The Communist Origin of the Modern Conservative Movement VI

Most of the staunched defenders of the free market are awash in government subsidies. They love the free market as long as the government covers their losses. Most of the welfare in this country goes to the ungodly greedy in ways that the workingman does not see. Giant agribusinesses receive billions in government welfare every year it was designed to subsidies the small dirt farmer in the 1930s but has since given 100s of billions to some of the biggest corporations. Seems funny that some of the biggest corporations would receive government welfare but that is a fact. Half a billion dollar government handouts to corporations like Boeing and Daimler-Benz but Toyota turned down the same offer to build a new plant in US because of our healthcare mess.

Of course one of the industries receiving government subsidies is the healthcare industry. Hospitals have always received government subsidies to cover their losses from those who were unable to pay. The Medicaid system is also a government subsidy that one of the primary purposes was to cover loses for treating the poor who can’t afford to pay. Medicare is also another government subsidy to the healthcare industry it pays the healthcare industry to care for the elderly who would have no way of paying for medical care.

It is exactly those who are subsidized by the government the most who are crying the loudest about the loss of the free market. The healthcare industry in America is up to its eyebrows in government subsidies and in fact if the government subsidies stopped the American healthcare system would collapse overnight. The government is the only thing that is keeping the healthcare industry alive. If all these people that wanted a free market healthcare system actually got what they wanted they would find themselves in the same boat as 35 million Americans without health insurance, no health care.

Illusions are fine, they stoke are ego and reinforce are view that the world is just but many are based on simple slogans that do not address the complex reality we find ourselves immersed in. When we hear that healthcare should be a free market enterprise we should realize that is an illusion it is like the still surface of a pond, when you look under the surface there is a lot more going on then can be seen. We began moving away from the free market healthcare system over 80 years ago with the decision to subsidize the losses of hospitals. Our fathers and grandfathers fully realized that healthcare was not like any other commodity that should only be available to the rich. They built county hospitals with government money and gave them responsibility for caring for the sick. Taxes were levied on everyone to establish medical schools and pay most of the cost for doctor’s education.

We must now decide whether we will continue to believe that healthcare in America is just another commodity that should be auctioned off to the highest bidder or is it a social responsibility that we all share. Illusion die hard and it is time to realize Santa Clause will not be waiting to help us out when we get cancer. Free markets are not driven by compassion but by greed.

Living in any illusion is a lot like taking opium it makes you feel better in the short term but creates bigger problems in the future. Living in the here and now is fine but we all have to deal with the future. The main illusion in America suffers under is if my child or I get sick that we will get medical treatment whether or not we can pay for it or have medical insurance. America has always been the land of plenty for most of us, we simply can’t imagine going without but a growing minority is beginning to realize that medical care is simply moving away and leaving them behind.

The American Healthcare system is a house of cards that exists now only because it is propped up by Medicare, Medicaid and direct government subsidies to cover those who can no longer afford to pay for care. If the smaller get their way and element “entitlements” like Medicaid and Medicare the house of cards falls. The right wing illusion that the America Healthcare system is a self sustaining free market is just that an illusion it only exists because the government subsidizes it. Too start with the people most in need of healthcare services are the very ones who are too sick to afford it and too sick to continue to make monthly payments for medical insurance. The government has a long history even before Medicare and Medicaid of stepping in to take care of hospital losses.

In America we already have the expectation that if we or our families become sick that we will get medical care and believe me the most rabid right wing father would have no trouble accepting a ½ a million dollars of free medical care for his sick child and then go out campaigning for smaller government after his child recovers. The rabid right child is his reality but the children of others are abstract and it is easy to take from something that is and abstract. The future is an abstract which sickness may or may not happen but when we are looking at our sick child it is a reality.

American have always had the same expectation as socialized medical system, that everyone be able to get medical care and the government has long socialized part of the cost the illusion is that we have healthcare system that is free market based.

In the early 90s with healthcare costs spinning out of control I can remember attending a healthcare rally in Huntington when Clinton was running for President. Clinton was purposing a type of National Healthcare to solve the runaway cost spiral but what was surprising was that General Motors was supporting the propsal. Why would one of the largest corporations in America support Nationalized Healthcare? The simple fact was that General Motors could see the writing on the wall. Wages were only portion of the hourly cost of an employee, benefits packages were becomming a major cost issue as well and among those benefits health insurances was the most costly. The accountents at GM could easly see that if the ever essculating cost of health insurance continues in the the near future the cost of health insurance would exceed the cost of wages. GM provided Health Insurance not only to those who worked there but also the employees who were retired. The accountents knew that the cost of health insurance would one day bankrupt GM and it did in 2008. The mighest corporation in America was bought to its knees by the ever esculating cost of healt insurance.

