Author Archive for Atanamis

America’s immigration law is abusive

Written by Atanamis. Published on June 14, 2010 ago in General and Politics. 2 Comments

Personally, I wouldn’t have a problem handing out work visas at the border to any healthy, non-criminal, adult with ER insurance willing to come here and work. Migrant labor massively lowers the cost of fruits and vegetables grown in the US, by reducing the cost of picking. They reduce the cost of fast food. They improve the quality of life of every American. If someone who was given a free education here in the US and all the other benefits of growing up here really wants that fruit picking job or that fast food job, they can compete with foreign labor for all I care.

That said, our current policy is both abusive to migrants and dangerous to us. We are almost deliberately creating a black market of workers who won’t cooperate with the police, who are re-infecting the US with diseases which were previously eradicated, and who create a pipeline for other illegal trafficking. Employers can abuse their migrant workers who have little recourse, as can other criminal traffickers.

The answer is to grease the legal channels for migrant workers, since we obviously have a demand for them and they increase our own standard of living. Require them to provide a thumb print and basic health inspection at the border, then report to the government when they find a job. Anyone breaking the migrant worker laws gets kicked out and is not allowed back in. Anyone committing a crime on a work visa gets kicked out. If emergency health care is needed, it is covered by a highly focused plan so hospitals aren’t shafted.

This plan would be better for the migrant workers, better for the American people, and better for law enforcement. The one group it would NOT be better for are the corporations that treat migrants little better than slaves because they know the migrant has few legal resources to call upon. We shouldn’t reward illegal behavior (like sneaking into our country), but the laws have been designed to be broken. Unfortunately, the elite have managed to turn this into an irrational brawl where people accuse migrants of stealing jobs. Personally, I like my $1 fast food cheeseburger. If that means allowing migrants to “steal” fast food jobs, so be it!

Libertarian Environmentalism?

Written by Atanamis. Published on June 7, 2010 ago in General. Closed

I came across an interesting take on merging environmentalism with libertarianism. The suggestion is to recognize the natural property rights of plants and animals!

Asking the Right Questions
…environmentalists often confuse symptoms with problems. But this doesn’t mean that the problems aren’t real. There may be considerable debate about global warming, the toxicity of dioxin, or the threats to species like spotted owls or grizzly bear. Rather than dismiss these problems, libertarians who want to work with environmentalists should treat them as genuine symptoms of a serious underlying problem. This means focusing on environmental problems not as technical issues but as big government and property rights issues:

  • “Will dams make the salmon go extinct?” is the wrong question. The right question is, “Why is the government subsidizing dams?”
  • “Will timber cutting make the spotted owl go extinct?” is the wrong question. The right question is, “Why are there no property rights for owls and salmon, and how could property rights help protect these species from extinction?”
  • “Is burning of hydrocarbons changing world climate?” is the wrong question. The right question is, “Why are people allowed to emit pollutants into the air that trespass onto my property?”
  • “Do pulp mills damage rivers with dioxin pollution?” is the wrong question. The right question is “Why are there no property rights to the rivers and how could property rights protect them from pollution?”

Nearly all environmental problems are rooted in society’s failure to adequately define property rights for some resource. An ecosystem doesn’t solve such problems by passing a prescriptive law or creating a regulatory agency; it relies on individual self-interest to produce a balance. The important thing is to show environmentalists how thinking of the economy as an ecosystem leads to decentralized free-market solutions to environmental problems.

More: Building an Alliance Between Environmentalists and Libertarians

So the big question then is: “Do other species have natural rights to property?” And if they do, who has the authority to enforce those rights? In general, can’t anyone choose to protect a natural right of a weak party from being violated?

What’s Really in the Health Care Bill? (Part 1)

Written by Atanamis. Published on April 1, 2010 ago in Current Events and Politics. 2 Comments

Most people who are making noise about the health care bill have no idea what it includes. It was actually surprisingly difficult for me to find a good analysis of what it actually does [link].
I would appreciate it greatly if anyone commenting is very specific about what they do or don’t like, based on what is actually in the bill. If you are referencing something not in my above summary, please provide detailed documentation. Thanks.

