Insurance for Pre-Existing Conditions and the Constitution

There are a lot of people out there who think that insurance companies need to provide coverage for pre-existing conditions. The thinking, if you can call it that, goes that if a person has insurance through his employer, gets sick and then loses his job, he also loses his insurance. Any new policy won’t take on his costs for his existing illness. Both Republicans and Democrats seem to agree that somewhere in the Constitution there is a “pre-existing conditions cannot be denied by private health insurance companies clause.” I have a copy of the Constitution and lately I have been dragging it out and pouring over it looking for all these new powers that the government has decided they have. I am still looking for the automobile bailout clause, the banker bonus control clause and the compensation czar clause.

Let’s say I was looking to start up an insurance business. I go out and raise the capital I need, hire some employees, rent some office space, buy some computers--then the government tells me I have to offer policies to people with pre-existing conditions. How do I stay in business? For the people who show up with diabetes, what are they buying and what am I selling and who makes a profit? Now I am going to assume that here in the United States I will still be allowed to make a profit in the coming years. Profits allow me to improve my business, hire more people and send my kids to college. I know that many on the political left think profits should be secondary to helping the community but reality says that making a profit is what keeps me in business and keeps the motor of the country running.

So is my new insurance company a business or a charity? It pays taxes like a business but signing someone up simply so that I can pay their medical bills is more like a charity isn’t it? This is the magic question that I am really looking to have answered. If I have to take on the medical payments for pre-existing conditions why would anyone pay me for a policy prior to getting sick? What is my motivation for simply raising capital to pay people’s medical expenses? If I go broke because I can’t be selective about who I insure, what happens to my employees and who pays the medical bills when you do get sick?


A more fundamental question is do I have the right to start a health insurance business in the United States of America and expect success? Is there a free market for health insurance? If so, how does it work if the government demands that I simply take on the payment of some portion of the population’s bills? In order for this to work and to support the insurance industry as it exists, the government will be required to force everyone to purchase insurance at a cost that covers everyone’s pre-existing conditions. Who will decide which insurance company will get the premiums? How will the balance of charity cases be divided among the existing companies and will new ones be allowed? If someone can’t pay the premium will they be jailed? Where, exactly, is this new right located in the Constitution?

Are we going to ditch the idea that this is a nation of laws or are we going to pretend that the supreme law of the land takes a backseat to what a particular political point of view wants the nation to be? The remarkable thing about the United States is that no matter what political party is in power, each is limited by the same set of rules laid down in the founding document. One cannot hold an election to negate the rule of law. That axiom seems to be lost on the current administration. They seem to think that if they can pass a law, the constitutionality of that law is moot.

I am not beholden to the government of the United States. We are not ruled by our government. The government exists solely to serve the people and protect the Constitution. It is the duty of all Americans to remove any government that ignores the rule of law and violates the Constitution. If we destroy the insurance industry, then the people in power will seize that service as an entitlement. It will destroy the healthcare delivery system of this country and depress our economy further. If you want to improve the health care delivery system then get government out of it. There is no “right” to healthcare as there is no right to any service or product someone else must provide.

IT’S A CONSPIRACY I TELL YA

Sitting at a Burger King the other day after having the person behind the counter correct my order for the third time I was struck by the level of incompetence people have reached just in my lifetime. It is now possible to arrive home with the wrong number of burgers, condiments and change, all presented to you in two languages. “Café Grande por favor”…ends up a diet coke, two packets of sugar, incorrect change with hash browns. Since we live in a society where no matter what happens, blame must be assigned, I started looking into the root causes of this national bout with stupidity and I think I have discovered the main culprit…the majority of the people will absolutely believe anything! All you have to do is present what can be astounding nonsense with an air of mystery and basic plausibility.

There used to be a radio talk show host in Dallas, Texas, named David Gold. He had a theory that 10% of the people had working engaged brains. The others, the 90 percent-ers were basically the reason People Magazine is in business, Paris Hilton is a celebrity and people listen to Sean Penn on foreign policy. I am certain that Mr. Gold missed the spread by quite a large margin. From what I see, those in the know are a fraction of 1% and the other 99.98% just barely make it through their lives managing to find their way to work each day by some miraculous stroke of pure luck. Full parking lots at businesses always surprise me.