It was once said that whatever was good for GM was good for the country and it seems that whatever was bad for the country is also bad for GM. The most expensive cost to manufacture a car is not steel it is healt insurance. At the time of the health care rally GM accounts could show that for each person GM insured it paid the healthcare bill for six other people who had no health insurance and could not pay the bill and this was expected to get worse. It seems the so called free market health insurance system was redistributing the wealth in America. The commie/conservatives often acuse the government of redistriebuting the wealth with a progressive income tax but they will defend the right of the free market system to do the same as long as it is redistributing the middle class wealth to the ungodly greedy.

As health insurance increased in cost by 33 times in America in 39 years that cost was passed along in the price of what ever the company maufactured. Manufacturing jobs generally provided health insurance while low wage service jobs did not provide health insurance. The othe manufacturing countries had solved their health insurance problem with nationalized healthcare. America's biggest export in the last 30 years has been manufacturing jobs and one of the main reasons they had to be exported was the cost of health insurance in America. We can not compete on a world stage until we come to terms with our healthcare problems.

Why didn't America solve its healthcare problems when the rest of the manufacturing countries did? In fact a national healtcare bill was introduced into congress for fourteen straight and had the support of President Trueman but it was beaten by the cold war. The American communists like Frank Meyer and Whitaker Chambers helped generate a communists scare in America that was more effective then the radio brodcast of H G Wells, "War of the Worlds. " National healthcare did not come up again until Medicare in the middle 60s.

If Russia used a hammer to solve a problem than America could only use a screw driver. If Russia had national healthcare America could not. Economic solotions are specific to economic problems and independent of political ideology. When we let one political ideology own all of one type of economic solution and cut ourselves off from that economic solution for a particular problem we lose.

Of all the emotions fear is the easiest to generate and the most contagious it drives the lynch mobs and the stsmpeding cattle. Fear is used by polliticians to manipulate it need not be real, Saddam' s atomic bombs come to mind, perception is enough to do the damage.

The American Medical Association (AMA) has been a long standing enemy of National Healthcare but it wasn’t always that way originally the AMA supported National Healthcare and worked hand in hand with the American Association of Labor Legislation (AALL). In 1906 the AALL began a campaign for National Healthcare. In 1914 the AMA joined the fight and several prominent physicians who supported the AALL plan lobbied congress for the law. Some physicians wrote the AALL secretary and told them, “Your plans are so entirely in line with our own we want to be of every possible assistance.” By 1916 the AMA and AALL had formed a united front for National Healthcare.

What was the AALL plan way back in 1906? The bill included medical care, hospitalization, sick pay, and a $50 death benefit. This national health insurance would cover only workingmen making less than $1,200 a year about$30,193 in today’s dollars. This would have provided a way for those who made too little to afford medical services a way to obtain them.

The $50 death benefit was the death of this plan as big insurance stepped in to stop this plan. There was no private health insurance to compete with a government plan. But life insurance was the profit center of big insurance at the time. The AALL plan would take a major portion of the life insurance market. There is nothing like a vested interest to end legislation. All we can do is look back an imagine what could have been if we solved our healthcare problems over a 100 years ago.

All insurance operates on the principal of socialization of risk. When someone buys fire insurance policy they know that they have only a small risk of having a fire but they are willing to pool their money with others incase they are one of the unlucky ones who has a fire. Car insurance also socializes the risk. In 20011, I was taking my wife’s new Honda CRV to get its first inspection sticker because it was purchased out of state. Another car ran a red light, some of the witnesses placed its speed it 60mph, it totaled my wife’s brand new car. The driver then hit my car again to push me out of the way so he could run. He was driving a full size Mercury SUV. He was later caught and both he and his girl friend were arrested. Of course he had no driver license and no insurance. The side of my car was caved in so bad the glove box couldn’t be opened, not to mention the damage to the back of the car where it was hit again. My risk was socialized through my uninsured motorist coverage. Once it was determined that the other driver had no insurance my policy paid for the loss minus $300 deductible. If I had not had uninsured motorist insurance I would have been out $25,000.

My accident was a perfect candidate for free market insurance it would be impossible to predict who this idiot would hit. Everyone was at equal risk but in health insurance is not that way the accidents happen in an instant but health problems are often lifetime problems. This is the information age where a family history of breast cancer or heart disease is as good as a weather forecast. The Health Insurance industry plays with loaded dice they can refuse to insure people or price them out of the market based on family history, known health problems, or simply drop coverage after the big bills start coming in. Current health insurance is a fixed game where the house not only controls the odds but show those who get a pay off the door. The current fixed game in Health Insurance would make any Las Vegas Casino operate envious. The current health insurance system in America is not designed to provide healthcare it is designed to make a profit for the insurance companies.

