Parenting Our Government: The Cost of Giving In

My three year old has mastered the concept of verbal assault like a professional special interest lobbyist. She lurks in a room, just long enough to take stock of the situation. Once she sees an opportunity, she pounces like a lionness. The attack is swift, and I rarely have time to think, much less consider her demands. "What is that? Why are you doing that? What is that thing for? Can I have that? I want that...can I have it? I want that NOW! Mom, can I have it? MOOOOOMMMMM! I want that NOW!!!"

After ten minutes, the neural synapses fire simultaneously, driving me to acquiesce, in order to stop the hammering in my head caused by her incessant begging. Half the time, she gets what she wants and simply starts asking for something else. Like any pre-schooler, the power and control isn't in the getting, it is in the demanding after being refused, and THEN the getting. In a way, she could mentor a Washington lobbyist in methodology. Moreso, if what she wants isn't possible, she just demands louder and screams until every nerve in my body is raw. I become willing to give her ANYTHING, just to preserve my sanity. Just shut the kid UP!

As a parent, I know to give into her rants and demands are only going to successfully create a monster. I have to be firm in my parenting and nip the manipulation in the bud by putting her in another room as soon as the pitch on her whining reaches a certain decibel level.

Special interest groups operate in much the same way in our country. They scream and kick until they get their way, or they simply bombard us until we grow so weary, we just want to shut them up. And much like my three year old, they are never satisfied when they achieve their objective. They just change the demand. As long as their demands are being heard and eventually met, they are in control. That is really all they want.

Those special interest groups represent the business people whining about the cost of health insurance, insurance companies complaining they can't control the costs of medical care and medical care providers complaining too many people are showing up for care that don't have insurance, forcing them to increase the costs of health care to the patients. The funny thing in all this is one simple reality: In the early eighties, the government gave into fear mongering (by hospitals) that the baby boom generation was going to meet untimely deaths unless they had government health insurance. Medicare and Medicaid were born.

But by placing a third party between the producer (physician/hospital) and the consumer (patient), we unwittingly created a delayed reaction in the supply/demand cycle. Throw licensing boards into the equation, and the ugly truth is, we were better off 30 years ago when the average person didn't have medical insurance, and simply paid out of pocket to see a doctor or go to the hospital. If you examine the cost of inflation rate to the rate of medical care costs, you will be able to pinpoint exactly when the government got their grubby little hands involved in healthcare the LAST time:



The perceptive person will notice the dramatic increase of costs just in the last two years when the discussion for government sponsored healthcare for all reached a fevered pitch in the last few months. Coincidence? I doubt it. You'll notice a dramatic increase in medical care inflation right about the time Billary were introducing their idea for socialized medicine in the early 90's. Wow...what a real coincidence! Talk about frothing at the mouth!

You see, there was a time when the cost of medical care rose only as high as the cost of inflation. It changed when the Medicare program was introduced, along with Medicaid. The 'costs' were suddenly through the roof when hospitals and doctors noticed there was an open ended check from the government. They found it was very lucrative to buy up hospitals, make major corporations out of them, and bill up the wazoo to get every dime out of the government. Of course, after the government realized the stupidity of care without cost controls, they introduced Diagnosis Related Groups (DRG's to those of us who have spent too much time in the Medical industry.) This meant, if a patient showed up with a diagnosis of heart attack, the government estimated the average amount of time for being in the hospital, bypass surgery and recovery time, and paid only the average, regardless of where the care was given, who gave it or how long the actual recovery rate was. The flat rate was born, and hospitals now had an incentive to push people out of the hospital before they were ready to go, if they had exceeded their max number of allowed days in the hospital. Add to that the need to deal with a new onslaught of patients who now 'bought into' the Medicare system and you have a nice little nightmare just waiting to be experienced.

Now Pres. Obama (PO as in, I'm PISSED OFF, from now on) wants to take over the current medical care system to "reduce costs." Um...maybe he hasn't noticed, but that was the objective the LAST time they did this, and it only drove the costs UP. Now, if PO doesn't want to force his plan on every tax payer, he won't be able to afford it. If he does, he hasn't fully understood the definition of socialized medicine. And the concept hasn't really been presented honestly to him. If he wants that, he wants to destroy the medical industry in the U.S.

