgages. We also passed the most sweeping economic recovery plan in our nation's history.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was not expected to restore the economy to full health on its own but to provide the boost necessary to stop the free fall. So far, it has done that. It was, from the start, a two-year program, and it will steadily save and create jobs as it ramps up over this summer and fall. We must let it work the way it's supposed to, with the understanding that in any recession, unemployment tends to recover more slowly than other measures of economic activity.

I am confident that the United States of America will weather this economic storm. But once we clear away the wreckage, the real question is what we will build in its place. Even as we rescue this economy from a full-blown crisis, I have insisted that we must rebuild it better than before. For if we do not seize this moment to confront the weaknesses that have plagued our economy for decades, we will consign ourselves and our children to future crises, sluggish growth, or both.   Read More »

Too hungry to fish or walk to a fishing hole. Learn about hunger in the US. One cause of an eagle's demise is the lack of food, once it becomes malnourished, its muscles will become too weak to fly, its last hours on earth are spent walking weakly and aimlessly on the ground. Do you suppose that malnutrition has an effect on a human's greatest asset, the brain? How many Einsteins have we lost?

Learn About Hunger:

http://www.alliancetoendhunger.org/resources/documents/America's%20Second%20Harvest%20-%20Hunger%20and%20Poverty%20Statistics.pdf

Op-Ed Columnist - Clean, Sexy Water - NYTimes.com

A charity group to provide clean water has been stunningly successful, thanks to the marketing talents of its founder, a former nightclub promoter.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/opinion/12kristof.html

Ever since President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the right wing has attacked her with racist and sexist remarks--part of a coordinated strategy to tarnish her credibility. And now they've continued their assault by publishing problematic and disrespectful images.

The fact is that Judge Sotomayor is the most qualified nominee to the Supreme Court in at least a generation. She has more trial experience than any sitting member of the Supreme Court had when they were nominated. And she just received a unanimous recommendation fy the American Bar Association-something that can't be said about any of George W. Bush's nominees.

So we partnered with Presente.org to bring Colorado this poster design to celebrate our pride in her historic nomination and to thank you for standing with her. We hope you'll download it, spread it far and wide, and invite your friends and family to do the same:

http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/Sotomayor

The poster was designed by Presente.org co-founder and artist Favianna Rodriguez. When you download the poster you'll have an opportunity to sign the petition, which we'll send to the Senate Judiciary Committee on your behalf. Hearings on Judge Sotomayor's confirmation are scheduled for this coming Monday, July 13th. That means we only have a few days to get this poster distributed and reproduced everywhere-on web sites, in street windows, and on office walls.

Right-wing extremists like Tom Tancredo and Rush Limbaugh will only ramp up their attacks against Judge Sotomayor. We can't let them dominate the conversation. It's up to us to show just how many people stand behind Judge Sotomayor.

Help us by downloading the poster and spreading the word to your family and friends:

http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/Sotomayor

Thanks for all you do!

P.S. - We also have created bumper stickers based on the poster that you can purchase. Also, if you don't have a color printer or if you would like to get a larger, high-quality poster printed, you can do that as well. Just visit our shop on CafePress.

http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/Shop

"The United States' top fighter jet, the Lockheed Martin F-22, has recently required more than 30 hours of maintenance for every hour in the skies, pushing its hourly cost of flying to more than $44,000, a far higher figure than for the warplane it replaces, confidential Pentagon test results show."

F-22's Maintenance Demands Growing

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 10, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/09/AR2009070903020.html

"Even if we tap every renewable power source available, it won't mean a thing without a final, crucial step: reinventing the grid."

By David Roberts

Popular Science

http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2009-06/next-grid#

Wish more people would watch his movies. MC

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/07/09/arts/entertainment-us-moore.html

I changed the title of this article. MC

"Back in the Vietnam era, Gen. William Westmoreland, interviewed by movie director Peter Davis for his Oscar-winning film "Hearts and Minds," famously said: "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient.""

Who's mourning the dead in Afghanistan? Our hearts should go out to the innocent victims of our wars
By Thomas M. Engelhardt

Jul. 08, 2009 |

It was a blast. I'm talking about my daughter's wedding. You don't often see a child of yours quite that happy. I'm no party animal, but I danced my 64-year-old legs off. And I can't claim that, as I walked my daughter to the ceremony, or ate, or talked with friends, or simply sat back and watched the young and energetic enjoy themselves, I thought about those Afghan wedding celebrations where the "blast" isn't metaphorical, where the bride, the groom, the partygoers in the midst of revelry die.

In the two weeks since, however, that's been on my mind -- or rather the lack of interest our world shows in dead civilians from a distant imperial war -- and all because of a passage I stumbled upon in a striking article by journalist Anand Gopal. In "Uprooting an Afghan Village" in the June issue of the Progressive magazine, he writes about Garloch, an Afghan village he visited in the eastern province of Laghman. After destructive American raids, Gopal tells us, many of its desperate inhabitants simply packed up and left for exile in Afghan or Pakistani refugee camps.