We see nothing wrong with socializing a risk of an accident, or a fire but private socialization of a lifetime of health problems is not the same as an accident that happens in an instant and that the risk of a fire or accident is far less predictable. What other industrialized countries have found out is that government socializing of the cost of health care is the only way that the risk of lifetime healthcare problems can be handled effectively. America’s health insurance system is designed to care for the healthy and eliminate coverage for those that are truly sick.

While the America Medical Association (AMA) had supported American Association of Labor Legislation’s National Health Insurance proposal in 1914 by 1932 the insurance soon shifted their position and called the Committee on the Cost of Medical Care (CCMC) report social medicine. The CCMC was composed of eight philanthropic organizations including the Rockefeller, Millbank and Rosenwald Foundations. “The AMA treated the CCMC report as a radical document advocating socialized medicine, and the acerbic and conservative editor of the JAMA called it an “incitement to a revolution.” But it was the AMA that had become radicalized just 20 years before they had fully supported a similar proposal. Why had the AMA become radicalized? The AMA had become reactionary because revolutionary changes taking place in other places in the world like Germany and Russia.

Imagine that you are head of fire insurance company and can travel 20 years into the future. What would you bring back from the future? The head of the insurance would no doubt bring back the fire loss records. He then would use this list of future claims to either deny or cancel policies making his company much more profitable. Remember like health insurance fire insurance companies are not in business to provide a service they are in business to make a profit. Medical insurance companies don’t need a time machine they need don’t have to go into the future to obtain those records. They have them now in genetic and family medical histories. How reliable is their information? They are so reliable that many women are now having their breasts removed to avoid almost certain risk of dying of breasts cancer. A breast cancer patient will cost the insurance company $500,000 if it has not spread if it has spread it is a million dollar medical loss to the company. Remember the fire insurance CEO will no longer insure houses that he knows are a sure loss do you think the medical insurance company would avoid a million dollar medical loss if it had the chance? The information age has given us access to more information that we ever imagined. Information can be used to benefit us or hurt us.

Medical histories are currently being digitalized to give doctors instant access to a patient’s medical history but these histories will find there way into other hands and they are more valuable to medical insurance companies than anyone else. Where there is money there is always a way. There will be winners and losers in the future and the winners will be the big insurance companies who will sell medical insurance to those least likely not to be a medical loss. The answer is not the Affordable Healthcare Act it is only a small step in the right direction. But the longest journey begins with the first step. With the Affordable Healthcare Act we acknowledge that the current system of greed based health care is broken beyond repair.

What you see is all there is (WYSIATI) is very important concept in psychology. In other words our minds are designed to draw conclusion from the available evidence and tend to believe that what we see is all there is. For the last 30 years the commie/conservatives have been very successful in manipulating this concept. For the last 70 years the right screams socialized medicine every time an attempt has been made to control the cost of medical care which has increased 33 times in the last 39 years. We all know that in a free market system you have only two choices you can pay the prevailing price or do without. The ability of a consumer to do without a new television set, a new car, or new furniture is key in controlling the price but a consumer can’t decline to get medical care for a dying child or dying wife. This is why medical care has increased 33 times over the last 39 years there is no possible control over the escalating cost of medical care in a free market system until we decide just to let people die. The consumer’s right to refuse to buy makes a free market system possible it is the key ingredient that is lacking in our health care system. If gasoline went up 33 times to a $108.90 a gallon and the cost of filling your car cost $2,178 you would stop buying gasoline. This is known as demand destruction, price would literally destroy demand but yet this is exactly what happened in the medical field and demand was not destroyed.

We look at the medical field and see that medical care is purchased by dollars and see a Free Market system WYSIATI. What we don’t see is the cost shifting where those with medical insurance pay the medical bills of 6 people who have no insurance and can’t pay the medical bills. Imagine going into Wall Mart and you decide to buy a television set that costs $500 but when the clerk rings up the television set it says $3500 and you ask why so much and she says because you can afford it you must buy a television set for 6 other people who can’t afford one. You would be outraged and refuse the purchase but when you go to hospital this is exactly what happens. Bad debt is a cost of doing business and it is simply passed along to other consumers that can pay. Hospitals have been subsidized by the government to treat those who can’t pay for decades. Doctors have a righteous sense of entitlement to millions in compensation because they paid to go to medical school but medical schools are built and highly subsidized by taxpayers. If the taxpayers didn’t subsidize the medical schools there would be no medical schools for doctors to attend. The cost of medical education is highly subsidized and the word would be socialized. We have socialized medical education but no doctor sees anything wrong socialized medical education. The S word is simply never used when referring to medical education.