Individual Requirements
I’m actually in favor of mandatory insurance. Currently, hospitals are mandated to provide emergency care to anyone who needs it, so I think it is legitimate for patients to be mandated to have coverage. Providing help to those with income between 133% and 400% of the poverty line is something I support less enthusiastically, but I would be willing to help this group purchase at least catastrophe insurance. $700 / person per year (up to 3 in household or 2.5% of household income) penalty seems reasonable, so long as this money goes toward a fund to reimburse hospitals for unpaid ER care.

Employer Requirements
I don’t think insurance should be an employer mandate, so I disagree with the penalties for employers who don’t insure their employees. The current tax situation that makes it cheaper for employers to buy insurance should be fixed. The “free choice voucher” that allows an employee to buy their own insurance though is a good thing, and should not be limited to employees under 400% of the poverty line. Ideally, I’d like to see everyone have private insurance plans funded by pre-tax dollars, and this approach moves in the correct direction.

Medicaid
Ideally, I’d like to see the needy helped by private charities funded by voluntary donations. That said, I am willing to see government provide “essential health benefits” to those under 133% of the poverty line, particularly for children under this level. Children are not capable of pursuing their own best interests, and cannot be held accountable for parents who fail to contribute sufficiently to the economy. My main concern is what constitutes “essential health benefits”, and how efficiently this program is run. I don’t trust our government to do a good job with it based on past performance, but would be thrilled to be proven wrong.

Cost Subsidies
I’m not entirely opposed to the credits, though I think they should be tied to “bronze” plans rather than “silver” plans. Basing the subsidies on the second lowest cost option seems to make sense though, as does tying the subsidy to a percentage of income and the total cost to percentage of GDP. My biggest fears here are that the verifications won’t be done effectively, and that the GDP limit will be ignored or changed rather than reducing benefits if this becomes too expensive.

On the positive side, I’d like to see hard GDP limits placed on all spending bills, with a requirement for a 2/3 majority to increase any such limits. We really need to end runaway spending programs, and this could be a feasible way to approach it.

Subsidies to Employers
I still don’t like the idea that employers proxy insurance purchases by their employees, so I’d rather see the government subsidize the employee than the employer. Anything that continues to benefit the employed over the self-employed is undesirable.

Tax Changes
Most of the increases I am ok with, though reducing useability of flexible spending and health savings accounts is a step in the wrong direction. Such accounts should be encouraged in every way possible, since they reduce the need for high cost insurance plans. Increasing taxes across the health field is likely to further increase health care costs in the US, again a move in the wrong direction. On a positive note, even trying to offset spending increases with tax increases is a good thing, and shames the behavior by the Republicans over the last decade.

Insurance Exchanges
Making it easier for people to buy and sell plans is only a good thing. Distinguishing between “employers” and “random groups buying together” seems to be a bad thing though, since any group of equivelant size should be considered equally. I do NOT think such exchanges should need to validate residency status, they are selling a product to an individual and group and the only thing they should be concerned about is the relative health of the members of that group. I think that encouraging co-ops is a great idea, and could well help reduce expenses in the health industry. My main concern is that the funding for such groups should be repaid to the federal government, and that these groups should be allowed freedom to operate themselves independently.

Benefit Tiers
I like anything that makes it easier for consumers to make an informed purchase. This seems to do that quite effectively. I’d like to see the health insurance mandate reduced to allow any citizen to buy only a catastrophic plan if they so choose (not just those under 30). With a strong health savings account and health loan program, this could be the only kind of insurance needed.

Detailed rules
I actually like the renewal guarantee requirement. The current situation of raising rates through the roof when someone gets sick is simply wrong. People pay good money for insurance they don’t currently need so that if they get sick they will be covered. If the insurer can’t predict their probability of getting sick in advance, they shouldn’t be able to change rates except based on age and intentional lifestyle decisions. This is the number 1 abuse by insurance companies, and needs to be fixed.

