6 years since Obamacare was signed into law.

It's almost been 6 years since Obamacare was signed into law, and we're now seeing the problems in the law.  Democrats rightfully say that more people are covered by health insurance, while Republicans rightfully say that there are fewer choices in medical care. What is the objective truth?

To look at this law objectively, one has to look through the lens of American politics, and what happens when the political system periodically breaks down in this country. The other day Rachel Maddow talked about an interesting phenomena on her show. It had to do about "Nativism" and when it pops up in our society.  Nativism, as I like to describe it, relates to a frustration held by native born citizens related to their place in society (and in the economy), a tendency to blame their problems on the foreign born, and a remedy to stop (or reverse) immigration by unwanted foreigners. 

When Nativism first became important, it was in the guise of the "no nothing" movement. Our political system was breaking down over the festering issue of slavery, there was political paralysis caused by the Northern and Southern states refusing to work together to govern effectively. In the end, the Whig party died, the GOP was born, and we had a brutal civil war before we had a government that could govern again.

We are again seeing the signs of our political system breaking down.  Donald Trump is only a symptom of a much larger problem. 

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America is again at a crossroads.  Every so often, its politicians tend to become so opposed to each other, that the normal business of government doesn't get done.  We have a Supreme Court nomination that the GOP controlled Senate refuses to act upon, simply because it wants to deny the current Democratic president any ability to make constitutionally mandated decisions that may affect the balance of power for years to come. They falsely claim that a lame duck president has no right nominate a person for a Supreme Court opening, stating that the next president should be the one making the nomination. Tribal loyalty is trumping (no pun intended here) duty to the nation. And we all suffer for it.

As a nation we have serious problems that are not being addressed.  We have refused to act on rationalizing America's immigration policy for years, effectively encouraging a "catch and release" policy for illegal immigrants.  Many people believe that the big problem is Mexican immigration to the USA, when the reality is that Mexicans are going home because of opportunities opening up there.  We have people who want "forever wars", and a Military-Industrial complex which is all too eager to oblige them.  We warehouse many of our poor in prisons, locked away for trumped up charges, all in the name of keeping our nation safe from crime.  (We'd be better off legalizing hard drugs, and taking away the reasons people commit crimes to buy these substances, and imitate Portugal in this area.)  We still have not been able to cover 100% of Americans in a medical insurance program, in part because of political bickering, in part because of big pharma having prevented some of the meaningful reforms that would allow medical insurance to be profitable for both the customer and the corporate entity providing it, and in part because because we do not have a "Public Option" ("Medicare for All", as Bernie Sanders would call it) where private industry can't afford to provide care.  Our political class is paralyzed, and the people are revolting at the polls.

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This situation has happened in other countries, and we've seen the disasters. To me, the most notable disaster was the fall of Weimar Germany and the ascent of Hitler and the "Thousand Year Reich".  We all know what happened there. Europe's economies were destroyed for at least a generation, and many of the continent's scars are visible to this day. Yet, Nativism still flourishes there, with far right parties trying to throw the immigrants out. And I can't blame the Nativists, because many of these immigrants have not assimilated into European society, many still live in cultural ghettos, and many cause problems by trying to bring the failed social values of their old homelands to the new.

The Nativists are just as much of the problem as are the unassimilated immigrants. Neither has adapted to change.  In many ways, both cling to a past which has not served them well, and has left them unprepared for the future.  It's sad, as neither group realizes that the past is the problem and not the solution.  In both the US and in Europe, Nativists resent immigrants who they feel are stealing their jobs. In reality, they are doing the kinds of work that the native born consider beneath themselves to do.  To make things worse, the jobs that many of the Nativists once did are no longer available.  Both Britain and the US have reduced their needs for coal, but no one has provided for the displaced workers. They have good reason to feel angry.  Immigrants are also part of the problem, as they bring ways of life which are incompatible with life in the new countries.  Muslim immigrants are often shocked that Western countries do not, and will not accept Sharia law in their midst.  The native born Christians in these lands rightfully see this as a problem, as it could lead to an all out war between them, and a growing Muslim population.

