Koan of the Week

Master Li Kim was scanning his ID at the gym. Businessman Barry ran in behind him.
“How are you today?” the Master asked.
“Running twenty minutes late,” Barry replied breathlessly. “Like everyday this week.”
The guy at the counter interjected. “If you’re always twenty minutes, maybe you’re on time.”
Master Li Kim conceded to Counter Guy, “You are the master now.”

Lessons from Senator Kennedy

Ted Kennedy was wrong on almost every issue he encountered during his long career. From Medicare to Obamacare, the mining of Haiphong Harbor to the surge in Iraq, Judge Bork to Judge Alito, the Gentleman from Massachusetts was consistently on the side of more government at home, more wavering abroad, and more activism in court. As an intermittent resident of his state, I voted against him three times.

Yet I am indebted to Senator Kennedy for two very valuable lessons.

I learned the first lesson in second grade. Mr. Kennedy was running for re-election against businessman Josiah Spaulding and we held mock elections in school. Kennedy swept the class twenty-five to one. I was the one (so arguably I voted against Kennedy four times). After the votes were tallied, some of the larger boys tried unsuccessfully to find out who the dissenter was. No doubt they intended to do me some harm. That day I had a first hand demonstration of the benefits of the secret ballot.

I learned the second lesson more recently. Last month I attended a Tea Party Protest on the Boston Common. One of the organizers gave a speech in which he talked about the difficulties of bringing the event together. With a day to go before the protest, the City of Boston still had not issued a permit. The organizers called Senator Kennedy’s office for help – within hours they had the permit in their hands. That day I had a first hand demonstration of grace and fairness amid the most acrimonious and partisan debate in decades.

Rest in Peace, Edward M. Kennedy.

Health Care and Your Employer: Severing the Link

Consider some of the problems with health care in the United States:

If you do not get health insurance from your employer and you are not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid, a health care policy is expensive and you have limited choices. As a result, you have, at best, a large bill to pay. At worst, you go without insurance, and risk financial catastrophe if you contract a serious illness.

If you do get health insurance from your employer, you are significantly insulated from its costs (employers that offer insurance pay, on average, 84% of the tab for individuals). As a result, there is more demand for medical services, raising the national doctor bill to over $2.2 trillion a year and rising. (I know there is skepticism that insulation really affects health care costs – I’ll address that in a future entry).

If you lose your job, you may lose your policy. As a result you are at risk of being turned down for coverage for pre-existing conditions under a new policy.

There is a common element to these problems. They all exist because a majority of Americans (about 60%, according to the Census Bureau) get their health insurance from their employers. The main reason they do so, rather than buying it themselves, is a quirk in the tax laws. If your employer buys your health insurance for you it is fully tax deductible. If you buy it yourself, it is not. So it is cheaper for you to accept a lower salary and let your employer use the difference to buy you health insurance.

I’ve written in recent weeks that Obamacare will limit health care choices and raise health care costs. I’ve also written about the House Republican Health Care Solutions Group’s alternative. By extending the health insurance tax deduction to individuals, the GOP proposal levels the playing field between individuals and employers. It thereby addresses the root cause of the problems of cost, choice, and job loss. Due to the lack of public support, the President will need to retool his health care proposal when Congress comes back from August recess; he would do well to consider some of the ideas coming from across the aisle.

(P.S. Thanks, Suzie, for helpful discussions on this.)

Equivocation about Rationing

In a number of recent speeches, President Obama promised to refute “misinformation” about the Democrats’ ideas for health insurance reform. At a Town Meeting in Colorado, for example, he addressed criticism that the proposed reform would lead to the rationing of care (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-By-The-President-In-Town-Hall-On-Health-Care-Grand-Junction-Colorado/). “When we talk about reform,” he said, “you hear some opponents of reform saying that somehow we are trying to ration care, or restrict the doctors that you can see, or you name it. Well, that's what's going on right now. It's just that the decisions are being made by the insurance companies.”