I’m concerned about the rest of the rules. I do think that in an emergency, a plan should be expected to cover any reasonable services. The rest of the requirements seem like they run the risk of telling the provider how to do their job though, and could drive health care costs up if they are not well designed. I don’t see anything obviously dangerous, but it makes me uncomfortable.

Benefit Design
This has to be done right: “Create an essential health benefits package that provides a comprehensive set of services, covers at least 60% of the actuarial value of the covered benefits, limits annual cost-sharing to the current law
HSA limits ($5,950/individual and $11,900/family in 2010), and is not more extensive than the typical employer plan.” As stated, I have no current objections though.

Still to come:
Changes to Private Insurance
State Role
Cost Containment
Improving Quality/Health System Performance
Prevention/Wellness
Long-Tern Care
Other Investments

Liberal vs Conservative in Academia

Written by Atanamis. Published on March 29, 2010 ago in Essays and Politics. 16 Comments

I just read a very interesting article, with a great deal of insight. It attempts to answer the question of why a majority in US academic circles are liberal. In particular, it is interesting to see someone from a liberal perspective acknowledge that liberal vs conservative is often affected by successful vs unsuccessful. He weakens his third point by pointing out that liberal arts professors in Europe who have just as much education in history don’t show the same split as in the US.

When done “right”, liberalism is idealistic, striving to change society for the better. Those best able to see the problems will definitely tend to be those who study history or are downtrodden themselves. It is also true that those who are unsuccessful would often prefer to blame the system rather than change their own behavior. Unfortunately, this causes the idealists to become associated with the freeloaders. The problem is that such idealists are not always realistic about how to implement the changes. People like Marx had valid complaints to make, but his theories have proven impossible to apply in a workable format.

Conservatism done right is based on doing what has been proven to work. This may be part of why business professors and physical scientists lean this direction. They have a proven system that works, and prefer to play with the inputs rather than changing the system. Those who are successful (for any reason) also tend to jump on this bandwagon. Even if the system is fundamentally broken, those who are “winning” are less likely to want to change it. Slavery was a “conservative” lifestyle that made a few people wealthy at the expense of many.

Sometimes the system itself needs to be changed. At those times, you need the liberals to help recognize the problem and conservatives to help make the solution workable. Both approaches are important to the final solution.

Health Care Is Already Socialized. The Real Question: Should It Be Expanded?

Written by Atanamis. Published on February 24, 2010 ago in Current Events. 26 Comments

The argument over the health care reform package being pushed by Democrats has been over whether it would make health care in the US socialized, and whether US government  control over health care would reduce costs, increase coverage, and increase quality of care. The most fundamental flaw in the logic is that the government already pays 46% of all health care spending in the United States. The question really doesn’t seem to be whether we should have socialized health care, but if we should expand it. (And yes, I would agree we have socialized national defense and law enforcement, and personally don’t think there is inherently anything wrong with government run programs that really are better than privately run programs.)

One commonly mentioned observation about health care in the United States is that we pay a large amount for the care we receive compared to what is paid in other nations. While people for other countries will come here for the best surgeons and specialized care available, the average person in the United States does indeed pay FAR more for health care than in other developed countries. In fact, some estimates suggest that $1.2 trillion of the $2.2 trillion we spend on health care is unnecessary spending. The primary causes of overspending listed are up to $210 billion on unnecessary testing and $210 billion on claim processing. Add in ignoring doctor’s orders and inefficient technology for another $188 billion combined, and we have a lot of inefficiencies that should be easy to address by a unified health care provider like the United States government (allowing them to provide more efficient health care).

In fact, assuming the savings are equal between government programs and private programs, you could double the benefit of government health care purely by addressing inefficiencies. Throw in fraud and other problems with the government program, and we should be able to greatly reduce national health care costs with no changes to existing law. I wouldn’t even think you’d need to make a law to spread these initiatives into the private sector. A first step here would be working with insurance companies to derive a generic, simple, and efficient claims processing standard that provides the information needed by each company to process claims. If the major companies were in agreement, doctors would simply drop any insurer who didn’t adopt the standard. Developing clear guidelines for testing would also seem like something that could be achieved cooperatively. Cash for testing should, of course, always be available as a safeguard.

