A Cure for Everything | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

    The great American ethic is that money will buy anything. It is particularly true in the political world. We try to buy everything from international friendship to better schools to votes to taxpayer support for some behavior that politicians believe we should embrace.

    A lot of countries don't like us - even a little. So what do we do. We regale them with Foreign Aid - using a lot of borrowed money. We even "give" foreign aid to China - some directly and some through the UN - in the hope they will support us when it comes to "crunch time". And what does all the foreign aid that we dole out get us. Not so much. Some occasional lip service but normally not much of substance

    And how about our failing schools?? We hand out social promotions. If the kids who receive those promotions figure out the value of a high school diploma soon enough, they enroll at the local Community College where they finish learning all those things that they didn't bother to learn in high school (or maybe jr. high). If they don't figure out soon enough that having a high school diploma is really helpful when trying to get an even halfway good job, they may try the GED route. Unfortunately all the money we dumped on the schools doesn't seem to have done much to improve anything - other than the standard of living for some union "leaders" maybe.

    As an aside - Why they changed the name from "Junior College" to "Community College" is a mystery. Do you suppose the idea came from the same folks who managed to get all kids who participated in a team sport a trophy regardless of their team's performance. Surely they weren't trying to straighten out the "Junior College" misnomer. Junior college, indeed... Why not "freshman and sophomore" college?? Another of life's imponderables

    And then there are federal expenditures to convince the American public that one government policy or other is a really good idea.. Wouldn't you think that really good ideas would stand on their own with no need for "tax breaks" (i.e. bribery)?? Have you ever heard of "Tax Expenditures"?? The Congress "bribes" us with "tax credits" or allows certain "expenses" to be deducted from our taxable income. The tax credits normally result in a dollar for dollar reduction in taxes. The deductions normally result in the amount of the deduction not being taxable. (It isn't quite that straightforward when all is said and done, but I promise you don't want to be subjected to all the details...) For Politicians the tax credits are the better of the two. They tend to be harder to see which subjects them to much less scrutiny than the "deductions" which are out there for everyone to see. The credits make it easier for politicians to be more selectively generous with other peoples' money. (Speaking of "generous with other people's money", has anyone seen the Schedule A tax forms submitted by any of the Beaufort County Commissioners?? I didn't think so. Why do you suppose that doesn't rile up a lot of honest taxpayers who do put heir money where their mouth is??)

    Even the enactment of Obamacare required throwing money at several hesitant lawmakers who either really believed what they were saying or simply held out for the goodies they knew would eventually be offered. Did you ever hear of the Louisiana Purchase (not the 1803 Louisiana Purchase - the 2010 one)?? That was reportedly the price of Mary Landreau's "aye" vote . And how about the Cornhusker Kickback that was the reported price of Senator Ben Nelson's "aye" vote (later removed from the legislation). Think Bernie Sanders (I - VT), Carl Levin (D - MI),Patrick Leahy (D - VT). They also managed to get on Harry Reid's gravy train. And there were still more votes "purchased". Click here to see the Dec. 2009 Politico article on the subject.

    Now we hear folks like Harry Reid and a lot of his Dem. Cohorts telling us that the ACA is the law of the land and we must, therefore, adhere to it. And yet it seems as though almost ever since the ACA became the "law of the land", the Anointed One has been unilaterally changing it. As an aside, do you suppose when he was a lecturer teaching Constitutional Law, he taught his students that it is the Prez' who is responsible for law-making and not the Congress?? (Why the MSM insists on referring to the Anointed One as "Professor" when describing his "teaching" activity defies explanation. Everyone knows that a "Professor" is either someone who has tenure or is someone who plays piano in a Bawdy House. I'm fairly sure that the Anointed One is neither.) He was a lecturer - nothing more

    One thing that seems to escape a lot of folks is the fact that the Affordable Health Care legislation deals almost exclusively with Health Insurance (plus a lot of new taxes). It doesn't really address the cost of health care. In fact, it truly increases the cost of health care. Yes, the cost of health care as well as the "old" insurance coverage that many of us used to "enjoy" rose every year - often at a rate higher than inflation, but it is difficult to see anything in the ACA that does anything about that - other than demanding that at least 80% of the premiums collected be paid out in benefits.