That is because socialized medicine in every country that has it does two things: It drives up the cost of medical care for everyone, and it reduces the quality of that care. Rationing isn't a 'fear mongering' concept. It is real, here in socialized medicine Ireland. Ask anyone who gets cancer. They must wait in line to get surgery (12 months in some areas.) They must wait in line to see specialists. (It has taken me two full years to get an appointment with a neurologist for my M.S.) A psychologist's evaluation for my autistic son is still a pending issue, and it took over 18 months to get occupational therapy for his care. This is AFTER having a diagnosis (which takes a psychologist AND a neurologist.) Ireland does boast the lowest rate of a lot of conditions, but then again, noone bothers to get diagnosed, because it takes so long.

Now understand, I appreciate the care I have gotten. Our GP is very kind, and the nursing care is very good. But overall, it isn't top of the line. The structure discourages the best from getting the best appointments, and the appointments to the highest positions are very politicized. Imagine Barney Frank appointing the Department Head for Dietary Nutrition...or Nancy Pelosi selecting the Head of Psychiatry. Better yet, imagine Katherine Sebilius appointing the Head of Obstetrics. We would all have dead babies.

There aren't any socialized medicine systems that have a single payer system and advanced quality medical care. I believe it will never work in the U.S. Our culture in the U.S. is too conditioned to demand the best. But they can't hold up to the bureaucracy of the Federal Government. It will drive us back into non-participating physicians who only want cash for care. We will be forced to select from a small minority of doctors, and we will be locked into paying for a government system that is ineffective, administration heavy and not cost contained. Either that, or they will be something reminiscent of Logan's Run.

My point is, be careful about giving into the whining on this one. It is like the constant badgering from my three year old. She begs, whines and screams for a piece of cheese, but within an hour, the cheese causes her to develop asthma that chokes her airway almost to the point of suffocation. I can't give in on the cheese, so she will survive, and thrive. It is the same with the healthcare system. It simply takes looking at other models for socialized medicine and evaluating THEIR success. (Yes, Ireland has a two payer system too...doesn't mean a damned thing except the wait for a neurologist is shaved down to 12 months.)

It may be better to just return to the direct payment system, where doctors and hospitals have to set their prices based on the amount people can reasonably pay. We can always go back to paying for major medical insurance. Insurance should be insurance for the unlikely eventuality that we are hit with a catastrophic situation...not a common cold.

Otherwise, the whining is just going to intensify, only it will be coming out of our own mouths, in order to just get in for a test or for a visit with a specialist.

Full Circle Time: The Little Boy President Who Cried "Crisis!"

Okay kids...let's all get on the mat for full circle time. It's time to tell you a story about the Little Boy President Who Cried "Crisis." Do you remember the original story, where the little shepherd boy cried wolf, and all the townspeople came running. He did it to MANIPULATE the townsfolk to his own perverse sense of pleasure. But when the time came that a REAL wolf appeared, the townspeople thought his cries were another b.s. alarm and they wouldn't come to save him. What happened to the little boy? He was torn to tiny pieces by the wolf...and rightfully so. Do you think ANY of the townspeople shed a tear? Well, I'm sure some saw the boy was still a youth and too narcissistic to realize the impact his decisions were having on the townspeople, but most of them probably said, "He had it coming! Serve the little jerk right!"

Does anyone remember where we were, boys and girls, about two weeks ago? That's right! We were at the Tea Parties on Tax Day. And what was our purpose there? Right again! To remind people that our government should be OF the PEOPLE, BY the PEOPLE and FOR the PEOPLE. Now in our story of the Little Boy President Who Cried "Crisis", the Little Boy President saw all of us standing around, protesting the bad decisions made by our so-called 'representatives' in Congress. He began to throw a temper tantrum because the people did not want to play the game his way after he changed all the rules to make himself the winner. So the little boy devised a nice little idea that would make people stop gathering.

First, the Little Boy President Who Cried "Crisis" thought, "I'll show those American Townspeople!" So he took his favorite airplane and fighter jets and had them fly low over Manhattan, just to make the American Townspeople run away scared to think there was another terrorist attack coming. The American Townspeople in Manhattan began to cry because they were AFRAID that their city was going to be dessimated again by men that hate Americans. But just when they thought the plane was going to crash into a building, it tilted and someone said, "Hey, isn't that the Little Boy President's plane? Why is he trying to scare us? They got angry that the Little Boy President was so stupid as to think he could scare us away with his planes. So the American Townspeople stopped being afraid.

