Hawaii Universal Healthcare plan?

SOURCE: Koohan Paik (koohanpaik@gmail.com)
SUBHEAD: Hawaii bill considers possibility of universal healthcare coverage to residents.

By Jill N. Tokuda on 25 March 2017 in Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2017/03/hawaii-single-payer-plan.html)


Image above: Senator Lorraine Inouye in the Hawaii State Building in Honolulu. From (https://www.flickr.com/photos/134175784@N05/26056617971/).

[IB Publisher's note: This is time sensitive. Deadline tomorrow for comments.]

After witnessing the Republicans' tour-de-force fumbled attempt to rob Americans of healthcare, it occurred to me that *now* is the perfect "opening" to push for a healthcare system that truly serves us.

Unless you own an insurance company, that would be "universal healthcare," or "single-payer healthcare" -- basic medical coverage for all, for little or no money, with the opportunity to purchase additional coverage from a private insurance company.

Besides costing tax payers less money, universal healthcare is a great way to shift wealth back to the people from the 1%, and also from defense spending back to social services.

So I did a bit of research to find out how we can get back to the universal health care that Hawaii happened to have enjoyed a quarter-century ago. And guess what I found out?

There are folks in State government thinking along these same lines. Turns out, funding to investigate the viability of a universal healthcare system is being proposed this week!

Yep, there is a line-item in a budget bill to provide funding to the Hawaii Health Authority (they do healthcare planning for the state) to research how Hawaii can get universal healthcare -- health care for all! The item proposes to give a salary to two researchers, who would be helped by nine volunteers to draw up a plan. This is the first step in the right direction.

Of course, the health insurance companies are powerful and oppose such a plan that cuts their profit out of the equation of our healthcare. But if this bill gets enough testimonies sent in BY MONDAY NIGHT, and our senators vote to fund this research, we will be on our way to a system that would resemble Medicare for all ages. Wouldn't that be great?

The budget bill is HB100 in the Senate Ways and Means Committee. Here is the web site to submit testimony: (http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov)

(It's cumbersome at first, but you get the hang of it - just don't forget your password!)

Once you indicate HB100, there is a place for you to make a comment that you would like to see the Hawaii Health Authority funded so that those nine volunteers plus a couple of paid staff can design a Universal Health Care system for Hawaii.

AND... call the Hawaii State senator who represents you -- and tell them the same thing.

AND... if you are so inclined, call the other senators in the Ways and Means Committee. Here is the list of their names and numbers.

Ways and Means Committee
Chair: Jill N. Tokuda: 808-587-7220
Vice Chair: Donovan M. Dela Cruz: 808-586-6090
Lorraine Inouye: 808-586-7335
J. Kalani English: 808-587-7225
Brickwood Galuteria: 808-586-6740
Breene Harimoto: 808-586-6230
Kai Kahele: 808-586-6760
Gil Riviere: 808-586-7330
Maile Shimabukuro: 808-586-7793
Brian Taniguchi: 808-586-6460
Glenn Wakai: 808-586-8585

Hawaii State Senators
 On Kauai it is Ron Kouchi: 808-586-6030
For other districts find your Senator's phone number here:
(http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/members/legislators.aspx?chamber=S)
 
Please let's fund the Hawaii Health Authority's research on Universal Health Care. But testimony must be in by Monday evening. Here is an opportunity to make a difference!

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Be Your Own Medicine

SUBHEAD: Alas, being your own medicine strips the $3.5 trillion healthcare system of profit, power and control.

By Charles Hugh Smith on 29 January 2016 for Of Two Minds  -
(http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan16/be-your-own-medicine1-16.html)


Image above: "LSD Bicycle Day" by Alex Grey. From (http://thirdmonk.net/creative/art/psychedelic-spirit-paintings-alex-grey-art-gallery.html).

Alas, being your own medicine strips the $3.5 trillion healthcare system of profit, power and control, so the last thing the healthcare cartels want is for us to be our own medicine, as that would reduce our reliance on highly profitable pharmaceuticals, tests, procedures and high-cost facilities.

Note the slogan isn't "take your own medicine" or "make your own medicine"--it's be your own medicine, which suggests that health is a way of being, not just a way of consuming, though what we consume is integral to being your own medicine.

Our materialist-consumerist culture focuses almost exclusively on data, so "health" is quickly reduced to FitBit readings, test results and an obsessive monitoring of calories and diets, to the general exclusion of the mind-body as an integral system.

The importance of what we put in our mouths is expressed by the old Chinese saying: disease comes in through the mouth, i.e. what we consume.

But what we consume is not limited to food (or what is sold as "food"): it also includes what our minds consume in the way of "news", entertainment, knowledge, etc., and what inputs we experience as stress.

There is also what we might call a spiritual component that includes beliefs but also purpose, meaning and positive social roles.

People who have lost (or been stripped of) positive social roles, goals and purpose are prone to a Devil's brew of psychological and physical ailments that cannot be understood or treated as separate from being.

Yet this is precisely what the U.S. healthcare system does: separate conditions into specialties that can each be treated by medications or procedures.

What cannot be "fixed" by medications or procedures--for example, a loss of purpose and positive social roles--are ignored: these realities simply do not exist in the U.S. healthcare system.

Any physician or nurse who attempts to understand and co-treat (with the patient themselves) a patient's entire state of being will encounter multiple layers of institutional resistance or even active hostility.

There's no time or money to address the state of patients' being; treatment is defined by tests, data and diagnoses that then trigger "standards of care" that rely heavily on medications, for a number of systemic reasons: drugs satisfy the patients' demands for the system to "do something" that "fixes" their condition instantly; it enables overworked physicians and providers a ready treatment that can be defended in the courts as current standard-of-care, and it enables every cartel in a system of cartels to reap huge revenues and profits.

What would a healthcare system based on prevention and be your own medicine look like? Such a system would still be called upon to treat diseases such as brain tumors, genetic conditions, traumatic injuries, etc., but the front line of the system would be designed to help individuals be their own medicine, not just in the context of provider-patient but within the day-to-day contexts of households, communities and enterprises.

The idea that actions have consequences is not alien to us, yet our healthcare system is based on giving lip-service to the causal consequences of what we put in our mouths, what we do with our bodies and minds, and what we consume in the material, spiritual and psychological worlds.

Treatment of atomized individuals in a setting of atomized symptoms and treatments is by any measure the opposite of a system that encourages and enables everyone to be their own medicine.

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Duct Tape Medicine

SUBHEAD: The end product of all the grift is that medical care costs twice as much in the USA as any other civilized country.

By James Kunstler on 4 November 2013 for Kunstler.com-
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/duct-tape-politics/)


Image above: Healthcare cartoon by Dave Grunlund. From (http://www.trianglecrc.com/blog/the-cost-of-healthcare/).

The ObamaCare website rollout fiasco, joined by the bait-and-switch “You can keep your current insurance (not)” tempest, obscure the fundamental quandary about so-called health-care in America: that it is a gigantic racket structured to allow countless layers of grift and counter-grift. 