We need to move forward with the changes to healthcare with our eyes wide open and realize the only reason the only reason that What You See Is All There IS, is because we have not fully opened our eyes. It seems socialization of costs is acceptable but socialization of profits is not.

What You See Is All There Is that statement is very true when it comes to what people believe about the Free Market in America. Ask most people and they will tell you America is a Free Market economy because that is all they see. We know that Free Market Healthcare is a complete and total failure that is dragging the rest of America down with it but did the free Market economics ever fail America before. The most basic stable of life is food and in 1930s the family farms were failing and those that worked were dirt poor and the farmers were looking for another way to make a living. In a free market supply dictates price as the farmers in America got poorer they did the only thing they knew to make more money they grew more and when they grew more prices went down further. Farmers did not have monopoly like the oil cartel where members would be required to cut back supply so a social solution was found and the government instituted price supports, bought up excess supply, and paid farmers not to grow crops on portions of their land. These social controls have been in place for 75 years there is no free market for food in America prices are controlled by the government.

Do you believe manufacturing in America is a free market activity? Open your eyes and look a little closer. Recently West Virginia was in the running for a new cracking plant the owners were demanding a billion dollars in tax credits that a billion with a capital B. We all know that when a new plant is built or new equipment put in an existing plant that they get to take that off their taxes. So a new plant would have automatic tax write offs for the next 27 years. The kicker was the owners knew this and wanted to be able to sell the billion dollars in tax credits to other companies. So they could sell the billion in tax credits to Exxon Mobil fore 20 cents on the dollar and make a huge profit. The cost of building the plants is being socialized and the profits not only privatized but exempted from taxes. This socialization of price of a manufacturing is going on all over America. In America we have effective socialism for the richest 1% and the cost is being levied on the bottom 99%. Then they tell us we can’t socialize healthcare. It seems to me socialism is the main reason the richest 1% is getting richer they simply socialize the cost of manufacturing through a welfare for the rich system. It time we realize that there is far more in America than what you see.

When it comes to socializing risk the ungodly greedy are thinking of new ways everyday. The Century Aluminum plant in Ravenswood, WV had proposed to the WV Public Service Commission that they be supplied with $50,000,000 in free electricity and that the cost be passed on to other WV electric customers. If the price of Aluminum went up that Century would pay for a small portion of the cost of the electric they used. If the price of aluminum ever went way up Century would actually pay for their electric. The poorest people in WV would pay for the billionaire’s electric bill. What could be more fair than that the billionaires is providing jobs and so somebody has to pay and the poor should be made to pay. When the millionaire lawyers from Century tried to sell this scam it was rejected. WV has a high rate of High School dropouts but they can still count and the millionaire lawyers were sent packing but they went to Kentucky and sold them a similar plan where they got “reduced electric rates” to reopen a smelter in Kentucky. You can bet reduced is like you got a reduced price on a $25,000 car you pay a dollar and someone else pays the $24,999 for you.

This is where the real socialism is taking place in our society. Century wants to socialize their risk and privatize the profit. The billion dollars in tax credits is another to socialize for the Oil Cracking Plant is another. Can you imagine a corporation that could sell a billion in tax credits to other companies? If your company didn’t want to pay taxes on a million in profit this year simply purchase tax credits from another company. Red neck right radio scream socialized medicine everyday but did you every hear them mention that say anything about taxpayers giving Boeing a half a billion dollars to build a new plant. Wasn’t the $500,000,000 cost of building the plant being socialized? You bet it was the taxpayers paid the cost.


Glen Beck was lamenting yesterday that a government take over the healthcare industry would be a takeover of 17% of the US economy. That in itself should tell you something as the Healthcare industry in other countries only involves 4%-5% of their economy. We are spending 400% more on healthcare and have a healthcare system that is ranked 38 in the world. Of course Glen Beck would never say anything about a company demanding a billion dollars in tax credits that they could sell to who ever they pleased. In Glen Beck’s philosophy what ever you are powerful enough to take you are entitled to. If you are a billionaire and you can use your political clout to make some of the poorest people in America pay your $50 million electric bill you are entitled to it. Beck philosophy is philosophy of every thief or conman I ever had the privilege of putting in prison they believed they were entitled to anything they could take. One told this story about himself he had an Heating and Air Condition but fixed appliance on the side and Old Lady called about her refrigerator and he repaired it but un plugged the defroster motor knowing he would be called back. When he went back he plugged the motor back in and charged her for a new motor. She had very little and cried has she wrote a check for the unnecessary repair. He told her just don’t get any tears on my check. The billionaire owner of Century would say the same. They are the same type people.

