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Slavin again? (groan)

Dec 1

Posted by Rob Field in Florida, Politics | No Comments

In his incoherent scree …, I mean in his blog: “Clean Up St. Augustine,” shrill noisemaker Slavin returns for more silliness:

Yet ROB FIELDS ululates as only a wannabee apparatchik can, like a hog caught under a gate.

Why do the heathen rage?

Because Faye Armitage is “the real deal” and HEATHER BEAVEN is a fake, just like CLYDE MALLOY before her. Like CLYDE MALLOY, BEAVEN seems like a “Stealth” candidate, with no detectable pre-existing positions that would make one believe she is a Democrat.

Is HEATHER BEAVEN a shameless opportunist?

With some of the same staff (and funders), FIELDS is mistaken to dubBEAVEN “the frontrunner” when no one has ever voted for BEAVEN, and 2008 Democratic nominee Faye Armitage earned nearly 150,000 votes last year against reprobate Representative JOHN LUIGI MICA for the Seventh Congressional District race.

Beaven has no staff in common with Malloy. There’s also not more than a thousand bucks worth of donor overlap.
Beaven and Malloy are both lifelong Democrats.
What Mr. Slavin fails to mention is that elections are not tests of character or fairy-tale struggles against evil, they are numbers games, technical exercises in the mobilization and utilization of resources.
It’s rather bizarre that Slavin repeatedly refers to Malloy and Beaven as “stealth” candidates, because it is Ms. Armitage who is running a stealth campaign. Filing in April, she has missed two FEC reporting deadlines. She illegally refuses to report her fund-raising totals and sources. What is Armitage afraid for us to know?
Ms. Armitage has failed to put together the team necessary to beat Mica. This General Election will be more difficult than last cycle, because turnout will be lower. Armitage is serving as a spoiler. She will not campaign, will not raise money, but she refuses to drop out, clearing the field for Beaven to attract support from people waiting to see what the previous nominee will do. Since the Primary is only two months before the General, this could potentially swing an otherwise contestable election in Mica’s favor.
Ms. Armitage is the stealth candidate, pretending to be a Democrat while helping keep John Mica in office.

Beaven has no staff in common with Malloy. There’s also not more than a thousand bucks worth of donor overlap.

Beaven and Malloy are both lifelong Democrats.

What Mr. Slavin fails to mention is that elections are not tests of character or fairy-tale struggles against evil, they are numbers games, technical exercises in the mobilization and utilization of resources.

It’s rather bizarre that Slavin repeatedly refers to Malloy and Beaven as “stealth” candidates, because it is Ms. Armitage who is running a stealth campaign. Filing in April, she has missed two FEC reporting deadlines. She illegally refuses to report her fund-raising totals and sources. What is Armitage afraid for us to know?

Ms. Armitage has failed to put together the team necessary to beat Mica. This General Election will be more difficult than last cycle, because turnout will be lower. Armitage is serving as a spoiler. She will not campaign, will not raise money, but she refuses to drop out, making it more difficult for Beaven to attract support from people waiting to see what the previous nominee will do. Since the Primary is only two months before the General, this could potentially swing an otherwise contestable election in Mica’s favor.

Ms. Armitage is the stealth candidate, pretending to be a Democrat while helping keep John Mica in office.

By the way, my name is “Field,” not “Fields.” It’s written right in the comment field and everything. I already knew you can’t write, but I thought even a disbarred attorney could read.

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Armitage Supporters Are Getting A Tad Squirrelly

Nov 26

Posted by Rob Field in Florida, Politics | No Comments

faye--armitage-3397-20090216-5Beaven, HeatherArmitage Supporter Ed Slavin, in his blog “Clean Up St. Augustine” went a bit too far in his search for contrast between his favored candidate for FL-7 and apparent front-runner Heather Beaven. In his post supporting Republican incumbent John Mica’s bid to ban smartphones and laptops from US airlines, Slavin got a bit carried away:

It is a matter of air safety. When we fly, we don’t want to die.

