A Cure for Health Woes

OK, so we know that we can fix the education system with a dose of private enterprise. But what about health care? Surely, with the spiraling costs of health care, there is no substitute for a large government presence?

Not according to Canadian psychiatrist David Gratzer. In The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care, he proposes that the current government-dominated system be replaced with a new system free of spiraling costs and bureaucracy.

In an interview with Jamie Glasov he explains his approach.

American health care is so expensive because it’s so cheap. That is, with Americans paying just 14 cents out of pocket for every health dollar, there has been little incentive for people to economize their health expenses.

So what is to be done?

Make health insurance more like other types of insurance; Foster competition; Reform Medicaid, using welfare reform as the template; Revisit Medicare; Address prescription drug prices by pruning the size and scope of the FDA.

You can order the book from Amazon, of course, or you can go to Dr. Gratzer’s op-eds.

Here’s “For Health Care Woes, a Capitalism Perspective” in the Washington Post.

The problem is, of course, that we Americans expect to have other people pay for their health care. And they have organized their lives on that basis. To change that system will create discomfort for millions.

Rudy's Leadership and Newt's Ideas

The grave of Republican hopes in 2006 is scarcely filled in, but the hopefuls are lining up for 2008. According to David Saltonstall and Helen Kennedy Rudy Giuliani’s lieutenants have filed the papers for an exploratory presidential committee.

On Sunday in Pennsylvania, Giuliani said he was giving a run for the presidency "a lot of thought" and would make a decision "sometime next year."

But that was on Sunday.

Three of Giuliani's most trusted lieutenants filed papers with the state on Friday forming the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Exploratory Committee, allowing him to raise money to "test the waters" without officially declaring himself a candidate.

Meanwhile Newt Gingrich is generating a fountain of ideas, including books, five point strategies, and a ten point 21st Century Contract with America. His five point strategy looks like this.

1. Defeating Our Enemies
   
2. Defending God in the Public Square
   
3. Protecting America's Unique Civilization
   
4. Competing in the Global Economy
   
5. Promoting Active, Healthy Aging
   

Remember the cartoon back in the 1990s. It showed a rank of filing cabinets, each drawer labeled “Newt’s Ideas.” Over on the right was a drawer labeled “Newt’s Good Ideas.”

Very droll, of course, but don’t forget what the salesman said: Every No is a step closer to Yes.

With Rudy’s charisma and leadership abilities and Newt’s idea factory, Republicans should have a lock on the 2008 election. Right?

Pelosi's New Direction for America

If you want to know what life will be like under a Democratic Congress, here is an article by House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi that lays out her agenda for the 110th Congress.

She writes that the American people voted for a change, for “greater integrity” and “greater civility” in Washington D.C. On Iraq, she writes,

The strategy of "stay the course" is not working, has not made our country safer, has not honored our commitment to our troops and has not brought stability to the region.

And she promises to enact the New Direction For America.

We will make America safer by implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 commission; make our economy fairer by raising the minimum wage and ending taxpayer subsidies for sending jobs overseas; make college more affordable by cutting the interest rates on student loans; improve healthcare by allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices and promoting stem cell research; achieve energy independence within 10 years by investing America's energy dollars in the Midwest instead of the Middle East; and guarantee a dignified retirement by improving Medicare, protecting Social Security and making it easier to save for retirement.

All these policies, she writes, are supported by large majorities of Americans.

They are, in fact, minor crowd-pleasing course corrections to the direction of the vast welfare state. But what do the American people really want from their government? That is always the question.

It is, however, a meaningless question. You might as well say: What do the customers really want from their neighborhood restaurant? What they want is a good meal and a feeling, after they have left, that they would like to come back.

When you have been eating at the same restaurant for years and years, you get an impulse to try something else.

The question is: Will you stay with the new restaurant, or return to the old one?

Clinton's Analysis of the Thumpin'

Here is how Jeff Jacoby tells it—out of the mouth of Clinton.

"The reason we are at this moment," former president Bill Clinton told a group of Democratic donors on Nov. 1, "is that they do not represent faithfully the Republicans and the more conservative independents in the country. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here tonight. This is a sweeping, deep, big thing." According to the nation's most popular Democrat, in other words, Republicans were about to be punished for having abandoned their Republican principles.

In other words, Republicans hadn’t been conservative enough.

OK, so congressional Republicans were corrupt and venal, and they concentrated on redistricting the Tom DeLay way instead of good conservative policies. Yes but how?

First of all, let’s get off Tom DeLay’s back. His job has always been to work on the nuts and bolts of fundraising and political mechanics. His famous redistricting of righted a monstrous wrong created by long time Democratic gerrymanders. A majority of votes in Texas was Republican but a majority of the representatives in the House were Democrats.

No, I think the big problem for Republicans was that they were frightened. They were frightened by the ferocious attacks and obstruction of the Democrats. They figured they couldn’t get anything done, so they didn’t try.

After all, Denny Hastert was made speaker after the debacle of 1998 when the Republican effort to remove President Clinton from office foundered in the Senate and resulted in Democratic gains in the mid-term elections. That was when the Republicans decided that discretion was the greater part of valor.

Well, now Republicans are in the minority, so now they have to play catch up. Now they have to take some risks if they want to get back into the majority.

Meanwhile, it seems that some people already have John McCain nominated for the Republican presidential nomination and Hillary Clinton elected to the presidency.

Nothing personal, you understand, but they obviously didn’t ask me before they decided the presidential election of 2008.