A caller to the ED Shultz show yesterday called to say that she had found insurance on the exchange for her and her husband for $236 a month. This was platinum plan with no deductible and it paid 90% of claims. Her previous policy cost another $5280 a year, had a large deductible and only paid 80% of her claims. A Republican friend, who disliked The Affordable Healthcare Act, came in to her business. She showed him that he would save over $6,000 a year on the exchange even though he had a preexisting condition. The Republican was an account and did not qualify for a tax subsidy. He was reduced to tears when he realized what listening to Republican propaganda would have cost him. Accountants deal and numbers and the numbers showed the Republican propaganda was nothing more than self serving lies. Ed was trying to arrange an appearance of the Woman on his MSNBC talk show that is broadcast daily at 5:00 PM weekdays.

When the republican smoke and mirrors give way to reality it will be quite different than what they would like to believe. It is all about the money and if the insurance companies lost over $11,000 on just these two customers you can imagine what that will be multiplied by 10s of million of times. The real debate is not about healthcare, the same people will continue to provide healthcare whether the Affordable Healthcare Act continues as the law of the land or if it is repealed, this is about the money. This debate is about redistribution of wealth in America. We have all stood by and silently watched as medical and insurance industries took everything from neighbors and relatives and demanded more. The wealth of the working class is being redistributed to the insurance and medical industries. I have watched in town as the elderly are taken from their homes and not even allowed to take a picture of their father with them. All their assets are hauled off and “disposed off.” Their houses are sold to a political friend for a fraction of it value. The home is than resold by the political associate for a 400%-500% profit. The modern day highwaymen are robbing the middle class blind. They have a good scam going and they will be hard to stop.

There are many people who would rewrite history to benefit their political ideologies. Only a tiny portion of our history is taught in school so it is important not to accept history according to political ideologies without first making an independent search of the facts. The fact is America realized over a hundred years ago that our healthcare delivery system was not working. Most Americans believe that the American Medical Association (AMA) represents the doctors in America but in reality the AMA only represents only 60% of US doctors. The AMA though it first completely supported National Healthcare but by the 1930s became a bitter enemy of any form of healthcare that was not greed based. The AMA became one of the leading political ideologue against national healthcare. The fact is that some doctors officially support National Healthcare and one such organization is Physicians for a National Healthcare Program (PNHP) “A Brief History of Universal Healthcare Efforts in the US” is posted on their website. A quote from Harry Truman is also posted on their site.

”The time has arrived to help millions of people living without a full measure of opportunity to achieve and enjoy good… and [to have] protection…against the economic effects of sickness.”

It is amazing to see that in 1945 Harry Truman was concerned with the “protection…against the economic effects of sickness.” The cost of sickness in 1945 was a tiny fraction of the cost of sickness today. If food had gone up as much as medical care since 1945 a dozen eggs would cost $55, a gallon of milk would be $48, and a dozen oranges would cost $134. You would need a shopping cart to take the money to grocery store but you would only need a small bag to take the groceries back home.

National Health insurance was to be included in the Social Security Act of 1935 but opposition by the America Medical Association (AMA) effectively killed National Medical Insurance. It seems the very people who stood to benefit the most, the doctors, did everything in their power to kill National Health Insurance. Since the Great Depression was going on at the time and many if not most medical bills were going unpaid why would the doctors oppose a system that would insure their bills would be paid? They feared that cost controls would accompany national health insurance. At the time the doctors typically charged the patients on a sliding scale, rich patients were charged higher fees and poor patients paid lower fees. My dad never got over the fact that my parents were charged twice as much by the same doctor for the birth of my sister as another couple they played cards with was for the birth of their child. Doctors were said to check out the type of car and how new it was to decide what they would charge on a sliding scale. There was no such thing as a flat fee until medical insurance became common.

The outcry from the doctors in the 40s was that National Health Insurance would make them slaves. If they had to work for a salary they would be slaves in their mind. A few days on a plantation might have shown them what a difference there was. Most Americans work for a salary and don’t think of themselves as slaves but the AMA thought this was a valid argument and that this argument would generate sympathy from the rest of America. Most doctors would still have 6 figure incomes in any National Healthcare Plan and no doubt be in the upper 5 percentile in incomes. It is hard for most Americans to feel sorry for someone who makes more money than 95% of us do. We definitely would not think of them as slaves. But in a society whose value system is greed based on greed we understand their aspirations to be among the top1%.

The goal of National Health Insurance can only be achieved by changing our value system. Greed can not be the primary value our society is built on we have to understand there are more important values. In the end greed destroys our humanity.

The man that designed the National Healthcare system in Canada is a considered a national hero. In Canada if you are sick you simply go to the doctor’s office and there is no charge for his services. A Canadian doctor receives his compensation from the Canadian government. The Canadian healthcare system is a single payer healthcare system. The average gross salary for a doctor in Canada under this system is $328,000. Canada adopted National Healthcare in 1984 one of the right wing talking points is that if National Healthcare is adopted there will be shortage of doctors because they will not work for a paltry $328,000 a year but in Canada the opposite has happened and they now have a record amount of doctors 29 years after the adoption of National Healthcare it seems there are people who will work for paltry $328,000 a year.