While lithium batteries have caught on fire, the number of times this has happened is dwarfed by the billions of units in service around the world. Clearly, the facts do not justify the kind of hyperbolic language on display in this post.

Likewise, Slavin’s spin of this issue as an attack on Beaven was a bit out of left field:

Heather Beaven, the Stealth corporativist candidate from the “monumental, $20 million dollar, growth campaign” that teaches workers nothing about OSHA.

Heather Beaven: unsafe at any speed?

Wait, what?

Reading this kind of bizarre vitriol, I was compelled to respond:

Banning lithium batteries from aircraft would mean eliminating all laptops and smartphones from air travel. This is unrealistic in the extreme, because such devices have become indispensable tools for the business traveler. Airlines have recently added WiFi to their flights in recognition of this fact. Every airport in the US has facilities for wireless networking. These devices allow business travelers to receive, send, and edit data and voice communications with their home offices, out-of-town clients, and suppliers. Banning or confiscating such devices would do much to render business travel impractical.

There have been incidents of batteries catching fire, but of the billions of units in service, the number of documented fires have numbered in the hundreds. Considering the percentage of a device’s life represented by a trans-continental flight, such a ban would represent a gross over-reaction to a very small threat. Even the arch-paranoiac Dick Cheney only applied a one-percent doctrine to his worst-case models. This would be more like a .00001 percent model, and Cheney was talking about nukes!

Look, these things have been in widespread use for a decade, and there are billions of air-miles logged a year. If this were a danger worth imposing this kind of cost, it really would have happened by now.

Furthermore, this issue is hardly the focus of Ms. Beaven’s campaign, and does not justify the inflammatory ad hominem tactics represented in this post. There are plenty of points of disagreement between Armitage and Beaven which could have been explored here, but the Bush-style scaremongering displayed here is unworthy of you or this fine blog.

It’s hard to understand why such an erratic campaigner as Armitage inspires such fervent loyalty. Whatever the political qualities of Beaven, at least she has been running a campaign. She’s been building a team, making appearances, raising money, hiring consultants, and using the media. Armitage has filed no campaign finance reports, has hired no staff, made few public appearances, and refuses to return repeated calls about her status as a candidate. When she ran last year, she showed little aptitude for retail politics. She was able to win the primary based on the personal loyalties of fellow health care activists in her home county, but got beaten by more than twenty points in the most favorable environment  for Democrats in this district since 2002. I’m personally prepared to blame myself for her primary win in 2008, but her idiosyncratic interpersonal style is a strange choice for someone who aspires to elected office. Apparently, her combative and quixotic approach is contagious.

Banning lithium batteries from aircraft would mean eliminating all laptops and smartphones from air travel. This is unrealistic in the extreme, because such devices have become indispensable tools for the business traveler. Airlines have recently added WiFi to their flights in recognition of this fact. Every airport in the US has facilities for wireless networking. These devices allow business travelers to receive, send, and edit data and voice communications with their home offices, out-of-town clients, and suppliers. Banning or confiscating such devices would do much to render business travel impractical.
There have been incidents of batteries catching fire, but of the billions of units in service, the number of documented fires have numbered in the hundreds. Considering the percentage of a device’s life represented by a trans-continental flight, such a ban would represent a gross over-reaction to a very small threat. Even the arch-paranoiac Dick Cheney only applied a one-percent doctrine to his worst-case models. This would be more like a .00001 percent model, and Cheney was talking about nukes!
Look, these things have been in widespread use for a decade, and there are billions of air-miles logged a year. If this were a danger worth imposing this kind of cost, it really would have happened by now.
Furthermore, this issue is hardly the focus of Ms. Beaven’s campaign, and does not justify the inflammatory ad hominem tactics represented in this post. There are plenty of points of disagreement between Armitage and Beaven which could have been explored here, but the Bush-style scaremongering displayed here is unworthy of you or this fine blo

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No Way Are We That Friggin’ Lucky!

Nov 24

Posted by Rob Field in Culture, Politics | 1 Comment

Sarah Palin demonstrates her native intelligence with a sly wink!