Excluding me and an extremely small circle of peers, we, as a people, will not only believe pretty much anything anyone throws our way, we will act on it. This has always been true from the first snake oil salesman in the market square to the new global snake oil salesman on the internet. We are currently going through a spike in idiocy. Recently, in the last 5 years or so, stupidity has become the rule and intelligence the rare exception. It all comes down to what a person is willing to believe.

I have examples.

Here is a list of things that many people actually believe in:

UFOs and Aliens
Ghosts
Alien Ghosts – See Chapter 2
Magic
Werewolves
Vampires
Curses
Good Luck Charms
Voodoo
Animal Rights
Psychics
Astrology
Moon landing conspiracies
Government conspiracies – 9/11, JFK, RFK, Etc…
Area 51 having alien technology
The intellectual prowess of actors
Global warming
Hope and Change
Winning the Lottery
Eternal rewards for killing people – Virgins, Etc
Liberalism
Socialism
Spiritualism
Power in inanimate objects, Magnets, Crystals
Barrack Obama’s qualifications to be President
Government Economic Stimulus
Corporate Taxes
Left wing intellectualism
Bigfoot, Yeti

If you fall into a group who believes in any one of these things, it is understandable that you would have trouble remembering to leave the pickles off that burger. Believing in silly crap like this leads to whole segments of the population becoming willing participants in absolutely ludicrous nonsense. For example, people believe that raising taxes on the prosperous will somehow make the poor prosperous someday. Or, that rewarding people for doing nothing will make them want to do something.

It isn’t that these goofy things are being presented to the people to distract them from what is really going on. It is that nothing is really going on. People believe there are aliens flying around in gravity defying vehicles and the government knows about it. There are people who believe that being born in March changes your personality based on the position of the planets in March, simply because they are gullible. The only physical effect that could remotely be affecting you from the planets is gravity and the girth of the delivery nurse has more of a gravitational effect on you than Mars. I know this because I used to do terrain corrections for gravity surveys for a geophysics company.

The government is not…repeat NOT, hiding bigfoot, aliens or secret conspiracies to bring down the Twin Towers. They aren’t competent enough for that. The thing that should worry you about the government is that it will get too big, trip and part of it might fall on you. The problem is not diabolical evil…but clumsy unstoppable inertia. Government is a monster but it is a dumb one….I mean look at who we elect to lead us. The trick to protect yourself from the monster is to stop feeding it. When you feed it, it gets excited and happy and wants to do stuff for you. Then it is time to head for the hills.

(This is a rewrite of part of a chapter from God's Motive.)

PARASITES

I have a short story to tell about an event that occurred on the social networking site Facebook. Facebook has a lot of pages set up by various individuals that cater to certain groups or interests in addition to those individual pages we can set up about ourselves. I have a Facebook page. I am also a member or a fan of other Facebook pages and until recently was a member of a page called “Writers.” I fancy myself something of a writer. I have written and published a couple of books, been published in a couple of newspapers, and have a blog. So when I noticed that there was a Facebook page titled “Writers” I stepped right up and requested to join. They let me.

Now a group of writers one would think would have a wide range of interests. I mean the title of the page was “writers” not religious writers, political writers, fiction writers, poetry writers, newspaper writers just “writers.” On this page was a tab that said “Discussions.” This was a place where people could create topics for discussion. Usually you can’t get any clearer than that, but perhaps these folks should have tried. I had posted in some of these discussions before and had enjoyed some back and forth discussion with other members of the page. One day, while visiting the page, I noticed that someone had put up a discussion that said “Favorite Quotes.” Well I have several favorite quotes after all I am a writer.
Back in 1992, I ran for the Texas State Senate as a Libertarian. One day, the Libertarian Presidential candidate came to Dallas for a visit and to be a guest on a radio talk show. I got to ride with him from the airport to where the interview was taking place. His name is Andre Marrou. He is a likeable sort and on the way he told us this joke about the origins of the word “politics.” He said it was from the Latin “poli” meaning “many” and tics which were blood sucking parasites. I remember saying something about my dog and parasites and the line that survived was; “If parasites are bad for my dog, what makes them good for my country.”

