Cost is missing from the health care debate

The Democrats are pushing hard for health care "reform" by which they mean everyone gets health coverage and Uncle pays for it. Problem is we cannot afford it.
Right now, with millions of uninsured, we spend 18% of GNP on health care. We cannot afford that. Insure the uninsured and the health care slice of the economy will go up, and we can't afford that either. The US spends twice as much on health care as any other country on the globe. 18% of GNP means 18 people out of 100 are providing health care. Each health care worker only cares for 5.5 patients. This is insane. US products sold abroad cost 18% more just to pay the workers health care. We have to compete with the rest of the first world that is only paying an 9% health care markup. Companies move production off shore to avoid US health care costs.
We need to cut costs, by a half, to be competitive. Adding tens of millions of people to health care insurance isn't the way to do it.
The US spends as much as it does on health care because health care is free. The bulk of us have company paid health care that pays for everything. So whatever the doctor orders in the way of tests, procedures, imaging, motorized wheelchairs, prescriptions, and office visits, we do. Doesn't matter how outrageous the bill is, we don't care, it's paid for. And the bills ARE outrageous. Like $500 for a 50 minute office visit or $1023 for prescription drugs that can be had at Walmart for $48.
Only way to fix the excessive amounts of care and the gouging on the bills it to have us patients pay for it out of own pockets. Insurance ought to only pay for major catastrophes beyond any ordinary patient's purse. Routine stuff ought to be paid for out of pocket.
Then we could clamp down on the tort lawyers that sue for malpractice at the drop of a hat. A lot of testing and scanning and such is done to cover the ass of the doctor against a possible malpractice suit. Do something about predatory lawyers and costs would go down.
We need to clamp down on drug costs. The sky high prices charged for on-patent drugs goes not to research and development, but into marketing. Big drug companies have fancy salesmen, wearing suits, visit every doctor in the country every couple of weeks to peddle pills. Not quite sure how you deal with this but I'm sure there is a way. Allowing drugs in from Canada might be a start, taxing marketing expenses might be another.
Allow more competition. Allow insurance companies to sell insurance in every state of the union. Get a license in one state and you have the right to sell the same insurance policy in every state. Right now states won't allow out of state companies to sell insurance instate.
Drop state mandated support of every strange condition. Plenty of people would be happy to skip support for drug addiction, chiropody, contact lenses, dental coverage, gender change, and who knows what else, in return for a lower insurance premium.
Something like 30% of health care costs are incurred in the last year of the patient's life. At end of life, there is always something that can be done, even if it won't help much. It may not help, but the doctor and the hospital can bill for it and Medicare will pay for it. This isn't health care, it's making money. One fix might be to have a law that says "Death cancels all medical bills. If the patient dies, clearly the medical treatment was ineffective and will not be paid for."

Fools Gold by Gilliam Tett

From the dust cover "How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe". It's a 2009 copyright which brings it right up to date. Gilliam Tett must have read Tracy Kidder somewhere along the line and her book has Kidder's closeups of the people involved. Those are fun to read. The "Small Tribe" at Morgan invented the credit default swap in the early '90s. This bit of financial magic amounts to default insurance. A credit default swap issuer gets paid a modest amount of money. In return the issuer guarantees the deal. If the borrower doesn't pay up, the issuer will make good the buyer's losses.
The first credit default swaps were issued on ultra safe packages of blue chip bonds. The banks persuaded the federal regulators to lower their reserve requirements if their loans were protected with credit default swaps. The credit default swap market took off like a rocket and the issuer's made a lot of money selling them. Late comers, stuck on stupid, began issuing credit default swap protection on shaky mortgage backed securities. The whole thing crashed in the fall of 2008 when Bear Stearns and Lehman imploded and everyone started collecting on their swaps. The issuers of the swaps didn't have the cash to pay off, and the Bush administration picked up the tab, fearing that letting AIG and the rest of them fail would touch off Great Depression II.

The author reviews some of the famous Wall St catastrophes of the past, Drexel Burnham Lambert , Long Term Capital Management, Enron and WorldCom. She gives J.P.Morgan a sympathetic treatment, they were smart enough not to get sucked into the mortgage backed security black hole.