I was cruisin’ the tubes when I came across a blog post on the Atlantic Monthly site about female support (or more precisely, the lack thereof) for Sarah Palin. At the bottom of the comments section was this gem from a “tnorton:”

If she didn’t have a good chance you liberals would not keep running stories daily headlines about her not being qualified, nor would your supporters spend most of their time responding or commenting on how she doesn’t have a chance. Funny how an attractive, intelligent republican female scares you guys so much. Must be because she not the average female liberal, A mullet wearing, PETA supporting lesbian member of NOW. Poor libs cant sleep at night worring about her. GO SARAH!!

If she didn’t have a good chance you liberals would not keep running stories daily headlines about her not being qualified, nor would your supporters spend most of their time responding or commenting on how she doesn’t have a chance. Funny how an attractive, intelligent republican female scares you guys so much. Must be because she not the average female liberal, A mullet wearing, PETA supporting lesbian member of NOW. Poor libs cant sleep at night worring about her. GO SARAH!!

Now, suffice it to say, I had one or two points of disagreement with this brilliant person, but the foremost was the idea that liberals thought that Palin running for President was a BAD THING. I felt compelled to share the following insight:

Are you freakin’ kidding me? I’m wetting myself with glee, and so is everybody I know. She’s our dream opponent. She lays bare everything about your party and ideology that we hold in utter contempt: Your cluelessness, arrogance, utter lack of concern for the vulnerable and the future, your worship of wealth as the determinant of human value, your casual attitude toward the grave responsibilities of public office, your substitution of glib talking points for policy analysis, your mindless jingoism, your rank hypocrisy, your deeply troubled relationship with the truth. She is a better refutation of the conservative creed than anything we could make up. She is a giant gift-wrapped wet dream for liberals who might otherwise be concerned about 2012. I’m on my knees praying to the God I cherish that conservatives are THAT FRICKIN’ STUPID! If she announces, I’m going to launch a fund-raising drive for her among my liberal friends. In the words of my second-least-favorite President: “Bring it on!”

Reading that last paragraph, the only thing I regret is the absence of the word “vacuous.” Feel free to insert it where appropriate.

The Republican Party has experienced hacks and gifted wonks at its call. It has people who can look good in a suit, stare into a camera, and recite a focus-group tested soundbite with the best of them. Can we dare to hope that the rabid base is gullible enough to believe that this human train wreck is the best choice to run against one of the best political operators in the history of American politics? Can we really be that lucky?

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Meek: Not Losing Senate Race

Oct 12

Posted by Rob Field in Florida, Politics | No Comments

44510343I’ve liked Kendrick Meek and his campaign ever since I met him in January. Super GF Lisa was a big fan and tried to get us jobs on the campaign. We failed at this, but remain committed supporters of the Congressman, securing hundreds of petition signatures in Volusia County. A gregarious but serious man with witty but bearable children and an impossibly attractive and sharp wife, not liking Kendrick Meek is a symptom of some personality disorder. While he is undeniably the Kendrick Meek of the manicured life and the high-flying friends, he’s also surprisingly Progressive and committed to the plight of Americans on the edge. And yet, even though he is running a well-organized, well-funded, and well-connected campaign, the Party seems to find ways of marginalizing the man, like giving him the tail-end time slot after the one-sentence speeches by the House candidates, while the delegates were eating lunch. He faced a half-empty room and gave a rousing speech to people who were already backing him, while freshmen like Alan Grayson got choice slots to fuel his re-election campaign to the US House.

On Sunday Morning at the State Conference, after the AG’s debate, The Kendrick Meek campaign held a combined press/new media event with three professional reporters and a handful of bloggers. The campaign’s new chair and the newish new media director were present and began the briefing before the arrival of the candidate. They were delighted about a poll that showed the Crist-Meek gap to be not 18 points, as last month’s poll showed, but a mere 14. Hey, advocacy is their job. They had it partially broken down and showed where Crist’s numbers were soft, which we knew. A great deal of emphasis was placed on an 800 LV phone poll with an MoE of 4.