The end product of all that artifice is that medical care costs twice as much in America as any other civilized country, and that it has to be operated by a cruel and despotic matrix of poorly coordinated bureaucracies that commonly leave people more disabled financially than the diseases that brought them into the system.

ObamaCare was designed to work like a giant roll of duct tape that would allow the current cast of characters in charge (Democratic Progressives) to pretend that the system could keep going a few years longer. But it looks like it has already blown out the patch on the manifold and is getting ready to throw a rod — which duct tape will not avail to fix.

I had three major surgeries (hip, open heart, spine) the past year and paid attention to the statements that rolled in from my then-insurer, Blue Shield (the policy was cancelled in October). These documents were always advertised as “this is not a bill” and that was technically true, but it deflected attention from what it really was, a record of negotiated scams between the “providers” (doctors and hospitals) and the insurance company.

There was never any discussion (or offer of discussion) of the cost of care before a procedure. When asked, doctors commonly pretend not to know what their work costs. Why is that? It’s not to spare the patient’s feelings. It’s because sick people are hostages and both the doctors and the hospital management know they will agree to anything that will get them through the crisis of illness. This sets up a situation that allows the “providers” to blindside the patient with charges after the fact.

My hip “revision” operation was necessary because my original implant was a defective (“innovative” circa 2003) metal-on-metal joint that released metal fragments into my system and it had to be removed. 

The stated charge for replacement part — a simple two piece bearing made of metal and plastic, about the size of tangerine — was $14,000. Blue Shield “negotiated” the price down to about $7,000. If you go to the websites of any of the manufacturers of these things, you will not see any suggested retail or wholesale price. The markup on these things must be out of this world. 

Cars come with four ball joints that carry roughly the same time warrantee, and they come with a staggering array of “extras”— engines, transmissions, air-conditioning, seats, air-bags, and radios. The pattern was similar for the other surgeries and what they entailed. I ended up paying five-figures out-of-pocket. Lucky for me that I saved some money before this all happened. I don’t have kids so I haven’t been paying extortionate college tuitions during my peak income years.

All the surgeries I had required hospital stays. For the hip op, I was in for a day and a half in a non-special bed (no fancy hookups). The charge was $23,000 per day. For what? They took my blood pressure nine times. I got about six bad meals. The line charge on the Blue Shield statement said “room and board.” It would be a joke if this extortion wasn’t multiplied millions of times a day across the nation. 

Citizen-hostages obviously don’t know where to begin to unravel this skein of dreadful rackets. If you think it’s possible to have a productive conversation with an insurance company rep at the other end of the phone line, then you’re going to be disappointed. You might as well be talking to a third-sub-deputy under-commissar in the Soviet motor vehicle bureau.

This ghastly matrix of corruption really only has two ways to go. It can completely implode in a fairly short time frame (say, five years, tops), or we can, by some miracle of political will, get our priorities straight and sweep away all the layers of racketeering with a single-payer system. The evidence in other civilized countries is not so encouraging. 

England’s National Health Service has degenerated into a two layer system of half-assed soviet-style medicine for the proles and concierge service for the rich. France’s system works more democratically, but the nation is going bankrupt and eventually their health care network will fall apart. The Scandinavian countries have relatively tiny populations. I don’t know, frankly, how the Germans are doing.

Here in the USA, you can make arguments for putting a greater share of public money into a single-payer system. For instance, if we redirected the money spent on our stupid military adventures and closed some of the countless redundant bases we run overseas. That would be a biggie. Given the current choke-hold of the military-industrial complex on our politicians, I wouldn’t expect much traction there.

You can argue that nobody complains about government spending on the highway system, so why should “the people” complain about organizing a medical system that really works? Obviously, there’s no consensus to make that happen. Too many doctors want to drive BMWs. Too many insurance executives and hospital administrators want to make multi-million dollar salaries. 

Too many lobbyist parasites and lawyers are feeding off that revenue stream. Too many politicians with gold-plated health insurance coverage don’t want to change the current distribution of goodies. End-of-story, as the late Tony Soprano used to say.

It’s the old quandary of fire or ice… which way do you want to go? Since I’m interested in reality-based outcomes, my bet would be on implosion. In any case, several of the other systems that currently support the activities of our society are scheduled for near-term implosion, too. That would be the banking-finance system, the energy supply system, and the industrial agriculture system. 

As those things wind down or crash, you can be sure that everything connected with them will be affected, so the chance that we could mount a real national health care system is, in my opinion, zero.

The ObamaCare duct-taped system will go down. The big hospitals, HMOs, insurers, pharma companies will all starve and shrivel. Like all things in the emergent new paradigm, they will reorganize on a small and much simpler basis.

 Everyone will make less money and high-tech medicine will probably dwindle for all but a very few… and for them, only for a while. Eventually, we’ll re-set to local clinic style medicine with far fewer resources, specialties, and miracle cures. There will be a whole lot less aggravation, though, and people may die more peacefully.

Finally, there’s the pathetic American lumpen-public of our day itself, steadily committing suicide en masse by corn byproducts, the three-hundred pounders lumbering down the Wal-Mart aisles in search of the latest designer nacho. What can you do about such a people, except let fate take them where it will?

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System Reset 2014-2015

SUBHEAD: Resets occur when the price of everything that has been repressed, manipulated or obscured is repriced.

By Charles Hugh Smith on 29 October 2013 for Of Two Minds -
(http://www.oftwominds.com/blogoct13/reset10-13.html)


Image above: Actual organization chart of Federal health care. Way too complicated. Click to enlarge. From (http://lonelyconservative.com/2012/05/another-obamacare-failure-small-businesses-fail-to-apply-for-tax-credits/).

Resets occur when the price of everything that has been repressed, manipulated or obscured is repriced.

The global financial system will reset in 2014-2015, regardless of official pronouncements and financial media propaganda hyping the "recovery." Despite the wide spectrum of forecasts (from rosy to stormy), nobody knows precisely what will transpire in 2014-2015, so we must remain circumspect about any and all predictions-- especially our own.

Even as we are mindful of the risks of a forecast being wrong (and the righteous humility that befits any analysis), it seems increasingly self-evident that financial systems around the world are reaching extremes that generally presage violent resets to new equilibria--typically at much lower levels of complexity and energy consumption.

John Michael Greer has described the process of descending stair-step resets (my description, not his) as catabolic collapse. The system resets at a lower level and maintains the new equilibrium for some time before the next crisis/system failure triggers another reset.

There is much systems-analysis intelligence in Greer's concept: systems without interactive feedbacks may collapse suddenly in a heap, but more complex systems tend to stair-step down in a series of resets to lower levels of consumption and complexity--for example, the Roman Empire, which reset many times before reaching the near-collapse level of phantom legions, full-strength on official documents, defending phantom borders.

