Yay Health Care

It is my opinion that the major problems in our health care system can be traced back to two simple issues.

1. Health care costs too much (for the insurers and the insured).

Now, just about everyone knows health care costs too much for the insured. Even if you are lucky enough to have insurance, you still have to deal with co-pays, caps, deductibles, non-covered issues, and mountains of paperwork. If you don't have insurance, you get to deal with costs that are clearly not meant for man to pay.

As for the insurers, they deal with hospitals and clinics that probably deeply resent them and inflate their prices accordingly. Meanwhile, drug companies are spending millions advertising their latest-and-greatest prescription drugs. The costs of that advertising get built into the price of the drugs, and therefore have to be paid by the insurance company. It's a safe bet to say that the insurers build this cost into your premiums, and that it isn't a trivial amount.

2. There is no guarantee of health care unless you or your insurance company can and will pay for it.

The fact that, in the United States, a person who needs an operation to survive but can't afford it has to choose between death and bakruptcy is absolutely wrong. There is no getting around it. Regardless of whether you are president of the country or Joe Six Pack in college or a bum on the street, you should be getting the same quality of health care at the same price: free.

This is the part where, if this were not my blog post, I would interrupt and start telling me off about how truly free health care is unachievable and that you'll just be paying more in taxes to cover the extra cost. Excellent point, me. However, building the cost of health care into taxes directly is the best way to ensure fair coverage. Insuring your body is not like insuring a car. If you can't afford the insurance on your car, then you should probably have a cheaper car, or a bike, or take public transportation. There are other options for you. As law enforcement so loves to remind us, "Driving is a privilege, not a right." But life is a right (or should be, our wonderful founding fathers must have forgotten to put it in the Constitution (see Declaration of Independence)).

Regardless of all this, the base cost is still too high. If our taxes pay for health care, they are going to go up unless we cut back on some other government programs (which might not be a bad idea, but that's a different issue). Reducing the base cost of health care should be a major priority. Moving health care into the realm of government should reduce costs somewhat, since insurance companies are under pressure to make profits and the government isn't. We also need to regulate the drug companies, for the reasons mentioned above. Their paid advertising needs to be controlled or, better yet, eliminated entirely, which will go a long way toward reducing the cost of prescription medicine. Information on new drugs would still be available on the internet and in the news, as well as delivered directly to doctors.

So, is there any hope of getting a good health care system in place when we finally get to see Bush leave office? Let's take a look at the candidate's positions, shall we? Hillary and Obama put on a good show of being passionate about the issue, but neither outlines a plan with any real detail. Edwards' plan is somewhat weak ("Affordable" healthcare for all probably sounds familiar to you if you're from Massachusetts), but at least he has a plan. Dennis Kucinich [pdf] actually co-sponsored a bill proposing a universal health coverage plan back in 2003, and stands by that bill now. All the Democrats, however, list health care as a major concern.

Any republicans with anything worth talking about? Romney just wants to force everybody to to buy insurance, while Tancredo tries to blame the issue on illegal immigrants. Brownback seems to think that the ability to "shop around" for health care will be of great benefit to Americans. Tommy Thompson at least has an Edwards-like plan. Ron Paul thinks there is already too much regulation in health care and wants to cut down on it. Gingrich almost addresses the issue in "Promoting Active Healthy Aging." As of this post, McCain and Giuliani don't even list health care as an issue on their campaign sites.

This post was really long.

Massachusetts == The Democratic Party

It's a little weird how closely the Democratic party's candidates for president match up with the candidates for the last Massachusetts gubernatorial race. Take a look:

1. The "Mean" White Women - Hillary and Healey
2. The Inspiring Black Men - Obama and Patrick
3. The Rich White Guys - Edwards and Mihos/Gabrieli

Perhas it's a sign?

Thoughts on education

Standardized tests have gotten completely out of control, and it's high time something was done about it.

1. They don't do what they are intended to do.
Try as they might, the board of education (at least here in Massachusetts) still cannot come up with a test to determine which child is creative and thoughtful, and which one just had parents with the money to drop on a nice prep course.

2. They hurt kids.
Don't take this the wrong way. I am all for straight talk in education, even if it means telling a kid that he just isn't smart enough for X. However, the vast majority of kids know exactly where they stand on the intellectual ladder and don't need some very official-looking number from a statewide test rubbing it in their faces.