Next, the Little Boy President told some of his little boyfriends in the White House to take a little bottle of un-medicine that the world hasn't seen since 1977 and, before that, 1950, (http://www.virology.ws/2009/03/02/origin-of-current-influenza-h1n1-virus/) and release it in rural Mexico where the silly little peasants would never know what hit them. Then, it would spread and they could tell everyone what a deadly disease it was and how everyone should stay inside because it normally KILLS PIGS but now it is KILLING HUMANS. The Little Boy President had his best little boy friend, the Little Boy Vice President, even say on national television that he wouldn't have his own family ride the trains, even though the Little Boy Vice President LOVES trains. The American Townspeople heard this and began to worry. They stopped gathering, because they were AFRAID of this sickness. You see, boys and girls, noone really remembered having it before, and fewer understood how it managed to jump from just making pigs sick to making humans puke their guts out, so the American Townspeople were very scared of getting sick. Really, they were just afraid of throwing up so hard that vomit would come out their noses, but they were more afraid of that which they didn't understand.

After a few days, when people who got sick from it started to feel better, the American Townspeople began to realize that, just like every other illness humans get, our immune system fights it pretty well, and we get better, although some of us had the added advantage of having such violent vomitting and diahrrea that we finally dropped those pesky few pounds that wouldn't come off after having the last baby .

Well boys and girls, in the original story, it only took the townspeople two times to realize the Little Boy was full of crud and they began to ignore his cries of the wolf coming. But the American Townspeople haven't stopped being afraid when the Little Boy President cries Crisis. Although he has cried Crisis with the Economy, with the Auto Industry Collapse, the Banks, and now, with the Pig Flu, the American Townspeople still respond out of fear. But the American Townspeople are starting to be brave and not be so afraid. Pretty soon, they will begin to ignore the Little Boy President altogether when he shouts about the new Crisis of something or other.

And although the American Townspeople want to make sure their town is safe from all the silly Crisis, they now understand that things like a bad economy, having to find a new job and paying cash for everything sometimes has a good side. They understand that we all get sick, and some sicknesses, like viruses, actually PROTECT us from some forms of cancer and worse illnesses: chicken pox versus Shingles...Cow pox versus Small Pox...common cold versus brain cancer http://www.medical-hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877(06)00610-4/abstract .

The American Townspeople began to be BRAVE just like their forefathers. They began to remember, they live in the 'Land of the Free, Home of the Brave' and that the two can't be seperated. They realized that being Free, meant being Brave. They started coming back together in town to protest, to let their voice be heard. Most of all, they began to ignore the Little Boy President every time he cried Crisis and started to live life again, without fear.

After they did that, they all lived HAPPILY EVER AFTER.

A Simple (and Less Expensive) Solution to The Economic Crisis

How to Fix the Economy Without Giving Away The Store (or the U.S. Treasury)

Here is an example of why people aren't spending money. It isn't because the gas crisis took their disposable income. It isn't because the banks aren't loaning money. (Well, they aren't, but that's not the reason.) You can add it all up on ten fingers (each representing one thousand dollars a month) and see it plainly. All the tax cuts, construction of DOD buildings, Pell Grants and Watershed Projects won't make any impact on it. You have to hit the problem at the core. Bottom Line: People have to have money TO SPEND!

http://www.midasletter.com/news/09021301_How-banks-are-worsening-the-foreclosure-crisis.php

Stefanie and James Smith of Santa Clarita, Calif., fear they may need the
help of a bankruptcy court if they are to keep the subdivision home they bought
for $579,000 in November 2005. Stefanie, 37, a university human resources
coordinator, and James, 40, a federal law enforcement agent, borrowed the entire
amount in two subprime loans that required a total monthly payment of $3,000. A
representative of their lender, Countrywide, told them not to worry, says
Stefanie: They would be able to refinance in a year.
By mid-2007 they were running late on payments, and refinancing options had dried up. With their monthly bill scheduled to jump to more than $4,000 this January due to a rising mortgage rate, Stefanie contacted Countrywide last summer. She asked for a loan modification so they could avoid default. In December the lender said it would be willing to increase their payment by $600. That was better than the scheduled rise of $1,100, so the Smiths agreed. But now they are struggling to pay the higher amount. Countrywide's parent, BofA, declined to comment, citing the
Smiths' privacy. After BusinessWeek's questions, though, Countrywide called them
to discuss cutting their payments.
"We knew when we bought that the payments
would be a stretch," says Stefanie. She regrets assuming they would be able to
refinance at a lower rate. "We are not deadbeats," she adds. "All we want is a
mortgage we can afford."

