1.\u00a0 Interesting spin coming out of the White House and Congressional leadership about the deterioration of the health care reform effort.\u00a0 Suddenly, they announce<\/a> (or see the NYTimes article here<\/a>), they\u2019re no longer going to try to include the Republican party in their solution.\u00a0 This is absurd, but it\u2019s excellent rhetoric.\u00a0 The Dems have made no serious effort to include Republican suggestions and therefore court Republican support for their plans.\u00a0 There was no effort at bipartisanship, except perhaps to lure some liberal Republicans to replace the lost votes of Blue Dog Democrats.\u00a0 Yet Democrats have enough votes to pass health care reform without a single Republican vote, and the real problem has been the intra-party rift<\/a> between Left and center-Left Democrats.\u00a0 The rhetoric makes it appear that the reform effort has stalled because Democrats have been striving heroically to reach across the aisle, and now they\u2019ve finally accepted that the Republicans are simply so evil that they will not cooperate.\u00a0 All of the failure heretofore can be blamed on Republican intransigence, and now the Dems will simply do what has to be done.\u00a0 There is also here an implied threat<\/a> of pushing for health care reform through the budgetary reconciliation process, so that not even the Blue Dogs in their own party could stop them.\u00a0 The Blue Dogs receive cover for their objections so far, and the Dems can even blame all the town hall ugliness on Republican obstructionism.\u00a0 Yet now<\/a> the attention will fall on the Blue Dogs, since the Dems will no longer be able to blame Republicans.\u00a0 Once you\u2019ve said you\u2019ve written off the Republicans and gone it alone, you can\u2019t come back to that table and blame the Republicans again.\u00a0 (Perhaps the public is not much swayed<\/a> by the town hall kerfuffles, but they were designed to sway Representatives.)<\/p>\n But what do <\/em>the Dems want to do?\u00a0 The suggestion that the Obama administration might accept a reform plan without a \u201cpublic option\u201d set off a firestorm<\/a> within the party, as many liberal Democrats vowed not to support a reform bill without it.\u00a0 Now the Obama administration says that it never seriously considered dropping the public option.\u00a0 Is this a flip flop?\u00a0 Or a trial balloon that popped?\u00a0 Or perhaps just a media mischaracterization, and the administration truly never gave it serious thought?<\/p>\n Steve Pearlstein, whom Obama has called \u201crequired reading\u201d in the White House, actually does recommend that Democrats drop the public option.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the rub.\u00a0 For some\u2013that is, especially for liberals of full stripe\u2013the public option really was <\/em>a way of working toward a government takeover of health care.\u00a0 In fact they were quite open about it.\u00a0 For others, the public option really is not <\/em>about occluding the private market, and really is about controlling costs and increasing choice and competition.\u00a0 But if controlling costs and increasing choice and competition are the goals, then the public option is only one way among many, and perhaps not a very effective way, of achieving these goals.\u00a0 Pearlstein makes this quite clear.\u00a0 As Pearlstein writes, \u201cYou also hear the argument that government-run insurance would have lower costs because it wouldn\u2019t have to generate a profit (that\u2019s true) and would be more efficient than private insurers (that isn\u2019t). The evidence of greater efficiency is Medicare, which spends about 2 to 3 percent of its budget on administration. But if a government-run plan had to spend its own money to collect premiums, market itself to customers, maintain a reserve, and manage care in a way that lowers costs and raises quality \u2014 none of which Medicare now does \u2014 then you can be sure its administrative costs would be nowhere near 2 or 3 percent\u2026In sum, there is nothing about having one government-owned health insurance company that is likely to change the competitive dynamic and bring costs under control.\u201d<\/p>\n Watching their numbers plummet<\/a>, the White House and its spokesmen are pretending<\/a> as though the public option was a very minor part of the proposal, and pretending to be surprised that people on the Right as well as the Left have focused so much attention on it.\u00a0 This is disingenuous.\u00a0 The White House knows full well that many Democrats had pushed hard for a \u201csingle payer\u201d system and only agreed to a compromise when they were promised a robust \u201cpublic option.\u201d\u00a0 And since Obama himself, as well as other Democrats such as Barney Frank and Russ Feingold (see another explosive video here<\/a>), have stated that the \u201cpublic option\u201d is the best way to lead to \u201csingle payer,\u201d they cannot be serious when they say that it was not a big part of their design for reform.\u00a0 Obama was in the camp of those who wanted a public option in order to move toward single payer; he said so himself on numerous occasions.\u00a0 Of course, Presidents are allowed to change their minds; in fact, we should hope that Presidents do <\/em>change their minds when they learn more about the issues.\u00a0 If Obama has changed his mind, he should simply say so.\u00a0 Instead, Obama again is insisting that he has not wavered in his commitment to a public option.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 There is one substantive point I want to address.\u00a0 This video<\/a> has caused a lot of buzz, as a Congressman Weiner is denouncing private health insurance providers and arguing that we would be better off if we had \u201cnational Medicare,\u201d or a nationalized health insurance program.\u00a0 Of course, this contradicts the rhetoric from the Obama administration, which constantly assures us that it is interested only in increasing the choices Americans have.\u00a0 Weiner wants a single-payer system.\u00a0 If people are so happy with Medicare, he says, why shouldn\u2019t we all be on health care?\u00a0 And what value to private insurers really add, if government can do the same job for cheaper?\u00a0 And in fact one often hears this objection: so many people are happy with Medicare, so what would be the problem if we were all essentially on Medicare?<\/p>\n Yet there is a vast difference between having a government option (such as Medicare) and having a government monopoly.\u00a0 Medicare has done well, in part, because it is not the only option<\/em>.