To  summarize: we already have socialized health care, and inefficient socialized health care at that. If the government wants to convince me that they should become a single payer, they need to start by getting their own house in order. Once Medicare is so good people want to buy in and so efficient we can afford to let them, we can talk about making a public option available to everyone.

SEC blames victims for being abused

Written by Atanamis. Published on February 4, 2010 ago in Politics. Closed

Bank of America executives not being held liable for their fraud

In late 2008, Bank of America executives decided that they wanted to acquire Merill Lynch. To approve the large buyout though, they needed the approval of the shareholders (the people who actually own Bank of America). At the time, they were aware that Merill would be losing significantly more money than the market expected exacerbated by huge bonuses being paid to “essential staff” (many of whom left the company soon after anyway). Whether the buyout was desirable or now is definitely debatable, and the executives at Bank of America still claim to have done the right things in buying out Merill.

Investigations conducted by the SEC make is clear that this information was deliberately and illegally withheld from shareholders to distort the vote. Only time will tell if buying Merill was a good decision, but the act of fraud committed is not really up for debate. In early 2009, these same executives threatened the US government late in the process that they would back out if not given subsidies to protect Bank of America from the risks of the buyout. Clearly if that were such a significant concern that it required blackmailing the US government, it should have been presented to the shareholders before the vote.

Nobody really seems to contest the above facts of the case. Where there is more doubt is what should happen as a result. Last September, the FTC  proposed that due to the fraud Bank of America should pay $33 million in fines with no acknowledgment of wrongdoing. This agreement between the SEC and Bank of America executives was rejected by a federal judge:

The judge accused Bank of America and the S.E.C. of concocting the settlement to effectively absolve themselves of further responsibility.

“The S.E.C. gets to claim that it is exposing wrongdoing on the part of the Bank of America in a high-profile merger,” he wrote, and “the Bank’s management gets to claim that they have been coerced into an onerous settlement by overzealous regulators.”

The ruling echoes a long-standing criticism that the S.E.C. has largely failed to prosecute cases against corporate executives, opting for quick settlements in which companies themselves are penalized instead of their leaders.

The criticism is that base on fraud committed by executives against the owners of the company for which they work (the stockholders), the company (and therefore the shareholders who own it) was being punished while the executives avoided any admission of wrongdoing. One would hope that the SEC would learn their lesson, and do things better. Unfortunately, they seem to have completely and entirely missed the point altogether. Their new settlement agreement is to just penalize the victims of this fraud MORE, by fining the company more money:

As Mr. Cuomo was announcing his lawsuit, the S.E.C. released details of a settlement with Bank of America on two separate cases. The bank agreed to pay a $150 million fine and strengthen its corporate governance rules

At least now the company is agreeing to strengthen its rules, right? That must mean that they are admitting they did something wrong? Nope:

“The evidence demonstrates that Bank of America and its executives, including Ken Lewis and Joe Price, at all times acted in good faith and consistent with their legal and fiduciary obligations,” Mr. Stickler said in an e-mail message.

This email message was in regard to a lawsuit on behalf of shareholders being filed by attorney general Andrew Cuomo of New York, stating:

“They understated the problems, the losses to the shareholders, they overstated their ability to terminate the arrangement to the federal government to secure $20 billion in TARP money, and that is just a fraud,” Mr. Cuomo said. “The Bank of America and its officials defrauded the government and taxpayers at a very precarious time.”

Again, the facts of what happen don’t really seem to be in question. The only reason Cuomo even needs to be involved here is that the SEC is unwilling to even pursue terms that a federal judge will approve. The SEC isn’t acting as a regulatory agency, but as an advocate for Bank of America trying to get the federal judge to agree to blame a victim for their abuse and penalize that victim for the crime committed against them. The Bank of America executives are demonstrating complete lack of willingness to honestly manage the company on the behalf of its owners, and should all be fired by those owners. A company manager who provides false information to the owner and then seeks to penalize the owner for that fraud should not be trusted to run a company.

