The True Narcissists

Fresh from the presses is a supposed compromise on health care reform.  The op-ed from Senators Wyden and Bennett offers us these gems:

1. “…everyone — not just those who currently get insurance through their employer — would get a generous standard deduction that they would use to buy insurance — and keep the excess if they buy a less expensive policy.”

A “generous” tax rebate?  I find these tax rebate notions slightly ridiculous.  If it was that imperative that we have the money to purchase insurance then why do we have to first hand it over to the government.  The reason is thus:

2. “The Republicans agreed to require all individuals to have coverage and to provide subsidies where necessary to ensure that everyone can afford it.”

The government can dictate when to give you this deduction by penalizing those who “choose” not to be insured.  Also, the tax collection to redistribute this money must accompany some kind of tax increase or lead to further deficit spending. Also, this seems to echo the notion of your tax dollars going directly to the insurance companies with you getting the remainder of your “generous” deduction.

3. “Our plan would give the consumer the same leverage in the health-care marketplace by creating state-run insurance exchanges through which they can select plans, including their existing employer-sponsored plan.”

I am not sure how I.E.’s lower prices (see Massachusetts), but the notion that we provide a “generous” allotment for a health care plan seems to direct more dollars to state based markets.  Further, the increase in demand for plans should send the prices of plans up.  Still, this seems like government sponsored price setting.   For example, the insurance companies know that a certain percentage of people are buckling to the mandated insurance provision and can predict how much a group will be paid.  Thus, the directors of distribution on the state level set prices by simply allotting money; the individual exerts no leverage, the bureaucracy that levels the tax deduction does.

Further, this compromise does not solve the notion of higher costs due to the illegal immigrants effect on the hospital system.  If the basis for this plan is to be specifically state run from a federal dispensary then states with higher illegal populations will continue to suffer with localized budget drains.

In effect, this bill appears the first on the bi-partisan butcher block, choked with handouts to the insurance companies with no notion of regulating the rising cost of health care.  Further, by denying the government to act as an honest broker in negotiating prices across the board the money we provide them carries no incentives when delivered to the insurance companies.  The reason is because insurance companies know that they are getting your money.

All I can see is that we would have government subsidised status quo health care.

As health care reform seems to be spiraling towards some kind of a conclusion as the August recess of congress approaches the plethora of plans in contention seems to obscure any fortune telling as to what exactly is going to be the result of all this compromise.  While the so-called Blue Dog Dems seem to be gumming up the works for any substantial reform the average person will have very little input on this upcoming bill.  While  special interests push to preserve or favorably manipulate what makes the current and future system profitable.

But I understand that most Americans will wake up some day and learn about this health care reform and then make the best decision for themselves.  Despite the average Americans political ideologies (either right, left or centrist) the notion that they specifically grasp the nuances between a mixed market vs. two-tier systems is ludicrous.

You are also confronted by the ideological leanings of the populous.  Certain people will never be open to a public option because of the deep-seeded belief that this infringes on the liberty of the people.  Whats more is that they would continue to hold this belief even if the public option was successful.

Now that we are faced with the summer break of our Congress, health care reform waits in the shadows of back room  deals and compromised quid pro quo.  But not to worry, that’s the way its always been.

President Obama’s position has focused on repeatedly calling for the need and importance of reforming one-seventh of our economy and practically declaring that it must be delivered.  Also, he has said that it must be fiscally neutral; not adding any more deficit spending (in the long term at least).

But what about the Prescription Drug Plan that President Bush signed over that denied Medicare the ability to negotiate with these companies.  Essentially, this denies the ability of the government to establish itself as a “public option” competition, while costing the public millions in over-priced drug subsidies.

Will the new health care bill be so hindered by “bi-partisan” compromise that it fails to effectively provide a public option?

What I find even more troubling is that will the bill be signed if it meets the broad targets laid out by Obama himself, but does not go far enough to truly provide us with an effective public option?