One early dawn in August 2008, writes Gopal, American helicopters first descended on Garloch for a six-hour raid:

The Americans claim there were gunshots as they left. The villagers deny it. Regardless, American bombers swooped by the village just after the soldiers left and dropped a payload on one house. It belonged to Haiji Qadir, a pole-thin, wizened old man who was hosting more than forty relatives for a wedding party. The bomb split the house in two, killing sixteen, including twelve from Qadir's family, and wounding scores more ... The malek [chief] went to the province's governor and delivered a stern warning: protect our villagers or we will turn against the Americans.

Continued at Salon.Com

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/07/08/afghan_weddings/

"Meanwhile, in Washington the House Foreign Affairs Committee is weighing a 1,500-word resolution in Jackson’s honor. Perhaps because the resolution calls Jackson a “global” humanitarian."
(“Whereas in December 1991, Michael’s office MJJ Productions donated more than 200 turkey dinners to needy families in Los Angeles. ...”)

"Michael, a Foreign Affair" Gail Collins
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/opinion/09collins.html

To save the 2.5 million African children that die every year from malnutrition, the population of the US, 305 million, would have to donate 56 cents each. Worldwide there are 113 million children suffering from malnutrition, to feed them all for a year would cost $7.8 billion that works out to $25.56 each for the population of the US. Every year we spend $1,678 for every man, woman and child on defense. That works out to a 1.5 percent cut in defense. MC

Nicholas Kristof
Op-Ed Columnist - Would You Let This Girl Drown? - NYTimes.com
Source: www.nytimes.com
Why we’re so willing to try to assist a stranger before us, yet so unwilling to send donations to save strangers from malaria half a world away.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/opinion/09kristof.html?_r=1

NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/07/08/08greenwire-breakthrough-reported-on-low-cost-alternative-to-388.html

"The dignity code........It also commanded its followers to be dispassionate — to distrust rashness, zealotry, fury and political enthusiasm."

I'm having trouble finding balance, even though we have been blatantly provoked by charlatans in positions of trust MC

NY Times
July 7, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
In Search of Dignity
By DAVID BROOKS
When George Washington was a young man, he copied out a list of 110 “Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.” Some of the rules in his list dealt with the niceties of going to a dinner party or meeting somebody on the street.

“Lean not upon anyone,” was one of the rules. “Read no letter, books or papers in company,” was another. “If any one come to speak to you while you are sitting, stand up,” was a third.

But, as the biographer Richard Brookhiser has noted, these rules, which Washington derived from a 16th-century guidebook, were not just etiquette tips. They were designed to improve inner morals by shaping the outward man. Washington took them very seriously. He worked hard to follow them. Throughout his life, he remained acutely conscious of his own rectitude.

Continued:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/opinion/07brooks.html?em

We are in serious trouble, years of neglect, shrinking revenues and a congress more concerned with pork rather than meaningful expenditures on infrastructure. We as a country have rested on the laurels of the New Deal and Eisenhower's Interstate Highway System. The American people, the Republicans that have demonized the New Deal and the Democrats that capitulated will reap the whirlwind. Note the date on this article. Things are worse now, we're broke and the hole we are in is huge. I think it is time we quit playing around in space and funding a unnecessarily mammoth Defense Department. MC

NY Times
August 23, 2006
Talking Points
Things Fall Apart: Fixing America’s Crumbling Infrastructure
By NICHOLAS KULISH

Whether it’s the roads we drive on, the pipes carrying our water, or the power lines humming with the electricity that lights our homes, America’s physical networks are falling apart.

That’s bad news for those of us spending hours a day in traffic caused by road-repair bottlenecks, or sweating through prolonged summer blackouts. But it’s also a substantial drag on our economy and on our businesses. And it will be a competitive challenge for this country in the years to come.

Infrastructure — the catchall term for the backbone of our nation — is the kind of word that makes taxpayers want to roll over, hit the snooze button and go back to sleep. We ignore it and only complain when something breaks. No dummies, our lawmakers react accordingly. They approach the underpinnings of our nation’s future like school nurses, applying the equivalent of Band-Aids and aspirin.

Continued:

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/opinion/23talking-points.html?pagewanted=all

"It was patriotism, not communism, which inspired me... Inspired me to fight the unchecked and brutal imperialism present in Indochina, first administered by the French then by the Americans. " Ho Chi Minh

When he sought aid from the United States in their fight against the French, he was asked, are you a member of the communist party? His answer, "My country is my party." When I first read a history of Vietnam, I was shocked to realize the Vietnamese fight for independence was even more admirable than the US fight against British rule. I encourage you to read the entire NY Times article. In many ways Rumsfeld reminded me of McNamara, although no one could possibly match Rumsfeld's arrogance. Killing three million civilians was an extension of the McNamara/Curtis Lemay WWII Pacific strategy of, "Bombing them into the stone age" MC

NY Times
July 7, 2009
Robert S. McNamara, Architect of a Futile War, Dies at 93
By TIM WEINER
Robert S. McNamara, the forceful and cerebral defense secretary who helped lead the nation into the maelstrom of Vietnam and spent the rest of his life wrestling with the war’s moral consequences, died Monday at his home in Washington. He was 93.

