Do we need a strong public option for healthcare?

Obama and Pelosi say we do. We will probably get one. But Republicans and Independents don't trust the government. So maybe we need something run by someone else -- not the insurance companies and not the government. Who does that leave? How about the insured?

Yep. Let's create an insurance where the insured are members. They elect the Board of Directors. The board will set rates, ensure that there is no profit and so forth. And the insured will have 100% control over the board!

Your thoughts? More ideas soon.

Do you approve?

By all accounts people disapprove of what Congress is doing by 2:1. That's right. We don't like the health care system Congress wants to impose on us. CNN and Fortune show us the five freedoms we'll lose under the current proposals:

1. We'll lose the freedom to choose what’s in our plans
2. We'll lose the freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay our real costs
3. We'll lose the freedom to choose high-deductible coverage
4. We'll lose the freedom to keep our existing plan
5. We'll lose the freedom to choose our doctors

Now, the Senate may be doing something about number four, so we'll see. Number three is very important to me as I have one of those plans. Despite BHO's promises that we'll be able to keep our current coverage, it doesn't look like it.

It is time for change. We need fiscally responsible legislators sensitive to the needs of taxpayers. I am voting for change.

House health bill gets WORSE

From the "We're from the Government and we're here to help" department. Consider this from the House health bill:

Under “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section says

the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day [of the year the legislation becomes law].

In other words, individuals will NOT BE ALLOWED to buy insurance. "Protecting," my a**. Which means consultants like me will not even be allowed to buy insurance other than from the Government. We can probably keep what we have (if it meets the rules) but if the bill is approved this year, we will not even be able to keep insurance bought before the bill was proposed. I do not think that this is what the Founding Fathers intended.

More at Investors Business Daily.

But hey, it's "change".

Whatever happened to "give me liberty or give me death"? I am voting for a positive change.

Just buy them each some!

The CBO says the Kennedy plan will cost USD1 trillion and add only a net of 16 million people to the list of those with health care. It seems even with this plan, the CBO says the rest of the uninsured -- estimated at another 25 million -- will still be left out. Today the cost is reported to be USD1.6 trillion over ten years. Big numbers, to be sure. 1.6 trillion dollars divided by 160 million person-years looks like about 100,000 per person per year. For far less than that one can buy standard commercial policies for those people, and maybe even some of the others who won't have insurance. I wonder where the difference would go? More memorials to congresspeople and senators?

Your tax dollars at work.

Tax and send

Yes, "send"!

President Obama today announced plans to increase taxes on businesses doing business overseas. One plan is to remove or possibly reduce the credit for foreign taxes paid to other countries. So for example if a US company pays five million dollars in taxes to country X, their US tax bill is reduced by five million dollars. The same rule applies to US citizens paying tax in other countries and most states apply that same rule to income taxes paid to other states.

The problem is that the US already has some of the highest corporate taxes in the whole developed world. This will only increase the burden on US companies. At some point that will make it unprofitable for the company to be headquartered ("domiciled" is the correct term) in the US. When that happens, companies will move their jobs to other countries, increasing US unemployment. Is that the Administration's intent? If not, how do they plan to discourage that?

This whole idea is really unfair to America's workers. It will encourage moving jobs overseas. Is this the "Change we can believe in"?

What does the 10th Amendment mean?

The tenth Amendment to the US Constitution says:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

What does that mean? I always thought it was pretty simple: it means that the United States (the "federal government") can only do what the Constitution says it can do, and that the states or the people can do everything else, unless the Constitution says the states can't. In other words, the Constitution is a document that limits what the federal government can do.

To me that means that since there is no provision for it to take over private companies, give money to failing banks, or control the country's schools, it cannot do it. For some reason this pretty simple sentence has been ignored by politicians for a very long time. Why?