But it’s hard to imagine a poll can be meaningful 13 months out when one’s opponent is the sitting governor of a state with huge budget liabilities and angry citizens. Crist’s decision to leave the Governor’s mansion and run for the seat mid-term in the middle of a budget crisis has always seemed callous to me. When some of my more Republican-friendly acquaintances told me he was going to do it, I suggested that there were cheaper methods of political suicide. Chalk another one up for the genius.

The real reporters questioned the validity of the poll, and I had technical questions. The real reporters asked inside baseball questions about the emergence of yet more penniless candidates in a crowded field that includes safe-seat fixture Corrine Brown from bizarrely gerrymandered District 3 . By this time, Kendrick had come in and addressed the reporter’s questions in a even, focused tone I found effective. He then went on to criticize a St. Pete Times reporter for a story that reported the empty room the day before without explaining why the room was empty. The effect was deceptive, but Meek was not making his case. There’s no way to complain about coverage and sound above the fray. Reporters go for the superficial. It’s their way of being “fair.” Analysis is spin. Besides, they might all be replaced with fashion reporters next Tuesday, so who the hell cares?

I saw near-universal Meek support among the delegates. Meek stickers were at least as omnipresent as Obama stickers in the parking lot. There is no doubt he will win the nomination, and in that sense the St. Pete piece was deceptive, because it strongly implied the nomination was up for grabs.

Reporters asked repeatedly about third-quarter fundraising numbers, which were still not public. The Chair delayed releasing the numbers until they finished spinning the poll. Then he announced that the campaign raised just under $800,000 in the first quarter, not enough to catch up with Crist. He promised three major fundraisers in the fourth quarter, two with former President Bill Clinton. If he can’t crack a million and a half then, something will be wrong.

One of the odd moments was when a reporter seemed on the verge of asking whether a black man could be elected Senator in Florida. He didn’t want to ask that question and it sort of visibly morphed into whether a man from Miami was electable statewide.

This was my first media event, so I’ll suspend judgement. The overwhelming impressions were the dearth of political savvy among the bloggers, the cynicism of the press, the tightly controlled candidate, and the transparent spin of the campaign staff. Other than two numbers and two scheduled events, I was no more enlightened than when I got there. Since everyone in the room had a Blackberry, it might have been avoided altogether.

Honestly, I’m worried Crist might knock Kendrick off, just by name-recognition alone. But it’s a hell of a long time between here and there. By choosing to get on the ballot by petition, he’s putting his money into voter contact where the response rates are higher. Crist will thus be able to out-TV him in the General. Countering that in the field will take the kind of specialized social-media tools we saw in the Obama campaign and that are as yet unseen in Meek’s campaign. The whole strategy is a risky bet. Large states are always won on television. Clinton won most large states in the primaries. The trend is aggravated by the likely low turnout in a mid-term race. If the petition strategy has a hidden advantage, this is it. Turnout operations are easier when you have all those voter contacts.

Anyway, good luck to Kendrick and his team. Hint: always feed the reporters. Worked for George W.

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Attorney General Debate

Oct 11

Posted by Rob Field in Florida, Politics | 4 Comments

At the Florida State Democratic Party Conference on Sunday morning was the hotly-anticipated debate between Attorney General candidates Dave Aronberg and Dan Gelber. Although both campaigns had an active presence throughout the Conference, Sunday morning revealed a Gelber juggernaut in the debate hall. Several hundred dollars worth of glossy yard signs and perhaps gratuitously pandering palm cards littered the venue, while Aronberg’s hand-drawn signs filled every other seat. Gelber supporters in vivid t-shirts crowded the halls and the venue, pasting Gelber stickers on the slow-moving and cooperative alike. There was a pretty obvious attempt to project the aura of inevitability.