3. They hurt taxpayers.
I would go as far to say that the only group benefiting from MCAS (or any standardized test) is the test preparation industry. You can be sure that "big education" folks are all up in your government selling them books and supplies, many that even have the test's name on the cover. Your tax dollars pay both for the people who create the test, and for the books and courses to help your kids pass the test. This is, of course, in addition to regular school, which is increasingly just an extended test prep course.

4. Going "by the numbers" doesn't work in education.
It seems to me that the educational system has tried to learn something from business, and expects graduation rates to go up every year. This would be fine, except for the fact that children aren't getting much smarter. Teachers are expected to maintain a certain pass rate (or even improve it), and therefore push through some kids who should probably fail. I believe that this was a big part of the motivation behind standardized testing. However, now instead of just being able to push the kids through, the teachers legitimately have to spend all their time repeating the same points until the dumbest kids in the class finally get it, holding the smarter ones back. Don't misunderstand me, I don't think it's right to just "push kids through," but we are running into the collision of several major issues here.

5. Teachers are evaluated based on student performance.
This is a tough issue for me. On one hand, you can't argue with results. There are some teachers who are just really really good. Certainly, these teachers should be rewarded. However, for a teacher to know that his performance is being judged by how his students do on a single test only encourages him to ignore the ones who will pass it easily, and focus all the attention on the ones who won't. Even outside of the standardized testing world, it prevents teachers from acting honestly all the time, even if only subconsciously in some cases.

6. You absolutely have to trust your teachers.
What it all comes down to is that you need your teachers to be trustworthy individuals and, more importantly, you need to actually trust them. If you've hired someone who isn't doing his job well, you will find out, one way or another. If you, as a parent, think that teachers aren't doing a good job, well maybe you should be a teacher. And if you are, good for you. Keep fighting the good fight.

Woo! Election Day!

I fully expect to see the usual slew of stories about thousands of people rising from the grave to vote republican.

Remember folks: vote early, vote often.

A Random thought

I hope I live to see a day when the Chinese (with or without help) tear down the great firewall. Never will trashing a few racks of servers be so meaningful.

We need to get these people mad! I'd like to propose that all content providers start looking through the Forbidden Words List and start randomly sprinkling them in hidden content on your web pages. The more legitimate pages China has to block, the better!

Actually, the web accessibility people would probably hunt me down and burn me at the stake for suggesting that. Any way to do it without hurting people using screen readers?

The Answer to the Immigration Problem

Let's just get Mexico to apply for statehood. They all seem to want to be Americans anyway.

Why oh why

Maybe it's just because I like a good argument, but I always seem to have this terrible temptation to discuss politics. More often than not I wish I hadn't brought it up, but I still keep going back to it. Must be a little bit of that youthful idealism in me that's still not quite dead.

There are a few warnings I need to share with you before you go on. First off, I'm going to be talking about politics here. I define politics as I go along, so I basically get to talk about whatever I want. Deal with it. Second, these opinions are my own unless otherwise noted. "My own" is such an amazingly relative term in today's world that I'm not going to delve into it here. Third, be warned that politicians are a very slimy bunch. You don't want to touch them without wearing gloves. Just reading this journal will probably make you feel a little dirty. I recommend setting aside some time for a shower immediately after reading, just to be safe.

All right. Let's do this. I'll try to keep this first one short, to ease you into the muck.

In a democratic society, I view wars as the most major failures possible on the part of a government. Admittedly there are times when a nation has to defend itself, but I assume that these times are fairly obvious. On the whole, though, a democratic government has failed in some regard if it has no option but to send at least some of its citizens to their deaths. The most impressive things in American history are not our victories in war, but our ability to avoid wars. America's greatest achievements are those of compromises between two (or more) sides that couldn't agree on much of anything. You look at the variety of people in this country and how badly some of them get along in the rest of the world, and it's a miracle that we've only had one civil war.

Why can we all get along, or at least agree to disagree, here and nowhere else? Because historically, the American government has stayed out of the people's way. If an issue is sharply divisive, it's probably none of the government's business. No matter which side it comes down on, a large group of people will be angry. The philosophy is that government is a necessary evil, and must be kept just large enough to carry out the few functions only a government can carry out. Obviously, we're not there anymore. Our government has gotten itself tangled up in a bunch of things that are none of its business, and that is causing all kinds of problems.

Next time: maybe an example or two.