Health Care Reform Part 2
This is a continuation of my previous post Health Care Reform Part 1. In this post I will discuss some of the absurdities of the current health care system and possible solutions to improve the program.
Okay, in Part 1 we have agreed there is a problem with health care and we have demonstrated that the Obama plan will be a very costly failure, so let’s talk of a genuine solution.
Here it is !
Are you ready for it ?
I bet not !
100% Socialized Health Care
Yep, you read it right. All health care costs must be paid for via the government by taxes applied to the populace. But before you flame me, back away from the keyboard and read why this doesn’t have to be executed as badly or as costly as so many people are afraid it might.
The current process goes something like this:
Scenario 1
You become sick, you weigh the probability of what illness you have being covered by your insurance policy, you decide that you are too sick to ignore the problem and try to make an appointment with your doctor, they can’t fit you in right away so you have to wait another day or two before an appointment can be made. You show up at the doctors office twenty minutes before your scheduled appointment in dire hope that there has been a cancellation, but there have been no cancellations, instead there have been several walk-ins so the doctor is running an hour late. If you cancel now you will be billed a cancellation fee so you decide to stay. Even though you have insurance you still have to give them money to cover your co-pay (who knows what the logic behind this is but someone somewhere has gotten rich off it) you then wait for two hours as the original one hour behind schedule was really a pipe dream all the while being infected with whatever everyone else in the waiting room is hacking up. You finally get in to see the doctor who spends five minutes in consult writes a prescription for the drug that he gets the best commission from the drug company to sell and sends you on your way. If you are lucky you have a prescription drug card that covers 100% of the costs of your prescription drugs, but you are a hard working, law abiding US citizen which means you are not lucky and the particular drug your doctor wrote the ‘script for is not available in a generic form manufactured in Asia, it is only available in the genuine copy write formula so you have to pay 50% of the very high cost. It is expensive because the manufacturer has to make as much money as possible before their patent runs out and generic varieties produced overseas start being shipped in by the megaton undercutting their production and development costs.
Some may think I’m joking but anyone familiar with health care knows that the sad sorry above is all too common of an occurrence.
Now let’s examine the process in a properly run socialized system. You are sick, you go to the doctors, you wait (Yes, the waiting will still be there until massive numbers of new medical professionals are educated and inserted into the system, this will take YEARS so get used to the wait.) You see the doctor, you are handed the necessary prescription, you go home. No money changes hands, no forms to fill out, no claims to make. No being hassled by the insurance company that they are refusing your coverage, no being hassled by the doctors office that you are responsible for the costs as the insurance company is refusing to cover you. Most importantly no getting turned away at the doctors office because they no longer accept your particular insurance due to repeated non payment.
“How can this happen?” you ask. By taxes. Everyone who lives in a particular county will pay a percentage of the total cost of health care administered in said county. I encourage it to be done on a county by county basis as the average county already has the necessary medical infrastructure in place and compiling a budget for all the various health care providers should not be too difficult. You then simply divide that sum by the number of people residing in the county and you have the base amount that needs to be charged to each individual.
First let us discuss actual operating costs vs. the cost of insurance premiums. If you don’t have health insurance and you go to the hospital you can figure that a visit with any type of surgery as well as diagnostic procedures are going to cost you about $150,000.00 assuming you are only in the hospital for a week or two. If you do have insurance the company will typically negotiate the cost down to less than $100,000.00. Still very expensive but it does reveal the true cost of medical care compared to what the medical profession would like to charge. There is a distinct lack of ethics on both sides of the business. So now that we now the actual operating costs of the health care industry are far below what their billing practices would have us believe. We also know that a significant portion of our insurance premiums go towards fuelling the operational costs and towards profit margins to boost stock prices of the insurance companies. We can now get an honest quote from the health care industry for total operational maintenance and eliminate the middle man bureaucracy of insurance companies.
So for the sake of argument let’s assume that the cost for operating every hospital, doctors office, clinic, and medical practitioner in our fictitious county is $1 Billion dollars (yes this is a seriously inflated figure but whatever the TRUE cost of operations is you can pretty much be sure that it is more than 30% less than what insurance companies are bringing in now, as they have to cover their exorbitantly paid chief executives as well as an entire staff of tens of thousands of claims processors) . Now let us consider that the population of the county is 500,000 people. We divide the billion dollar costs by the total population and we get $2,000.00 per year per person. If we eliminate the insurance company profit from this figure it falls to $1400.00 per person. Still a very large amount of money, but remember the basis is $1 billion it is very likely that number is extremely high and the final cost may be as little as $200 million which would further reduce that per person cost to $400.00 per person.