Has the President over-committed to the point where he will be faced with the option of vetoing a defective bill and suffering the loss of face by being viewed as unable to deliver on compromise?  Or signing weak legislation in the hope that at least its something (i.e. see Stimulus Bill).

My compatriots and I have been basking since the election of Barack Obama, but as the financial world appears to be crashing in on us my mind has turned to what must be changed from the disaster that is the Bush Administration.  The first issue that springs to mind is the torture question.  Namely, will President Obama renounce all forms of torture that is aided by the US?  Will he cease coordinating with US allies that use torture?  When we investigate the recent history of US torture policy we find that Obama will be fighting an established policy tool that has, until recently, been operating under the consent of our political leaders.

Rendition: a Short History

Torture is illegal under US law.  Apparently, this means that it is illegal for any US citizen or soldier to engage in any form of torture on any human being.  Beginning in the early 1990′s, according to the ACLU, the CIA began shipping persons with intelligence value to countries like Jordan or Egypt for interrogation and torture in a process known as “extraordinary rendition.”  This program became organized and established under the Clinton Administration by a CIA employee named Micheal Scheuer.  Mr. Scheuer testified before congress that when a terrorist was apprehended by CIA operatives the US would manoeuvre around domestic restrictions on interrogation by placing suspects in countries where the human rights laws were easily negated.  Scheuer states that the claims of high level Clinton men insisting after 9/11 that these suspects being deported to other countries were being treated within the bounds of US law as a lie.

The Bush Administration on the 9/11 battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq reinterpreted US law to include in the toolbox of US interrogators many of the torture techniques available under the extraordinary rendition program. By removing the established international norms of the Geneva Conventions the Bush Administration placed the “enemy combatants” of the War on Terror in the international limbo of Guantanamo Bay and the rendition system.  The wide spread acceptance of torture in the interrogation process by the Bush Administration fermented an environment where Abu Ghraib style functioning flourished.  Using the fear of another 9/11 the Bush Administration justified torture as a necessary component of intelligence gathering for the protection of the homeland.  Under this system the extraordinary rendition practice sought to keep valued prisoners outside the bounds of US and international law by bouncing prisoners around the world to “black sites” in order to avoid Geneva Convention obligations.  Internally, the policy was labeled as “harsh interrogation” amounted to physical attacks, inflicting extreme environmental discomfort, and water boarding all operating under the approval of President Bush.

These policies are still considered standard operating procedure (SOP) for the Bush Administration’s War on Terror.

Obama and Change

The loss of US “soft power” over the torture question in the land of the free cannot be underestimated.  The ability to regain our credibility in the world must be answered by Obama in his next administration; to this date Obama has yet to address how he plans to deal with this problem.  During the campaign Obama said we must, “tell the world that America rejects torture without exception or equivocation. It’s time to stop telling the American people one thing in public while doing something else in the shadows.”  In doing so, Obama must take decisive action against the taints of the Bush Administration’s torture policy.  To say so when not burdened with protecting the American people is one thing, but bringing to life such a lofty ideal is another.  So, the question must be facing the President-elect: how do we fix this?

The simplest answer would simply be speech on an international forum that reestablished US commitment to the Geneva Conventions, followed by establishing executive orders for removing the Guantanamo system, rendition program, and the “harsh interrogation” limits.  Such a program of action would remove the practice of the US torture, but is this enough?  There is, perhaps, a more bold approach that could bring the mantra of change that Obama sought into a more dynamic form.

Simply put, a re-commitment to the Geneva Convention would imply that the international norms are simply at the whims of the current American administration.  If true change is what Obama seeks then perhaps his course should be to call for a new declaration of international rights by the nations of the world.  Such an action would seek to create a new international environment for human rights with the worlds greatest democracy leading the helm after renouncing its checkered past.  Obama could invoke his “team of rivals” concept by appointing John McCain to lead the US delegation in international negotiations.  In pure Obama fashion the appointment of his ultimate rival to this task would represent the unity of the American commitment to abolishing torture in all of its forms in a bold and sweeping fashion.