Is Islam Strong or Just Brittle?

Some people think that Islam is taking over the world. In America Alone, Mark Steyn claims that it is taking over Europe.

But other people, such as the cryptic Spengler that Islam is facing a terminal encounter with modernity.

British physician and critic of the welfare state (Life at the Bottom) Theodore Dalrymple inclines towards the latter perspective. In a review of Robert Spencer’s The Truth about Muhammed he writes:

Personally, I believe that all forms of Islam are very vulnerable in the modern world to rational criticism, which is why the Islamists are so ferocious in trying to suppress such criticism. They have instinctively understood that Islam itself, while strong, is exceedingly brittle, as communism once was. They understand that, at the present time in human history, it is all or nothing. They are thus more clear-sighted than moderate Moslems.

The thing is, of course, that the West cannot just stand there. It has to do something. In the 40 year Cold War against Soviet communism there were those who wanted to fight, and those who wanted to sit.

And after the Bush years, it looks like the first florish of action in the War on Terror is going to be followed by a period of retreat.

It’s easy to take a materialist view of history and justify doing nothing by awarding the victory to the side with the most productive forces, i.e. Us.

But there is always the lesson of China. China was the most productive society in the world for going on 2,000 years. But it was successfully invaded from the Asian steppe not once, but several times. Of course, you may argue, the barbarians became “sinicized” by the superior Chinese culture. But not before a ton of people got swept away in massive cycles of violence.

It’s comfortable to look at history from an armchair. But when you are considering your own time you are talking about your own life, and the lives of your loved ones.

When there are barbarians at the gate it means that your life in is the balance.

The only way to tell if Islam is really strong enough to take over the world or merely brittle is to take action and try to break it.

Let's Get Serious, Say Spy, Blair, and Noonan

Now that the Democrats are back it’s Happy Days Are Here Again, right?

But yesterday Prime Minister Tony Blair has trundled out the head of MI5, the British spy agency, for a little straight talk. Said Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller at a speech on November 9:

What I can say is that today, my officers and the police are working to contend with some 200 groupings or networks, totalling over 1600 identified individuals (and there will be many we don't know) who are actively engaged in plotting, or facilitating, terrorist acts here and overseas. The extremists are motivated by a sense of grievance and injustice driven by their interpretation of the history between the West and the Muslim world.

...

I do not speak in this way to alarm (nor as the cynics might claim to enhance the reputation of my organisation) but to give the most frank account I can of the Al-Qaida threat to the UK. That threat is serious, is growing and will, I believe, be with us for a generation.

Some were upset by the “alarming tone” of her speech, according to Philip Johnston. So Tony Blair came out to back her up.

The Prime Minister today came to the defence of Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, who has been criticised by some for the alarming tone of her assessment.


Mr Blair said that Dame Eliza's speech echoed "what I have been saying for several years."


"It's a very long and deep struggle but we have to stand up and be counted for what we believe in and take the fight to those people who want to entice young people into something wicked and violent but utterly futile," he said.

That is why Peggy Noonan is right when she says today about the new Congress:

We are in a 30-year war. It is no good for it to be led by, identified with, one party. It is no good for half the nation to feel estranged from its government's decisions. It's no good for us to be broken up more than a nation normally would be.

...

Go, Democrats, be great and serious. Go, minority Republicans, refind yourselves. Go, conservatives.

Because we have got to treat each other like adults and gird ourselves for the great clash of civilizations ahead.

Looking Forward

It’s too late now, but suppose that Congressional Republicans had followed President Bush’s lead and reformed Social Security? Maybe they would still have been stiffed by the voters, but they would have left behind a landmark piece of legislation to prove that they were there.

Well, that’s all history now. And The Wall Street Journal in today’s editorial looks towards the future. But first the bad news:

Here's one telling exit poll result: In battleground districts, only one in five voters said Republicans would do a better job to "keep government spending under control"; almost twice as many voters said Democrats would do a better job.

It defies belief that anyone could think that, but Republicans had better pay attention and turn that around right away.

Republicans also need to rediscover an agenda for reforming government programs that don't work or threaten to bankrupt future generations. The Gingrich Republicans did that with welfare reform in the 1990s, and they tried with Medicaid. Then President Bush gave Republicans a once-in-a-generation chance to reform Social Security and health care along free market lines, but GOP House leaders fought him behind the scenes. For this alone, they should be returned to the backbenches.

Actually I think we are all being a little unfair on the Congressional Republicans. It is hard to image reforming Social Security while the Democrats are still dead set against it.

As Camille Paglia says, reform is achieved by a small band of dedicated revolutionaries. The average person just wants to be left alone. So the opportunity for reform does not come in normal times but when people are frightened and willing to be led.

The next time that Republicans come to power we should be ready for the next items on the agenda: reform education, reform Social Security, and reform health care. And it can’t hurt to have a new generation of leaders in Congress:

The good news is that a younger generation does seem to be stepping forward. Mike Pence, of Indiana, has already declared for minority leader, and John Shadegg of Arizona is seeking the number two job as whip. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Jeb Hensarling of Texas and Jeff Flake of Arizona... are among the other Members who have tried to put ideas above mere incumbency.

The true lesson to learn of political life is to accept its cyclical nature, to understand that there are years of advance and also years of retreat. Mistakes are made and, if you are a Republican, you must pay for them.

The only unforgivable mistake is not to be ready when opportunity knocks.