The aura was interrupted by Gelber’s opening shot on vouchers, which was returned by Aronberg equating the comment with Republican smear jobs. After that, the two candidates couldn’t say too many times how much they liked each other. Aronberg’s answers were consistently, if not overwhelmingly, sharper and more coherent than those of his opponent. Senator Gelber felt it necessary to mention three times that his wife was also a federal prosecutor, seemingly implying that prosecutorial talent can be sexually transmitted and that he was thus twice as qulaified as Senator Aronberg to be AG. Aronberg made the risky move of calling for reforms in sex offender laws but didn’t seem to lose the audience. The crowd, which seemed like a Gelber fan club at the beginning, definitely warmed to Aronberg by the end. One leading YD looked at Sen. Aronberg and said “future Governor.” I think the YD might be right.

A Star is Born

Oct 11

Posted by Rob Field in Florida, Politics | No Comments

At the 2009 Florida State Democratic Conference on Saturday, the organizers arranged the usual dog-and-pony show, putting telegenic Democrats on giant screens in front of cheering Democrats in what can only be described as a sporting event. Every forceful phrase was rewarded with applause and cheers. There is always something North Korean about the atmosphere at a party event. During Bill Nelson’s address, however, the North Korean vibe was broken by hundreds of angry hecklers screaming “Public Option!” at every pause in the Senator’s remarks. Nelson kept to his rambling speech, talking about everything but the issue on everyone’s mind, even taking refuge in a gratuitous display of Obama-humping over the catcalls. Finally, he came to the subject of the health care bill to cheers and more calls of “Public Option!” When Nelson pledged to support a watered-down version of the public option proposed by New York Senator Chuck Schumer, the crowd let him finish in peace.

Next to speak was 8th District Congressman Alan Grayson, who recently opined that the Republican health reform plan was for sick people to die quickly. The crowd lost its collective senses. Wild applause filled the hall. I had thought that party leaders may have been nervous about Grayson’s incendiary language, but they were clearly encouraging it by giving him a prime time slot after the keynote. Grayson, of course, stole the show, repeating his greatest hits to wild acclaim and clearly eating it up. He proposed that the Democratic Party be renamed the Conscience Party and the Republican Party the Party of Selfishness. The language came off a bit cynical and pandering, but the crowd was wholly uncritical. There’s no doubt there’s a great deal of sincere feeling behind Grayson’s rhetoric, but the simplicity of the language seems crafted. He was one of the few mainstream Southern Democrats in recent years to approach a critique of conservatism itself. Grayson’s popularity holds out hope of a new era of Progressive dominance in the Party.

The Congressman has been making the rounds on television and distributing his clips on the Web. His fundraising has been brisk, and it appears he will not have to use his own money this cycle. Of course, Congressman Grayson’s popularity comes at a bad time. He probably will not enter the Senate race this late, and the next shot will be Nelson’s seat in 2012. He might take it, but the Party would seek to stop him. The only other prize is re-election, which seems like a lot of effort for a small reward. Acclaim like this never lasts.

One wonders if this was calculated or just, as one observer out it, “Alan being Alan.”

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Because We Can

Oct 11

Posted by Rob Field in Florida, Politics | No Comments

fa_2009_conferenceI just got back from the Florida Democratic Party’s 2009 State Conference. Like in 2007, I was struck by the contrast between the sparkling talent on offer from some of the party’s candidates and the lackluster leadership and organization of the event. The schedule, as usual, could be classified as Science Fiction, and the dominant experience during daylight hours seemed to be hordes of confused-looking delegates trying to find events moved halfway across the building.

Michael Arth, the serious but seriously dark-horse candidate for Governor, rented a table and occupied it on Friday to find it moved to the ghetto on Saturday morning with all his campaign materials “placed in storage” without his knowledge. (Where I come from, we call this stealing.) He chose to confront his tormentors politely through the viewfinder of a video camera, so of course venue staff helped him move to an acceptable location near some actual humans. Apparently, the rule is to speak softly and shoot in HD. Nobody likes to be a jerk on YouTube.