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The future is not as bleak as one might think. Mexican immigrants have assimilated more easily into American society the further away they are from Mexico.  In the lands which once were part of Mexico, they have tended to maintain a stronger cultural identity, and pose an interesting problem for America.  How do we insure their primary loyalty is to America? Most Muslim immigrants do not want any part of Sharia law, nor do they want the customs of their homelands.  They see the problems in places such as Egypt, where the government has no value to the common person.  They also see that government in the USA has a rightful place in public life, and is much of an asset here, as much as it was a liability in the lands from which they came. And in virtually all cases, it is education that has made the difference.

It's hard to learn to think critically without a good education.  And many of Obamacare's greatest opponents come from the masses who have not been educated well.  They do not see the law as an important first step towards an effective health care system for Americans, as they have not been taught civics in our schools.  They do not know how the government functions, nor do they know how to achieve their goals using the powers reserved for the people.  Instead, they look for a strong leader to deliver them from the mess that they, themselves have made. The masses have caused their own problems, because they, themselves have delegated their thinking to others.

Luckily, we still have a critical mass of Americans who have been well educated, and they still outnumber the "unwashed masses".  Hopefully, these people will stop the "unwashed masses" from electing a bombastic demagogue as a strongman leader, and instead, force the two parties to work together again and govern.  I still have hope for America, as the structure of the government handed to us by the Founding Fathers is still resilient enough to deal with today's problems.  They saw the objective truth, and it wasn't pretty then.  And our objective truth is just as ugly today as it was then.  So I have faith that what was given to us by Hamilton, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams and others is strong enough to weather the likes of Trump or Clinton....











https://www.morningstar.com/news/Market-watch/TDJNMW_20160831501/update-how-gilead-broke-obamacare.html


http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/obamacare-prescription-drugs-pharma-225444

http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottgottlieb/2015/01/08/what-a-drug-price-debate-reveals-about-obamacare/#6eed2d1578c2

Rebellion

When I wrote the following rambling missive to a friend, I didn't realize how well it could work as a blog post.  Thinking about this letter (and my friend's unpublished response), I realize that I am a Jeffersonian at heart, while my friend is a Hamiltonian.  In short, I believe in the will of the people, although I believe that it must occasionally be checked and balanced.  My friend sees the elite as a needed safeguard against the rabble running amok. 

For the most part, our views are two sides of the same coin - both of recognize the public's need to have a say in their own affairs, but we both recognize the need for a buffer to keep the common person from destroying the society in which he lives. And both of us have been lucky enough to avoid the encumbrances that would make us slaves to the society in which we live, instead of controlling our own destinies to a large degree.

Right now, I see the Trump and Sanders campaigns having their successes rooted in the general belief that the public is mad as hell and isn't going to take it any more.  A Trump or Clinton win would result in a one term presidency - and would leave the body politic much more unstable than we can afford at this time in history.  Yet, I like instability (to some degree) as I like to see the body politic refreshed by healthy blood - something we haven't seen in a while.

So I hope you enjoy today's missive, in the form of rambling thoughts I've written to a friend to provoke conversation....


If I were going to do a War Of The Worlds story today, I'd make the "aliens" look more like us, so that the alien invasion would not be that of a faceless enemy, but of an enemy that lives with us. (This reminds me of a movie that Roddy Piper made - "They Live.") The story would be more of the dilemmas a space faring civilization faces when encountering a "sort of" sentient species, and then the ultimate realization that this planet is too toxic for that species to inhabit - leaving the formerly colonized to think that they had the upper hand in their own right. Of course, one could throw a lot of social metaphors into the story to give the story more gravitas than it deserves, and to score higher ratings from the critics.