What I am basically trying to say is that no one currently has any idea what the true cost of health care is, they just know the current system is very expensive and poorly managed.
The goals are now to discern the bottom line cost of health care. To find ways to reduce that amount even further. To increase the quality of the care you receive. To make sure no one is getting a free ride from honest tax paying citizens.
Many of you are concerned that once government inserts itself into the health care industry quality will plummet. Normally I would say you are correct that is why my plan prohibits government from being involved with the decision making process. You pay your taxes. You get health care. All decisions on your care will fall onto the shoulders of you and your doctors regardless of the costs involved. Also anyone who receives medical care will be required to fill out feedback on their caregivers. This feedback will be used to assess wage evaluations and future budget predictions for the particular facility from which you received care. This would be handled by an independent association of unpaid citizens.
How can we reduce the cost of health care ?
Scholarship programs ! Any prospective student interested in a career in the health care industry should be given 100% free college tuition. Caveats that apply would be the requirement to being a US born citizen. No foreign students would be allowed to participate in the program. There would have to be a certain level of ethical behavior by the student. No arrests. No controversial activities. Obviously a minimum level of grades would have to be maintained. Finally they would have to commit to 15 years of service at wages defined by the local standard of living, no more exorbitant salaries, but yes they would be compensated very well indeed.
By reducing the salaries of medical practitioners you will rapidly drive down the costs of healthcare and as such be able to hire far more doctors, nurses, physician aides and what not. This will rapidly increase the quality of care whilst not inflating the cost of said care.
Further driving down the cost of healthcare will be how illegal aliens treatment is handled. Currently they are treated, at the cost of the taxpayers due to chronic lack of insurance amongst this demographic, they are then allowed to return to society. From now on when an illegal enters a hospital for care they will be given the most basic care to sustain life and then turned over to the INS for immediate deportation. It is assumed that illegal immigrants cost honest citizens more than $250 BILLION in health care costs although this number is questionable due to the fact no one is entirely sure how many illegal aliens are in the country.
There are dozens of other things the country can do to revitalize the health care industry. One thing for certain is that sweeping change is a necessity and that.
There are also hundreds of potential questions I left unanswered for the sake of brevity (too late I know!) an example of which is regarding care whilst travelling on vacation or for business and they are easy enough questions to answer. Hopefully I will receive some excellent feedback on this concept and if so will launch a Part 3 that will handle any questions posed. Thank you for your time
patriotranter
Health Care Reform Part 1
I apologize in advance to my readers. This is going to be a long post. It will easily exceed 2000 words so I will try to break it into separate parts to make it more digestible. I’ll try to keep each part organized and relevant although there is a lot of ground to be covered and I do enjoy a good ramble.
Wednesday June 24th, 2009 Barack Obama hosted ABC and a group of health care professionals at the White House. When the meeting was first announced many professional journalists cried foul. Claiming that ABC had become the puppet of the administration and was now taking the same position that Fox News allegedly held for President Bush. Essentially being nothing more than a tool to disseminate the propaganda spewing out of the Obamachine.
I will not rehash the entire conference but I will focus on a few key weak points and also offer arguments, explanations, and a solution of my own. If you did not see the broadcast I suggest you do so, the entire conference can be viewed HERE.
The main focus of the conference is to address the 46 million US citizens who have no health care coverage either due to inability to afford it or due to being denied health coverage as a result of preexisting conditions.
I’ll not argue with Obama on this one, as a US citizen with no health care coverage I absolutely agree something must be done and it is going to take government involvement to get it done. There is absolutely no incentive for insurance companies to improve the health care industry as long as they are making a profit. With the current system being run by private health care insurance companies that are traded publicly on the stock market ensures only that their number one concern is profit. The only way for them to make a profit is by raking in billions of dollars from premiums paid on policies they hold and then not paying out if and when a claim is made. Any time an insurance company pays out on a claim it reduces their profit margin and cuts into shareholder value. Not a good thing for any business.