Doctors in Canada work on average 35 hours a week while doctors in America work a 70 hour week. The doctors in America spend only 35 hours on patient care and the other 35 hours cajoling the insurance companies to get paid. The insurance companies employee experts to try and keep from paying for medical procedures. Where a doctor in America must deal with a 150 different insurance companies and a 150 different set of rules a Canadian doctor deals with only a single payer and a single set of rules. Since the Canadian government does not need to make a profit it has no need to try and defraud the doctors out of payment there are no CEOs or stock holders trying to get rich off the sickness of others and by not paying for their medical care.

The red neck right argument that the Canadian healthcare system is socialized medicine does not hold water. In socialized medicine the doctors are government employees in Canada each doctor has his own practice and bills the government for his services. In would be like saying we have a socialized agriculture in America because the government provides price support for crops.

Rush Slimbaugh answer to America Healthcare crisis, do nothing. He was admonishing his fellow Republican for proposing an alternative proposal to deal with healthcare. Rush says absolutely nothing should be done. Rush believes we should insure the healthy and let nature take its course with the sick. In Rush’s mind the sick are going to die sometime so why not let them die now instead of later. It is simple economics in Rush’s mind those who can afford to live should enjoy the privilege those who can’t should at least have the decency to suffer and die silence.

Most people think of psychopaths as being like Ted Bundy and Jeffery Dahmer but in actuality serial killers make up only a tiny fraction of psychopaths. Most psychopaths are not criminals but they all have one thing in common they make decisions based on how it benefits them. Rush Slimbaugh thinks like a psychopath he makes every decision based on how it will benefit Rush. If the current cost of health insurance continues at the current rate for the next 30 years only the top 1% will be able to purchase health insurance. Why does this not bother Rush? He is one of the top 1% and will continue to have access to healthcare. Does it bother Rush that 99% of Americans won’t be able to afford health insurance in 30 years? Not in the least no more than it bothered Ted Bundy when he killed his victims for his amusement after all they were going to die some day why not today. Neuroscientists can now pin point the brain patterns of a psychopaths they brain scans can be easily separated from normal people. There are areas of the brain in psychopaths that are simply inactive. Unfortunately most psychopaths in our society are far more likely to be political ideologues or CEOs than serial killers but the damage they do to society is far worse than a few dead bodies.

This is dawning of the age of the Psychopath, they are admired for their very lack of humanity.

I wonder if during Rush Slimbaugh drug use and hearing loss caused by illegal drugs use whether there was ever a brain scan done and if it was would it prove that he was a psychopath. A psychopath like Ted Bundy can at best only affect a few lives but a psychopath with a microphone and use of the public airwaves can damage hundreds of millions of lives now and hundreds of millions of lives in future generations as he preaches his gospel of selfishness. The current healthcare debate is pivotal, if healthcare continues to eat up an even larger share of GNP America will simply not be a viable manufacturing country in the future. Healthcare of employees is already the most costly expense in the manufacture of a new car. Two of the biggest corporations in the world, GM and Chrysler, collapsed under the ever increasing burden of healthcare. Rush answer would be the classic psychopath’s answer “let them eat cake,” if you can’t afford healthcare you can go eat cake according to Slimbaugh.

The question in the future is do we continue to indulge those like Slimbaugh who already have 95% of the economic pie with bigger and bigger shares of the economic pie? Or do we finally wise up to the psychopath’s game and put a stop to it. Contrary to popular belief putting all of or most of the economic resources of a country into the hands of a few psychopaths does not benefit the country as a whole but it does benefit the psychopaths. Just 1% of America population are psychopaths that may sound like a small number but it amounts to over 3 million psychopaths in America today. We know that 20% to 30% of the American prison population is made up of psychopaths and they are the most likely to be repeat offenders. Only about 2.5 million prisoners are incarcerated if we apply the high estimate of 30% of the prison population as psychopaths it would amount to 900,000 psychopaths jailed but the majority are running lose we have to deal with 2,100,000 running lose everyday. In a meritocracy such as ours it is the cream that is suppose to rise to the top but in fact the psychopaths in our society are the ones most likely to rise to the top and when they get there they will take everything they can.