Nothing truer was ever said in my estimation and so that is what I typed into the “writers” Facebook discussion tab under favorite quote. I didn’t think another thought about it. Couple of days later I was back at the Writer’s page and went to see if someone had commented on my quote or put a quote in I might enjoy. My quote was gone…erased...deleted. It took me about two seconds to decide that I wasn’t happy about that at all. So I went back into the discussion group and posted my ire with the fact that the quote had been deleted and reposted it. I also sent a note to the keepers of the page letting them know my quote had been deleted and asking them why.

Next thing I knew I was deleted. I could no longer go to the Writers’ Facebook Page because I had been delisted a lot like my quote. Now there is another Facebook Page called Writers II which exists because some of the people from the first one, think that they are too heavy handed with their censoring of ideas they don’t like….well duh! On this new page there is a discussions tab and on this page was a discussion called, “tired of the heavy handed editing on the writers page?” Well I was so I went there and posted my ire with the first page and got a response from a fellow claiming to be the very one who deleted my quote from the first one, telling me how awful it was that I would say such a thing.

As a matter of fact I got responses from several people on this new page that were perfectly fine with me getting kicked off the first page, because they saw something terrible in my quote. One of them thought I must be talking about his unemployed father. Another though I must be talking about his Aunt who had to work two jobs. Another thought I must be talking about unwed mothers…and they were all mad at me for saying simply that “if parasites are bad for my dog, what makes them good for my country?”

I found this to be remarkable. None of these people knew the context of my quote or anything about me at all, but they all knew that I must be talking about someone they know. “Methinks perhaps thou doth protest too much.” WS. They wanted my blood. They weren’t going to stand idly by and allow me to disparage their particular victim. They were shouting that their relation or group were not parasites even though no one had accused them of being so. They weren’t reading what I was writing and they were using emotion instead of cognition to come to conclusions about facts not in evidence. It was sort of a mob mentality.

I don’t think I ever got them to go back to the origin of the controversy and that was the idea that if you ask me for my favorite quote, I am going to give you my favorite quote, and if you really want your favorite quote or one you agree with, that is what you should ask for. Am I the only one in this scenario who can follow directions? This was typical behavior for people who are insecure in their beliefs. If I don’t tell them what they want to hear…they demand that I do. And when I still don’t, they attack me personally.

I don’t think any of these people are in danger of becoming very good writers. They must first learn to read, comprehend and think critically.

REAL CHANGE FOR REAL HOPE

Our country is in trouble. To listen to the President of the United States and the elected officials of his party, the solution is to borrow and spend our way out of debt. We are over $12 Trillion in debt and the President wants to spend more. The money coming into the Federal Government exceeds the money going out by $110 Billion dollars just this month so far…it is January. At this rate we will exceed the highest Bush deficit by the end of March.

The President has called for a freeze on discretionary spending for three years yet hasn’t the power to implement this freeze and doesn’t touch the areas of government that is actually causing the problem which is entitlements. We are eating the seed corn and the President and his party proposes that we add another $2.5 Trillion dollar entitlement into the mix. Every dime that health care will cost will have to be borrowed or created out of thin air. The government acknowledges the problem of the deficit at the same time calling to increase it. I don’t know what they are counting on.

We have no statesmen. All the Congress wants is for us to look the other way so they can remain in power. There is no courage in Washington to do the kinds of things needed to save this giant house of cards from collapse. Instead the political left sees this as an opportunity to increase the power of government and to reign in capitalism which is the motor that feeds our families and drives our economy. It is madness.

I believe that there are things we can do to fix our country before time runs out. The debt is not sustainable and the entitlements will run out of money. What must happen to prevent catastrophe will require that the people rid the country of those who feel entitled to rule. We must elect citizen statesmen who understand that they are there to fix what is broken and then leave.