So the first item on the agenda is to remove insurance companies from the stock market. Yes the stock was originally issued to raise capital and expand their market share but based on the gross wages paid to insurance company executives operating capital is no longer an issue. Now that we have removed these companies from being publicly traded the only profits needed are those to cover salaries. Is this an absolute solution that will reduce the cost of health care ? Absolutely NOT ! All it will do is make it more probably that any medical procedure you require will be covered by your insurer rather than being negotiated endlessly whilst you slowly die only to have the final solution being you are sent to a foreign country for a lower cost of treatment. Perform a search for health care outsourcing and you will see this is already being done to further lower the costs of insurers all the while increasing the ever important bottom line.
Now to discuss some points Obama made and then poke holes in them. DISCLAIMER: Before you get your panties in a bunch these are not exact quotes of what Obama said. I am merely paraphrasing to include specifics that he neglected to mention and to maintain the context of which he spoke. As I stated earlier I agree something must be done and it will take the government to do it.
Obama said: Now some of those 46 million Americans will not be able to afford the policy even at the rates the government would charge and these policies would have to be subsidized
The Hole: Our questions is how many of these 46 million wouldn’t be able to afford it ? Our guess is approximately 45,998,956 can not afford insurance at any price. So your tax burden will rise to compensate for those who can not afford the program. Oh yes, one other detail that was revealed. These 46 million uninsured currently consume 33% of hospital visits.
Obama said: With government involvement we can work with health care professional to improve efficiencies and lower the cost of providing health care. This will also benefit private insurers as their costs will be brought down as well.
The Hole: This is a big one. Obama is obviously viewing things through beautifully rose colored spectacles. Since when has the government EVER done ANYTHING efficiently. Also, the health care industry can just as easily refuse to accept or treat anyone carrying the government insurance card. They can simply refuse to acknowledge the whole program and continue operating as is. The end result is that costs will rise because insurance companies knowing that the government program will not be accepted will realize they truly do have a stranglehold on the industry and will be more likely to raise premiums. Meanwhile it will be tax dollars being used to cover all the uninsured in the way of federal grant money for hospitals who treat uninsured individuals.
Obama said: Any company that does not currently provide insurance to it’s employees would be charged a certain amount to compensate for their not doing so and the employees would be then eligible to enroll in the government health insurance program.
The Hole: If the program truly is cheaper as Obama claims it will be, then what company in their right mind would not go this route, eliminate their current policies and pay a token fee to the government and let employees find their own way through the “governsurance” program ? If it costs less, that increases profitability and improves the bottom line it’s a win-win for any company NOT in the insurance industry. CEO’s just may be able to add a few more million onto their salary packages.
Obama said: Any American who wishes to remain with their current insurance provider is free to do so.
The Hole: See above, if your company chooses to end its contracts with your current provider do you think anyone as an individual could afford the new premiums they would be required to pay ? Simple answer. NO ! You know this to be true if you ever had the pleasure of paying COBRA premiums. No insurance company has ever been more appropriately named. Venomous to say the very least.
Obama said: That the whole cost of the program would be absorbed by taxes only on those earning more than $250,000.00 per year
The Hole: Sunday June 28th it was revealed that Obama is “open” to taxing some employee benefits of those earning less than $250,000.00. Based on the fountain of lies spewing form the Obamachine you can pretty much expect that this will mean the bulk of the cost will be absorbed by people earning between $20,000.00 and $30,000.00. This will guarantee that those tax payers will not be able to afford the independent/corporate insurance plans and will be forced to use the government policies. Imagine that ! Democrats trying to control the health care of independent US citizens. Democrats do not like independent free thinking intellectual individuals.
