Nom de plume: Rivrdog

The "Single-Payer" Fallacy

Even the most die-hard liberal seems to believe that the SCOTUS is about to either gut or utterly destroy Obamacare, so there's angst all over the media.

Too bad it's misplaced angst, for angst can be a good thing if it leads to logical solutions.

The misplaced angst here is the failure of the entire liberal side to look at the One Big Question* in the single-payer scheme of health insurance.

That question is simply this: shouldn't any mandated insurance plan have, at it's core, efficiency in payment? Let us not forget these points:

An insurance plan is just that, and that only: a plan to arrange payment for a service: rebuilding your home after a fire or other loss, rebuilding YOU after an illness. All those restorative services have COST associated with them, so PAYMENT is required.

It almost seems like liberals think that a health insurance plan must first change health care delivery. No, it doesn't have to, all it has to do is arrange PAYMENT for services. This is where Obamacare over-reached, it attempted to reconfigure health care delivery, then pay for the new delivery system.

Obamacare was a deliberate attempt of the President and his party to use health care services, or the control of them, to drag the USA into a new political system, socialism. You see, the health care insurance system we have now is not mandatory. People can and do forgo health care. They can and do shop around for the best price for health care AND health insurance, and their choices lead directly to the efficiencies in the health care marketplace. The LACK of efficiency in the health care marketplace is due entirely to non-payers. Yes, a health-care services bill is the easiest one to refuse to pay. All you have to do is declare that you can't afford to pay, and the bill will either be put off, or reduced, or some arrangement made to pay it from public funds.

The lack of certainty in payment for health care services causes the ineffiencies. To solve that one, relatively easy problem, Obamacare proposed to re-write the entire idea of delivering AND paying for health care services. This is the equivalent of using a SWAT team to bring an overtime-parking violator to justice.

BTW, your Rivrdog won't keep you in suspense. The way to solve the problem of uninsureds in the system is to have a pool of money for payment. This has been done in the auto insurance industry almost since the start of auto insurance some 80 years or so ago. It's called "assigned risk", and the system works well. If you are in the assigned risk pool, you pay higher premiums, but you get insurance, the equivalent of using a SWAT team to arrest an overtime-parking violator. The higher premiums encourage you to do whatever it takes to improve yourself so that you get OUT of the Assigned Risk pool.

All the Feds had to do to execute Universal Health Care was establish the Assigned Risk Pool for those payers who couldn't find normal insurance, and make paying for medical care the same level of debt that everything else is. Establishing that pool would have required only a small fraction of the bureaucracy and a small fraction of the money which Obamacare demands from us in it's various forms. Assigned risk wouldn't have imposed insurance, it just would have paid for all those who don't have insurance to get it.

The health insurance system in this country works. It can and should be made more efficient, but most of the job of making it more efficient would be done by establishing the Assigned Risk pool.

The Assigned Risk solution isn't glitzy though, it doesn't require a "Czar" to run it, and it certainly wouldn't require the pogrom against health care that is now in place and hopefully, will soon be erased by the SCOTUS.

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* The "One Big Question" is a construct of Joe Huffman, who blogs frequently, here. He says that most propaganda can be unraveled by the simple technique of digging out the One Big Question, and examining it for the truth.

Go directly there

...to BorePatch's blog, and read this screed.

Yes, it's come to this pass. History will show that the Second American Revolution actually started before Obama's second term started...

H/T to Uncle

BTW, if you are into conflict management planning as I am, you might consider this date: Wednesday, the Seventh of November, 2012. That is the day after the election, and assuming Obama is re-elected, that is the day his "complete-the-dictatorship" program starts. Assuming you are going to resist that dictatorship, YOU will have to be prepared to begin your resistance on that date. If you are on the other side, and will be joining Obama IN his dictatorship, that is the date, after which you will begin laying your life on the line for Obama, every day until one side or the other wins unconditional victory.