His wife, Diana, said Mr. McNamara died in his sleep at 5:30 a.m., adding that he had been in failing health for some time.

Mr. McNamara was the most influential defense secretary of the 20th century. Serving Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1968, he oversaw hundreds of military missions, thousands of nuclear weapons and billions of dollars in military spending and foreign arms sales. He also enlarged the defense secretary’s role, handling foreign diplomacy and the dispatch of troops to enforce civil rights in the South.

Continued:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/us/07mcnamara.html?hpw

NY Times
July 7, 2009

Making a Cash Cow Out of Manure Isn't Easy

By DEBRA KAHN of ClimateWire
ATWATER, Calif. -- The gurgling is loudest near the edges as Carl Morris jumps on a tarp covering a lagoon of decomposing manure.

"It's the world's largest waterbed," said Morris, chief operating officer of Joseph Gallo Dairy Farms in California's Central Valley.

The moonbounce-like, 60-millimeter-thick tarp covers the farm's 24-foot-deep pond. It's a holding tank for manure from 5,000 Holstein and Jersey cows, and the decomposing waste produces 400,000 cubic feet of methane gas per day. That, in turn, powers a generator and provides steam to run a cheese-making plant. It's also very stinky.

"There's nothing high-tech about it," said Morris, who estimates that the farm saves about $2,700 per day in electricity and steam power, plus 400,000 gallons of propane per year.

Continued:
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/07/07/07climatewire-making-a-cash-cow-out-of-manure-isnt-easy-45070.html

Maybe if we ignore climate change it will go away, along with millions of acres of pine, top soil and watershed. The bad news, the 21st century pine beetle scourge, natural or not, will have a profound effect on the water supplies of Phoenix, Vegas and LA. MC

NY Times
July 7, 2009
Some See Beetle Attacks on Western Forests as a Natural Event
By JIM ROBBINS
MISSOULA, Mont. — When Ken Salazar — then a senator from Colorado, now secretary of the interior — called the attack on millions of acres of pine forests by the bark beetle the Katrina of the West, he was expressing the common view of the explosive growth of the beetles as an unmitigated disaster.

But not everybody sees it that way. Some environmentalists and scientists support the beetles. While they acknowledge the severity of the problems the beetles are causing, they argue that the insects, which kill only mature trees larger than five inches in diameter, are a natural phenomenon, like forest fires, and play a vital ecological role.

Continued:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/science/earth/07beetles.html?ref=science

Part of ProgressNow Colorado's mission is to counter the right-wing message machine, and invariably that really ticks off the far-right and the unfortunate souls who actually believe the likes of the leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh.

Earlier this week, I sent out a message to our members in the 4th Congressional District that seems to have struck a nerve. We asked folks to sign our thank-you card to Representative Betsy Markey for her leadership and favorable vote on the House climate change bill known as "ACES."

Here's a sampling of the hate mail I received from the far right. Particularly interesting is the misogynistic tone many of them took. I wonder if they speak to their wives and mothers like this? Names and addresses removed to protect the moronic...spelling and grammar errors left intact.

   Read More »

Coal? Natural gas? Nuke? We can wipe them all off the drawing board by using current energy more efficiently. Are you listening, Washington?
By Joseph Romm

Jul. 28, 2008 | Suppose I paid you for every pound of pollution you generated and punished you for every pound you reduced. You would probably spend most of your time trying to figure out how to generate more pollution. And suppose that if you generated enough pollution, I had to pay you to build a new plant, no matter what the cost, and no matter how much cheaper it might be to not pollute in the first place.

Well, that's pretty much how we have run the U.S. electric grid for nearly a century. The more electricity a utility sells, the more money it makes. If it's able to boost electricity demand enough, the utility is allowed to build a new power plant with a guaranteed profit. The only way a typical utility can lose money is if demand drops. So the last thing most utilities want to do is seriously push strategies that save energy, strategies that do not pollute in the first place.

America is the Saudi Arabia of energy waste. A 2007 report from the international consulting firm McKinsey and Co. found that improving energy efficiency in buildings, appliances and factories could offset almost all of the projected demand for electricity in 2030 and largely negate the need for new coal-fired power plants. McKinsey estimates that one-third of the U.S. greenhouse gas reductions by 2030 could come from electricity efficiency and be achieved at negative marginal costs. In short, the cost of the efficient equipment would quickly pay for itself in energy savings.   Read More »