One of the key hurdles to the program will be establishing the entire infrastructure of a company to handle the newly created policies. It normally takes many years for any insurer to be in a position to handle the traffic of 45-50 million customers let alone to create an entity that could handle that much business on opening day. Interestingly enough, it was reported HERE that AIG (unquestionably one of the worst scofflaws that benefited from government bailouts) announced just 12 hours after the Obama health care summit that they would “spin off” their profitable insurance subsidiaries into Special Purpose Vehicles by turning controlling interest over to the Federal Reserve whilst reducing their debt to the government (ie- the taxpayers, ie YOU) by $25 Billion dollars. This conveniently puts the necessary infrastructure into the hands of the Obama administration while conveniently saving said administration from having to raise capital (read – taxes) to do so because taxes have already gone up to compensate for the original bailout. In an nutshell honest hardworking taxpaying US citizens are already being screwed by the Obamachine Free Healthcare program to the tune of $25 Billion and it hasn’t even been approved yet. But you can bet that if it goes forward in the manner Obama intends things will only get worse and much more expensive. Don’t believe me ? Just check out the VA health system and you will quickly see that government administered health care is not a good thing. But you know what ? It could be. Read how in Part 2.
PROPERTY TAXES – SOMETHING THE GOVERNMENT MUST RECTIFY
In the United States property taxes are currently calculated based on how much a home is worth. This is probably the most asinine system that could ever have been put together.
Assessed value of a home is based on an arbitrary number derived from calculations on the size of the home, the size of the lot, upgrades made to the home and lastly how much the home was purchased for. The key problem with this is that just because someone is willing to pay a certain amount for the home does not mean the home is worth anywhere near that amount of money. People willing to pay way more than a home is worth is one of the key reasons the real estate market imploded. Second only to avaricious unethical lending institutions.
If you pay any attention to the news, or if you are a homeowner, something that will crop up fairly often is people suing for unfairly assessed property. Rightly so too because technically property only has value to the people who live on it and those who wish to buy it. But if the government deems that your property would serve the greater good being used in a manner different than which you use it. They (the government) can come in and take your property from you by using the so called eminent domain clause. Now under this clause the government is supposed to buy your home from you at a fair market value, although it must purely be coincidence that what the government decides is fair value when trying to buy your house in no way matches what they decide is fair value when assessing the taxes on your property.
The only fair way for government to collect property taxes should be based on
- The square footage of the lot
- The square footage of structures used for actual residence
- The square footage of structures used for storage
Each of these criteria would be calculated at a different rate. For example you may be charged $.10 for each square foot the lot requires, $1.00 for each square foot of residential structures and another $.50 for each square foot of storage structure (ie. barns, sheds, carports, unfinished garages or basements and such)
Obviously the actual rate schedule would vary per geographical region and actual usage of the property. Although the taxing agency should be responsible for including an itemized report on how your tax dollars were being spent. Including all the necessary municipal functions, Police, Fire, Road Maintenance, etc. Any time the particular government wanted to increase budgets for these agencies they should be required to enclose a prospectus explaining how it would benefit the tax payer, how much it would raise the particular taxes for them and a ballot so the tax payer could vote directly on whether they approved of the new budget or not.
School taxes would be calculated in the same manner but be collected separately for the purpose of a more accurate budget and the ability to keep a more focused eye on how the school district was performing financially and academically.
With a socialized health program the hospital and medical maintenance costs could also be absorbed this way thus freeing the average family of the hardship of dealing with insurance companies and the bureaucrat filth that work with them. I discuss Socialized Medicine elsewhere in this blog
Now if you think that this program is allowing renters to evade taxes you are wrong. Rented properties would be taxed at a higher rate than regular owned properties to compensate for excessive enforcement required at these properties. Every home must meet certain building and livability codes and rented properties are more likely to violate these codes than properties lived in by the home owner. These code violations require more housing inspectors and police and fire enforcement to handle and as such they would be billed appropriately. Higher taxes on rented properties would make it possible to inspect these properties on a yearly basis to ensure they meet codes for health and safety.
Now I know this mini-festo does not cover all aspects of the property tax problem, it is just a simple guideline pointing out that things could be done better than they are now.
If you agree with the idea stated here there is no need to contact me – Contact your local politicians instead and tell them to do something right for a change.
Thank you for your time
PatriotRanter
Polygamy – the savior of the modern family
Now even though I call myself the patriotranter it does not mean I have only a political mind. I do often think about the tragedy that today’s modern families are facing.
Since World War II, women as housewives have been entering the work force at record levels. Few children of the baby boomer era were fortunate enough to be raised not only with two parents who managed to not get divorced but also with a mother who was home all the time to give these children a proper familial environment.