In the present, we can expect the overly costly, complex, inefficient, fraud-riddled U.S. sickcare (i.e. "healthcare") system to reset as providers (i.e. doctors and physicians' groups) opt out of ObamaCare, Medicare and Medicaid; like the phantom armies defending phantom borders of the crumbling Empire, the vast, centralized empire of sickcare will remain officially at full strength, but few will be able to find caregivers willing to provide care within the systems.

Just as much of the collateral supporting the stock, bond and housing bubbles is phantom, many other centralized systems will reset to phantom status. As local and state governments' revenues are increasingly diverted to fund public union employees' sickcare and pension benefits, the services provided by government will decline as the number of retirees swells and the number of government employees actually filling potholes, etc. drops.

Local government will offer services that are increasingly phantom, as stagnating tax revenues fund benefits for retirees rather than current services. On paper, cities will remain responsible for filling potholes, but in the real world, the potholes will go unfilled. In response, cities will ask taxpayers to approve bonds that cost triple the price of pay-as-you-go pothole filling, as a way to dodge the inevitable conflict between government retirees benefits and taxpayers burdened with decaying streets, schools, etc. and ever-higher taxes.

As for phantom collateral--the real value of the collateral will be undiscovered until people start selling assets in earnest. As long as everyone is buying, the phantom nature of the collateral is masked; it's only when everyone tries to get their money out of asset bubbles is the actual value of the underlying collateral discovered.

When assets go bidless, i.e. there are no buyers at any price, the phantom nature of the supposedly solid collateral is revealed. Price discovery is one way of describing reset; transparent pricing of risk is another way of saying the same thing.

When risk has been mispriced via state guarantees, fraud, willful obfuscation, complexity fortresses, etc., then the repricing of risk also resets the system.

Resets occur when the price of everything that has been repressed, manipulated or obscured is repriced. The greater the manipulation and financial repression, the more violent the reset. What been manipulated, obscured or repressed? Virtually everything: risk, credit, assets, labor, currency, you name it. Everything that has been manipulated by central banks and central states will be repriced.

Trust is difficult to price. Every reset erodes trust in the capacity of the centralized status quo to manipulate/repress price to its liking. Once trust in the system is lost, it cannot be purchased at any cost.


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Two Forces & Three Bears

SUBHEAD: During runaway hyper-complexity our prime task  in history is managing contraction.

By James Kunstler on 28 October 2013 for Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/two-forces-and-three-bears/)


Image above: Hypercomplex surface of 3D fractal. From (http://www.miqel.com/fractals_math_patterns/visual_math_fractal_types.html).

In these climax years of industrial technocratic society, two opposing forces shape the destiny of government: the desperate effort to control everything versus the decline of the ability to carry out that effort. 

The result will be the loss of legitimacy and the collapse of government from the highest levels, moving downward until the real power to make anything work re-sets at a feasible and appropriate level — probably very local. This dynamic is seen very clearly in three spectacles du jour: the “national security” (spying) mess, government-sponsored accounting fraud in finance, and the ObamaCare rollout.

As history develops, people do things for the simple reason that it seems like a good idea at the time. Computer tech made it possible for bureaucrats and military apparatchiks to invade the privacy of everybody, but in the end it only had the effect of embarrassing the perpetrators and eroding a big chunk of the US government’s legitimacy. 

The attempt at maximum control will eventually lead to maximum resistance and, quite possibly, some sort of political revolution, perhaps starting with the death of the two dominant political parties. When political disruption finally occurs, it will manifest quickly, as criticality thresholds are breached. It has the potential of taking this society in very undesirable directions including civil war, theocracy, and war against other peoples.

The diminishing returns of computer technology applied to intelligence gathering are that it produces more mountains of data than any team of professionals can make sense of, and it prompts said professionals to make mischief with the information that is easiest to sort out: the financial records of ordinary citizens. 

Nothing will create political resistance more surely than messing with people’s money. The NSA apparatus is now a self-reinforcing monster that will strive for ever more control ineffectively, creating a debris path of ever more embarrassment and resentment. A lone true patriot like Snowden does more to oppose this monster than all the “freedom” and “liberty” spouting, flag-lapel-pin-wearing cowards in either political party.

The pervasive accounting fraud in the attempt to prop up an unsound banking system is even closer to criticality. A society that produces tradable goods needs sound money which functions as;

1. a medium of exchange, 
2. a store of value,
3. a unit of account for establishing prices. 

The combined accounting frauds in Federal Reserve policy, private banking and securities markets, and government fiscal management is destroying all these functions. The more abstracted finance gets from real productive activity, the more fragile the system becomes. We are doing nothing now except adding more complexity and abstraction to it, causing the system to become more detached from reality. In effect, we’re opting to forego an economy based on goods in favor of one based on empty promises and paper swindles. 

The potential and probable consequent destruction of nominal wealth would be an event that advanced technocratic society likely will not recover from — in the sense that today’s standard of living could be preserved for billions of people worldwide. That destruction would herald a new dark age, this time without any prospect of recovery via the exploitation of natural resources, which will have been depleted.

The ObamaCare piece of the picture is a mere pathetic soap opera compared to the first two quandaries. The 2000-page law did nothing to address the core tragedy of medicine in America — namely, that it has evolved into a hideous hostage racket. 

You go to a hospital with a terrifying illness and you are susceptible to fleecing by the so-called “care-givers” for the promise that you may get to live. No prices for treatment are ever discussed. They are presumed to be astronomical — but who cares if you end up dead, and if you do get to live, you’ll figure that out later. 

If you hold an insurance policy, these charges will be subject to a fake negotiation between grifting insurance companies and grifting hospitals, physicians, and drug companies. The price “settlements” are only slightly less a joke than the actual charges, and are obfuscated in documents designed to bewilder even well-educated policy-holders.

Even if you are insured, the charges may bankrupt you. A typical one-day charge for “room and board” in a non-specialized hospital in-patient bed runs $23,000 at my local hospital. For what? Half a dozen blood-pressure checks and three bad meals? You can be sure that ever-fewer families will be able to fork over $12,000-a-year for basic coverage. 

The ObamaCare legislation and its laughable rollout of a useless website is just a punctuation mark at the end of the soap opera script. The result eventually will be the complete implosion of the medical racket and a return to a very primitive clinic system, with payment in chickens or cords of stove-wood. 

The smaller number of surviving humans will surely enjoy better health, and greater piece of mind, when this monster racket expires of inertia, bad faith, and deceit.

These efforts to manage runaway hyper-complexity with more complexity are guaranteed to fail. Our prime task at this moment in history is managing contraction, and the means for doing that would be simplifying, not adding layers of complication larded with fraud, pretense, and mendacity.

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Greenwich Stilt Houses

SUBHEAD: It is a wrenching process, but as we see sea levels rise we are going to see more of this.

By Annie Linskey on 19 August 2013 for Bloomberg News -
(http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-19/greenwich-stilt-houses-foreshadow-impact-of-new-fema-maps.html)


Image above: The Ekvall family in Old Greenwich, Connecticut are raising their house on stilts. From original article.