First, get rid of the minimum wage and make every state a right to work state. The minimum wage is just a vehicle for indexing union wages and prices young people out of the marketplace and no one should be forced to pay a union to represent them. Unions have destroyed our manufacturing base in steel, textiles, automotive, heavy equipment and electronics. Perhaps if we can reduce the cost of labor we can bring some manufacturing jobs back to this country.

We should go to Mars. Set a national goal to put a colony on Mars and let private industry do it by creating tax incentives. We should get rid of the Departments of Education, Energy and Commerce. The only people who will notice are the people working there. Repeal all unfunded mandates to the states. Respect the 9th and 10th amendments. The best governance is local. Get rid of capital gains and estate taxes, these are taxes that punishes hard work, families and thrift.

Get rid of the corporate income tax this is just a tax that gets passed on to consumers and drives our corporate citizens off shore. Dump the tax code and replace it with a flat tax. Taxation should never be a mechanism to bestow favors or regulate behavior. If the President wants to create a commission, create one outside of government to review the activities of the Federal Government to determine if they are Constitutional and then repeal those programs the commission identifies. Sunset every program and make them justify their funding every two years.

Further, stop all foreign aid, withdraw all overseas troops, close the bases and close the southern border.

Repeal the 17th amendment. The original intent for the Senate was as representatives of the state governments. How many federal mandates do you think would get out of Washington if the Senators had to answer to the state legislatures instead of popular elections? The founders should have never been second guessed in this regard. Remove interstate restrictions on trade. Interstate commerce regulation should not be used to prevent competition and free trade. We can pass NAFTA to prevent tariffs between Canada and Mexico but people in Texas can’t buy insurance from a company in Ohio.

If we follow the current path we will drown in debt. We are putting our futures in the hands of China. China will do what benefits the Chinese. If what benefits the Chinese is not in our interest we will lose. When we can no longer borrow enough and inflation makes printing money pointless, where are we to turn? Our choices are quickly disappearing. It is time to act in our own long term interests and not for the short term interests of those in government.

More naughty than nice on this list

Well, it is Christmas week and I am making my own list of who’s been naughty and who has been nice and checking it twice. Ben Nelson, senior Senator from Nebraska has made the naughty list. As a matter of fact, he sits atop the list in a category all his own. This is the man who made it possible for the Democrats to end debate on the mostly secret Harry Reid/Barrack Obama Healthcare Bill. Like cockroaches, Democrats in Washington prefer to hide their activities from the glare of light so they scheduled the vote for 1AM Monday morning. In this particular instance, they also picked a time when the capital was covered in snow.

Ben Nelson had been the last best hope for preventing the government from taking over healthcare. His failure as a servant of the people is setting this country on the road to having the same caliber of people who run the Post Office schedule your brain surgery. Unfortunately, Ben didn’t turn out to be a statesman, just another Washington huckster, for sale to the highest bidder. So Nebraska gets Medicaid payments forever and the rest of the country gets to pick up the tab, so much for equal protection under the law. In addition, we all get Obama care and the slow erosion of what is the best medical care in the world. Where will the Canadians go for heart surgery once our system is as bad as theirs?

The Democrat leadership goes on television every day and complains that the Republicans won’t participate in the design of this important legislation all the while they lock themselves in Harry Reid’s office and hammer out the details. The final bill was released Saturday morning and debate was ended in the middle of the night Sunday; so no real debate took place on the final law. The old Soviet Politburo would have been jealous of the Democrats on this one. They are now saying that the final vote will be held on Christmas Eve ensuring you will be properly distracted as they slide this 2000 page monstrosity one more step closer to law. They don’t want us mere peasants watching what they do because the more we know about it, the fewer of us support it.

There are no heroes here, no champions of the people. Those senators who held out did so because they knew they would be paid off. They were not disappointed. The Congress, which has spent trillions of borrowed money over the past year, is adding another $2.5 Trillion in spending all the while insisting that this is deficit neutral. They tell us that they will cut Medicare by $500 Billion dollars without affecting services. But I would point out that there has never been a cut in Medicare or any other entitlement. Entitlements like taxes are forever. We are being lied to on a massive scale and the news media, that 4th Estate whose job it is to tell us when the government is out of line, is simply a cheerleader for those who are stealing our future and the futures of our grandchildren in the dead of night.