You can easily find a direct correlation between teenage drinking, drug use and even pregnancy by wether or not the child was raised by a parent or raised as a latchkey kid by absentee parents.
Upon entering the new millennia there is an upsurge in parents placing their children in daycare or various after school programs to ”keep them safe” whilst the parents selfishly pursue their own goals.
With both parents working there are certain inevitable events that occur. The child gets sick, school gets canceled for some reason, or plain old school vacations. These events place the parents in a bit of a problem. What to do with the child ? In many households the answer is to simply abandon the child to his or her own devices and hope for the best. Another solution is that one of the parents take time off from work. The parent this falls upon is usually the mother, which leads to women in general getting a bad reputation at work due to their unreliability.
It is my fervent belief that there should always be one parent home to take care of the children and with a modern day economy where both parents are forced to work (due to their own lifestyles exceeding their incomes – but that is an entirely different topic).
The question is how to provide children with a wholesome home environment whilst parents achieve their own personal goals.
The answer is to have three parents. Two parents who work and one parent to stay home and raise the rugrats.
Of course religious zealots are against this type of activity, but if you ask them to provide a solid topical reason WHY they are against it the best answer you will get is that The Bible is against it. Now we know that The Bible was written solely for the purpose of controlling the unwashed masses. Religion was the main form of government as little as 1000 years ago and anybody with a modicum of intellect knows that the sole purpose of Government is to control the weak minded Why else do you think churches refer to their attendees as a flock of sheep ? Enough said, there is no reliable argument against the idea of plural marriage. Now we must describe the benefits of plural marriage.
First let me disabuse anyone on the potential sexism of this idea. I am not insisting that every man be allowed multiple wives. Nor am I suggesting that women be saddled with multiple husbands. Although these two concepts would consist most of the dynamics created by this plan there is another possibility of two couples forming a union and living in harmony.
The upside of this is that several parents can go to work and provide a nice solid income whilst the extra parent can stay home and attend to the needs of the children. Also if the parents were working with an understanding company they could rotate the duties at home and the parents who go to work. Having this kind of labor pool available to them would also benefit companies in untold ways.
In families with four parents you could have a situation where two parents work and the other two parents attend college part time whilst raising the children part time. Upon graduation they could find better paying jobs and rotate the duties of all parents.
I can continue to extol the incredible possibilities of plural relationships but there is not one single reason I can come up with against them. Of course religious leaders and political leaders are against them because this kind of activity strengthens the position of the people and weakens the power of the so called leaders. And that right there is the best benefit of them all.
The Golden Age of Rail
I have been wondering lately why Amtrak hasn’t taken full advantage of the weaknesses currently afflicting air travel.
Most people don’t even consider train travel as an option because it is so slow. After all, it takes 24 hrs to traverse the east coast by rail when the same journey can be done by plane in a few hours.
But let’s compare some of the differences, other than time, between the two modes.
When flying by air, you have to arrive several hours early, get half undressed, get subjected to all sorts of impolite groping from TSA scumbags and perverts, then you have to turn off all your electric gadgets and toss out any potentially contraband products -like water, toothpaste and the $150.00 per ounce perfume you didn’t want to entrust to “checked” luggage, which airlines generously let you “check” for a small fee. Then you sit around a generic lobby for two hours listening to other peoples children bitch and moan about how bored they are. A few more hours go by and if by some chance your flight hasn’t actually been canceled due to weather in a city 1500 miles away or some other inexplicable reason, you actually get to board the plane – this doesn’t necessarily mean that you will soon be airborne and on the way to your destination, all it means is that instead of waiting in a wide open lobby filled with screaming children you are now trapped inside a ten foot wide aluminum tube with a bunch of other peoples screaming children.
When riding the train it goes a little something like this. You show up at the station an hour or so before departure. You check your luggage which, can be two VERY heavy bags, and you also get to take a decent amount of carry on luggage with you. As a matter of fact, when traveling by rail most peoples carry on luggage exceeds that of the entire luggage allotment the airlines give you before they begin charging. You can carry your own food and beverages onto the train. You can bring a carry on containing toothpaste and deodorant. You can even carry your Swiss Army knife in your pocket and they don’t think you are going to try and hijack or disassemble the train. You can wander around, even going to the club car and getting a decent hot meal and some refreshing beverage without having to sell a kidney to be able to afford it. Maybe you will enjoy some pleasant conversation or even a game of cards with a fellow passenger and all the while your cell phone is on and ready to receive or make a call you might need to take. You can even, if you so choose reserve a sleeper bunk for those longer passages and have your own private sitting room, bedroom and bathroom away from the “unwashed, huddled masses of the generic public”.