I live in Ireland but my home is still in California. This is commonplace all over my state. People bought homes, under pressure with loan officers promising the hope of refinancing at lower rates late, only to discover the bubble had already burst on the housing market. Yes, these are critical times, but a stimulus is window dressing. What has to happen will be painful, across the board, because housing prices have to get back to a workable mortgage payment amount. There is another option, so hear me out. There is a light at the end of this long tunnel.

People bought houses when I was a kid in 1971 for about $25,000 to $33,000. These were modest but not cracker boxes. The square footage, in a 'burb of Los Angeles, ranged from 1500 to 1800 sqare feet. They had reasonable yards, upwards of a tenth of an acre, and a reasonable interest rate of 5.25 to 6. The payment for a 30 year fixed mortgage was about $182 a month. Taxes and insurance would add another 75. At most, you were paying $250 a month and your monthly median household income was about $11000 a year, or 916 gross a month. That meant you were only paying a little over 30% of your income for your mortgage.

Flash forward to 2005. Home prices range at $524000. At 7% interest, the payment is $3486. The median income is $53629, (this comprises 82% of American households or $4469 gross a month. At the peak of the Housing Bubble, Americans buying homes for the first time were paying approximately 80% of their GROSS monthly income on their mortgage!

I am not an economist, or a banker, or a genius, or even a math major. I am an average American who is looking at the numbers and even I can see why we're in trouble!!! 20% of your gross income is what most people pay in payroll taxes!

In other words, the bankers bled the system for all they could get. Homeowners selling during that time made an unmitigated killing, but it was a fleeting opportunity. They maxed it for what they could, but like a plane going up at a 90 degree angle to the sun, it reaches a point where it ceases to go up and it starts to tumble down. Gravity is inevitable. People have to EAT!! (You moron loan officers!)

I am going to stick my neck out, but here goes: All the spending in the world won't change the fact that people can't pay more than they make for a house and living costs! And even more, until the banks get out a calculator and take their heads out of their asses, they will continue to face HUGE losses until equalibrium is acheived. In other words, until the average mortgage payment goes back to 30% of monthly, they will find people not making their payment and going into foreclosure. To make it worse, if the average American does NOT have their heads up their asses, they will get a little calculator out (they are pocket size now) and figure out that they must have money to eat. They will figure out that food, gas, utilities, and daily living expenses usually amount to about 50% of their income, and they will avoid purchasing a home until they can afford to do both.

President Obama can only do one of two things: Either mandate a minimum wage of at least $14 per hour, or LET THE BANKERS BITE THE BIG ONE! Since I take great offense to the idea of a teenager who fries my burger making as much as me, the only solution is for President Obama and Timothy Geittner to acknowledge that the situation mandates underwriting all the homeowners who have loans above $225000. Either force the banks to write down all loans to the actual value of the properties as they stand now, then supplement their losses based on the TARP funds the Treasury has already given the banks, or supply those homeowners directly with a low interest loan (based on the lending rate they currently offer banks) at .5% for the full value of the principal. This would take a loan of $524000 to $1568 a month. Hell, just so we give the taxpayer a return on his investment give it to 'em at 2%.($132,840...This is a little better than a 20% return on the original investment.) The payments would be $1937 a month. That puts percentage of a person's income to the mortgage at roughly 40%. Not exactly what it was in 1971, but a helluva lot better than 2005.

Oh, and if the asshole bankers want to offer the same thing, they are welcome rework the loans. In fact, if they are determined to maintain their investment value and see home prices stay where they are or go up, they should think about offering that rate to everyone...PERMANENTLY!!!

Otherwise, watch the housing market fall back to earth.