Mr. Obama’s argument suffers from the fallacy of equivocation. This fallacy consists in using a word in more than one sense. In this case, the word is “rationing”; Obama uses it to mean any scheme for allocating resources. The critics he is addressing, however, use it in a different sense. They mean the allocation of resources by government control. Or as the Wall Street Journal put it, “Yes, the U.S. ‘rations’ by ability to pay (though in the end no one is denied actual care). This is true of every good or service in a free economy and a world of finite resources but infinite wants. Yet no one would say we ‘ration’ houses or gasoline because those goods are allocated by prices. The problem is that governments ration through brute force—either explicitly restricting the use of medicine or lowering payments below market rates. Both methods lead to waiting lines, lower quality, or less innovation—and usually all three (‘Obama’s Senior Moment’, 14 August 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203863204574344900152168372.html).”

The Logic Critic gives President Obama…

2 Blades - Wrong.

Koan of the Week

“First of all, I do not want you to give in to the pressure of the moment. Whenever you’re hurting bad, just hang in there. Finish the day. Then, if you’re still feeling bad, think about it long and hard before you decide to quit. Second, take it one day at a time. One evolution at a time.

“Don’t let your thoughts run away with you, don’t start planning to bail out because you’re worried about the future and how much you can take. Don’t look ahead to the pain. Just get through the day, and there’s a wonderful career ahead of you.” – CAPT Joe Maguire, Commanding Officer, Naval Special Warfare Center, quoted in Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell, 2007.

Master Li Kim’s Commentary: Lone Survivor, according to the book jacket, tells the true story of “Marcus Luttrell and the desperate battle in the mountains [of Afghanistan] that led, ultimately, to the largest loss of life in Navy SEAL history.”

But before Petty Officer Luttrell ever got to Afghanistan, he had to become a SEAL. The training was excruciating – months of dropping for push-ups, climbing rocks, paddling boats, running with boats, running with logs – usually while wet and sandy. The toughest part was “Hell Week” – the same exercises but performed continuously, while under fire (with blanks), and with only an hour or so of sleep every few days. The dropout rate was high. Of Luttrell’s initial class of 164 men, 98 were left at the beginning of Hell Week, 66 were left two hours later, and 32 were left at the ceremony that concluded the week.

Luttrell believed that he was one of the few who made it to the ceremony because he listened to his Commanding Officer’s advice: “Finish the day”. Although one usually does not associate meditation practice with U.S. Military special forces, CAPT Maguire’s comments illustrate the first Gate of Mindfulness: Be in the present.

The whole story illustrates the enormous sacrifices made by American soldiers and sailors, and the enormous debt we all owe them but can never fully repay.

The Party of Yes: Health Care and the GOP

“Party of No”. That’s what the Dems call the GOP. According to them, the Republicans say “no” to every initiative President Obama brings to the table, while offering no alternatives of their own. The Democrats even have a web site about it (http://www.democrats.org/page/content/partyofno).

Well, on health care the Republican Party does offer an alternative. The House Republican Health Care Solutions Group’s plan can be found at (http://blunt.house.gov/Read.aspx?ID=1140). Two provisions form the centerpiece of the plan:

1. “Brings greater fairness to the tax code by extending tax savings to those who currently do not have employer-provided insurance but purchase health insurance on their own. This provision would provide an ‘above the line’ deduction that is equal to the cost of an individual’s or family’s insurance premiums.”

2. “Implements comprehensive medical liability reform that will reduce costly, unnecessary defensive medicine practiced by doctors trying to protect themselves from overzealous trial lawyers.”

Whether these provisions are any good will be the subject of future entries. In the meantime, they suffice to refute the “Party of No” epithet. The only thing I can’t figure out now is why the GOP is not more vocal about it.

Koan of the Week

Master Li Kim was getting ready for the day. A seagull called out. That is the Koan of the Week.

Master Li Kim’s Commentary: It is healthy to look up from your routine from time to time in order to be mindful of what’s going on around you: birds singing, rain falling, traffic going by, children playing, the cat meowing.

Master Li Kim’s Haiku:

A wispy gray sky.
Waves sloshing against the bridge.
A seagull’s hoarse cry.

Logic - Now More than Ever

Inside Congressman John Dingell’s Town Hall Meeting in Michigan (and many, many others), an angry crowd opposed to the Democrat’s Health Care proposal booed the speaker and attempted to shout him down as answered questions about the bill.

Outside Congressman Russ Carnahan’s Town Hall Meeting in Missouri, an angry demonstrator in a Service Employee’s International Union polo shirt tread on conservative Ken Gladney as he attempted to hand out yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flags.

Arguments, not shouting and beating should settle the Health Care debate. The Logic Critic gives both sides…

0 Blades - Insane Troll Logic