Your time is important to you, so wouldn’t you prefer to spend it idling the hours away watching the scenery of this great nation pass by a picture window. Rather than in some over priced, cramped, so called “seat” wedged in next to an overweight salesman with garlic breath and a bad combover while the little brat in the seat behind you tries to stick his gum in your hair (and that’s what the airlines call First Class). Air travel has become terribly inconvenient and horrifically embarrassing for some, but people actually prefer it to spending so much time riding the rails and taking days to get to ones destination. What about if Amtrak made a few key changes to its business model and started providing rail transportation in a truly unique way?
The question is this : What does Amtrak need to do to get you off planes and onto trains ? For me personally they don’t have to do any thing BUT for those of you avoiding rail travel think about this
A. What if Amtrak started non stop routes between major destination hubs just like the airlines do. Non stop from Chicago to L.A. Non stop from New York to Orlando for those Disney Vacations. Non stop New York to Chicago. Non stops from Boston to New York and Washington DC. I think if the price was right even a few stops per trip would be acceptable compared to the thirty or so stops at every podunk little town these runs currently make. Much like air travel, couldn’t these smaller hamlets be serviced with regional trains ? I think so.
B. Segregated cars – and don’t get your knickers in a bunch, I’m not talking race here. I’m talking lifestyles. You could have Adult only cars that cater strictly to the eighteen and over crowd and then you could have family cars that cater to people traveling with children. For these cars they could rip out a few rows of seats and replace them with “play zones” let all the kids get together and have a good time without disturbing other passengers. Some of the seats could fold flat into passable crib type or young adult beds for when the rug rats wear themselves out.
C. More comfortable seating and more adaptable seats. If they can put lie flat sleeping pods on 747’s then they can do the same with trains. Cheaper and nicer besides.
D. Maybe a movie theater car. Have a selection and schedule movie showings and passengers can make movie reservations at the beginning of their trip and spend a couple hours killing time watching a flick – with pop corn and junior mints and all the lovely concessions. Frankly if the train had current movies playing they could really mop up simply charging for this specialized service
E. Expanded and easily affordable Auto Train service. Just imagine getting ready for that family vacation. You load up the car and go to the train station. ALL ABOARD. You spend a day or so traveling to that dream destination you detrain rested relaxed and fed. AND your car is there waiting for you with all your vacation stuff. No need to rent a car and pay for all that weird insurance. No need to worry about tons of luggage as it’s all right there in your car waiting for you. This alone could benefit families immensely. Or sportsmen and hobbyists. Golfers, Hunters, Musicians, SCUBA divers – Every time you fly you are entrusting valuable equipment to unreliable people and risking it being damaged beyond belief as well as paying through the nose to transport these odd items. Now just load up your trunk and away you go on the auto train. Your valuables safe and sound away from thieving paws and careless baggage handlers
I think it is high time for Amtrak to really take advantage of all the benefits of rail travel and remake themselves returning us to a new golden age of rail. Trains are vastly more fuel efficient than planes and far kinder to the environment as well.
So ”Go Green, Go By Train”
thank you
Germs Germs Germs
Recently I have been seeing a certain PSA (Public Service Announcement) on television in regards to the fact that germs are getting stronger.
In the commercial the advertisers advocate the avoidance method of not spreading germs. Staying at home from work, washing your hands, that sort of thing. The motto is :Germs are getting stronger we need to get smarter.
It seems to me that, sure, maybe the germs are getting stronger but by avoiding them and evading the issue of letting our immune systems take care of them internally we are only making ourselves ever weaker and more vulnerable to germs.
Personally I expose myself to as many germs as I can as often as I can and my health is what doctors would describe as exemplary. Yes I do get sick and when I do I can be laid out for days BUT those days are few and far between. When I am sick it is usually more severely than others I know but it is also considerably less frequently than anybody else I know.
There are numerous times throughout the year when everyone around me is sick (probably from something I gave them) yet I will be walking around the perfect picture of health.
