Massachusetts, Campaign Finance Decision and Health Care

Here in Texas we have had our official winter spell of sub-freezing days and we’re now on our way to Spring, so it’s time grease the tractor and share some random thoughts about recent events. Things sure have been interesting since New Year’s Day.

 

Scott Brown is the new senator from Massachusetts. There is precious little comment to make that has not already been made, but one gem seems to have gone unshared. The President with the “gift” announced at his going through the motions Coakley rally that the election was “not about me”. Heaven forbid that Obama might get branded with the Big L for Loser by backing a lost cause. Less than a week after the election his Howdy Doody – AKA Robert Gibbs – and the new / old PR hack Plouffe, as well as Howard Dean, claim that Coakley lost because the voters were angry over the sparse implementation of Obama’s ideas. This is too rich. The Massachusetts election was both about and not about Barack Obama at the same time! The President has raised Narcissism to spectator sport levels!

 

The Supreme Court swatted down the central nervous system of the campaign finance fiasco. Sadly, this was a split decision. Even more sadly, there are people who are allowed outside without adult supervision ranting about it. The court upheld the literal meaning of the first amendment in the Bill of Rights’ protection of all political speech from government imposed limits, laws and regulation. This is one of the cornerstones of a free society. The ranters’ arguments are laughable on one hand and a sad commentary of our education system on the other. I will dispose of three.

 

The decision gives corporations too much power. Geez! Grow up! Captain Planet is a cartoon show (aired by a corporation, by the way) not reality. Reality is that corporations are publicly owned businesses charged with growing the uninsured wealth of investors who accept the inherent risk in return for the hope of appropriate returns on their investments. Those investors include state teacher and employee retirement funds, churches, individuals and mutual funds. Why should they not have a right to influence politics as much as George Soros? Their wealth is also one of the cornerstones of a free society – liberty to acquire, own and reap profit from private property. Corporations employ millions of people. Corporations, not government, make our lives better. In my little town Wal-Mart just refurbished and upgraded its store. They used their money to do it, not Obama’s stimulus money. The store looks great and the people love it.

 

Yes, corporations make mistakes and, sometimes, violate the law. So do individuals. In such a situation both must face the natural consequences of their actions, unless they get “bailed out” by the government like GM, Chrysler and Bear Sterns. By the way, “Honest” Abe Lincoln was chief corporate attorney for the Illinois Central Railroad. A second “by the way”: if one wants to see industrial pollution and worker abuse, one need only look to Communist era Eastern Europe and China.

 

There’s too much money in politics. This is John One Note McCain’s favorite. Money drives politics. Does McCain refuse contributions? Of course not! George Washington is reputed to have said his seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses cost him a keg of rum per vote. If there were no money in politics then politics would look like public television. Bill Clinton should have stolen McCain’s arguments. “There are just too many big-breasted, tight-butt, naive women in the intern pool! Somebody, somebody, please protect me from me”. The fact of the matter is this. If politicians didn’t sell influence as a product, there would be no buyers. If politicians always and only did what was right there would be no suspicion about what contributions they accepted. There’s too much greed in politicians, not too much money in politics. To buttress that statement, please repeat the following names out loud: Cunningham, Dodd, Murtha, McCain, Rangel, Clinton.

 

Well, it seems Obama is really angry about the decision. In the State of the Delusional Ego Address to Congress he had the audacity to criticize the Supreme Court, a move that makes Joe Wilson’s “You lie” look humorous by comparison. His comments are a great springboard to deal with the third liberal complaint about the decision.

 

The decision overturns a century of legal precedent. So what? If we stuck with precedent as an excuse to avoid correct thinking Dred Scott would be the law of the land, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King would be only common criminal footnotes in history and black kids would still be attending their own “separate but equal” schools. Overturning long-held precedent is what the Supreme Court is designed to do.

 

Now, off in a new direction…. Next week the old farmer gets a new left hip. That means he’s having another opportunity to interact with the health care system. Because of arthritis, this will be the second bionic hip and, because of an old racquetball injury that led to a new right knee, the farmer is three for four in his legs. Here’s what the experience of the allegedly “broken” health care system.

 

There have been four consultations with the surgeon over the past year – each scheduled within two days of the request for an appointment. Each consultation lasted about thirty minutes. For the three most recent visits the surgeon declined to take new x-rays. His reasons were simple: he already knew the hip was worn out; new x-rays would just run up the bill and; he didn’t see any reason to expose the patient to more radiation.

 

The surgeon sent me to the hospital for pre-surgical lab work, EKG and chest x-ray. The hospital is a public hospital so it deals with more non-paying patients than paying patients. The entire process took about ninety minutes. Every employee smiled. One lab tech noticed there were more patients than chairs in the lab waiting room. She found and carried chairs to each patient.

 

Next came a visit with the surgery nurse. She already had my entire file on her desk. She took almost thirty minutes reviewing my medical history with me. She called my primary care doctor to arrange an appointment to approve me for surgery. That appointment started right on time and was very thorough.

 

The surgery will start on time, the surgeon will have both of his partners on hand to assist, the implant manufacturer will have a technical rep in the operating room, and the farmer’s wife will know what is going on at all times. Recovery will be in an adequate, clean private room with quality nursing care. The surgeon and the primary care doctor will each visit at least once a day until discharge. The point should be quite clear by now. American health care fits into the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” category.

 

Here’s what is “broke” about American health care. The same hospital, because it is a public hospital, sees its emergency room overwhelmed with diabetics who refuse to monitor their diets and / or refuse to take their insulin; alcoholics who are in delirium tremens because they are out of money and are sobering up because they cannot buy the booze to sustain their buzz and meth- heads who come in because they’re out of money and they want free medication. The drug addicts know exactly what to say. These people get admitted because the hospital is in dread of a lawsuit, so the hospital ties up a bed, nursing services, food services and all of the other components of a hospital’s delivery system for no other reason than fear of tort lawyers.

 

Ready for the other shoe to drop? The diabetics often walk out of the hospital against medical advice because they want a cigarette and some ice cream. The drunks do the same thing once they have snookered a relative into giving them some booze money. This cirque du bizarre repeats itself time and time again, replayed by the same pseudo-patients.

 

What is broken in American health care is the system’s ability to differentiate treatment so that irresponsible people in the ER because of their own irresponsibility do not get treated the same ways as people admitted for heart attacks, strokes, accidental injury or life threatening illness.

 

The liberals will wave the bloody shirt and claim all of this is based on “anecdotal evidence” and “stereotyping” and “racism”. The farmer knows these arguments well as he often steps into it in the pasture. American health care is broken for the same reasons the American family is broken. Impressionable, poorly rooted people, raised in the generations of moral relativity and ego-centrism, deny personal responsibility for anything that afflicts them as well as responsibility for their decisions.

 

So when Obama talks about reducing health care costs, why is it his solutions involve denying pacemakers and hip replacements to little old ladies instead of denying a guaranteed bed at hospital for self-destructive addicts and drunks who want to be enabled, not helpedf?