TARP Bailout and Government Productivity

Written by Atanamis. Published on December 9, 2009 ago in General. 26 Comments

People complaining about government spending will often make the statement that government doesn’t grow the economy, it only consumes resources. The question that this has brought to my mind is why that would be the case. The common answer is that government doesn’t have to run things effectively because it is a non-profit funded by taxes. However, the fact that an organization has a non-profit based revenue stream does not mean it can’t still be effective. In fact, stock selling is a way that most companies raise capital without selling a product. In exchange for a partial ownership in the company, people contribute money for no actual product. The only reason any company has to be effective is because its owners require it to be effective. In this analogy, government is obviously owned by the taxpayers (who in a democracy also do so in exchange for a vote in how the company is run) and therefore if it is not effective in its goals the cause isn’t any level of inherent inability but rather a lack of expectation of effectiveness by the owners (voters/taxpayers).

The TARP bailout is an interesting example of government ineffectiveness. A year ago banks were in serious trouble due to poor lending policies having caused them to become overextended. Worse, because large banks were failing nobody wanted to lend money to allow them time to unwind their mistakes. This was potentially a huge opportunity for anyone with access to vast amounts of debt. Warren Buffett at the time claimed that someone with access to hundreds of billions at a low interest rate could make massive profits by assisting banks in extracting themselves from the mess. There are two things that a large stable government can do better than most private sector institutions. One is apply physical force to a situation, and the other is borrow large sums of money at lower than normal interest rates. The TARP bailout should have been an opportunity for the government to not only avert economic turmoil, but to do so in a way that presented a longer term profit rather than a loss.

So why are we now hearing that the profits from the loans aren’t even expected to exceed the losses? The answer is because we as owners of the government haven’t expected or demanded it, and the board of directors we hired are stable in their jobs even if they lose us money. The majority of banks are doing much better now, and are repaying their emergency loans. Those that are not doing well are going under, and the government is going unpaid. Why is this? Because the money paid out in emergency funding was often in the form of stock purchases or low priority debt in a bankruptcy. This seems the exact opposite of what one would do when loaning emergency funding to a troubled company. The ONLY form of funding that should be provided to a troubled company would be the kind that gets first priority in a bankruptcy, and all loans should have been at interest rates that more than covered the cost of the program.

People from a more “progressive” standpoint will tend to suggest that government spending should not be intended to be profitable, but that it is charitable spending that we should expect to never see a monetary return for. The problem with this approach is that it leaves no way to determine the effectiveness of the actions taken. Looking at the TARP loans, we have no way of knowing today whether the money was well spent or wasted, because its direct economic return was negative. Had it been profitable, it would have demonstrated that the money loaned out was multiplied by the borrower to create more wealth that was used to make the loan. When the borrow doesn’t pay back as much as was loaned, there is no way to know if what was done was positive.

I’d like to see this pattern of lending used in more cases as well. Someone needing health care might not be able to afford it out of pocket, but they are more likely to be at least a little more responsible in their spending if they know they will be expected to at least try to repay the costs at some later point. Obviously it doesn’t make sense to crush someone struggling financially under monthly payments, but once we help them back up doesn’t it make sense to prove we’ve actually made a difference by expecting repayment? The same is true of unemployment benefits and other welfare. Only expecting repayment on an “as able” basis is charitable, but not requiring any kind of repayment encourages abuse.

To summarize, I really don’t see any good reason why government CAN’T be effective, other than the fact that we don’t require it to be so. Using a more “corporate” governance policy for government charitable spending seems like it would be a good way to start.

How Do We Determine If Soldiers Are Worthy Of Honor?