\u00a0 Yes, it\u2019s paid for by the state, but it has competition, and people can leave Medicare and get their own private insurance.\u00a0 Because of the private insurance market, the United States health care system is extraordinarily innovative.\u00a0 Roughly 80% of all medical and pharmaceutical innovations come out of the United States.\u00a0 When the government goes from being one option and competitor in the marketplace to having a monopoly over the marketplace, then we will quickly find all the inefficiencies and mediocrity that come from monopolies.<\/p>\n Of course, for Christians, one of the questions, when it comes to health care reform, is: \u201cWhat would Jesus do?\u201d\u00a0 The question is being debated<\/a>.\u00a0 I will join in later on a massive conference call between President Obama and \u201creligious leaders\u201d on the issue, and I\u2019ll try to live-blog.<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0 It appears<\/a> that the UN nuclear watchdog agency is withholding evidence of Iran\u2019s militry nuclear program, evidence it recently received in a \u201cclassified annex\u201d from its own Iran inspection team.\u00a0 \u201cThe document was not included in the final report,\u201d according to Israeli officials.\u00a0 \u201cBritish, French, German and US senior officials have recently pressured ElBaradei to publish the information, the newspaper said.\u201d\u00a0 Mohammad ElBaradei has been accused before of seeking to undermine the US\/Israeli argument that Iran is seeking to weaponize its nuclear program.<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0 The Obama administration is apparently<\/a> killing any notion of leading a manned mission to Mars or to the moon anytime in the next decade.\u00a0 Aware that some Americans are still in love with the notion of space exploration, and aware that there are practical arguments to be made in its favor as well, the administration is blaming even this on the Bush administration.\u00a0 As one White House official said, \u201cWe have inherited one of the many failed promises of the Bush administration\u2013to set out a very good program without providing the resources to fund it.\u201d\u00a0 Of course, many at NASA believed they did <\/em>have a very good program, and the fact that it would need increased spending in its later years is not unusual.\u00a0 I\u2019m all for blaming Bush for the things he clearly got wrong, but this strikes me as absurd.<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0 A very strange story<\/a>: the Obama administration is providing a $2b loan for a Brazilian company, Petrobras, to explore the immense oil field that was discovered off the coast of Brazil.\u00a0 Why would the US government subsidize a Brazilian company\u2013a very large company with substantial resources of its own\u2013in drilling for oil off the coast of Brazil?\u00a0 We\u2019ll have to learn more about this story.\u00a0 One thing we\u2019ve learned already: George Soros, a major supporter of Obama as well as organizations (such as ACORN) that Obama has been involved with, positioned himself to make major money off of Petrobras just a few days ago.\u00a0 Strange goings on.<\/p>\n 6.\u00a0 In England, the average number<\/a> of sick days in the private sector is 6.4; in the public sector, it is 9.7.\u00a0 In the National Health Service that average rises to 10.7, as 45,000 NHS staff call in sick each day.\u00a0 A few little factoids for ya.<\/p>\n 7.\u00a0 The mystery cargo ship called the Arctic Sea, which had disappeared after passing through the English channel was \u201cfound<\/a>\u201d by Russian authorities (the crew was Russian) on Monday near the Cape Verde Islands.\u00a0 The Russian news service (essentially a state-run media organ) claims that it was hijacked, but speculation is rife that there was actually some sort of clandestine material on the ship. As one Russian opposition journalist said, \u201cTo put it plainly: The Arctic Sea was carrying some sort of anti-aircraft or nuclear contraption intended for a nice, peaceful country like Syria, and they were caught with it.\u201d<\/p>\n 8.\u00a0 Yesterday we mentioned Tom Daschle\u2019s work as a lobbyist for companies in the health care field.\u00a0 Dick Armey, a Republican, recently left a firm for much the same reason.\u00a0 As it happens, Howard Dean as well serves as a lobbyist<\/a> with clients in the health care industry.\u00a0 The incestuous relationship between government and lobbying is a major problem with Washington today, and one of the best arguments in favor of restricting the reach and power of the federal government.\u00a0 The more power it has over the private market, the more money will be poured into lobbying and the more that federal legislation and government will be directed by those with the deepest pockets\u2013directed not by national interest, but by corporate interests working through government manipulation.<\/p>\n 9.\u00a0 Today\u2019s Two Sides.\u00a0 Two views, from the Right<\/a> and from the Left<\/a>, of how the Obama administration is flailing.<\/p>\n 10.\u00a0 Finally, an article very much worth reading at Christianity Today<\/em> on the notion of \u201cworldview.\u201d\u00a0 The article concerns a recent book by the philosopher James K. A. Smith, who argues that evangelical obsession with \u201cworldview\u201d is not so much a response as a capitulation to the Enlightenment, rationalist conception of human nature, and that education in pursuit of a Christian \u201cworldview\u201d is therefore misguided.\u00a0 If education is not primarily about what we know<\/em>, but is instead primarily about what we love<\/em>, then the task of education is that of formation, or rightly ordering our loves, and less about information, or rightly organizing and justifying what we know.\u00a0 Read the whole article.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1.\u00a0 Interesting spin coming out of the White House and Congressional leadership about the deterioration of the health care reform effort.\u00a0 Suddenly, they announce (or see the NYTimes article here), they\u2019re no longer going to try to include the Republican party in their solution.\u00a0 This is absurd, but it\u2019s excellent rhetoric.\u00a0 The Dems have made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1351,591,592,602,616,655,669,701,721,741,750,771],"class_list":["post-513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barack-obama","tag-health-care","tag-health-care-reform","tag-howard-dean","tag-iran","tag-medicare","tag-nasa","tag-public-option","tag-single-payer","tag-the-arctic-sea","tag-tom-daschle","tag-worldview"],"yoast_head":"\n