Magic!!
I’m a geek. I know it. My wife has said it more than once, and so have a lot of other people. I watch TV, some… I watch “educational entertainment”. Meaning, History Channel, Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, History International, Military Channel, Military History Channel, Science Channel, NASA TV… All that sort of geek TV. Mindless, bubblegum for the brain I really don’t have time for. But I sort of think that if you can be entertained, and learn something at the same time, isn’t that the purpose? We learn from reading books, even for entertainment, so why not TV?
A few weeks ago, on Discovery Channel, I was watching Time Warp. ( If you have not seen it, it is a really cool show where they have “guests” who do different things. They have had skate boarders, bike riders, stunt men, acrobats from Circe du Soli, and lots of other people. They film them doing their thing with High Definition superslow motion cameras. After the people have done their activity, they play it back at normal speed, then at about 500 frames a second, which is the really slow motion replay.) This particular night that I was watching Penn and Teller were on. They do an awesome close up magic act. They did the “ball and cup” trick, where they put a ball under a cup and it keeps moving around and eventually changes from a ball of aluminum foil to a baseball. Except this time, they did it with clear cups, and with the cameras rolling. It was so interesting to watch with the slow motion replay and Penn Jillette doing a “Play by Play” of the action. Also, after watching it going on and listening to the banter that Penn had going on while it was happening, and watching it in slow motion, you really see how a major portion of what is happening is covered by misdirection. While Teller was doing some of the bigger movements, Penn was attracting everyone’s attention by being loud and boisterous. Even knowing what is happening, it is very hard to not be attracted to where they were trying to make you look.
That is a lot of what is happening to us in politics now, particularly with the health care bill. IF they can keep you from looking at what is going on, and can keep you from noticing what they are NOT doing, then they hope that they can slide it by… They are doing that by “making you look” at things that are not important and are not part of the issue. When they start talking about the salary of the executives from the pharmaceutical companies, so what? How is that an issue? It doesn’t relate to the issue at hand, which is how is the GOVERNMENT going to afford the program that they are trying to rapidly shove down our throats. If it costs a billion dollars to develop a new drug (from thought to having it manufactured and available at the local pharmacy), if the head of a mega-pharmaceutical company makes a million or three a year it is not going to change the cost we pay for a prescription by a dollar. But if it can be used to distract us from looking at what is the issue, like how is this HUGE bureaucratic nightmare going to be paid for, then it is a great bit of close up magic… If they can get us to look at insurance companies… If they can make us “mad at them” because they don’t cover any preexisting conditions, and can make them into a scapegoat, then, it is a good bit of misdirection.
Since I brought it up, let’s talk about the preexisting condition a minute. Insurance companies exist to make money, right? Just like any other private company. They are in business to make a profit. An insurance company bets that you will pay a LOT of money in, and not take much back out, in the form of a claim. That is a gross simplification of what they do, I know, but it is the basis of it, right? Anyway… If you don’t pay money in, then you don’t get anything back out. If you pay a lot of money in, and just get a little bit back out, then they make money. Now… If you could manage to NOT have to pay anything in, but could get money out, that would be a deal for you, but the company would not exist for very long… (The US Government is the only thing that seems to be able to keep operating with a negative cash flow… If my bank account gets overdrawn, I get in trouble… but that’s another blog for another day…) So, if you could say not have any insurance on your car, and then call and get insurance on it AFTER you have a wreck or it gets damaged, and the insurance company would fix it, then that would be a really good deal for you, right? But not so good for the insurance company… So, why do you expect a health insurance company to do that? Again, this is all a gross oversimplification of the situation, but it is the very basic roots of the issue.
So if the PR war for Obamacare can make you turn your attention to that, or to how much the executives of a private company make, or to some other thing, anything other than asking how we are going to pay for it, or how EXACTLY they intend to lower the costs, then they have won a very elaborate shell game.
The other questions to be asking, and questions that you should be asking your representatives, are things like who is going to be covered, who is going to have what sort of coverage, who is going to be paying for it and the most important thing is who is going to make the decisions about who will get what sort of care, and what is the criteria that will be used to make those decisions.
If you look at some of the comments that have been made by Obama’s “Science Czar” John Holdren, things like forced abortion, mandatory sterilizations, and zero population growth, I think that you can start to have a very frightening idea of the road that we may be heading down. (see the book he coauthored in 1977 “Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment”) You can read some of his writings and comments that he has made and see that he is in favor of a global government, and a VERY controlling one at that. If you look at some of the comments that have been made by Obama’s “Health Czar” Dr Ezekiel Emanuel, you will see that he has made the comment it January 2009 medical journal The Lancet (http://www.ncpa.ort/pdfs/PIISO140673609601379.pdf) that if healthcare has to be rationed, he prefers the “complete lives system” which “discriminates against older people”. He also wrote in an article for the Hastings Center Report (http://www.ncpa.ort/pdfs/Where_Civic_Republicanism_and_Deliberative_Democracy_Meet.pdf) that health services should not be guaranteed to “individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens” he said “an obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia”.
Obama recently told PBS’ Jim Lehrer that he wanted to “stop providing $177 billion worth of subsidies to the insurance companies for a Medicare Advantage program that offers no additional benefits to seniors compared to regular old Medicare”. (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec09/obama_07-20.html) There is more information available about what this will do from the Wall Street Journal, here http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203517304574303903498159292.html#mod=djemEditorialPage
Slight of hand? Card tricks? Close up magic? You expect to see misdirection used, and people who are masters of it. However, when it comes to the Government, and a president who said “We will have the most transparent Administration ever” I don’t appreciate being subjected to what amounts to Three Card Monty.
The “baby boomers” are about to be reaching 65, and will be increasing the rolls of Medicare. If you have a family member that is in their older years, start looking for information on the British Health System. You will find that they do not provide care for their elderly, and that is one of the systems that is being studied for the coming Obamacare system.
Think about it… Call, email, write to your representatives, visit their local offices, let them know that you WILL hold them responsible, personally, for the ill effects of this bill as it currently stands, if it is passed.
Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools talk because they have to say something -
Plato
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