    This is for anyone who believes the Dem talking points about the ACA reducing the cost of health care. Ask yourself how we can provide health care for some 30M people who previously did not have health care and do so for less money. And then ask yourself how we can provide widely expanded coverage for everyone and do so for less money. And then if for some inexplicable reason you still believe, ask yourself how the clever folks who have been able to make the foregoing come true have been unable to get us out or the fiscal morass we have been working on for the last five years. Food for thought.

    Here's a novel thought. The government is composed of "workers" and "watchers" (mostly "watchers) - or as Ayn Rand would call them the producers and the moochers. It would be interesting to see how the government could get by under a mandate that no more than twenty percent of the money collected can be spent on the "watchers" (moochers) and the other eighty percent (at least) must be spent paying for the "workers"

    If the anointed One and his minions really cared about reducing the cost of health care, you would think that they would have opened up the market such that the insurance companies could compete with each other by selling insurance across state lines. There are a lot of folks who believe that selling insurance across state lines coupled with tort reform would really do the trick. Implementing tort reform would surely result in lower costs. Surely the insurance companies would love it, but just as surely not the lawyers - which would suggest that it might be tough to get the congress which is composed mainly of lawyers to even consider - much less approve - such a notion. Reducing the cost of doing business for the insurance companies coupled with increased competition for customers would cause the insurance rates to moderate, if not actually decrease. But then that would not comport with a government takeover - which makes it a dumb idea. Yeah, right...

    With all the ad-hoc changes being made to the ACA we can only wonder how the insurance companies can keep up. First, they cancel policies (in compliance with the law) that don't measure up to some bureaucrat's idea of what a health insurance policy should cover. Then the Anointed One approves the notion of reinstating them... Move the cutoff date. Move it again. I suppose if anyone had stopped to think before they made all those pronouncements, it may (should) have occurred to them that it's really not that easy to undo the damage wreaked by the ACA specifications as to what health insurance policies must include (e.g. pre-natal care and the like for everyone - regardless of need). Anyone possessing even a little sense who has ever been responsible for managing something would surely know that decisions are easy to make. It is living with them that frequently gets difficult.... That is one of the first things one learns when they find themselves in a job with responsibility and accountability - which may explain why it may not have occurred to very many of the Anointed One's spear carriers. It is difficult to imagine an organization staffed with so many people who possess so little experience managing anything in the real world.. That may explain why the notion of accepting responsibility (other than rhetorically) for their performance (or lack thereof) seems to be a totally foreign concept...

    With all the "monkey motion" going on in the Anointed One's administration it would seem to be a better than even chance that the Insurance Companies are going to lose a bundle trying to accommodate to the ad-hoc nature of the ACA implementation. There exists the very real possibility that a whole lot of "healthy" young folks aren't going to be wiling to sign up (and overpay) for the ACA just so the "oldsters" can have lower rates?? The insurance companies stand to take a real beating. Stand by for an health insurance company "bail out". We can only wonder if that has been promised in any of the White House "closed door" meetings. That would certainly account for the Insurance Companies relative silence about the state of flux in which the ACA finds itself.

    Years ago, way too many people demanded and received a shot of penicillin for whatever ailed them (whether they needed it or not) with the result being that many of the "bugs" which originally were controlled by the miracle drug developed a resistance to it. There are a lot of folks who believe that the same thing may be happening with the Government's reliance on "bailouts" to rectify every problem (or is it "issue"??) they encounter. This is particularly true when we see that the vast majority of those "problems" were created by the Government itself.

    D'ya Think??