Slimbaugh and Romney’s attitude can easily be seen as that of a psychopath. Romney even though he was extremely rich was running for president to cut the taxes he was paying on his vast fortune. He was only paying around 10% after deductions and he wanted to cut it further. A system that is designed to favor psychopaths will put psychopaths in power. Slimbaugh thinks there is absolutely nothing wrong with a company, city or state cheating their employees out of their pensions and openly advocates that on his show. Why? The base calculation and the deciding calculation of every psychopath is basic math, does it benefit me? If the city where Slimbaugh lives keeps it promise and pays it employees their pension taxes may be need to be raised and that would come out of Slimbaugh share. If Healthcare is nationalized that also would take a bite out of Slimbaugh share. Slimbaugh never considers what would be moral or right he is incapable of doing so, that portion of a psychopath brain doesn’t work. He is capable only of simple math and whether the outcome benefits him is the bases of his every decision. Less sophisticated psychopath sees nothing wrong with using a gun to take whatever their victim have but more sophisticated psychopaths understand that there are consequences to some actions an avoid criminal actions.

In California 23% of those signing up for health insurance under the Affordable Health Care Act are between 18 and 34, approximately matching that demographic in the general population. Since The Affordable Healthcare Act mandates that members of that same group up to age 26 are covered under their parent’s insurance plans this demographic may be actually over represented. One of the major red neck right talking points is that the young will not sign up for health insurance in sufficient numbers to make it viable what is happening in California is showing the difference between self-serving propaganda and reality. The psychopaths like Rush Slimbaugh will continue to push their self-serving propaganda long after reality shows it to be nothing more than obvious lies.

When the city of Huntington’s health insurance became unaffordable in 2008 I was one of those on the committee who spent a year studying different types of insurance plans and self insured plans. The second term democratic Mayor at the time had been supported and elected with union support and we expected to be treated fairly at the very least. As I was president of the local at the time he did not get support by the union in his bid for a third term. An insurance consultant was bought in at the time with the idea of keeping our Blue Cross policy. Though the city was self-insured Blue Cross administered the plan and the employee could go to their network of doctors. We had already lost the prerogative of choosing your own doctor and that was about to get far worse. The consultant was a bean counter and simply looked at claim history and looked at cutting out coverage that was costing the city money. For instance if you worked for a company that had large claims for accidents on all terrain vehicles, you put a disclaimer in the policy that stated that the company’s health insurance policy would no longer pay for medical claims caused by an accident on a all terrain vehicles. In WV all terrain vehicles accidents rival automobile accidents for the number of injuries and deaths. The basic idea of greed based health insurance is to exclude medical losses and excluding all terrain vehicles accidents could save a small company a half million dollars in just that one change. Rasing the deductible was another change that produced short term savings. Our policy had an originally had a deductible of $100 for 25 years it was raised to $1500. Rasing the deductible was a direct cost shift of 1500%. But it saves more than the $1500 because many employees that did have the $100 didn’t have the $1500 and as a result they make medical care decision like any other economic decision if you can’t afford it you do without. Of course this is short term bean counter thinking and long term foolish it saves money on the front end but when a relatively minor medical problem all to often turns into ½ million dollar medical loss. Medical care is often a pay me now or pay me much more later proposition. The bean counter always comfort themselves by saying we didn’t deny medical care we just deny payment. The bean counters look on the bright side and hope that those who go without medical care because of higher and higher deductibles will go without medical care long enough that they will die quickly and not cause a large medical loss, after all those that die are not people to bean counters they are just beans on paper and all beans are created equal in the minds of bean counters they are just numbers on a sheet of paper.

In a strange twist of fate one of the main management bean counters who pushed to cut our insurance policy to pieces wife soon came down with breast cancer and now that the cancer spread throughout her body will likely cost the insurance policy $1.5 million and bury him in debt for the rest of his life.

In Huntington when our insurance committee looked at the two most costly age groups it was those from 60 to 65 and those zero to 6 months. Of course those from zero to six months don’t buy insurance but they are on their parent’s policy usually the 20 something group. Pediatric intensive care is extremely expensive a fireman’s wife recently had triplets that ended up pediatric intensive care the insurance claim ended up between $1.5 million and $2 million. Two of the babies did not make it. Most 20 somethings are looking at starting a family and from delivering the babies to infant medical care it can be extremely expensive so the 20 somethings need insurance every bit as bad as other age groups so it should not be surprising that the 20 somethings are enrolling in the Affordable Healthcare Act at a proportional rate to their numbers in the general population. The fact is the 20 somethings are least likely to have jobs that provide insurance and are least likely to be able to afford private insurance.

The 20 somethngs are far more likely to be involved in car and 4 wheeler accidents. They are more likely to take foolish risks and more likely to drive drunk. Big medical bills could destroy their credit and diminish the rest of their lives. Of course not all 20 somethings will rush out and buy insurance this year but as the penalty increase and tax refund decrease it will become more attractive to just buy health insurance.