I heartily and in good health advise everyone to avoid prescription medications and expose yourselves to as many germs as you possibly can. Germs, for lack of a better word, are good Germs work !
Now it is true that I am not a doctor and there are germs out there that can lead to a terminal event so even though I myself rarely go to the doctor I do make a visit if my health ever deteriorated to the point where my life was in jeopardy.
So in summation I tell you get out there, get exposed. But if you are too stupid to go to a doctor when your health is in genuine jeopardy resulting in your death it is in no way my fault and I am in no way legally responsible for any negative results of this advice.
A cold for the common cure
patriotranter
Big Oil, Your Government, and you
As all citizens of the United States are aware, the price of gasoline has reached costs that are increasingly troublesome. Many people like to blame the government for these problems and the truth is the government IS responsible for the high cost of oil, but not for the reasons you may think.
You see, the real problem is not what the government has done but what it is not doing. What it is not doing is stepping in and forcibly regulating the prices oil companies are allowed to charge for a gallon of gas.
With many industries, if certain corporate policies are followed that would be detrimental to the consumer the government often steps in and gives said company and ultimatum. You see this most frequently in the Airline Industry. Whenever there is even the remotest talk of a pilot strike the President of the United States simply steps in and forbids such action. Why ? Because a nationwide pilot strike would cripple the nation in such a way as to bring us to a nearly complete and utter standstill.
Now if we take a brief look at some historical data we can see that the government used to regulate many industries specifically the telecommunications industry and once again the airline industry.
With the telecommunications industry it was in 1984 that the government split up “Ma Bell” AKA American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) into seven different entities and began letting independent companies provide the necessary services. Until this point Ma Bell essentially had a monopoly on the primary means of communication for most of the U.S. The reasons for this divestiture are mainly due to illegal practices by the bell company to stifle competition. (Read the wikipedia article here : Ma Bell Wiki ). Examining todays world, what industry has a choke hold on the American public whilst stifling competition such as power derived from solar, wind or other interesting means. But also a few minutes spent at any shopping mall in the United States will reveal a cornucopia of telephone service providers and the inexpensive plans they offer it is quite obvious that deregulation was the perfect answer. Yes there were some hard times on the road to this point as anybody who tried making a collect call to New York from southern Florida in the late 1980’s can attest to.
With the Airline Industry deregulation took place in 1978 with the Airline Deregulation Act to remove the air transport industry from governmental control and by exposing it to certain market forces competition would bring the prices down and the services up. Those two benefits are now steadily being eaten away by the costs Airlines are forced to pay by the monopolistic behavior of oil companies.
You see deregulation is a good thing when there is a government backed monopoly but when that same monopoly is corporate backed such as the oil industry it only costs more for the consumer.
Face it, you really don’t have much of a choice. You must buy gas. Some claim that there are many ways to reduce your fuel consumption but are there really ?
Lets quickly discuss the falsehoods of carpooling.
A. How many people are there who not only live near you but also work close enough to your work to make car pooling actually efficient. If you are at all like me that answer is ZERO.
B. Let’s assume that the above criteria have been met – they live near you they work near you. Now do they work hours similar to yours as well ? I didn’t think so
C. Again, let us one more assume that the above criteria are met. They live near you, they work near you and have a similar work schedule as yours. Now comes the Dagwood Bumstead effect - how many times a month do they either cause you to be late or do they suddenly depart work early due to a family emergency stranding you without homeward bound transportation? I thought as much.
So even though carpooling make work fine for a few hundred thousand lucky groups, for the other two hundred million of us it just DOES NOT WORK. Period. This conversation is over.
Now that we have confessed our need for gas and we have discussed the monopolistic behavior of oil companies lets quickly address a few other issues
First there is Price Per Barrel. Oil companies have convinced the American public that the Price Per Barrel you see oil being traded at is what it actually costs to pump the oil. This is the biggest lie in history. Price Per Barrel is just an arbitrary number created by commodities traders who are hoping that the price of gasoline will continue to rise which it does because the commodities traders have so grossly artificially inflated the Price Per Barrel in their trading. Remove Oil from the commodities market and you will suddenly see the costs plummet because it costs no more to pump and transport oil in todays world than it did in 1992.