Written by Atanamis. Published on November 16, 2009 ago in Philosophy and Politics. 17 Comments

When considering how to view soldiers, it is important to look at both why they join, what they do, and what their nation asks of them. A soldier who joins in expectation that he is putting his life on the line for protection of others should be given credit for that willingness to sacrifice, even if the nation for which he serves uses him for unsavory purposes. A soldier who knowingly commits acts of atrocity should be scorned even if he did so for supposedly noble purposes or at the orders of a superior. In no case should a soldier be “worshiped” or considered to be above reproach, but neither should they be condemned purely because you disagree with policy decisions by their nation.

It is often hard to determine why someone joins the military. Someone who is forced to join to escape prison though clearly isn’t doing so out of an interest in serving others by putting their life on the line. Many people who join militaries do so though in the belief that doing so will protect the safety or liberty of their family, friends, or neighbors. Even if one believes this motivation is naive, the sacrifice it implies is significant. The Bible indicates that there is no greater love than to lay one’s life down for another. Someone who joins purely out of a desire to inflict harm on others though is not worthy of respect for their joining a military. Most who would call for soldiers to be honored likely would NOT call for them to be honored if it was known that they had done so purely out of a blood lust.

A soldier potentially takes that risk in joining a military. Of course, the above quality could potentially also apply to people we might consider terrorists, to those who commit war crimes, or to those who otherwise engage in acts that are unsupportable. No soldier who engages in improper conduct should be honored. The question of what consitutes “improper” is probably the biggest concern for those who oppose honoring troops. Is engaging in an unjust war improper? What about torturing an enemy who has critical information? Some might argue that there are no rules in love or war, and that any action that helps one achieve their goals is acceptable. This is generally the idea behind the view that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. In fact though, each man is responsible for his own actions and cannot beg off on having been given orders to engage in wrongful behavior.

The specifics of what is considered wrongful behavior are likely to be an area of contention, but I would not hold a soldier responsible for actions outside their direct control. This would include decisions like where their military is fighting and with what operational goals. An individual soldier cannot necessarily be expected to be familiar with the larger details of a conflict they are engaged in, or to refuse to be deployed to a given conflict. (That said, a military ought to strive to keep soldiers informed and to allow them to opt out of conflict if they feel strongly that it is unjust.) They do have control over their direct actions, and should not deliberately target civilians or engage in deliberate torture of enemies (regardless of legal combatant status). Targetting soldiers (who have not surrendered) in the case of a war for legitimate reasons is acceptable, since those soldiers have specifically identified themselves as targets.

The final condition to be considered is the cause of the nation for which a soldier fights. It is illegitimate for a soldier to intentionally join a military which they know exists for immoral purposes. If I know my nation is engaging in a genocide, I should not join its military. This raises the question of what constitutes “legitimate” use of a military. The only legitimate use of a military is to remove physical threats to oneself or others. It is always morally legitimate to respond with lethal force if someone is threatening your life or that of a non-aggressor party, regardless of whether one is in a police or military force. If someone points a gun at my wife, I’ll kill them. I can also do this if someone is threatening my neighbor with lethal force. Nations (as gatherings of people) have the right to do the same thing.

A Moderate Proposal for Health Care Reform

Written by Atanamis. Published on October 13, 2009 ago in General. Closed

The health care debate has been one of extremism on both sides, with nobody really seeking to find a middle ground. This article will attempt to do exactly that.

Emergency Health Care
One thing many people opposed to universal health care fail to recognize is that we actually already have it. Any person can walk into any emergency room at any time and cannot be refused service for lack of ability to pay. This law has directly resulted in many emergency rooms going out of business since they have been forced to provide health care to patients with no ability to pay. We really do have to examine this area first to determine whether we view health care as a “right” or a “privilege”. Those who truly view it as a privilege ought to oppose this existing requirement, and can accurately point out that it is greatly increasing the cost of emergency services for everyone. Since I haven’t heard much complaint about it though even from those strongly opposed to current reforms, I would assume that most Americans are in favor of mandatory emergency care.