The Party’s consistently antagonistic attitude toward Mr. Arth and other long shots for statewide office mystifies me. The concern expressed is that disunity threatens victory in 2010, but of course the nastiness just gives him publicity among Democrats dissatisfied with Tallahassee, which is more than a few. On their own, these candidates would get their 25 percent and be gone. Who would notice or care? Why run the risk of bad press? Giving all the minor candidates for Governor access to favorable table locations, speaking engagements, email lists and other goodies would cost the party very little, disrupt events less, and build goodwill among those Progressives inclined to view the arbitrary exercise of power darkly. It certainly wouldn’t threaten Ms. Sink’s all but certain run to the nomination. Their answer is that they’re not required to do that, which is a non sequitur.

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The Myth of Bipartisanship

Oct 6

Posted by Rob Field in Florida, Politics | 2 Comments

225px-Alan_GraysonWe have been assaulted for more than a year with the most extreme claims about the President. He was a secret extremist Muslim, we were told. No, a radical black supremacist Christian, wait, a socialist terror sympathizer. When he won the election last fall, I was stupid enough to believe that the rhetoric had peaked. Hah!

When he proposed the centerpiece of his domestic agenda, he carefully adhered to his campaign pledge of apolitical politics. He sat the “stakeholders” (vested financial interests, not the patients whose lives were at stake) at the table and gave away the winning run before kickoff. Single-payer proposals that would have improved standards of care, controlled costs, and guaranteed universal access were abandoned in favor of a wishy-washy “public option” that would accomplish none of those things. He declared again and again his intention to reach a “bipartisan” deal with Republicans in Congress, bending over backwards to avoid pissing off conservatives.

So, of course, town halls across America were surrounded by gangs of lunatics toting guns, warning of looming totalitarianism, and comparing our soft-spoken moderate President to Hitler. The lunacy was not limited to the parking lots, either. Republican lawmakers were gleefully spreading sleaze about “death panels” and decrying Democrats’ non-existent intention to “pull the plug on Grandma.” So much for the tone.

So, when Congressman Alan Grayson suggested that the Republicans’ Health Care Plan was for sick people to “die quickly,” I was shocked to hear Republicans complain about the incivility of it all. What national debate on health care were they watching? Perhaps they had stepped through an inter-dimensional rift from a parallel Earth where they had not spent the summer inciting domestic terrorists to kill Democratic politicians.

Congressman Grayson’s remark was relatively civil, by the standards of this debate. It was also relatively factual. Although prone to superficial stunts, Mr. Grayson’s commitment to his constituents is undeniable. He is rightly concerned about a monstrously dysfunctional health care system that is simply unsustainable.  The loss of life from our broken system is equivalent to 15 9-11s every year. This is an absurd and intolerable situation, and the Congressman’s edgy rhetoric is more than justified. While the Republicans chase phantom nightmares of totalitarianism, Americans are subjected to a kafkaesque labyrinth of insurance company rules as they watch their husbands and wives, their children and brothers, their fathers, sisters and mothers die when basic medical care could have saved their lives.

Courageous Progressives like Mr. Grayson are to be congratulated, but more importantly, they need our support. Please make sure the Republicans can’t knock him off next year by donating today.

Forget bipartisanship. To steal from Aaron Sorkin, our job is not to end the fight. It’s to win it. Hundreds of thousands of lives are in the balance, as is the economic security of our nation.

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How We Lost The Public Option

Aug 18

Posted by Rob Field in Culture, Florida, Politics | 2 Comments

Secretary Sebelius on Sunday claimed that the public health insurance option is “not an essential element” of health care reform. President Obama said at a town hall on Saturday that the public option was just “one sliver” of reform. This could hardly be more wrong. A universally accessible public option would give low-income people too rich for Medicaid access to meaningful health insurance and is the only way to approach universal access to insurance without a mandate or single-payer.

The wave of chronic conditions America faces over the rest of the century demand early detection and intervention to control the costs and misery that they produce. Gaps and lapses in coverage will make those diseases more expensive for those patients and the rest of us. Preventing those gaps in coverage will require serving the low-income patients currently ill-served by the current mix of overstretched public programs and private high-deductible plans and still bend the cost curve down. That will require a plan that can deliver overhead in the 3-6% range. Only a public plan can do that.

