No Runny Eggs

President Obama continues to campaign for the health care reform bill.  He continues to tell people that he won’t get in between them and their doctor.  He tells people that this isn’t a government take over of health care. 

Just as the left can’t look at a simple document like the Constitution and understand the implication of plain language, The Kool-aid drinkers continue to argue about what the definition of is is rather than understanding the implications of the plain language of the health care bill.  Note the comment exchange on this post as evidence of the blindfolded obedience the Obamabots have given The Won in support of owning health care.

So, is The Won looking to take over health care or not?  The Bots say no, we say yes.  How about we let The Won himself tell us:

Huh, at one time he said definitely yes, today he says no. In my view that leaves him either as a schizophrenic or just your common, every day, garden variety liar. The sad part is that just like all of the numerous issues raised during last year’s campaign, the media will yawn and say “nothing to see here. Move along!”

A day hasn’t gone by in the past two weeks, and likely won’t for several weeks to come, where the President or some other proponent of “health care reform” speaks to constituents about their plan.  While the specific arguments for reform that are highlighted may vary from group to group, an argument included in each presentation that by implementing health care reform, health care costs will be reduced.

In economic terms a “cost” is:

Valuation in terms of money of (1) effort, (2) material, (3) resources, (4) time and utilities consumed, (5) risks incurred, and (6) opportunity forgone in production and delivery of a good or service.

in other words, a “cost” is something that goes into making a product or service.  By definition, because a “cost” is a component of a product or service, the only entity that can make a determination as to what “costs” to include in a particular product or service is an entity that has control over the production of that product or service.

If you think about it for just a minute, the fact that you can only control costs if you control the production of the particular product or service is common sense.  If I want to buy a boat I can negotiate with the seller about the price I will pay for the boat.  However, no matter how hard I negotiate, I can’t impact the amount that it cost to produce that boat.  If I want to hire an accountant I can negotiate the price I am willing to pay for their service but I can’t impact what that person paid for their education or the opportunity value of their specialized knowledge.

Just as it is true that you must have control over the production of a product or service in order to impact its cost, it is also generally true that the greater control you have over an item the greater ability you have to control the final cost of that item.  If you make a component for the boat we discussed earlier you have an ability to impact the cost of the boat by making your component less expensive.  However, no matter how large or small the component you make you will never have as much control over the cost of the boat as the company who does the final assembly of the boat. 

Again, if we think for a moment, the reason the final assembler of the boat has the greatest amount of control over the cost of the boat is common sense.  If one of the component makers adjusts the price of their component to a point where the boat assembler believes the price to be uneconomic, the boat assembler can choose from several options including finding another component maker, developing the ability to make the component themselves or even eliminate the component from the boat.  Each of these options has the ability to change the cost of the boat and in each case the assembler has final veto power over which of the options will be chose and its impact on the final cost of the boat.

Along with reducing costs, there is another argument that gets made in an effort to sell the health care reform program; the government won’t get between you and your doctor.

Let’s think about that for a minute.

Earlier we determined that you can’t impact or reduce the price of something unless you have some control over it.  We also know that the ability to control the cost of something is relational to the amount of control you have over that something.  How is it then that the government will reduce health care costs but not have control over health care?

It’s not possible.

The only way for the government to “bend the curve” on health care costs is to exert control over health care.  There is no way for the “reformers” to reduce costs without control.  Oh, they may not employ doctors and nurses directly but they don’t have to.  The government can control health care by controlling how, how much and for what, health care providers get paid.  Worse, with an additional 10% – 15% being added to total expenditures, “bending the curve” will not get the job done.  In order to have a meaningful change there will have to be significant reductions in costs.  The only way to make significant changes on costs is to have significant control.

Two arguments; reduce costs and not control.  The two can’t happen together.  Whether it’s specified in the current bill or not, which of the two do you think will give?  I have my choice!

Or the natives are even more restlesser?

Police called on retirees at senator’s LA office

I learned a lot working on the cars of my youth.  Through experiences, some coached by my Dad, I became a pretty fair diagnoser and mechanic  parts replacer.  I worked on them through the 80’s model years as things started getting more complicated.  By model years of the mid 90’s there was hardly anything I could get at without highly specialized tools, arms that had no less than 4 joints or an MBA in autos.  I realized that the job had gotten more complicated than what I could focus on or had time for so I turned it over to the professionals.

This morning it’s being reported that CARS, Car Allowance Rebate System or the “Cash for clunkers program” has likely run out of money and will be shut down. 

Didn’t the CARS program just get launched?  Yes it did!

The program launched July 25th and was expected to last until November 1st.  It appears that the money has been used so fast that what was supposed to last 90+ days, won’t last 9 days!  In typical government response, rather than saying “oops, we screwed up” they say:

“assess the situation facing what is obviously an incredibly popular program. Auto dealers and consumers should have confidence that all valid CARS transactions that have taken place to date will be honored.”

In other words, “we screwed up and are looking for a way to put lipstick on this pig!”

So what can we learn from CARS?