That  said, there is still the problem of who pays for it. Under current laws, hospitals are required to simply eat the cost of emergency health care. This appears to be a fundamentally unfair requirement. If the federal government is going to require hospitals to provide emergency care, the very least they can do is to ensure that compensation of expenses is provided. For this reason, I would be willing to support a “mandatory emergency insurance” program enforced on all citizens, legal residents, and legal visitors. People from all three groups will be granted access to our emergency services if needed, and should be able to guarantee payment. This insurance program doesn’t necessarily have to mean that the insurance company covers all expenses, but rather that the insurance company guarantees that the hospital gets paid. Individual contracts between patient and insurer would determine whether the insurer pays out of pocket, with a “health savings loan” to be repaid by the patient, or  from a “health savings account” owned by the patient. Obviously, the premium cost of the first would be the highest and that of the last would be lowest. Even in the last case though, the insurer would have an obligation to work out with the patient how any costs in excess of the account balance.

Health Care for Minors
The next area of  likely agreement is with regard to children. In the US, we consider those under 18 years old to be legally unable to make their own decisions, delegating these decisions to the parent with some supervision from the state. Most children have little to no choice whether they have medical insurance, and again most Americans would argue that children should not be refused medical treatment by hospitals. Statistics show that around 8 million children are uninsured. One assumes that most people would support programs to insure these children, and in fact “Nearly three quarters of uninsured children are eligible for health insurance coverage under Medicaid or SCHIP. The remaining uninsured children are not eligible primarily because their family incomes exceed program eligibility levels (Figure 3).” This leaves only 2 million kids in non-poor families uninsured.

This gives us another low hanging fruit that is being intentionally ignored in the current debate. Rather than arguing about universal  health care for adults, why don’t we first enroll the 6 million uninsured children who are eligible for government care? This can be done through a combination of health care drives where we pull together all the people needed to enroll these children and explain the benefits to their parents and by simplifying the enrollment process. No major legislation or national debate needed. For the remaining 2 million children, I would be willing to support either mandating that they be insured or extending government programs to cover them.

Insurance for the Rest
Getting clearly specified preventative care should be a pre-requisite for all insurance. A great deal of the expense in insuring people results from not catching problems early, and insurance companies have a (moral) right to try to reduce their expenses in this way. The easiest way is to just tack the cost of a yearly visit onto all policies, and provide the patient with a mandatory appointment if they fail to make their own by a pre-determined date. Insurance companies would be allowed to set their own rules about this though, since their interest is in reducing total cost. If a company decides yearly visits are unnecessary, they wouldn’t have to pay for them. In fact, a more piece-meal approach to insurance is desireable all around. Insurance as a concept is really only useful for unlikely disasters, since it is only in those cases that the average person can ever expect to get more out than they put in. That being the case, other than mandatory checkups as described above most insurance should probably be high deductible insurance.

Insurance that kicks in at 5 or 10 thousand dollars has always been cheaper, and allows people to have help when they really need it without paying inflated premiums when they don’t. Current estimates of the uninsured are around 48 million. Subtract the 8 million kids we already discussed above, the 6 million people who aren’t here legally to begin with (but will still get ER care), 9 million making more than $75k, and another 6 million non-minors who also qualify for existing benefits to get 21 million (note that these groups may have a little overlap). What would it cost for this group to get a high deductible plan? Maybe those worried about their status would be better off creating a medical relief charity to buy them coverage than trying to use tax dollard to do so?

All such insurance should be owned by the individual, though it can be purchased through collaborative negotiating groups if desired. Tax benefits that favor employer based coverage should be ended or shifted to cover all insurance plans whether through an employer or not. By having the plan owned by the individual, one wouldn’t experience changes in insurance due to job changes. (That said, an employer might still offer negotiated rates from insurers, though those rates would not change due to a future employment change.)

Health Savings and Health Loan Accounts
The  final piece needed is coverage for the expenses between the mandatory office visits and the point where the high deductible insurance kicks in. The best place for this is in health savings accounts, which could remain tax exempt to encourage contribution. Companies wanting to attract talent could also provide automatic or matching funding, much like they do with 401k plans. (My own company currently provides $1500 a year in a health savings account to anyone choosing a high deductible plan.) Throw in a loan program for those who encounter expenses before accumulating enough savings, and you have a nearly complete program.