The longest journey starts with the smallest step and the Affordable Healthcare act is that small step in the right direction. The critics on the right will always point out that the Affordable Healthcare Act does not solve all our healthcare problems overnight any more than a first step got the early settlers all the way to California but if they had never taken the first step they would never have gotten to California.

The art of misdirection is invaluable to a magician; it is the art of controlling the audience’s attention. The art of misdirection is also just as invaluable to another profession that of the professional political propagandist. The political propagandist does not tell you so much how to think but tries to confine your attention to certain aspects of the political debate.
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“The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, there intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these points in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.”

Hitler
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Obamacare was their slogan and that slogan has been repeated millions of times certainly enough to satisfy Hitler’s prescription of “harping” on the slogan endlessly. By using the slang term Obamacare instead of the correct terminology of The Affordable Act it ensured that anyone who voted against Obama would be against healthcare reform. This of course was misdirection at its best. Magicians use misdirection to entertain

The propagandists on the right have successful been able to misdirect the public’s attention away from the cost of health insurance that has been going up at the rate of 33 times every 34 years to the troubles with the web site. This been a very successful misdirection as most of the public as completely forgotten about the cost of health insurance continuing to go up at an unsustainable rate of 33 times every 34 years an instead focused their anger on the healthcare web site. Healthcare in America will continue to be supplied by the same doctors and hospitals under the Affordable Healthcare Act and people do not have to use the website to sign up as traditional paper applications can still be made to the health insurance companies supplying the insurance. When the truth actually came out we found it took 2 years to get all the bugs out of the Massachusetts healthcare site but the red neck right political propagandists misdirected the public attention to the window dressing and away from the actual problem. In solving problems staying focused on the actual problem is the key to solving any problem. Hitler was right the “public power of forgetting is [indeed] enormous,” the American public attention has been high jacked by the political propagandists and they have forgot America has a very serious problem to solve.

Magicians use misdirection to entertain but political propagandists employee misdirection for far darker purposes like looting the pockets of the middleclass. The political propagandist serve masters and their master stand to get richer. It is all really about money and as ways to rip the middleclass off become more sophisticated the middleclass will continue to suffer.

On the Sunday news shows the debate on healthcare continued well not really on healthcare but focused simply on one way of many to sign up for healthcare. It wasn’t just the rightwing propaganda network, Fox News who focused on the government website it was the mainstream news as well. Not one station focused on the real problem that the cost of healthcare is going up 33 times in 35 years in period when wages in real dollars declined for many working Americans. The steep rise in medical care in America is unprecedented anywhere else in the world. Tens of millions of Americans have already been priced out of the healthcare market while the government provides health care for 58 million through Medicaid that means that 19.3% of Americans get free healthcare from the government. Medicare provides health insurance to another 50.7 million Americans. The government provides or subsidizes healthcare for a 108.7 million people or 35% of Americans it is those in the middle that have had to absorb the cost of healthcare going up 33 times in 35 years. They are the ones least likely to have health insurance as they are priced out of the market the poor have Medicaid to fall back while many in the middle class go without healthcare.

In one of Rush Slimbaugh’s longtime talking point about healthcare he compares healthcare to the purchase of a car. Rush is always good to provide us with a psychopath’s perspective on the problem. In Rush’s demented mind purchasing healthcare is no different than purchasing an automobile. Rush points out that not everyone can afford to purchase a Cadillac that some can only afford to purchase a Hyundai. In Rush mind the government would not subsidize those who could only afford a Hyundai so they could afford to buy a Cadillac and healthcare is just a commodity like a car or any other consumer good or service. Opinions of psychopaths are self-serving and since Rush makes $70 million a year to sit on his rear and tell others they should just do without healthcare.

A Hyundai will get you from place to place just as well as a Cadillac and probably do it for less. Even if you could not afford a new Hyundai you might be able to purchase a used one but even if you couldn’t purchase anything but a bike it would not threaten your life. To Rush and other commie/conservative it is simply a black and white problem you can afford healthcare or you can’t if you can’t afford it you and your children can just do without healthcare and die that is the way of the free market you can afford it or you can’t. Jeffery Dahmer or Ted Bundy would have no problem with this type of thinking they would have probably even volunteered to help those without health insurance die quickly instead of prolonging their suffering.

In a world where only 1% of the population are psychopaths America has seen the psychopaths establish their own political philosophy and political movement. One of the prime talents of psychopaths is manipulation of others. The police in Washington state knew that Ted Bundy was taking his victims off of a certain beach. They doubled the number of Policemen on that beach. On that Sunday afternoon Ted Bundy took not one but two different victims off of that beach. They got in his Volkswagen of their own free will. There was no passenger side door handle in Bundy car. In America we got in to the psychopath’s car 30 years ago and there was no door handle to get out.