Health Costs, Leaders and the CBO

Here is a copy of the graph of cost from the health care program projected out over time as presented by the CBO. It is not pretty. http://cboblog.cbo.gov/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/slide10.jpg The solutions are fewer old people and/or less care for them. There is an overall point here. These politicians are not doers. They just say things but do not manage them. If there was a plan to fix a problem, there would be a big separation between recognizing the problem, offering a solution and managing the plan that would solve the problem. Forget how distorted the first two parts are; recognizing the problem and offering a solution are twisted, bribe and lobbying influenced processes that rarely create anything of value. But the big problem here is that the legislature-executive divide, so reasonably created by the framers who did not envision great government expenditures and projects, breaks down when distorted ideas and projects are created by the legislature and then administered by the executive. These people simply are not any good at it. In business when you have a vision and fail at it you go out of business and work for your brother-in-law. In government, when you develop a failed project you you stay a legislator or become an ambassador or a lobbyist but the rest of us are stuck with the stupid idea and implementation until the next inept go-round.

Health Care and our Leaders

Here's a real nice little quote from Obama. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/07/22/obama_doctors_taking_tonsils_out_for_money_instead_of_diagnosing_it_as_allergies.html
He looks to hype support for this government health plan by demonizing doctors who are victimizing children. The first page of the book on desperate responses: a personal attack on someone who has something to gain if you lose--and, by the way, include a kid. These people are shameless. Do I know crooks in medicine? Yes. But if the honesty among attorneys were one tenth the integrity of physicians, this would be a nice world.

What is overlooked in this mess is this: these lawmakers come up with a pandering notion/good idea and seduce the population with it. Now I make no excuses for the population; De Tocqueville said the big risk in the democracy was that the voters would figure out they could vote themselves other people's production. But then they do not manage the problem they created. I heard on the news a few nights age that a dentist billed Medicare for 9300 procedures on one day. There are three pizza parlors in Florida that managed to get themselves registered as three dialysis units and bill regularly for them.

Yet I routinely am called by my credit card if I do anything out of the ordinary.

A few years ago a friend of mine who was running a radiological diagnostic unit applied for his license to use diagnostic isotopes. He got back a license that authorized him to use weapons grade uranium. Weapons grade uranium! These people simply do not deserve to be in charge.

health care

I did not watch Obama last night but the health care mess seems to be worse. The insincerity of all this is staggering. The concerns about health care in the government is not about the well being of the citizens, it is about the expense of their well being. The government has always bought votes and support by offering voters perks --like social security, health care, and prescription plans--without any notion or concern about the eventual outcome. Anyone can see now that those bills are becoming unmanageable and, rather than tell the truth and admit they were wrong (and stupid and insincere), they try to disguise the situation and persist in the fiction that this can be achieved. If they tell the truth they will leave many old people--who thought they would have health care--without anything and social security is next. Those guys vote. So the option the political class has chosen is to deny there is a general financial problem and pretend the problem is fraud, or poor care or the uninsured. There is no easy solution here. We have people who have not saved, have a lot of debt and are totally unprepared for managing their future lives. There will be a shell of social security and a shell of medical care but these shells will mean a significant change in our lives and our expectations. And this will mean scavenging the productive people for any spare income to support those who did not make the effort to support themselves. I see a contraction here in lifestyle and comfort, like what is beginning in Europe. Here's an article that talks, superficially, about the American health measurements we mentioned earlier. http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=332723342557746

Health Care Bait and Switch

There are problems facing us now that will be resolved in one way or another. Refusing to confront them will still result in a solution of some sort. As I see it, there are three major things that must be resolved: 1. health care costs, 2. energy policies and 3.our attitude towards money and debt. I think it is important to distinguish between health care and health care expenses. Health care is fine; health care costs are not. As this blurb shows, health care costs will bankrupt us and are a function of the growing number of people requiring care and the growing number of health care solutions available to them. This, if true, leads to a few very nasty options including decreasing the number of people requiring care or minimizing the care options available. I see no other choices and believe the government has come to this conclusion as well; they are just lying about it.
http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=328

financial triage

This topic is crucial to every one's life: what to spend in the year. These stats are from the government and are quite extensive. Interestingly--and disingenuously--they do not include taxes which should be on every one's mind. But these are the numbers the average family spends after taxes and they are instructive. They are broken down in nice detail. If you believe as I do that the country will not grow much in the near future but there might be some financial distortions, for example energy costs might go up but inflation will not because credit and debt will shrink and thus contract the money available, then what increases in the chart in the future must be shifted from the chart. I.E. the chart will not grow: if one thing cost more it must be paid for by a shift in expense from something else. These are interesting to ponder.

http://www.visualeconomics.com/how-the-average-us-consumer-spends-their-paycheck/

Conspiracy or Accidental Chaos

I hope everyone read my little financial link yesterday. Here is a link of a different stripe. I do not know why this interview is not being discussed every hour by everyone. It suggests a remarkable event and legitimate terror on the part of our esteemed leaders. One could easily see this story as part of a huge James Bond plot. Who was moving this money out? Who has the economic muscle to do it? Why did they do it? Its proximity to the election is very provocative; was that a factor? Most importantly, why is such a huge and astonishing event ignored? It is more than curious: That money movement could anonymously threaten the security and stability of a culture must be addressed. But before that, it must be recognized.
From Motley Fool: http://caps.fool.com/blogs/viewpost.aspx?bpid=143295&t=01006124249416869148
And there are individual lessons, too. This is a complex world and we may not have all the understanding or the tools to control its most basic components. That places a burden on every individual to protect himself as well as possible. And that start with being informed.

Upheaval and Investment

There are countless websites devoted to the topic of personal finance because, I think, this is such a problem. This is something you can learn--and I can help because I have been through it all. My fear is that this is a harsh culture created by strong men. Their strength and vision may be bred a little thin now but the demands created by their philosophy persists. The concept of personal freedom guaranteed by the state is revolutionary but it is not immutable because it all but guarantees incidental personal failure. As time has gone by, some cultures have compromised freedom in order to mute the possibility of personal failure: it is illegal to work an extra job on your 6 week designated vacation in France. Illegal. The upside is compressed in an effort to elevate the downside. In this world the ideal bell shaped curve is a line straight up and down.
This battle between personal freedom and social responsibility will never end and will be tweaked and massaged forever by the well-meaning and the avaricious, the optimists and the pessimists, the exceptional and the kind proxies of the incompetent. You don't have to go any further than those horrifying pictures of those poor people staring out at helicopters in flooded New Orleans to know the truth: some people can not take care of themselves. What should we do about them?
Countries have dealt with their problems in a lot of ways but remember that the poor, the disenfranchised, the inept must be given something someone else made. Furniture. Food. Money. Security. If they can't create it, they must be given someone else's. This government in the past has outlawed gold ownership, capped money withdrawal, arrested and interred American citizens under some stressful circumstances.
At any rate, please indulge me my concerns here and take my ravings with a smaller grain of salt than you might ordinarily.
Here is the first thing to read, a notion that emerged by accident as the people at Google were searching for an investment approach for their soon-to-be-millionaire employees:
http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/best-investment-advice-youll-never-get