Today, we are on the Seventh Day of the Fifth month of 2012. There are exactly six months, one half a calendar year, left for you to prepare for this conflict, both physical and mental preparations. The world of your comfort, as you presently see it, ends in six months. Six months from now, you will be fighting, for or against Freedom, right here in your United States of America.

Progressive Soundboard: May Day protests

May Day is a big deal for Progressives. At least as big a deal as the 4th of July or Cinco de Mayo is for patriots in the US and Mexico, respectively. You have to be prepared. You have to be in the mood, so the Rivrdog Progressive Sound Board has it all laid out for you, just as if you were a rich One Percenter, and your Butler had just laid out your Tycoon clothing for you to jump into and be chauffered off to your seat on the Stock Exchange, so you could play with your daddy's money and make the 99% miserable.

First, the music. You have to have the correct music for May Day street activities.

That would be the famous Internationale, translated into many languages by those music-lovers at the Kremlin, and brought to you by the web-hosting service Angelfire.

Next, you have to exercise your mind, so as to have it properly stretched out to receive all that political theory from the Left. Is that a vague reference to promiscuous sexuality? No, it is a DIRECT reference to promiscuous sexuality. We conservatives are nothing if not direct, you see. No nuance for us, no ma'am.

At Rivrdog, we have a mental "stretching exercise" of a discussion topic all ready for you:

would today's expected large resurgence of leftist street activity have been possible without the support of the Obama Administration, and indeed, most cities' leftist Administrations? 

Discuss. Free, of course, discussion is always free.

Finally, drink. If you are hitting the posh 1%-er boulevards with your protest, and the weather is less than ideal (won't get out of the 50's today in Little Beirut, aka, Portland, OR), you must fortify yourself. No fine brandy or Scots whisky for you. No, that would be too "one-percenter" of a drink. You'll have to make do with Vodka, the proper intoxicant of the masses, as written here.

Okay then. You've been pumped up with the music, had your mind stimulated by the discussion, and you've fortified your spirit with the proper spirit, so get out there and give Capitalism some hell!

Ready for Marx Day?

Tomorrow is Karl Marx Day, and the forces of the Left will turn out en-masse to disrupt the centers of cities all over the Nation.

Too bad. I wonder if anyone will calculate the lost productivity and send Valerie Jarrett a bill. My guess is that she's coordinating it, as far as it could be coordinated.

What! You STILL think that all that leftoid drama is un-planned?

Silly you.

Conflict management Rule One: avoid confrontation, but be able to get yourself out of the worst one you might unavoidably find yourself in.

Tomorrow, when I travel to Clackamas, OR for the MOAA meeting, I think I'll carry my Glock model 22, and it's companion carbine, the Kel-Tec Sub Rifle 2000, both in .40 S&W. Of course, the EBC (Evil Black Carbine) will be locked folded and out of action, but I figure I can get to it and put it into action safely by use of the pistol and 3 magazines if and when the need arises...

I'd pack some extra ammo and go to the MOAA meeting early, since the Sheriff's Range is one block away from the hotel, but I notice it's closed on Tuesdays, and most of the spare Deputies will likely be detailed to downtown Portland, where the fun is supposed to break out.

Earth Day, 2012

There's some history behind Earth Day, you need to go to the Wiki and read it. You actually only need to read the first paragraph, because it will tell you (between the lines, I'm sure it wasn't written that way on purpose or the Wiki would have been deleted by now). Note in the Wiki that the original Earth Day was all about stewardship of the planet and it's natural environment, which is what it should be about today, but isn't.

Note also, in the Wiki, that the United Nations hijacked Earth Day three years ago. It is now just another tool of that anti-national-sovereignty body, which uses and recommends socialism as it's mechanism to destroy sovereign capitalist governments.