In the coastal areas of Greenwich, Connecticut, the latest housing craze requires hydraulic jacks, pylons and stilts. One home towers over its neighbors like a cruise ship. Others look like expensive tree houses.

“People are stopping in to ask us about it,” said Patrick Grasso, 59, a resident of the hedge fund enclave who jacked up his 1920s waterfront house about 3 feet (1 meter). “People want to know how long did it take and how much did it cost.”

Ten months after Hurricane Sandy, Greenwich is among the first U.S. municipalities to adopt revised flood maps from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that predict fiercer waves and higher storm surges. In doing so, the town has fallen in line with a federal initiative meant to thin the density of low-lying coastal populations, prepare for more damaging weather and reduce rebuilding costs borne by taxpayers.

The maps add as much as 5 feet to previous predictions of how high the waters of Long Island Sound would rise during a 100-year storm like Sandy. Starting next year, homes in surge areas across the country won’t qualify for flood-insurance rates based on the old maps. That means some homeowners will face a choice between paying as much as $150,000 to raise their houses or accepting premium increases as high as $20,000 a year.

Big Incentive
Greenwich will soon have company. Over the next four years, coastal communities in about 350 counties are set to receive new maps. Adoption is voluntary, though there’s an incentive: Towns wishing to remain in the National Flood Insurance Program, which insures 5.6 million homes, must accept the maps. Banks typically require homeowners in coastal areas to have flood insurance to secure a mortgage.

The federal government is focusing first on remapping the East Coast and Gulf Coast. Draft plans have added 180,000 residents in New York City and 32,000 homes in New Jersey to flood plains. Preliminary maps in the West Coast are set for the next two years, and the Great Lakes and Florida will get them in 2015 and 2016.

In Greenwich, home to hedge funds including Tudor Investment Corp., AQR Capital Management and Traxis Partners, the median value of a house is almost $1 million and many are at risk. Tougher standards were adopted for 20 percent of the residences in the Old Greenwich section. The neighborhood, which hugs the sound, is the nation’s 11th wealthiest zip code, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

No Choice
Many of the first Greenwich residents to lift their homes suffered so much damage during Sandy they had no choice: Repairs exceeded 50 percent of the value of the home, which triggered a federal rule requiring the structure to be rebuilt higher.

The Ekvalls in Old Greenwich are a typical example. Sandy’s tidal surge sent water up to the kitchen countertops of their 1930s cottage, which was 6.5 feet above sea level. They decided to raise the first level to 15.5 feet, higher than the 14 feet required by the town under the federal maps. Now the roof is 43 feet high, so tall that the family needed a variance on a different Greenwich ordinance: one restricting roof heights to 35 feet.

“You are really in the trees,” said Patricia Ekvall, 54, showing off a third-floor view of the tops of weeping willows. From there, she can see several other homes that have been elevated or are in the process.

Adding Stilts
The Ekvalls, whose property was assessed at $816,690 before the renovation, spent more than $300,000 on the project. They drilled steel pins through the muck below and then lifted the house onto stilts. In the next major flood, water will be able to flow under the house like a river below a bridge.

The elevation, while expensive, sent their flood insurance down to $458 year. Had they not raised the house, it would have been 6 feet below the new required height and their annual flood-insurance cost would have soared next year to $5,500, she said.

Neighbors -- even those with far less damage -- are considering the same move, said Denise Savageau, the town’s conservation director, who is coordinating federal Sandy relief grants to help owners raise houses.

“They realize the water was lapping so very close,” Savageau said.

Waters are rising elsewhere as well. Extreme weather caused by global warming is an increasing problem, according to President Barack Obama and state and local government officials. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has called for a $60 billion system of flood barriers to protect the city from tidal surges. The mayor is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.

New York state now lists climate change as a risk to bondholders after Sandy caused more than $40 billion in damage last year, and New Jersey is building dunes to protect its 127-mile coastline.

Rising Rates
Under the new FEMA maps, homes more than 4 feet below flood levels may see premiums jump to $10,700 a year from $3,600, according to data provided by the agency. In some cases, annual insurance will rise to $23,150 a year, according to Resources for the Future, a Washington-based group studying the effects of the changes.

The looming increases stem from a law passed by Congress last year to shore up finances at the National Flood Insurance Program. The system owes $24 billion to the U.S. Treasury, according to FEMA.

Subsidizing Risk
“By subsidizing risk, we are encouraging people to build in areas they shouldn’t build and putting that on the taxpayers,” said R.J. Lehmann, a senior fellow at R Street Institute, a Washington-based research organization.

“It is a wrenching process, but as we see sea levels rise and as we see global warming, we are going to see more of this,” said Lehmann, who helped write the law sponsored by Representatives Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, and Judy Biggert, an Illinois Republican.

Lehmann said the legislation was backed by fiscal conservatives who want to shift the financial burden of waterfront living to homeowners from all taxpayers, and environmentalists who say cheap flood insurance leads to development in sensitive areas.

In other, poorer parts of the U.S., there’s more outcry over the proposed maps.

Bill Bubrig, a 47-year-old insurance agent who lives in Belle Chasse, Louisiana, says his insurance costs will rise to $15,000 a year from $600 if his community adopts maps that would put his home 6 feet below required levels.

Stop FEMA
“This is devastating,” he said. “This is going to be worse than Hurricane Katrina. This will cripple the area.”

Rather than lifting his home, he’s lobbying for change. This summer he traveled to Washington on a mission to halt the insurance increases with a new group based in New Orleans called the Coalition for Sustainable Flood Insurance.

Another organization, Stop FEMA Now, based in Toms River, New Jersey, is planning rallies against the insurance increases in late September.

“We have to get communities together to make this a national issue,” said George Kasimos, who founded the group.

Opponents say they are making progress. In March, FEMA said it wouldn’t apply the new rates until next year. Senator Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, is pushing legislation that would halt implementation until an affordability study is complete.

Federal lawmakers didn’t realize that the new maps would cause such spikes in insurance rates, said Caitlin Berni, a spokeswoman for the coalition.

“This was the biggest case of unintended consequences,” Berni said.

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Kaiser Permanente avoids GMOs

SOURCE: Shannon Rudolph (shannonkona@gmail.com)
SUBHEAD: Kaiser Permanente, the largest managed healthcare organization in the US, has advised its members against GMOs.

By Staff on 14 November 2012 in Willamette Live -
(http://www.willamettelive.com/2012/news/corporate-giant-comes-out-against-gmos/?t=Corporate+Giant+Comes+Out+Against+GMOs)


Image above: Entrance to Kaiser Permanente offices. From (http://blogs.kqed.org/stateofhealth/category/money/page/2/).

It has come to our attention that Kaiser Permanente, the largest managed healthcare organization in the United States, has advised its members against GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in food.
In its Northwest Fall 2012 newsletter, Kaiser suggested membership limit exposure to genetically modified organisms. According to the newsletter:

“GMOs have been added to our food supply since 1994, but most people don’t know it because the United States does not require labeling of GMOs,”

Sounding like a radical organic health proponent, the huge corporate Kaiser continued, “Despite what the biotech industry might say, there is little research on the long-term effects of GMOs on human health.”

Independent studies have shown GMOs to cause organ damage in rats and the inability to reproduce, the Kaiser article said. Kaiser gave tips on how its members can avoid GMOs, including buying organic, looking for the “Non-GMO Project Verified” seal and to download the “ShopNoGMO” app.
Since corporations are required, by definition, to augment their bottom line, we think Kaiser’s efforts to encourage GMO avoidance for the members for whose health costs they must (sometimes!) pay – is telling.

Text of article in Kaiser Permanente Fall 2012 issue of Partners in Health magazine:

What you need to know about GMOs

Limit exposure to genetically modified organisms with these tips.

What do soda, canned chicken soup, margarine, and corn flakes have in common? They all contain genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.

GMOs have a piece of DNA from a different species, such as bacteria or viruses, spliced into their DNA.  Genetically engineered corn, for example, has DNA added so that it has a pesticide built right into it.  This process creates a new species of plant that would have never occurred in nature.

Where do you Find GMO's?

GMO's have been added to our food supply since 1994, but most people don't know it because the United States does not require labeling of GMO's.  As of 2012, most corn, soybeans, canola, cotton, and sugar beets are genetically modified.  Nearly 80 percent of processed food and most fast food contain GMO's.

Despite what the biotech industry might say, there is little research on the long-term effects of GMO's on human health.  Independent research has found that several varieties of GMO corn caused organ damage in rats  Other studies have found that GMO's may lead to an inability in animals to reproduce.

Here are several ways you can help limit your exposure to GMO's:

• Buy organic.  All USDA Certified Organic foods are GMO-free.
  
• Avoid foods that contain nonorganic soy, corn, and canola or cotton-seed oil.
• Look for the "Non-GMO Project Verified" seal.
  
• Ask your local market.  For example, Trader Joe's produce and Trader Joe's-labeled foods are GMO-free; Whole Foods Market's 365 Everyday Value products are sourced to be GMO-free.
  
• Download the ShopNoGMO app.

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Sustainable Healthcare is Prevention

SUBHEAD: One model of a sustainable national system would focus solely on providing preventative care.  

By Charles Hugh Smith on 19 August 2012 for Of Two Minds -  
(http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/a-sustainable-national-healthcare.html)



 
Image above: Stepping away from obesity would be a big step in prevention. From 
(http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/calling-obesity-what-it-is/).

The current sickcare system will bankrupt the nation. Longtime readers know that I have presented various options to our costly (and therefore doomed) sickcare system.

I have suggested a "cash only" system (The "Impossible" Healthcare Solution: Go Back to Cash July 29, 2009), and observed that the Veterans Administration (VA)offers a model for a national opt-in healthcare system that would offer an alternative to the hopelessly corrupt "fee for service" sickcare (Healthcare: A Large-Scale Solution January 4, 2011).

Stripped of purposefully obscuring complexity, sickcare is a system of State-sanctioned cartel skimming that redistributes the wealth of many to the hands of a few.

There are many potentially sustainable alternatives, but regardless of the options offered, it is self-evident that open competition between transparent systems is necessary to provide cost discipline and encourage innovation. In other words, one size cannot fit all, and the broader the spectrum of transparent opt-in choices, the greater the cost discipline and incentives for innovation.

Healthcare is one of those peculiarly ideological topics where people tend to conceptualize all choices as either/or: either a system is "socialized" or it is "free market" (code name for cartel skimming controlled by the State).

The idea that a system of multiple options, complementary and competitive, might be the most sustainable, is difficult for many to conceptualize, much less accept.

Advocates of the Central State taking a dominant role in healthcare bear the responsibility of explaining what will limit the capture of the State's spending and power by wealthy vested interests, a process of corruption that would quickly turn any "new" system into the same crony-capitalist, unaffordable system we now have.

Apologists for the present system of State-sanctioned cartel skimming claim that Medicare, Medicaid and ObamaCare are all sustainable with what amounts to modest policy tweaks.

There is scant evidence for this claim; indeed, the one thing we know is that the promises issued to the 306 million residents of the U.S. are claims on future national income and surplus that cannot possibly be met, and magical projections of unending "growth" and unlimited borrowing power for generations to come are fantasies. Since sickcare is unsustainable, it will eventually be replaced by something that is sustainable.

Our only choice is to either let the current system collapse and then start pondering sustainable alternatives, or begin an honest discussion of sustainable alternatives before sickcare implodes in insolvency.

In this spirit of openly discussing a variety of sustainable options, we present this essay by correspondent Lonn Gary Schwartz, O.D. Dr. Schwartz makes a compelling case for the view that the only truly affordable, sustainable national system is one that provides preventative healthcare only. Here is Dr. Schwartz's essay:

The decades-long health care crisis we continue to experience in the United States is multi-faceted and highly complex, touching every U.S. citizen and every American institution. Despite the complexities, getting to the root of the problem simply requires us to confront the following realities.

First and foremost, we can not, nor will we ever be able to arrest the aging process, eliminate illness, nor avoid death. Despite what the myriad of “Eternal Fountain of Youth,” industries puts forward, these very events define what it is to be part of the organic life-cycle on this planet.

Therefore, it would seem that we, as a society, need to let go of the illusion that we can circumvent the natural order of things. Secondly, each individual needs to take primary responsibility for his/her own health [care].

No more dependence on having others bail us out of poor life choices [insufficient exercise, poor diet, unstable mental/emotional/spiritual states]. No more squandering the nation’s wealth on highly destructive lifestyles and their outrageously expensive antidotes.

Additionally, and believe it or not, the amount of social wealth that can be allocated to health care is finite.

We can no longer tolerate insurance companies acting as health commissars, corporations that are a hideous synthesis of investment banker, tax collector, medical policy and decision maker, and grand financializer, indeed, the worst of all worlds.

If we well-understand that ignoring basic vehicular maintenance leads to pre-mature wear, mechanical breakdown, and expensive repair costs, why do so many of us fail to acknowledge that a similar outcome is inevitable when it comes to our bodies?

Although volumes can be produced attempting to figure out why people do what they do [regarding their health habits], social policy need not be concerned with the reasons, but only insure that individuals take personal responsibility for their actions, and not necessarily because it will result in a better [health] outcomes or a more productive citizenry, but instead, because there are simply no other fiscally sustainable alternatives.

The current health care system is geared to heal, repair and/or replace. Attempting to repair and re-fabricate body parts on every American within the context of the current explosion in technologic potentiality is absurd.

Imagine the possibilities when considering the varieties medical technologies already in place; transplantation, bio-mechanics [robotics], genetic engineering, and pharmacologic, to name a few. Soon enough, you will be able to spend nearly unlimited amounts of money keeping just one person alive!

The solution? There is only one solution and that is prevention only. And although this may seem harsh upon first consideration, it certainly seems to be closer to what Nature intended for all of Her life-forms.

Regardless, it is what it is. Whatever resources can be allocated to health care [within the context of a fiscally responsible government], should be earmarked to prevention, that is, actual health care. If by chance [or misfortune], you happen to contract a disease/develop a condition/be subject to an accident, then you are in the same position as people are today when there are no known treatments available.

What would probably be available are low-cost conventional, alternative, and natural remedies, provided by individuals or small businesses, and payable in cash. In order to prevent a similar sick-care system from being resurrected, health care must be de-institutionalized. No more insurance companies, no more Big Pharma, no more corporate super hospital systems designed to turn natural events into mega-profits for the few and fiscal bankruptcy for the rest.

After all, all of these institutions presently exist only through government decree. The results of a de-centralized system will be fiscal sanity, individual responsibility, and hopefully, a much healthier population.

This is not to deny that a move toward sanity in one respect will not cause much pain and adjustment in others, but the development of just social policy must have [at its core] compassion, personal responsibility, and sustainability driving the process.

Just as the welfare state could not save everybody from the natural forces of human social interaction, or give unqualified people mortgages in order to allow them to live “a better life,” we cannot promise to save everybody from the inevitabilities of our own natural life-cycle.

Getting beyond this era of counterfeit debt-money, and the resulting fiscal insanity it has guaranteed, will require the acceptance of principles that were once very much a part of who we were as Americans.

We must accept that just as real wealth is created by producing, saving, and investment guided by the principles of transparent risk/reward assessment, our good health must also be earned through sensible eating habits, adequate exercise, and some method of maintaining mental/emotional/spiritual balance.

Better times lie ahead for those willing to take responsibility for their own wealth and their own health. After all, it is the American way.

Thank you, Dr. Schwartz. The demographic and fiscal cliff are real. Hoping that we can borrow our way to prosperity by dumping trillions of dollars into fraud, malinvestment and needless, counterproductive paperwork, tests, medications, lawsuits and procedures (i.e. sickcare) is the path to insolvency and a future that fails everyone.

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Hostage Racket

SUBHEAD: Health care, like everything else, will be a much smaller, modest, and local in the near future. By James Kunstler on 2 July 2012 for Kunstler.com - (http://kunstler.com/blog/2012/07/hostage-racket.html) Image above: From (http://medgadget.com/2011/05/philips_ingenia_digital_broadband_mri_coming_to_us_1.html). Not to put to fine a point on it, but didn't that cunning rogue Chief Justice John Roberts pour a jug of Karo syrup into the gas tank of America's twelve trillion cylinder engine. Or, put another way (forgive the metaphor juke), didn't he just give President Obama enough rope to hang himself? Out to dry, that is. Roberts must know exactly what he is doing: prompting x-million young and/or poor voters to an election year tea party tax revolt. The Obama health care reform will henceforth be defined as a tax against people too economically strapped to buy health insurance - in other words, a gross injustice, courtesy of Obama.

Or call it a poison pill. Obama gets to brag that the heart of his 2700-page reform package stands - at the expense of the very people it was designed to protect. Forget about the niceties regarding the interstate commerce clause and other chatter points. This was all about Chief Justice Roberts interfering in a presidential election in a most mischievous way. He might as well have just heated up a branding iron that spelled out T-A-X and applied it to Mr. Obama's forehead.

Of course, with or without the so-called reform, the American health care system remains a hostage racket. When you are sick, you will do anything to get better, and the system knows it. You will sign onto any agreement to keep yourself alive, even if the health care system ends up taking your house and your children's educations. It is a well-established fact that the chief cause of personal bankruptcy in the USA is unpayable medical bills on the part of people who have health insurance. It is considered bad manners to inquire of a surgeon what his fee might be for a life-saving operation. Anyway, you don't want to know because it will be a figure with no anchor in the reality of hours spent or services rendered. Ditto the folks who run the hospital, where there is no reality-based relationship between things dispensed and prices charged. It's simple racketeering and true health care reform would be the vigorous application of Department of Justice attorneys on the doctors, pharma companies, insurers, hospitals, and HMOs who are engaged in routine, systematic swindling. But the truth is, we don't want to remove the swindle and the grift, we just want to find some way to get the American public to pay for their own swindling.

Before you get too exercised over the multiple idiocies and injustices of the current American medical situation just reflect for a moment that the whole creaking system cannot possibly survive no matter what the Supreme Court might have ruled or whatever Obama sought to accomplish. The US economic system is about to blow up. The banking sector has been kept technically alive on the life-support of accounting fraud since 2008, but that artful racket is coming to an end because sooner or later the abstraction called "money" must make truthful representations of itself in relation to reality, or else people cease to accept its claims of value. Without a functioning banking system none of the rackets organized into US health care can continue.

The eventual destination of health care, like everything else in society categorically, is a much smaller, more modest, more local scale of operation. We'll be lucky if the people with medical expertise can reorganize the wreckage of the system into something resembling small local clinics with all the costly and pernicious racketeering bureaucracy peeled off it. The insurance companies will be in the elephants' graveyard of failed institutions. Let's hope the doctors and their support staff remember to wash their hands.

A couple of side notes:

Anyone seeking to understand the deplorable physical condition of the general public need only stroll through the supermarket aisles and see the endless stacks of manufactured sugary shit that pretends to be food in this culture. That whole matrix is coming to and end, too, by the way, but probably not soon enough to save the multitudes programmed into metabolic disorder. They will just have a shorter life-span, aggravated by loss of income in a cratering economy and everything that comes with being impoverished. The doctors themselves by and large know almost nothing about nutrition, and make no organized effort to militate against the homicidal processed food industry - which brings me to the second side note.

Namely, that the diminishing returns of extreme bureaucratization and turbo-specialization in medicine has only made the doctors generally stupider and more inept. My own situation is a case in point. For two years I suffered an array of peculiar symptoms ranging from numb hands to supernatural fatigue. My ex-GP showed no interest in investigating the cause. Even my request for a toxicology workup was essentially shrugged off. I had to become my own doctor. For a while I suspected Lyme disease, which is raging in my corner of the country. I went to see a Lyme specialist who didn't accept insurance (because the insurance companies did not recognize his aggressive treatment protocols as falling within the current "standards of practice" - and this because the medical establishment doesn't know its ass from a hole in the ground about Lyme disease).

Anyway, I asked the Lyme specialist to include a test for cobalt levels in my bloodwork because I thought there was an outside chance I had cobalt poisoning. The reason I thought this was because Google searches of my symptoms kept pointing to metal-on-metal hip replacement failure. I had gotten just such a metal-on-metal hip replacement in 2003. The hardware was developed because the orthopedists wanted to give younger patients a longer-lasting implant. That's when the diminishing returns of technology stepped in and kicked everybody's ass, including mine.