Simply put, commodities traders are erroneously speculating that the cost of pumping oil has increased and the amoral oil company execs are cashing in on this fantasy.
If you think the war in Iraq is influencing the cost of oil in any way shape or form you had best think again. You see OPEC could easily increase the flow of oil to the States reducing our costs but they refuse to do so ( CNBC OPEC leaves Oil production unchanged ) Why ? Because these Arabs are making a killing selling us oil that is being pumped by American companies.
Why should OPEC have to increase it’s oil production ? In one word CHINA. China demand on oil has increased dramatically over the last decade and will eclipse US consumption in a few years Resource Consumption US vs China but you see China has a distinct advantage over the US in that it’s oil industry is wholly subsidized by it’s communist government so the gas prices are considerably lower than those in the U.S. You may ask how the Chinese government can afford to subsidize the oil industry and that is yet another simple answer. You the American People are paying for the Chinese to have cheap gas. Every time you shop at WalMart and buy some Chinese made product you are doing a number of things
1. You are causing the loss of a job to one of your fellow US citizens
2. You are enriching the Chinese government so they can continue to harass Tibet and Taiwan with their military.
3. Due to lack of Chinese pollution regulations your taking yet another bite out of the sustainability of this planet.
4. You are increasing the cost of fuel in the U.S. by making it more affordable in China
Enough about China for now.
Let’s get back on track with US oil companies. If they were truly independent organizations there would be huge fluctuations in the cost of gas from company to company but they always collude to price points within a few cents of each other. If oil and gas were actually expensive as they want us to believe there would not be a huge discrepancy in price from region to region, It would cost the same at every gas station nationwide. Why doesn’t it ? Because oil companies are trying to charge the maximum amount they can get away with and due to geo-economical influences and regional inflation oil companies know they can charge more in California than they can in say Arkansas.
It is high time for the government to step in, analyze the gross and indecent near criminal profits the oil companies are making and set a standard nationwide gas price also eliminating the profits oil companies are reaping and especially those dishonest oil executives
Oil Companies MUST BE STOPPED but it takes you the people to do it
Write your Senators and Representatives in Congress and demand that the government seize control of oil company assets and begin marketing affordable gas
It can be done. But it will take all of us
Good Luck America
patriotranter
Second Amendment Society
We here in the United States of America have a thing called The Bill of Rights. This document affords us citizens with a few inalienable truths that are presumed self evident.
The second amendment of these rights is the right to keep and bear arms. A direct quote from the document is as follows “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed“
Now lawyers, politicians, and other self serving scum have been debating what these words truly mean for centuries now, and it seems every year you will find some new infringement encroaching the basic verbiage of this amendment. In many states you actually have to undergo an excruciating and invasive application to receive the permission to own and carry a firearm in direct contrast to these simple words “shall not be infringed”
I will gladly be the first to admit that notoriously violent criminals should not have access to firearms BUT I also must stress that there is a very simple way to prevent their obtaining firearms in the first place and I will discuss those methods in a future post.
What I am advocating is the need for our federal government to remove the policing of firearms from the individual states and begin issuance of a Federal Concealed Carry Permit that would allow all us average Joe’s who own firearms to travel where we want in this country with our guns as the Bill of Rights claims we should be able to do.
Now I know that many of you who feel the same way about firearms as I do know in your hearts many of the violent tragedies that have occurred in this nation over the last several years ranging from 9/11 to specific college campus shootings would easily have been prevented if there were a few well armed honest citizens in the vicinity just before those crime were occurring. Those of you who are against firearms simply do not realize the old adage “when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns” is a truism and gets demonstratively proved repeatedly every day. I’m sorry, it’s just the way things are.
The National Rifle Association is the largest most vocal gun lobby group we have and they do some excellent work but they also neglect to look at the big picture. We have a right to our guns. It is time to take action into the hands of the people – that means you and me. Please, if you value your right to own a firearm, write to your congressperson – your representative and your senators, insisting that they pass a National Firearm Concealed Carry Permit and let them know if they fail to do this you will vote against them in future elections. We need to take back our rights and seize our guns.
A great man once said “There comes a time in every patriots life when he must defend his country from his government” . Well gun owners, that time is now.
Life , liberty and the pursuit of happiness, have a great day
patriotranter