When the UN hijacked Earth Day, they brought in the "Mother Earth" thing. Back when the original Earth Day was proclaimed, the Mother Earth or Mother Nature thing was a joke, as in the margarine commercial. Now it is a religion, and as such, is the only religion the United Nations recognizes (overtly, they recognize Islam under the table).

So, we have had a progression here, a progressive change. It's just another one of the progressive changes that wound up as a socialist tool, but environmentalism went from "conservation", as advanced one hundred years ago by Teddy Roosevelt, to Earth Day (let's ALL save the Planet) in 1970, to today's version (we're acolytes of Gaia, the Earth Goddess).

The only true version is the original. We can use the bounty of nature, but we must conserve it, so there will always be some.

That's what your Rivrdog follows as his outdoor creed. I recycle, too, in fact, devoted yesterday morning to getting the non-curbside recyclables together to take to City Hall, where, once a year, their huge parking lot is used for actual GOOD, and becomes a massive recycling center for the hard-to-recycle items.

If you conserve nature, you've done your duty to the planet. Socialism does not count as doing your duty to the planet, nor does prostrating yourself before the false idol of Gaia.

I knew Ronald Reagan, and you may NOT compare yourself to him, Obama

I knew Ronald Reagan because being stationed in CA during the late 1960s then the late 70s to early 80s, he was the talk of the State. The much-more-respectful MSM reported more accurately on the President then.

Ronald Reagan started out as a union guy, President of the Screen Actor's Guild, but at the time, the "wild-eyed socialists"* in Hollywood were in the minority, not the majority like now. There were a LOT of WW2 veterans calling each other Brother and Sister at Union meetings then, and there was at least SOME respect for the USA amongst the members of SAG.

After his SAG stint, Reagan went on to get elected Lieutenant Governor, then Governor of California, which, at the time really WAS "paradise on earth" (yes, readers, I could easily have been a dope-smoking hippie myself, they were graciously accepted most places then, as somewhat of a side-show, but they were accepted there).

Reagan went on to become President, taking over from Jimmy Carter, who dispite being a Naval Academy graduate, and a small businessman, made a piss-poor President. I had a fellow B52 crew-member who bought a residence in Riverside in '81, and had to pay a 18% mortgage rate (and the rates were FALLING then!), IIRC. I rented, was scared out of the home-buyer's market.

President Reagan's Airborne Command Post used to land at my duty station, March AFB (Now March Air Reserve Base), which was then the headquarters for the Strategic Air Command's Fifteenth Air Force, and it was home to double-Squadron wings of both B52s and KC-135 tankers. The Presidential Airborne Command Post was a brand-new E-4 (Boeing 747), which was outfitted as the President's place to fight a nuke war with the USSR from, even before Air Force One, it was THAT important. I got a VIP tour of the top-secret aircraft, which was later featured (a mock-up of it was featured) in the HBO movie "By Dawn's Early Light".

Gawd, this is digressy, isn't it?

*The point here was supposed to be: I knew Ronald Reagan, I probably knew him better than you do, Presient Obama. He was NOT a "wild-eyed socialist", but YOU ARE. Plus, you're a liar to boot, Obama, and I never knew Reagan to lie. 

Oh, BTW, President Obama, Warren Buffet, who has put up with you to an excessive degree, has just signaled you to quit calling your "tax the producers out of existence" plan the "Buffet Rule". Do the old, sick guy a favor and stop with that nonsense. Don't bother to try to call it the "Reagan Rule", either. Reagan wanted to lower taxes for EVERYONE, not just the dependable sloths who will always vote to get their "free stuff". Oh, and quit smoking that history-revisionist crack-pipe, Mister President. It's not legal yet. If you want it to be, fire Biden from your ticket and put Ron Paul on there.... 

The little Captains

...got the better of a squad of Federal rozzers, so it seems. With the entire squad forgetting their mission, their orders, and for most of them, their marriage vows (no, the "500-mile rule" is NOT written in the Procedure Manual), that outfit must either have very good fealty to their Special Agent in Charge, and followed him to the whore's market (yes, such places exist down there, they did in Panama when I was there in '94), or there were "arrangements" made in advance which were especially attractive.