First, the government has no ability to guage, estimate and appropriately fund, even a simple program like CARS.  They had $1 billion slated for this program to support the sale of 250,000 cars.  There are 23,000 auto dealers.  That means that each car dealership was alloted the average of 11 cars to be sold under this program.  With $4,500 going out for each vehicle does it even pass the smell test that it would take longer than 3 months for the average dealer to sell 11 vehicles under this program?  Actually, I’m surprised the program has lasted 6 days with all of the advertising and pre notice their was on this program.

Second, the government really doesn’t know if they are out of money or not.  They know that about 25,000 cars have been sold under this program, they are estimating the remainder.  The estimation is required because there are:

large backlogs in the processing of the deals in the government system.

This is incredible!  how difficult is it to track these sales?  Beyond name, address, vin of the vehicle you traded in and the one you bought and verification of the qualifying vehicles (another story to be told as the list changed daily), how much is required? 

Finally, the solution, as with all government programs is not to say “we screwed up.”  The solution being proposed is to throw even more money at the government screw up:

Lawmakers said they would try to find additional funding for the program, which under the legislation could grow to $4 billion for the funding of up to 1 million new car sales.

The government can’t successfully administer a program like CARS but continue to insist that they can run the entire medical industry. 

The government can’t manage a budget of $1 billion but claim to be able to manage a budget that is at least 16% of our entire economy.

Finally, the government can’t develop a demand curve for a few vehicles, missing it by a factor of multiple X, but assuredly tell us that they know that they will only spend $1.6 Trillion extra to take over all of health care…Yeah right!

I learned through my experiences, that there is a time for amatures to step aside and let the professionals handle the job.  During this recess we need to be telling our Congressional amatures to step aside and medical professionals handle their job!

When even the New York Slimes can ‘t jury rig a poll to get the results close to favorable you know your plan is in trouble….BIG trouble!

The New York Times/CBS poll shows:

Sixty-nine percent of respondents believe Obama’s plan will hurt the quality of their own healthcare. 

Seventy-three percent believe it would limit their access to tests and treatment. 

Sixty-two percent believe Democrats’ proposals would require them to change doctors. 

Seventy-six believe healthcare reform will lead to them paying higher taxes. 

A whopping 77 percent expect their healthcare costs to rise.

Not only is this not close, this is a landslide against The Won’s policy.  This explains why Barry has been a bit off his game and testier than normal as of late.

Feeling his oats from the passage of Cap and Tax, Henry Waxman is now threatening to bypass the Blue Dogs on his committee and go straight to a house floor vote for “The Final Solution”:

However, Waxman has threatened to force a floor vote to break the impasse within Democratic ranks on President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.

With all of the negatives on “The Final Solution” and now on Obama’s handling of nearly every issue, I say “Bring it on baby!”

If “The Final Solution”, in it’s current form goes to the House floor one of two things will happen.  Either the Blue Dogs will revolt and Pelosi along with The Won will be dealt a serious jot of mortality or the Democrats will pass this bill without any Republican support.  In either event if this bill gets a vote before the recess, anyone who votes for it will want to avoid any of those troublesome town hall type of meetings.  Congressional folks who vote for this bill will wish they had gotten as nice a reception as some of those I documented earlier this week.

Come on Nancy, what are you waiting for?  Make our day!

One of my roles with a previous employer was to develop compensation plans for various sales groups.  As I would work with the sales management it seemed that invariably they would tell me that if we paid more for a particular aspect of the plan, they would be able to get the sales team to achieve that goal.  Just as invariably, when I would hear their line, I would respond with a question, “Is the problem that you can’t do it unless you get paid more or is the problem that you won’t do it unless you get paid more?”  I think you can see the dilemma this left the sales management folks in.

As he cranks up his rhetoric in an attempt to save his health care reform initiative, President Obama told us today that we need to pass health care because it’s the only way to reduce costs.  His exact quote was:

We all know there are more efficient ways of doing it..

implying that only with the passage of health care reform would costs be reduced.  Ironically, he said this on the same day that it was found that the Agriculture department had paid nearly double the going rate for plain old ham.

It’s interesting that when President Obama refers to cost savings in health care he is referring to cost savings in Medicare and Medicaid.  As the health care debate got started, President Obama identified three areas where money could be saved: blackmailing drug companies via FDA approvals, to reduce drug prices, ration treatment to patients by forcing “increased productivity” of physicians and not paying for run of the mill issues that are treated in emergency rooms.   By doing just these three things, President Obama claims that $313 billion could be saved!

Medicare and Medicaid are programs that are completely administered by the government.  Rates for physicians are dictated by the government, procedures and drugs covered are dictated by the government.  With complete control over these programs wouldn’t it seem to be simple for President Obama to save his $313 billion simply by saying “make it so?”  In fact, the exact changes that President Obama proposes are changes that these programs have implemented to varying degrees in the past.

Continuing to cry that only the nationalization of our health care is the only way to reduce costs leaves me asking just one question of President Obama; are you telling me that without taking more of my money you can’t or won’t save money in health care?