My cobalt blood test came back off-the-charts high. (My many Lyme tests all came back negative.) Wouldn't you know, though, that the Lyme specialist wanted to treat me for Lyme anyway. He ignored the cobalt numbers and wrote out a prescription for $400 worth of antibiotics. He was the proverbial guy with a hammer to whom everything looked like a nail. I declined that course of treatment and instead went to my new GP for a first appointment and asked for an additional cobalt test, along with one for chromium. (My hip implant is an alloy of titanium, cobalt, and chromium.) They both came back way over the toxic level. Apparently, the rotation of the metal joint has been shedding metal ions into my system for nine years.

Next I went to the orthopedic surgeon who put the implant in. He ordered an MRI and xrays and appeared rather concerned. Eventually I was routed to yet another orthopedic surgeon who specializes in "revising" hip implant failures - in particular ones of the type I have, which have been failing at such a staggering rate that the lawyers have assembled one of the greatest litigation feeding frenzies in history. They are going after the manufacturers of these devices.

I have health insurance but I am quite sure that I will be soaked for many thousands of dollars beyond the coverage to resolve this problem, which will involve at least the changing out of the terminal bearings of my implant - if I am lucky. In the meantime, I have to become exactly the kind of pain-in-the-ass patient who asks too many questions so I don't end up crippled, or dead, or taken for ride like a purloined human ATM machine. I suppose I am also lucky that this happened to me soon enough to even have this kind of remedial surgery. Another year or two and I would have just steadily turned purple and croaked like some poor 19th century foundry worker

There's an excellent chance that I will be on the operating table at the same moment that another financial crisis erupts, one that will be orders of magnitude worse than the 2008 Lehman collapse. Won't that be something? I hope that the surgeon and the anesthesiologist, and whoever else happens to be on hand, don't all run out of the room at once to call their investment managers while I'm lying there inert, like a boned-out Thanksgiving turkey. Pray for my ass. I'm a hostage in the system.

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A Modest Health Care Proposal

SUBHEAD: A health care system administered by the IRS may seem inhumane, but still better than ObamaCare.  

By Dmitry Orlov on 28 March 2012 for Club Orlov - 
(http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2012/03/modest-health-care-proposal.html)

 
Image above: The Arnold Palmer Hospital Hybrid Cardiac Catheterization Lab combines a fully functional pediatric operating room. From (http://www.orlandohealth.com/arnoldpalmerhospital/OurSurgicalSpecialties/forparentsandpatients.aspx?pid=6654).

The US Supreme Court has taken up the issue of so-called ObamaCare: the controversial plan to extend private health insurance to all citizens, with a stiff tax penalty for those who refuse to purchase private health insurance. I know something about it, since I live in Massachusetts, a state that adopted so-called RomneyCare, after Mitt Romney, who was our governor at the time, and is now running for president. ObamaCare is modeled on RomneyCare.

The Supreme Court wasted a day discussing whether the tax penalty is a tax or a penalty, a distinction that's relevant only in the context of some arcane law concerning the litigation of unjust taxes, but lost on everyone, because the penalty shows up on one's tax bill. This point was discussed ad nauseam, so I will not discuss it or any of the other issues relating to ObamaCare that everyone banters about endlessly. Instead, I will say what no-one is saying: Obamacare (and Romneycare) invalidates the notion of health insurance.

First, let's make sure that we are all clear on the concept of insurance. Insurance is generally taken to mean a promise to pay out a settlement (or coverage) in case of a certain event (fire, flood, sickness), in exchange for a recurring cost (premium) and, usually, a deductible (or self-insurance). Insurers weigh the risk of the event against the amount of the settlement. Thus, if the policy is against your spontaneous combustion, with a risk estimated as 1 chance in a billion per year, and you want to insure yourself for $1 billion, then your premium is $1 per year, plus whatever the insurance company wants to charge you for writing the policy. If, however, you are currently engulfed in flames, then the risk goes up to 100% and the premium would theoretically be $1 billion, same as the settlement, but no insurance company would ever write such a policy because the risk is too high.

Now, health insurance is a strange proposition to start with, because everyone dies, and nobody dies healthy, so most people require medical treatment at some point. (A few people spontaneously combust, I suppose. They are still none too healthy during the few seconds before they die, but that's not long enough for them to avail themselves of medical attention. But that's a very rare case.) The point is, if all houses burned down at some point, there would be no fire insurance, and if all houses flooded at some point, there would be no flood insurance. But everyone dies, and yet there is health insurance. How is that?

ObamaCare introduces the provision that health insurers are not allowed to decline insurance coverage to individuals with pre-existing health conditions. That is equivalent to mandating fire insurance for houses engulfed in flames, or flood insurance for houses slowly sinking while floating downstream. In return, insurance companies are assured that they will be able to spread the risk over the entire population, which will be coerced to purchase their product by being threatened with a stiff tax penalty.

Some coercion is certainly required for people to accept such a faulty product. My family's health insurance bill comes to nearly $15,000 a year, with a $2,500 a year deductible. That is, we have to consume more than $2,500 a year in health care before the insurance pays anything. If I am employed, then the employer has to pay 80% of the premium; if I become unemployed through no fault of my own, then the state picks up the 80% for a few months; after that, I have the option of paying even more for an individual insurance plan, or paying somewhat less for the tax penalty but then risk being bankrupted by a medical emergency.

Recently, I called my insurer to ask how much a certain elective procedure might cost. You see, under this system, the doctor bills the insurer, the ensurer “adjusts” the amount, and then I pay the adjusted amount. I wanted to know the adjusted price beforehand, but I was told that they do not give out this information. The adjustments are generated by an inscrutable computer program, which determines the numbers on the spur of the moment based on a set of formulas. Now, normally I don't do business with companies that refuse to quote a price before I place the order. That's where the tax penalty is most helpful to them: it leaves me no choice but do business with, and get robbed by, this company.

As Vladimir Nabokov once pointed out, nothing breaks the human spirit more effectively than consistent bad treatment. To this end, forcing everyone to navigate an infuriating bureaucratic maze with their very health held at ransom is quite an effective strategy. Another is to force everyone to abide a blatant falsehood, such as calling health insurance “insurance” (now preferring, I notice, the more abstract word “coverage”) whereas it is definitely not insurance at all but a tax. Yet another is to force people to make false choices, such as between Romney, author of RomneyCare, and Obama, author of ObamaCare, which are very similar. At this point, the American spirit seems very well broken, along with the economy and the political system, and I do not advise you to squander your precious energies in trying to fix the latter two. I do, however, recommend that you mend your spirit, and stop thinking it necessary to abide a falsehood: health insurance is not insurance.