I see two problems with this mass human failing:

• The Secret Service and military members could well have been "set up" by enemies of the Colombian government. The FARC (commie-leaning drug cartels) still is around, it just can't beat the Columbian military in a fair fight anymore.
• The Obama White House may use this incident to create their own "Palace Guard" of Federal agents who will have to swear political fealty to Obama, and then Obama will have 100% of the trappings of a dictator. If he gets this wet-dream wish of his, do YOU believe that he won't use it to damage/eliminate his opposition?

Stay tuned to this issue. Stay tuned to any on the right who see it for what it is, or could become. They are the smarties. The rest of them will just have a good snicker about the scandal.

European history repeats itself

After Germany was defeated in 1918, it took them just a bit over 20 years to re-arm and start another World War.

Just over 20 years after the Soviet Union fell, Russia is now getting ready to face off against the Western World.

Coincidence?

I think not. Vladimir Putin is reputed to be an intense student of history, and throwing troops into the volatile mix that is Baby Assad's dictatorship should immediatley give our State Department a jolt.

But it won't, because unlike Putin, Obama is NOT a student of history, and in fact, never saw a history book he didn't want to re-write.

Calling all legal beagles

I have a question for you:

Can the US Supreme Court ever take up any case "on their own motion"? Some lower courts can and do take up matters, even political matters, on their own motion, and issue rulings as a result of argument that Court hears.

Just wondering, because it seems that a thorough investigation in Keyna turned up not only eyewitnesses who have direct knowledge that Mrs Soetoro had her child Barack in a hospital there, but seem to have turned up a Kenyan birth certificate for him as well. That birth certificate contains the usual footprint on it, and has been certified by a British official as genuine. It seems, according to the eyewitnesses, that Mrs. Soetoro flew to Hawaii three days after giving birth, then registered Barack as having been born in Hawaii.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio's recent look at the HA "birth certificate" did not include this information from east Africa.

So, the question devolves to the SCOTUS then, which Court would have to decide the issue anyway, and decide it before the election, hopefully. The only way I see that happening is if the Court took the matter under advisement on it's own motion. From a forensic point of view, if the Court found that the Keynan birth certificate was believeable as a registered document, it could order Barack Obama to provide a copy of his footprint, and that would settle everything. If the footprint on the document matched that on the Keynan birth certificate, then the course is clear, and President Biden takes over immediately (and probably pardons Obama immediately). Of course, the SCOTUS would then have to decide what happens to all the legislation and Executive Orders that bear Obama's signature, and THAT mess could take some time to sort out.

Oh, and if you haven't guessed, no, in fact I DO NOT consider the appellations of "Birther" to be a pejorative as the Left wants you to believe. The cop in me see this as a mater of forensic science and law, nothing more. As a matter of science and law, impartial findings are expected, even if the matter is highly charged, politically.

Big Lie Technique

Reports are that Adolph Hitler invented the Big Lie Technique, and Socialists have been using it since 1925 (didn't think Hitler was a Socialist? That's a Big Lie all it's own that he was some sort of ultra-nationalist)

The BLT goes like this: you can tell a lie, any lie, the bigger a lie the better, and get away with it if you tell it often enough and loud enough, because the repetition will cause people to believe it's a fact.

Here's a Big Lie:

 That was on the non-address side of an envelope your blogger got from Express Scripts, a QGO (Quasi Governmental Organization) which handles all the prescription paying, logging, etc for all the Government's health care. I have TriCare, the gummint health care for retired military, and I have a R/X benefit with said bennie, so I get all this monthly blather from Express Scripts.

Aside from the obvious problem of putting actual advertising on a first-class letter (which you or I can't get away with, but the Gummint and QGOs can), define the Big Lie here: