Say Anything Blog

Issa Emanuel Stimulus

Are You surprised we made it on the list?We need a reform, but not a one that's crammed down our throats by the democrats. OBAMA!Listen to the doctors, insurers, patients, state governments, businesses, ect. and then make a policy. DO NOT PUSH AND THINK YOU ARE THE SMARTEST PRESIDENT WE HAVE EVER HAD!


From Foreign Policy. com
BY ANNIE LOWREY

Russia

System: Free basic medical care provided by the government, with a byzantine and under-regulated employer-based private insurance market

Reform: Before it collapsed, the Soviet Union had an enormous socialized medical system, with millions of hospital beds and hundreds of thousands of healthcare workers. The transition from that system to a public-private model, between 1989 and 1993, went, in a word, horribly.

Ninety percent of Russians are technically covered. But, doctors and hospitals extract “donations” for free care. Anyone who can afford it pays out-of-pocket for private hospitals and doctors. In theory, consumers can pick their own insurance plan. In reality, their employers generally do it for them, bought-off by the insurers.

In 2006, Vladimir Putin’s government approved a $3.2 billion health care reform plan that failed to improve the system. The reform contained a hodgepodge of policy priorities, such as paying doctors to perform primary care, but did not address any of the healthcare system’s structural defects.

Even with the $3.2 billion infusion, Russia still allocates only 3.4 percent of government spending to healthcare, whereas the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends 5 percent.

China

System: A state-subsidized, public-private health insurance model

Reform: Starting in the late 1980s, China started to erode its centralized “cooperative medical system” and put a decentralized, partly privatized, market-oriented model in place. In theory, most Chinese were to pay income-scaled and government-subsidized sums into insurance pools.

But the reforms pushed costs onto local governments that were unwilling to pay for them. Government spending on healthcare fell. More than 100 million people lost their coverage.

Now, two-thirds of Chinese people have to pay directly for doctors and hospitals. If they cannot afford care, there are some free and low-cost clinics, though they are woefully substandard. Less than 1 percent of Chinese medical professionals have graduate degrees. China’s system, which is burdensomely expensive for the poor, is one of the most income-sensitive in the world.

This year, the country announced a new overhaul. As with everything in China, it’s big: Between 2009 and 2011, it plans to spend $124 billion to make sure that all have access to primary care.  The government plans to build 700,000 new clinics, for instance. Plus, President Hu Jintao has promised to revamp the health insurance system, ensuring that each Chinese person pays something he or she can afford for the guarantee of coverage.

Turkmenistan

System: Socialized medicine, with universal coverage and government-owned hospitals

Reform: In 2003, “President for Life” Saparmurat Niyazov decided that poor, landlocked Turkmenistan’s medical costs were too high and that its healthcare system urgently needed reform. The country had already suffered from a shortage of doctors, and the only qualified ones were in cities, Niyazov said on a public radio address.

So, in a frankly insane healthcare reform effort, he restricted the public’s access to care by replacing up to 15,000 doctors and nurses with unqualified military conscripts. The next year, he ordered hospitals and clinics outside of the capital, Ashgabat, to close—even though the vast proportion of Turkmenistan’s population lives in rural areas. The BBC quoted him as saying, “Why do we need such hospitals? If people are ill, they can come to Ashgabat.” He also implemented fees and created an “unofficial” ban on the diagnosis of certain communicable diseases, like hepatitis.

As a result, an epidemic of the bubonic plague reportedly broke out (Turkmenistan’s highly secretive government does not allow in organizations like the WHO) and existing rashes of AIDS, hepatitis, and tuberculosis worsened. At the time of Niyazov’s death from a cardiac infarction in 2006, Turkmenistan had one of the lowest life expectancies in Asia—less than 60 years.

Only after Niyazov’s death did the edicts end and hospitals reopen—dentist-turned-President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov even performed an operation himself at an opening ceremony—though fatalities from easily treatable conditions remain woefully high in this impoverished country.

United States

System: Employer-based private coverage, with an under-regulated private insurance market, and
government-subsidized public plans for the poor, elderly, and disabled

Reform: The United States has the rare distinction of being both one of the world’s richest countries and having one of its least-functional health care systems.

Americans spend around one in every six dollars on healthcare. But, in aggregate, they’re not getting much bang for their buck. People in the United States are as likely to die from diseases like lung cancer as citizens in all OECD countries - which, on average, spend less than half as much per capita. Some 47 million lack any health insurance coverage. An estimated 600,000 people file for bankruptcy every year because they cannot pay their medical expenses. Indeed, the United States is the only rich country without universal coverage.

The U.S. government has repeatedly tried to create a more coherent plan and to make sure more Americans are insured. Reformers have scored piecemeal victories—such as the 1997 creation of the State Children’s Health Insurance Plan, or Massachusetts’ recent implementation of universal coverage.

But for the most part, the history of health reform in the United States has been a history of failure. The last attempt at comprehensive reform—the 1993 bill derided as “HillaryCare,” during the administration of Bill Clinton—floundered in Congress. Since then, costs and premiums have doubled, a lower percentage of employers offer coverage, and millions more are uninsured.

Efforts at healthcare reform have tended to be derailed by partisan politics—and last week, Senate Republican Jim DeMint promised to make the issue President Barack Obama’s “Waterloo.” But with Democrats in the White House and enjoying a Senate supermajority, healthcare reform looks more likely to pass now than at any other time in recent history.  Let’s just hope it works this time.

From The Washington Post
By Michael D. Shear

Vice President Biden plans a political broadside this afternoon in the home district of Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), accusing the senior Republican lawmaker of joining in his party’s smear of the $787 billion Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

“To those who say that our economic decisions ‘have not produced jobs, have not produced prosperity, and simply have not worked’ I say, take a look around,” Biden will say, according to prepared remarks obtained by The Washington Post.

“I say, ‘Don’t let your opposition to the Recovery Act blind you to its results,’” Biden plans to say in the Richmond speech. “‘Come see what I see everywhere I go: workers rehired, factories reopened, cops on the street, teachers in the classroom, progress toward getting our economy back on the move.’”

Steven Crowder goes undercover to show you exactly what it’s like getting healthcare in Canada:
At one point, he’s actually told to get a blood test he should either wait two to three(2-3) years on a waiting list to get a family practitioner (and the nurse actually says that he is YOUNG AND SHOULDNT BE WORIED, he has time and there are no problems at his age), or other option is to go to one of the now allowed private clinics and pay $900 for check up. INSANITY!!!

When Crowder manages to go to another clinic he is told that they do not have doctors there. He asks "Why?" Lady answers - "Ask the government why... someday when you have cash you will have a doctor..."

Plus, he goes through how much the “free” really crappy health care actually costs in taxes and higher prices on everything. (GAS AT $4 a gallon.....)

To pay for that madness Obama is proposing everything will go up in price here in USA

And just for the record - Yes I think that the American health care system now is screwed and need reform, but do not think, that socialising the health care is the solution.

And also I am disappointed by today's blog entry by Robert Reich - The Health Care Clock, and Why Obama Has to Act Quickly, but hay we are free country (still) and anybody is entitled to an opinion....

Cap and Trade Primer

The estimated cost of the bill is about $1200 per U.S. family. It’s the most costly bill in the current Congress....

If you dont believe me that this is the end of the US economy watch Waren Buffet say it

If you do Not believe Him... read Congressional Budget Office analisys on Cap andTrade "Distribution of the cost" Yeah I know that the document is labeled "Distribution of the revenue...." , but it actualy explains how the government taxes the businesses and they in turn charge the customers more money to offset the cap and trade legislation and then the government pay the customers, so they can offset the bigger bill, they recieve from the businesses charging them more, because of cap and trade - INSANITY, INSANITY!!!!!

05-07-Cap and Trade Testimony

Who is going to pay for Cap and Trade costs?

You.

CBO Grossly Underestimates Costs of Cap and Trade

The Next Big Investment Bubble – Green Energy

Legislators Framing Climate Bills Hold Energy Stock

Costing Out Cap-and-Trade

Al Gore Invests Millions to Make Billions in Cap-and-Trade Software

Al Gore to Profit From The Cap and Trade. Just Another Thief Stealing Your Money. They Really Think We Are Stupid!!!

Obama’s ‘Cap and Trade’ Plan Likely Will Raise Energy Prices, Says Senate Energy Chairman

Dem Congressman: ‘Nobody in This Country Realizes That Cap-and-Trade is a Tax’

Oil Chief Warns US Green Policy Will Turn US into the World’s Cleanest Third World Country

U.N. ‘Climate Change’ Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy

Obama’s Energy Tax

The Long-Term Budget Outlook

From Canada Free Press

Al Gore’s venture capital firm has invested $6 million in a software company that stands to make billions of dollars from cap-and-trade regulation — further fueling controversy that Gore lied about his profiteering from cap-and-trade to Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee during testimony in April.

Hara Software sells software to help track greenhouse gas emissions. The market for such software is now about $2.5 billion dollars in size, and is expected to grow by a factor of ten to $25 billion if cap-and-trade legislation is enacted, according to Hara CEO Amit Chatterjee.

Kleiner Perkins, a venture capital firm in which Al Gore is a partner, invested in Hara just last year. Chatterjee told Reuters that,

“This company would not have existed if Al Gore had not bought off on the idea.”

Gore is also under fire for lying to Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) at the same congressional hearing about his relationship with Goldman Sachs.

Operating as a stealth tax, cap-and-trade will make the vast majority of Americans poorer and less free — but Al Gore, Kleiner Perkins, Amit Chatterjee and Hara will be laughing all the way to the bank.

Here is the video from April 24, 2009. Is Al Gore lying? I say - yes.

From WSJ

Lt. Gen. Pacepa, the highest ranking Soviet bloc official granted political asylum in the U.S., is the author of the memoir “Red Horizons” (Regnery, 1987).

They say history repeats itself. If you are like me and have lived two lives, you have a good chance of seeing the re-enactment with your own eyes. The current takeover of General Motors by the U.S. government and United Auto Workers makes me think back to Romania’s catastrophic mismanagement of the car factories it built jointly with the French companies Renault and Citroen. I was Romania’s car czar.

When the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu decided in the mid-1960s that he wanted to have a car industry, he chose me to start the project rolling. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. I knew nothing about manufacturing cars, but neither did anyone else among Ceausescu’s top men. However, my father had spent most of his life running the service department of the General Motors affiliate in Bucharest.

My job at the time was as head of the Romanian industrial espionage program. Ceausescu tasked me to mediate the purchase of a minimum, basic license for a small car from a major Western manufacturer, and then to steal everything else needed to produce the car.

Three Western companies competed for the honor. Ceausescu decided on Renault, because it was owned by the French government (all Soviet bloc rulers distrusted private companies). We ended up with a license for an antiquated and about-to-be-discontinued Renault-12 car, because it was the cheapest. “Good enough for the idiots,” Ceausescu decided, showing what he thought of the Romanian people. He baptized the car Dacia, to commemorate Romania’s 2,000-year history going back to Dacia Felix, as the ancient Romans called that part of the world. In that government-run economy, symbolism was the most important consideration, especially when it came to things in short supply (such as food).

“Too luxurious for the idiots,” Ceausescu decreed when he saw the first Dacia car made in Romania. Immediately, the radio, right side mirror and backseat heating were dropped. Other “unnecessary luxuries” were soon eliminated by the bureaucrats and their workers’ union that were running the factory. The car that finally hit the market was a stripped-down version of the old, stripped-down Renault 12. “Perfect for the idiots,” Ceausescu approved. Indeed, the Romanian people, who had never before had any car, came to cherish the Dacia.

For the Western market, however, the Dacia was a nightmare. To the best of my knowledge, no Dacia car was ever sold in the U.S.

Ceausescu, undaunted, was determined to see Romanian cars running around in every country in the world. He tasked me to buy another Western license, this time to produce a car tailored for export. Oltcit was the name of the new car—an amalgam made from the words Oltenia, Ceausescu’s native province, and the French car maker Citroen, which owned 49% of the shares. Oltcit was projected to produce between 90,000 and 150,000 compact cars designed by Citroen.

Ceausescu micromanaged Oltcit, but he didn’t even know how to drive a car, much less run a car industry. To save the foreign currency he coveted, he decreed that the components for the Oltcit were to be manufactured at 166 existing Romanian factories. Coordinating 166 plants to have them deliver all the parts on time would be a monumental job even for an experienced car producer. It proved impossible for the Romanian bureaucracy, which pretended to work and was paid accordingly. The Oltcit factory could produce only 1% to 1.5% of its intended capacity owing to the lack of the parts that those 166 companies were supposed to furnish simultaneously. The Oltcit project lost billions.

Ceausescu was an extreme case, but automobile manufacturing and government were never a good mix in any socialist/communist country. In the late 1950s, when I headed Romania’s foreign intelligence station in West Germany, I worked closely with the foreign branch of the East German Stasi. Its chief, Markus Wolf, rewarded me with a Trabant car—the pride of East Germany—when I left to return to Romania.

That ugly little car became famous in 1989 when thousands of East Germans used it to cross to the West. The Trabant originally derived from a well regarded West German car (the DKW) made by Audi, which today produces some of the most prestigious cars in the world. In the hands of the East German government, the unfortunate DKW became a farce of a car. The bureaucrats and the union that ran the Trabant factory made the car smaller and boxier, to give it a more proletarian look. To reduce production costs, they cut down on the size of the original, already small DKW engine, and they replaced the metal body with one made of plastic-covered cardboard. What rolled off the assembly line was a kind of horseless carriage that roared like a lawn mower and polluted the air worse than a whole city block full of big Western cars.

After German reunification, the plucky little “Trabi” that East Germans used to wait 10 years to buy became an embarrassment, and its production was stopped. Germany’s junkyards are now piled high with Trabants, which cannot be recycled because burning their plastic-covered cardboard bodies would release poisonous dioxins. German scientists are now trying to develop a bacterium to devour the cardboard-and-plastic body.

Automobile manufacturing and government do not mix in capitalist countries either. In the spring of 1978 Ceausescu appointed me chief of his Presidential House, a new position supposed to be similar to that of the White House chief of staff. To go with it he gave me a big Jaguar car. That Jaguar, which at the time had been produced in a government-run British factory, was so bad that it spent more time in the garage being repaired than it did on the road.

“Apart from some Russian factories in Gorky, Jaguars were the worst,” Ford executive Bill Hayden stated when Ford bought the nationalized British car maker in 1988. How did the famous Jaguar, one of the most prestigious cars in the world, become a joke?

In 1945, the British voters, tired of four years of war, kicked out Winston Churchill and elected a leftist parliament led by Labour’s Clement Attlee. Attlee nationalized the automobile, trucking and coal industries, as well as communication facilities, civil aviation, electricity and steel. Britain was already saddled by crushing war debts. Now it was sapped of economic vigor. The old empire quickly passed into history. It would take decades until Margaret Thatcher’s privatization reforms restored Britain’s place among the world’s top-tier economies.

The United States is far more powerful than Great Britain was then, and no American Attlee should be capable of destroying its solid economic and political base. I hope that the U.S. administration, Congress and the American voters will take a closer look at history and prevent our automotive industry from following down the Dacia, Oltcit or Jaguar path