This isn’t the United States I grew up in. I am shocked at how quickly we have become something other than what our founders meant us to be. Those holding power in Washington are not on the side of the people. They have determined that they know better than us. We along with the Constitution of the United States are simply obstacles in the way of their agenda and hence dispensable. We cannot give up. We cannot allow this to stand. We can vote those who are dismantling the country we love out of office. I just hope November 2010 won’t be too late.

The Political Continuum

I actually had an editor of a major newspaper accuse me of failing to see my ideology reflected in the fellow who murdered the guard at the holocaust museum. That man is a Nazi, an anti-Semite, a racist and a killer. Try as I might I can’t think of a single similarity to my ideology possessed by that person. You see this editor, this product of modern journalism, is typical of his profession. They see conservative Republicans as Nazis and anytime some nutty self proclaimed Nazi shows up on the scene, the media can’t wait to lump them in with the Republicans. This is because they are the ones blinded by ideology. They allow the stereotypes created by their own extremism to muddle their thinking.

I vote for the Republican 100% of the time. I do this because I know the Libertarians are going to lose and because the Democrats are going to overspend and raise taxes. But I have hope that an occasional Republican will restrain himself and support limited government. Here is how I differ from the fellow who murdered the security guard at the holocaust museum.

He is a fascist, I am a libertarian. He hates Israel. I love Israel. He hates Jews. I have no opinion of Jews based either on their religion or their ethnicity. He hates African Americans. I like African Americans just fine and I love my granddaughter and she is half African American. He thinks we were on the wrong side in WWII. I think the US defeat of the Axis powers was the single greatest accomplishment in this nation’s history. He denies the Holocaust; I am a student of the Holocaust. He thinks his first allegiance is to the state. I think my first allegiance is to myself. He is a collectivist. I am an individualist. He puts his trust in a powerful government. I put my trust in individuals. He thinks 911 was an inside job, I think everyone who thinks this is an idiot.

You see, I have nothing in common with this killer. He is not a reflection of my ideology in any way shape or form. The connection is born of liars who support the political left in this country. This idea that Republicanism has anything in common with fascism is absurd. This is especially true of modern conservatives within the Republican movement. We are generally supporters of Israel and limited government. Fascism hates Israel and supports a strong central government that exerts control over private enterprise…sounds familiar but doesn’t sound like Republicanism.

The mistake people make is to assume that ideology is a continuum on a scale starting on the left and moving to the right. It isn’t. There is a continuum, but it is a scale starting with despotism and ending with anarchy, and along the way you add depth as you move from one end to the other. I am closer to the anarchy side than the despot side. I believe that most of the popular “isms” are closer to the despot end of things. Totalitarianism, communism, fascism and socialism, all have strong centralized governments in common. They are all oppressive of individual liberties and economic freedom. The ideologies most common to the United States are liberalism and conservatism. They are pretty much equal and move towards the despotism side of the spectrum depending on whether they are in power or out of power.

As a Republican/libertarian, I vote for the Republican as a practical matter because I believe that the state doesn’t have the right to confiscate my wealth even if they vote themselves the power. I trust the Republicans more than the Democrats in this regard. As a libertarian, I want that government which governs least…so I lean away from the despot end of the spectrum and towards the anarchist end.

Right now in my country I see a government that has been elected under the guise of the Democratic Party but that is quickly moving towards the despotism side of the spectrum. It is strengthening the control of government in ways never seen before in this country. It is nationalizing private businesses and rewarding political organizations based on their loyalty to this government. This is a move towards statism and shows attributes of both socialism and fascism. It reflects fascism in the confiscation and control of private concerns and socialism in its stated desire to redistribute wealth.

This government has the support and loyalty of a large segment of the media. Such statist’s positions have a lot more in common with the fellow who shot the guard at the holocaust museum than I do. It is not people who want a smaller limited government, with lower taxation and fewer regulations who we should fear. It is those who don’t trust the people to make good decisions who are the potential despots among us.