The best solution would have been to put the entire population on a very low overhead plan. This was HR 676, Medicare for Everybody, Single-Payer. It never had a chance. Both Houses “placed it off the table” before negotiations began. The reasons for that decision are irrelevant, its consequences are all too clear. Moderate Democrats now pronounce the barely adequate public option DOA in the Senate. Without single-payer to draw fire, the opposition can focus on defeating the public plan option, If they had focused their energy on the socialism (i.e., public policy with which conservatives disagree) of single-payer health care, we could respond with the massive market reform of retaining the entire private health insurance with a single public program with subsidies for those who earn up to 4 times the localized poverty rate. Conservatives would hail this as a leg-up to the middle class, rather than welfare. We would have gotten the public plan we wanted, with ribbons affixed. They would hail their great market-driven defeat of the evil socialism of the hated liberals and declare it a great victory,

Instead we took the bogeyman away before the game started, leaving the public option as the target of the antis. We did so hoping to make them pros. This was possibly the most naive moment in contemporary American politics. The antis are anti not because of the actuarial tables or because Ludwig Von Mises hated regulation, but because we’re not them. We can’t be trusted to worship at the alter of God, CEO, therefore we are the enemy of all that is fine and good.

President Obama and Congressional leadership egregiously underestimated the irrational sectarian motivations of their opponents and chose to try to accomodate them, which merely served to slide the agenda rightward while buying nothing we couldn’t already take were we willing to ignore those we beat in November, as they have done to us and will again.

Thus are 22,000 Americans a year sacrificed to the demon of “Dear God, don’t let us be seen being Democrats.” God Bless America.

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The Bottom Line On Health Care Reform

Aug 8

Posted by Rob Field in Politics | No Comments

Before we can start talking meaningfully about health care reform, we have to understand the nature of the problem.

The biggest national problem is the entitlement gap. Over the next seventy-five years, we have a shortfall in our entitlement programs of about 50 trillion dollars, give or take ten trillion. Most of that gap is in Medicare and Medicaid. The gap is based on extrapolating current trends in health care expenditures, but current trends are not sustainable. Diabetes, obesity, and heart disease are increasing at a frightening rate, and we are not detecting these diseases early, when they can be prevented or treated more cheaply. The problem is particularly bad at lower income levels, where people away away from doctors until conditions become obviously life-threatening. Treatment is then sought at emergency rooms, where it is most expensive.  There should be no deductibles or co-pays, therefore, for routine, diagnostic, and preventive care. That’s the only way we can control the spiraling cost of treating chronic disease.

The same logic demands that coverage be universal and life-long. Portability must be automatic. Gaps in coverage will result in billions of dollars for unnecessary treatment for chronic disease. A child born today has a ONE IN THREE chance of developing Diabetes during their life. If that doesn’t wake you up, I don’t know what will. Cutting into those numbers will reverse the rising cost trend more effectively than any other measure.

The fastest-growing component of costs is in pharmaceuticals. We need to close the “no negotiations” loophole in Medicare Part D. If we are the industry’s largest customer, they will negotiate with us or face cuts in pharmaceutical spending. It’s not the taxpayer’s job to put money in the pockets of Big Pharma shareholders. We’re paying the highest drug prices in the world and it is time we stopped.

We also need to stop pretending there is some artificial dividing line between agricultural policy and health care. We are subsidizing the production of astronomical quantities of refined carbohydrates that are converted directly to glucose in the blood-stream, overwhelming the body’s capacity to absorb them. This is why obesity and diabetes are out of control. We evolved in an environment where fats and sugars were rare. Our bodies are optimized to process them as efficiently as possible. When placed in an environment where fats and sugars are the most plentiful foods, that efficiency kills us. The dietary habits of humans are very sensitive to considerations like convenience and cost. Artificially subsidized fats and sugars are helping to make us sick.

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