Conclusion
The above provides health care for almost everyone with very few changes to the existing system. Most people can probably agree about the children, and the ER coverage ought to have been part of whatever bill mandated that ERs take all comers (so you should either support the coverage or oppose the mandate). Encouraging a greater focus on savings and responsible lending should also be acceptable to everyone. I understand the last part is likely contentious, but it really is the best solution for everyone else. The only people whose needs WOULDN’T be met by the above are those with extreme long term illnesses that have an early onset. For these people, the high deductible every year would be a problem, but my hope would be that these people can be addressed through friends, family, charitable organizations, or even government welfare.

Modern Education Based on Poor System

Written by Atanamis. Published on September 30, 2009 ago in Essays and General. 17 Comments

On our forums recently, the following was posted (to the “weekly links” thread):

Written by: Jew

This is just great. Not content with trying to tackle the biggest, most complex problems in the world (peace in the Middle East, the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and oh, health care in America), the President has decided to meddle with schools. President Obama proses longer schools days and shorter summer vacation.

No thanks, Mr. President. I’ve been to school before. School days at the public school are too long, not too short. Students spend too much time in class, not too little. Summer vacations should be longer.

I was home schooled. My school days were about 3 hours long, I could complete a full school year’s worth of work in 4 months, and I graduated ahead of most honors/AP students in terms of academic courses and college credit. Each day I would read my lessons, ask any questions I had of my teachers (my parents), and begin working on homework. Any questions my teachers could not answer they found someone who could. Any problems I got wrong we reviewed together to determine why I had gotten it wrong, and then I did more problems that focused on making sure I got it right in the future.

I will admit that I started out a privileged middle class kid with well educated parents and a decent IQ (sub genius though), but in my experience most time spent is classrooms in a massive waste of everyone’s time. I have had ONE class that made effective use of everyone’s time. The professor would walk into class every day, ask if anyone had questions from yesterdays reading, and after answering all questions would hand out a quiz. After the quiz, he would present the next reading assignment, expand on any subject he felt was inadequately covered by the textbook, and dismiss class. The tests were a concatenation of the quizzes. If you didn’t read the material and ask good questions, you failed.

ANY class where students don’t read ahead before class is a waste of time. Why should I have someone with 20 years of education wasting time teaching me what I can read out of a book? Why do we all have to be present in the same room for a lecture, when he could just record it at his leisure and email me a link? Only interactive sessions between a prepared class and a knowledgeable teacher makes any sense. The problem with our school system isn’t time spent in class, it is a fundamentally broken educational model combined with lack of expectations by teachers and parents. Until parents become more involved in their children’s education, our test scores will continue to drop.

The current system requires teachers to have extensive training in things like crowd management and presentation skills that simply shouldn’t be required to teach at the elementary or high school levels. In fact, the ONLY time such skills are needed is when presenting new information that has never been published! This level of learning only takes place at post-graduate levels, meaning that even bachelor’s level teachers don’t need it. At all lower levels, students should be expected to work individually on their subject and request help on an “as needed” basis. Students that require a lot of individual attention wouldn’t have learned from a lecture regardless, and those who don’t can race ahead of their peers

The “lecture” format simply holds back advanced students while failing to help those with greater need. With greater parental involvement, it becomes possible to have a rotating group of “tutors” for every 2-3 students who can escalate any questions they don’t know the answers to. No special knowledge is needed to do this! In colleges, many schools will allow any student who has taken a class to “TA” the class, and many students will attest that they learned more from their TA than from the professor. This is because the TA is doing REAL education by answering specific questions that a prepared student has come to after first struggling the concepts to be learned, while the professor is doing traditional “education” by lecturing to a group of unprepared people who cannot reasonably be expected to retain much of what they are hearing. Why is is that we insist on doing the one that doesn’t work, instead of making a greater effort to do the one that does work?