Republicans don't have alternatives 'cause of special interests

As Obamacare takes on water, and a heavy list to port, the national punditry has been zinging the Republicans for failure to come up with an alternative to Obamacare. 
   That alternative is simple.  We need measures to bring down the sky high costs of US healthcare.  The US spending 19% of GNP on healthcare.  That's twice as much as every other country in the world.  And, as measured by infant mortality rates and life expectancy, US health is no better than, and in fact, not quite as good as, health in any other first world country.  For example  Canada, Britain, Germany,. Japan, France, Israel, Scandinavia, South Korea and others.   In short we are paying twice what we ought to.  If we could bring costs down by half, things would be a lot easier.  The uninsured could take a sick child to the doctor without entering bankruptcy. 
   Measures to bring down costs are well known.  It's just that well heeled special interest groups are dead set against 'em.  They like things the way they are.
   First off, we need to bring down the malpractice costs.  Malpractice insurance, which every MD has to carry, runs $100,000 a year in premiums.  At this point, any unfavorable outcome is malpractice. Any time the patient fails to recover, the doctor gets sued. The lawyers advertise on TV for plaintiffs.  We could adopt the English rule (loser pays court costs).  We could do what New Hampshire did, implement a special medical malpractice  court, we could forbid suits over FDA approved drugs.  We could forbid advertising for plaintiffs.  But, the lawyers are dead set against anything that cuts into their profits.  Most politicians are lawyers, which makes 'em shills or at best highly sympathetic to the lawyers arguments.
  Second, we need to bring down drug costs.  Big Pharma whips out scads of wonderful new curealls, and charges $100 a pill for 'em.  We ought to allow import of drugs from places like Canada, where the national health care system has forced the prices down out of the stratosphere.  Big Pharma is dead set against it.  Obama got their support (and kept Harry and Louise quiet) by promising Big Pharma, no imports.  In fact the government won't even bargain for better drug prices.  Allowing import of drugs would drop US drug prices by half.
   Third we could allow sale of health insurance across state lines.  Up here in New Hampshire, we only have ONE health insurance company, Anthem.  And guess what our rates are?  Anthem just told a third of the hospitals in the state to go out of business, 'cause Anthem won't do business with them any more.  Ought to be, that I can buy health insurance from any US company, no matter what state they are located in.  Naturally the insurance companies are dead set against this idea. 
  In short, special interests have forced up the cost of health care, and the Republicans lack the stones to work against them. 
 

Women's vote beats Cuccinelli in VA

The VA government election was close, closer than the polls were predicting.  McAuliffe only won by a couple of percent over all. 
  But, according to the TV news today, McAuliffe won the women's vote by 10% over Cuccinelli.  That's margin of victory right there.  If Cuccinelli had carried the women's vote, he would be governor right now. 
Same thing happened to Romney last year.  He lost the women's vote by 10% to Obama. Romney would be president today if he have carried the woman's vote.
    What is it with us Republicans that we turn off the chicks? 
    Is it time to get off the anti abortion thing?  Most chicks remember a scary time when they were single, in school, and feared they were pregnant, and feared not being able to find a safe and confidential abortion.  This memory is unlikely to make them vote for Republicans who campaign on anti abortion platforms. 

Obamacare website is fixed when they say it is

Obama administration is claiming that all will be fixed on the website by the end of the month.  Yeah right.  So what do we mean by "fixed"?   That it can process five individuals at once without crashing more than once a day?   Or that it stays up for days at a time while processing 100,000 individuals at once?  Wanna bet, no matter how flaky the website is, the Obamanauts will declare it fixed? 

Newsies cannot count

NHPR was giving yesterday's election results this morning.  They reported on NH, VA, NYC, CO, WA elctions.  Not once did they give a vote count.  Win by a landslide, win by a hair, it's all the same to NHPR.  Or, their staff has difficulty with numbers too large to count on their fingers. 
   Then, to distract us from the Obamacare meltdown, they offered a couple of blue meat stories.  You know, you throw out red meat to excite conservatives, and blue meat to excite liberals. First was a hassle in upstate New York over opening town meeting with a prayer.  Really important story there. 
   Then they had an election finance story.  Some activist was urging the IRS to be even more difficult about granting tax exempt status to 501(c) yadda-yadda organizations lest they use the money for politicking.  Real people are all ready outraged about IRS harassment of conservative organizations, and this idiot wants more of the same.  

Congress fiddles while the country burns

Bring out more violins.  Congress has failed to pass any appropriations bills, we have NSA angering the entire world, they failed to deal with the debt limit, Iran is getting nukes, the Middle East is burning down. Obamacare has paralyzed the economy.
So what does Congress do?
  They pass a special interest bill for gays and lesbians.  I'm sure it will gain the members a few gay and lesbian votes, but really, we have have plenty of non-discrimination laws on the books, we don't really need another. 
   Congress critters ought to spend their time on things  that benefit the entire nation, not dealing out favors to special interest groups. 

It's Halloween for taxpayers.

The US House just gave the banks a big green rustling handshake.  It passed the "Swaps Regulatory Improvement Act"  HR 992 on 30 October this year by a vote of 292 to 122.  A Halloween special.  All Republicans and 70 Democrats, including my Democratic rep Annie Kuster, voted for passage.
   What's going on here?  First we have to understand what "swaps" are.  Swaps are a high stakes gambling vehicle which crashed Wall St back in 2008 and  kicked off Great Depression 2.0.  A "swap" is a deal between two banks, or a bank and a brokerage house, or an insurance company and  a brokerage house, or any mix.  Only two can play.  the deal goes thus. "If  certain bonds that you hold default, I will pay them off for you.  You are relieved of all risk.  In return you pay me a modest fee, in advance."   It amounts to bond insurance against default.  In 2008, big insurance company AIG sold credit default swaps on a whole bunch of shaky bonds.  When the market crashed, all the AIG swapped bonds defaulted.  AIG, big as it was, didn't have the money to pay off on the swaps.  It went broke and we the taxpayers paid off all of AIG's $140 billion worth of swaps.  The resulting market turmoil crashed Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, and others, and kicked off Great Depression 2.0, which is still with us, five years later.
   Clearly "swaps" are dangerous.  And, "swaps" do not promote any kind of economic development.  All the money goes back and forth between Wall St players, none it goes to building new factories, buying airliners, financing inventory, or other useful purposes, it all stays on the Street.  Swaps are a high stakes gambling deal.
    Anyone in their right mind wants to forbid the sale of swaps, 'cause they are so dangerous, and they don't do anything worthwhile.  Anyone, except a banker who enjoys playing bet-the-company games.  And so, the Dodd Frank Act tried to limit swaps playing by forbidding the use of  Federally guaranteed (FDIC) funds to play the swaps market.   Which is a good idea.  A better idea would be to outlaw swaps completely, but they didn't go that far.
    And so, banks and bankers, who really enjoy playing bet-the-company games,  introduced a bill to repeal all the Dodd Frank restrictions on "swaps".  Spin the roulette wheel, the casino is open.  And the House passed it last Wednesday.  One of the Republicans finest hours.   
   And another triumph for the media.  They concealed the existence of this odious bill until four days after passage. 

Time Warner Internet Access Croaks, again

I was ready to make the preceding post a couple of hours ago, but Time Warner flaked out on me.  I could not connection with any web site at all.  They fixed what every it was a few minutes ago, but they are having maintenance problems.  For instance, TV channels 2 thru 12 have a severe herringbone interference pattern on screen.  Channels 15 and16 (Cspan) have been dead for months.