My Friendly Neighborhood Congressman

is a dork.

U.S. Rep Edward Markey yesterday demanded that President Bush take steps to control rising gasoline and oil prices....Markey accused the president of standing idly by as OPEC nations raise prices and move forward with a plan to cut oil production

John Kerry is yapping in a similarly idiotic way. He says he'd divert oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to increase supply. Hey, you think there's a reason we call it "Strategic"? It's not supposed to be a big vat of oil to tap into anytime SUV owners start whining about having to pay for the gasoline they're using. It's there for serious reasons. Tapping into it because you don't like the price of unleaded is irresponsible and sets a dangerous precedent.

At local gas pumps, drivers filled their tanks and shelled out cash -- reluctantly. "It costs about 40 bucks for this baby," said Framingham resident David Grinere, filling his Lexus LX470 at a Shell station on Rte. 9 in Framingham. Grinere said he is resigned to paying high prices and does not regret buying his SUV despite their reputation as gas-guzzlers. "What can I do?" he said. "I need it for the family. It's a necessary evil."

Ahem. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? Were you raised by Sea Monkeys(TM)? Your Lexus SUV is "necessary"???

OK, I'm now officially in favor of at least another 50 cents a gallon on the gas tax. These morons need to get slapped around until they get a clue, or at least shut up.

Kerry, meanwhile, is whining about the greed of Big Oil and blaming Dick Cheney for consulting energy companies when the administration was writing their energy policy. Say what? I'm sick of people complaining about corporate "greed". These aren't charities. The world doesn't work if corporations don't try to make a profit. Haven't we had enough examples of that recently? And are we supposed to formulate policy without talking to anybody who knows anything about the subject matter? Besides, has Kerry read the energy policy? As it turns out, it's mostly about conservation strategies and alternative fuels. Huh. Big Oil is pretty stupid if that's what they got for all their Seekrit meetings with the veep.

“I’ll use real diplomacy to do what George Bush hasn’t – pressure OPEC to start providing more oil,” said Kerry....."Under my plan....our young men and women will never have to fight and die for foreign oil."

Yeah? What's this pressure going to consist of? Threatening to invade? Oh, wait. Liberals don't like going to war for oil. You know, weird thing about this supposed "war for oil" we just had. If that was a war for oil, why did oil prices go up? Why is all the oil revenue going to building Iraqi infrastructure? Why are we spending several times more money on roads, schools, hospitals, police traiing, etc. for Iraqis than the value of all the oil they're pumping?

They're Stealing Your Money

There's a bill in the Massachusetts legislature to create a state-wide single-payer medical insurance system. This is idiocy rampant. You want to know why? We've got a great example of the single-payer system right here in America. Half our health care spending is under a single-payer system, called Medicare.

The Medicare trustees have recently announced that they're going to go bankrupt in 2019 (that's in fifteen years for those of you keeping score at home). More importantly, due to the mostly mythical nature of the trust funds, they're going to start paying out more than they collect as soon as this year. The present value of the unfunded liabilities for Medicare is $27.7 trillion. That's approximately equal to the total value of all publicly traded companies in the world. 2.5x our GDP. That's the money we would have to dump in Right Now so that after investment growth there would be just barely enough to pay for the medical benefits we've promised people. Medicare is $280 billion per year right now (over $1000 for every man, woman, and child in the country), and rising fast. That's without paying for prescription medication.

Raising the retirement age won't fix this; health care costs are heavily loaded towards the end of your life.

Cutting benefits is a terrible plan, and no one would ever go for it. We'd have people dying while sitting on waiting lists for necessary procedures.

Part of the problem is the drug benefit Congress passed last year. Helpfully, the Democrats actually wanted a more expensive version.

Most of the problem is hospital costs. A staggering proportion of spending is on patients in the final six to nine months of their lives.

More fundamentally, the people making the decisions about what kind of care to receive (or provide) or where to get it have no clue what anything costs, or at least have no incentive to care. The doctors seem to think money is filthy and profane (up until they get their paycheck). They don't want to allow questions of cost to affect their Higher Calling. Well, get a grip. Cost-benefit trade-offs are being made whether you like it or not. The question is whether you're going to make them based on sensible criteria or not. How does it make sense that we've been paying for massively expensive procedures of dubious benefit, like cardiac bypass surgery, but until recently there wasn't a dime for cholesterol-lowering medications that cost pennies on the dollar? Why isn't there a way someone could decide to provide funding for smoking cessation programs, or exercise and diet regimens? Why is catastrophic health care insurance illegal? Why aren't more people aware of Medical Savings Accounts?

If you watch TV without a TiVo, you already know that there are thousands of commercials for diabetes testing supplies. That's because diabetics with Medicare get that stuff for free, and the providers bill Medicare directly. Why are there so many commercials for the diabetic supplies and none for other stuff Medicare also pays for? Because Medicare's prices set for the diabetes stuff are way too high -- lots of people are piling into that business because the profits are artificially enormous. If you live in Massachusetts you've seen the same thing for auto glass. The state-mandated auto glass insurance costs next to nothing to the consumer, and overpays the glass replacement companies, so they conduct a massive advertising blitz to try to grab as much of your grossly subsidized business as they can.

One tired argument that constantly gets advanced for single-p;ayer systems is that administrative costs for HMOs eat up 30% or more of the spending on health care, while Medicare spends less than 2% on administrative costs. Well, sure, Medicare saves on administrative costs. That's what you get if you don't bother to make more than a cursory effort to detect, prevent, or prosecute fraud. Fraudulent Medicare billing is attaining some really staggering numbers. Pretty soon billing Medicare for fictional procedures is likely to become a bigger industry than piddling stuff like making cars or growing food.

I admit that the masses of pointless paperwork associated with health care are terribly wasteful. But that would all change if the insurance companies were subjected to a legitimate competitive arena. If one HMO had fluid, painless referrals and a coherent, non-psychotic billing procedure, right now it wouldn't do them much good. HMOs are competing to be selected by employers, who really don't care how well they provide their services.

Speaking of which, corporations shouldn't be in the business of providing health insurance. Or pensions. Those aren't areas of expertise for them, and linking health care and pensions to employment just perpetuates the problem of the millions of uninsured and indigent in our society. But that's a topic for another day.

Old people need reasons to care about how much their medical care costs. There need to be good reasons for them to consider private insurance options, and the insurance carriers need to be allowed the flexibility to offer a wide variety of different forms of coverage, instead of the cookie-cutter one-size-fits-all package they're currently permitted to offer.