The problem with a lot of mass media these days is that it has been dumbed down for a lot of Americans to consume. For example, how many shows will they make about antique and pawn shops, along with the people who run and supply them? How many shows can they make about dwarfs and their families? How many shows can they make of "unusual" families? Of course, I'm biased. I feel that narrowcasting has allowed a significant portion of the American public to avoid exposure to ideas to which they feel uncomfortable.

I think the problem starts in the schools and in the homes. Both liberals and conservatives can make good arguments about the problems in educating our children. But I also think we're seeing signs of structural unemployment which can't be ignored. Low end jobs are being outsourced to low wage places, leaving America to increase the size of its social safety net, lest we have major social unrest. Couple that with middle to high end jobs now gradually being replaced by computer functions, and we may be looking at a situation (which could become worldwide) where there are more people than jobs. How can a society cope?

Before you think that my idea of people outnumbering available jobs is a problem that could result in a radical solution, think of this. Before the Black Plague, "serfs" (I could equate them to newly freed slaves becoming tenant farmers) had no social power, owed most of their production to the manors, and could afford to take no chances with what they grew. There was always another serf to take his place. The plague took away all that excess labor that the manoral economy depended on, took away many of the lords and ladies, and left the remaining labor with the upper hand. They started to grow a wider range of crops, ate better, and were part of an economy that started to develop labor saving inventions because there were more jobs than labor. What could happen in America with roughly one gun in circulation for each of its citizens, if our elites don't address the problems of an economy where there are more jobs than people? Any slight event could radically destabilize things, resulting in great population loss before a new stable state is achieved.

So we go back to the schools and the homes. Religious fundamentalism has shown itself to be a plague on mankind. We have home schooled students who can't prove they know enough to enter trade schools. In fact, many of them can't do the math required for these schools, because their parents decreed that the bible contains everything the child needs to learn. We're already seeing what happens to some states when these clowns get to power - education gets shafted, in one case, the cutbacks meant that there was no local school available for the children of one town. (I wish I remembered the full details of this situation - I think it was in Kansas, but I'm not sure.) I shouldn't pin the blame on religious fundamentalism alone. We've seen the same neglect for our school systems and families in non religious areas of the country. We're seeing an America divided on Rural vs. Urban lines, and the Rural populations are winning for now. They are making the mistake that the solutions that worked 50-75 years ago, when the US was at its greatest level of prosperity vs. the world, are still valid today. Simply praying to god a bit more, and resisting social change (acceptance of the GLBT population as having equal rights), will not solve their problems. Something more is needed from both Rural and Urban populations....

We now have ready made scapegoats for people like Trump to exploit. Before you say I'm about to go into a diatribe against "the Donald", reflect on this - he did bring issues into the political conversation that the political elite would rather not address - albeit in an inelegant, crude way. I'd rather see him as president than Cruz. A vote for Trump is the hard core Republican's way of giving a vote of "No Confidence" to the GOP and its candidates. Sanders is the equivalent from the hard core Democrat's side of things, especially when it's a vote against Hillary Clinton. Although Sanders has not fleshed out his ideas that well, he might be the least dangerous person to elect because a GOP dominated legislature will block his every action.

Both political parties have their own reasons for keeping the insurgents from taking power. But it's harder to see the benefits of the insurgents gaining power. If Trump were to be elected, he'd be a wild card, a joker waiting to do something that would trigger impeachment and conviction - removal from office. It would also mean that the GOP would be able to get rid of its extremist elements and could produce a party ready to govern again. If Sanders were to be elected, it would give the Democrats a reason to stop a continued slide to the political right, and renew its position as a moderate leftist party again. And with both Trump and Sanders, I expect that they would have their reasons to deal with Wall Street and the corrupting influence of its money and power. Trump, to remove power from his enemies. Sanders, to clean up a system which caused the mess we are in....

As I noted, this was the start of a conversation that has lasted several sets of email exchanges so far.  The ideas are not well formed yet, but they touch on problems that have been long ignored by our elites.  I only wonder whether our leaders will bother to do their job, or continue to push America towards the decline of its empire....