She skims over the housing crash and the role of Fannie and Freddie in that crash. Fannie and Freddie fueled the sub prime disaster when they bought sub prime backed securities. This prompted the dumber Wall St houses to buy shakey mortgages, "securitize" them, and sell them. The resulting demand for mortgages led the mortgage companies to write mortgages on worthless property and to borrowers unable to make the payments. But not to worry, we will sell this sub prime mortgage to a bigger sucker on Wall St. When the suckers wised up and stopped buying the roof fell in.

Did speed sensors cause Air France mystery crash?

The TV pundits are in love with the story. The "speed sensor" is the pitot tube, a simple piece of tubing that sticks out head on into the air stream. The air speed indicator works by measuring the air pressure generated from the pitot tube. Airbus had been replacing the pitot tubes on the A-330's for some reason or other. The replacement program had been running BEFORE the crash.
Worst case, the pitot tube falls off or ices up and the airspeed indication drops to zero. Planes will fly with no airspeed indicator. Leave the engines set to cruise power and keep the plane level and it will keep flying. The zero airspeed will probably confuse the autopilot enough to make it drop off line, but again, the crew can fly the plane by hand.
Dispite pitot tube excitement on the TV news, I very much doubt that the pitot tube caused the crash.

TV pundit talking thru his hat.

Commenting upon the CIA director's opinion that Bin Laden is still in Pakistan, the Time magazine pundit, said that Bin Laden was unable to leave Pakistan.
Scratch that pundit. All Bin Laden needs is a credit card, a passport, and a shave and he can fly anywhere in the world.

Terminator Salvation

It's got action. Fist fights, gun fights, fires and explosions, airstrikes and dog fights, car chases and crashes. The action never stops. Lots of tough guys with stubble looking tough. They even resurrect Arnold for a brief fight scene. I assume that was done by computer graphics.
The movie is set in the future were the human underground is warring against the shiny red eyed terminator machines of Skynet. The humans win in the end, at least partly. The closing voice over announced that the war wasn't won yet, leaving an opening for a sequel.
If it had been on TV I would have changed the channel.

Welfare for NEMA

The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) managed to help themselves to a slice of pork. First they created a marketing concept, "NEMA Premium" electric motors, which are supposed to be radically more efficient than "NEMA Standard" motors. Naturally NEMA Premium motors cost more than NEMA premium. Then they got a US government subsidy for the purchase of "NEMA Premium" motors as an energy saving measure.
Trouble is, electric motors are highly efficient already, and motors manufacured 50 years ago are very efficient. The "Premium" motors are not any more efficient than any well designed motor. "Premium" motors run between 77 and 89 percent efficient. In actual fact, decent electric motors have been 90 percent efficient since World War II and before.
In short, a marketing concept, the "Premium" designation, has been recognized at law, and given a federal subsidy, paid for with tax payer dollars.
Nice work if you can get it.
This global warming measure was brought to you by congressmen from districts with large electric motor companies.

Hillary on the Stephanopolis Show this morning

She said the US doesn't know just what the Iranians want, and perhaps a diplomatic conference with Iran would lead to an exchange of views and we would learn what Iran wants. Right.
I got news for Hillary. You don't negotiate just for the fun of it. It's a horse trade, you give us this, we give you that, and it's gotta be a fair trade or both sides will welsh on the deal. If we don't know what the Iranians want, and how bad they want it, before sitting down with them, forget it.
Actually, we do know what the Iranians want, they want nukes, and they want them badly. With nukes they become regional hegemon, and they gain insurance against sudden regime change, the kind that happens should US tanks roll thru Tehran like they did thru Baghdad.
We are not happy with a nuclear Iran, and there is nothing the Iranians can do to make us happy, short of giving up their nuclear program, which they won't do, at least not voluntarily. Does not look like the basis of fruitful negotiations. In fact the Euro's have been having fruitless negotiations over this point for years. It has given Tehran more time to work on their nukes, but other than that, a wasted effort.