What is it then? “Insurance” that everybody is forced to buy as a legal precondition of citizenship? Where the risk pool includes the entire country? Where compliance is enforced by a federal agency, the Internal Revenue Service? (But where, if one does comply, the money goes to private entities, to pay other private entities.) What is that? Why, of course, it's a private tax collection service! Under ObamaCare, medical insurance companies become private tax collectors. Now, private tax collectors are not unprecedented in the annals of empire. The Roman senate bid tax collection contracts out to publicans, with mixed results: farmers often opted to abandon their land rather than farm it and have the grain confiscated to pay taxes. But ObamaCare takes private tax collection one step further: under it, the tax collectors not only collect the taxes, but also set the level of taxation as they see fit. That is, the medical “insurance” companies are allowed determine the “health tax.”

What makes this complex scheme of private tax collection so necessary? Its benefits include maximizing health industry profits, which can be recycled as electoral campaign contributions to elected officials who then protect the prerogatives of the health industry, keeping this private tax collection scheme running smoothly. But none of these benefits have much to do with keeping the population healthy. On the other hand, it creates a massive perverse incentive to maximize health care costs, while at the same time institutionalizing a private system of public robbery.

 

I therefore propose that the health tax be collected

directly by the Internal Revenue Service.

Furthermore, in absence of any competent agency within the US that could be charged with administering a public health care system, I propose that health care be directly funded by the Internal Revenue Service as well, as part of an integrated strategy for maximizing tax revenue: the “Keep American Taxpayer Healthy” plan.

The unambiguous mandate of the IRS is to maximize tax revenues. This it will do by making sure that taxpayers are healthy, so that they can earn the maximum of income and pay the maximum of income tax. It will make it a priority to provide good health care to all children, who are IRS's “seed stock”—the taxpayers of the future. It will also make sure that the health needs of the working-age population are attended to, to make sure that they continue to work, earn, and pay taxes. It will also provide palliative care to the retirees, to keep up the morale, but certainly nothing as lavish as what is available to them now. Since their tax-paying potential is negligible, keeping them alive as long as possible is not a priority from a tax revenue maximization perspective.

Not being specialists in the medical field, but realizing that basic and preventive care have the highest health care ROI and specialist care the lowest, the IRS would probably want to dramatically simplify health care delivery. Huge hospitals and medical centers, with their teams of specialists, support staff, swarms of administrators, billing departments, medical labs, intensive care units and MRI machines, are too complex for the IRS to even audit, never mind administer effectively. It is far simpler to establish neighborhood clinics, and to provide them with a fixed fee per patient per year, to spend in line with the overall mandate.

Provisions would be made for some number of specialists, probably shared between clinics, but with the understanding that, from a tax revenue perspective, specialist care reaches diminishing returns rather quickly. For instance, a triple coronary bypass is hard to justify financially, because the patient's earning potential, even after a full recovery, usually does not cover the cost of the operation.

Also, the IRS might consider actually denying health care to rich people (those with net worth over $5 million) in order for the treasury to reap the windfall from estate taxes when they die. Such people (Mitt Romney is a good example) rarely pay their fair share of tax in any case, being able to hire accountants and lawyers, who exploit every possible loophole. And so, there shouldn't be any free heart transplants for Dick or free brain transplants for George.

Having the health care system administered by the Internal Revenue Service may seem rather inhumane to you. However, I hope I have succeeded in pointing out that doing so would still work better than ObamaCare. This health care system is so bad that improving it is not any sort of challenge at all: I submit to you that even the IRS would do a better job of it.
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WikiLeaks Mystery File

SUBHEAD: WikiLeaks uploads 1.4 gigabyte encrypted mystery "Insurance" file. Image above: Julien Assange speaks in public to a group in Coppenhagen on 17 November 2009. From (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:Julian_Assange_20091117_Copenhagen_1.jpg). By Andy Carling on 31 July 2010 in Neurope - (http://www.neurope.eu/articles/WikiLeaks-founder-uploads-mystery-file/102093.php) After leaking 92,000 classified US military documents, Julian Assange, the founder of the whistle blowing website, has uploaded a file called “insurance” to the website and elsewhere. The file is 1.4 gigabytes, a thousand times larger than the recently leaked documents. The file is encrypted under AES256, which is equal to the methods used by the US government to encrypt Top Secret material. It is estimated that even the fastest computer would take millions of years to decrypt the file. It is believed that Assange, who is under intense scrutiny by the US, may have distributed the pass key to supporters, who could release it to the public. However, the talented former hacker would realize that this could place supporters in a difficult position. In earlier times, Assande co-invented what he calls "Rubberhose deniable encryption", a method that uses encryption to hide the amount of data or files, enabling a person to surrender one key, that would release harmless documents, without revealing the existence of other files. He said he developed the concept, "as a tool for human rights workers who needed to protect sensitive data in the field". The contents of the file are unknown. However, the recent release of documents, detailing the coalition’s experiences in Afghanistan, are not part of the 500,000 documents from Iraq, alleged to have been sent to WikLeaks by Bradley Manning, who is currently held in the US. Manning is also accused of passing a video of an incident in Garani, in Afghanistan, that local authorities say killed 100 civilians, most of them, children, were killed during a helicopter assault. Also included were 260,000 U.S. State Department cables. Leaks criticized for putting informants in danger There has been criticism over the leak of the Afghan war logs, with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates pleaded for an end to the disclosures,

"The battlefield consequences of the release of these documents are potentially severe and dangerous for our troops, our allies, and Afghan partners, and may well damage our relationships and reputation in that key part of the world.

Claiming that the leak would expose informants and Afghanis working with the coalition soldiers, who would be put at risk by having their actions made public, Admiral. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that Assange and WikiLeaks may “already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family.” An angry Assange responded by asking,

“Why is the Pentagon focusing on the hypothetical blood on our hands, which has never been proved, rather than the real blood of the 20,000 deaths revealed in the documents?”

The top whistle blower, also criticized the US for “sloppy” and “unprofessional” security. WikiLeaks only uses code names internally for sources. Assange criticized the accessibility of the documents, saying, the information, including names of informants, “was available to every member of the U.S. military and every U.S. contractor — not just in Afghanistan — but all over the world. The military has acted in a disgraceful and careless way.” This view was supported by Robert Berry, a former CIA officer, “It’s plain sloppy, there is no other interpretation of it,” adding that, “you never, never, never have the names of informants” in reports that are widely accessible. Taliban Spokesperson, Zabiullah Mujahid told UK Channel 4 News, that they were examining the leaked documents,

"We knew about the spies and people who collaborate with US forces. We will investigate through our own secret service whether the people mentioned are really spies working for the US. If they are US spies, then we know how to punish them."

Assange told reporters that he has plenty more material to be published, including “very significant” information on the BP oil spill and abuses in the US military, including sexual abuse. In the meantime, the mystery file is being downloaded by many people, waiting for the key. Video above: Additional news coverage of WikiLeaks' Afghan disclosure, war, the Internet, & the Media. From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibdTVXatBjY). Additional news coverage on the "insurance" file: WikiLeaks Posts Mysterious "Insurance" File | Threat Level | Wired.com Disappeared News: Julian Assange's insurance policy? See also: Ea O Ka Aina: Wikileaks posts Afghan War Diaries 7/25/10 .