Musings II

“Create OR Save” - Obama has been using this phrase to talk about jobs since he announced his intention to run for President. In the beginning he was promising to “create or save” 4 million jobs. That number moved around to 3 million, then back up to 3.5 million. Now he is at it again and promises to “create or save” 600,000 jobs. This is still as meaningless a phrase as it was during the campaign. What angers me isn’t that Obama is spouting empty rhetoric…that is standard operating procedure for this alleged administration. What angers me is the media’s complicity in allowing this nonsense to go unchallenged. Why doesn’t a single reporter stand up in the press briefing room and ask Gibbs what this means and how is it measured. Basically, if at the end of the day, 20 million people lose their jobs and 600,000 keep theirs then Obama can claim success.

GPS - How come there is a satellite that can track my car though the McDonald’s drive through but it requires a visual search of thousands of square miles of ocean to find a missing airliner?

Chrysler Bankruptcy held up by Supreme Court - I guess not even the liberals on the Supreme Court can stomach this deal. The Obama Administration was poised to have the secured creditors take a backseat to the unions in this political payback deal and none other than Ruth Ginsberg called bullshit. A lot of people have been calling this deal, socialism, fascism, and even communism…but it isn’t really an “ism” at all. It is theft. The Obama administration is plotting to steal the secured assets of one group and hand them over to the unions in exchange for political support. Usually you have to wait until a Democrat’s second term to witness that level of blatant corruption and malfeasance. What is interesting is that the mainstream media reports the events as they happen but never questioned the legality of the deal in the first place. Usually when someone attempts to steal stuff that belongs to someone else, someone gets arrested. Not in this administration, they are allowed to break the law with nothing said. I think the car czar should be charged. Won’t happen though.

North Korea - Rumor has it that the Obama Administration is threatening to have the UN Security Council send the North Korean government a strongly worded letter. This will be the 20th such letter from the UN in the past 20 years or so. Former “Axis of Evil” member North Korea is said to be loading its latest response on the launching pad as we speak. On the bright side, two Al Gore employees have been sentenced to 12 years hard labor for “grave crime(s)” against the regime. Perhaps Al can offer himself in exchange and we can get the journalists back and be rid of Mr. Gore in one good swap.

Health Care Tax - Obama wants to raise taxes on wealthy people to pay for Health Care for all. Why is this news? The only problem is that all these new initiatives by the Obama administration lowers the number of wealthy from which to tax for revenue. It is not a self-sustaining policy. It reminds me of constantly raising taxes on tobacco to pay for some giveaway or another and then complaining when revenues go down as the tax has its desired effect of lowering the number of smokers. Who pays for healthcare when there aren’t enough rich people left?

Israel - The Israelis may wish they had taken out Iran’s nuclear capability before the Obama Administration took office. It appears to me that Obama is an apologist for the Palestinians, clamoring for a two state solution even though the Palestinians have been killing one another and who are sharply divided internally with the terrorist group Hamas on one side and the terror supporting group the Palestinian Authority on the other. In the meantime, Obama announces that these maniacs in Iran have a right to nuclear energy which may be the single most ridiculous thing this man has said since taking office. And that is saying something. I don’t know what the United States would do if Israel took out Iranian nuclear sites, I hope we would stand beside our friend and ally but with this administration infesting the White House, one never knows.

Bank Paybacks - I don’t understand why there is even a question being raised about whether banks can payback the bailout money. Has the government lost its mind completely? The banks should not be allowed to pay the money back…they should be encouraged to and sooner rather than later. That the government is putting conditions on the paybacks is ludicrous.

Mortgages - If you borrow money to buy a house and you lose your job and can’t pay the money back, your house can be repossessed by the secured creditor. If this ceases to be true, why would anyone loan anyone else any money ever again?

Dropping bombs on people – Remember when dropping bombs on people in Central Asia was considered murder? Apparently today’s journalists have decided that Obama Administration bombs that kill civilians are just unfortunate accidents, while the Bush Administration bombs that killed civilians was part of a right wing conspiracy to kill people of color and was done with blatant disregard for humanity. I am sure those on the receiving end of this more benevolent and compassionate ordinance can appreciate the political subtleties.