A New Beginning

“A Republic … if you can keep it.” Those words, attributed to Benjamin Franklin during the evening hours of September 17, 1787, spoke into being a rich history of our nation, its founding and the establishment of our Constitution as the rule of law. The Constitution was written, debated, edited and debated further until a consensus of the Constitutional Convention was reached. In his closing speech, Benjamin Franklin acknowledged, “I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution.” This republic afforded the people of the various sovereign states representation on an equal basis based on the population, these are our representatives in Congress. The states were given an equal say in states matters in the Senate. Together the Representatives and Senators would comprise the legislative branch of our government that would direct the laws and policy of these United States.

Order Out of Chaos

Much confusion abounded during the time of the convention, bickering among the participants was considerable. However, one item echoed throughout the process that today most folks would deride as folly. During the final debates, Mr. Elbridge Gerry expressed the concern that the Constitution as it was written would lead to a civil war because it didn’t adequately protect republicanism. It was argued that in his home state of Massachusetts, there were two political parties, one devoted to Democracy, “the worst thought of all political evils” and the extreme opposite. Without a guarantee that the Constitution would protect the nation against such extremes, he refused to sign and subsequently argued against ratification because of the lack of a bill of rights that limited the power of the government.

The republic that was formed allowed each state to have 2 senators that were selected by the various states to ensure the government would never impinge upon the sovereignty of the individual states. This bi-level system assured that the states acting in concert could not impose legislation on the country as a whole without the consent that comes from the people through their representatives. The representatives and senators thus each are required to produce legislation and have it approved through both houses assuring the needs of the people are met and the sovereignty of the states is ensured.

States’ Rights Dealt Death Blow

The 17th Amendment, if doing nothing else, brought about the demise of states rights and effectively neutered the republic. When the Senate passed the amendment on June 12, 1911, they were voting for themselves the ability to be elected by popular vote and whether knowingly or not, they changed the face of the country. A senator elected by the people, will ultimately do the will of the people, or at very least the will of the people who ensure their continued re-election. This holds true for appointed senators as well. Those appointed senators would be loyal to the state legislature. The move from the states’ legislature selecting senators to the people removed the loyalty to the state and put it squarely in the lap of the people. The republic that Ben Franklin announced that historic day in 1787 had been lobotomized.

The Arguments

There are several arguments for the repeal of the 17th Amendment:

• It removed states’ representation from the federal government and essentially abolished state sovereignty and the states no longer have a representative voice in the legislature.
• It removed the balance from the legislative branch of government. A congress made up of elected officials from the enumerated people, plus two from each state essentially gives the people additional representation greater than the enumerated representation allowed by the constitution.
• Power has become centralized in Washington. A senate without loyalty to the individual states takes away the rights of individual states to pass any meaningful legislation, and causes the legislative power to reside in the federal government.
• It has increased partisanship in government. Political parties exist to give a stronger voice to like-minded individuals. Since individuals belong to political parties, their will is pressed in the senate as well as the house. The states on the other hand, do not belong to political parties and usually consist of a varied mix of several political views.
• The Senate is now directly responsible to the people. This means that if they don’t do the will of the people, they can be replaced. While this sounds good, the senate was never designed to do the will of the people. It was designed to do the will of the states. This effectively removed whatever protections the 10th Amendment provided.

The Repeal

In the political climate today, the likelihood of a repeal of the 17th Amendment is remote. There have been attempts to do so in the past, but they failed due to obvious reasons. As recently as August 2009, there were bipartisan attempts to amend the 17th to prevent the appointment of senators by state governors.

Constitutionally we must live within the law, and when those laws seem unjust or no longer are appropriate, it is the duty of the people to change those laws. The expansion of the federal government has put us on the edge of a crevasse that will soon give way to a calamitous action. We must act with purpose to restore the proper balance to a union of nation/states. Each state being sovereign, each person being secure in their liberty and the strength of the nation improved through a cooperative federal government instead of the bastardized monstrosity we are currently relegated to deal with.

Freedom, its a word that is flung around rather often these days, but how many of us realize what it really means? During my lifetime, at 42 years, which is relatively short, I have seen the gradual loss of many of my freedoms. As a child, I can remember eating ice cream while riding in the back of my dad’s pickup truck; something that today would get any parent a hefty fine at best. Other laws have slowly infiltrated our society; all of them implemented with the best of intentions… We’ve seen seatbelt laws, smoking laws, leash laws, litter laws, boating regulations, animal ordinances, etc. Face it, there’s no argument over the fact that we need laws… Let’s use smoking as an example of what happens when you pass a law that seems good. Everyone knows that smoking is bad; it is a proven fact that it causes cancer. Government has placed a heavy tax on cigarettes to discourage smoking; how is that money used? Laws have been implemented to prohibit smoking in restaurants; sounds good unless you are the restaurant owner whose main clientel are smokers. Wouldn’t it be better to just require that a sign be posted, saying, “this is a smoking establishment”? If you didn’t want to smoke then you wouldn’t eat there. I don’t smoke, but I have to sympathize with those who do. As long as they aren’t hurting others, what right does anyone have to dictate how they live their lives? Life comes with risk from day one… From that point forward, we have no guarantees as to what will happen to us. Shouldn’t we get to live our life the way we want to live it? With every law that is passed, even those that would benefit the majority of citizens, someone is losing a measure of freedom. When one looks at this in a broad scope and considers not just laws but bureaucracy, they have to realize that we have lost much of the freedom that we once had. Most of that time, bureaucracy comes with licenses and registration fees to pay for it. How much could be saved if there wasn’t so much bureaucracy to begin with? Anyone reading this, has probably thought of  The Department of Motor Vehicles, as they are reading… What a nightmare it is to deal with that bureaucracy.

Anyhow, the purpose of this post was just to provoke some thought, on laws, and their impact on our lives. So many laws are passed with such little thought on the cumulative effect on such laws on our lives. Much more attention should be given to laws that would seek to protect the majority rather than laws that would serve only to punish the few; the end result simply is, the erosion of our individual liberties.

Over the last century, our country, and countries across the globe, have made fantastic strides in providing infrastructure. Roads are built by governments; safe potable water is distributed in just about every town across America; refuse is collected and deposited in consolidated landfills; communication is transmitted instantly, worldwide, and electricity is delivered to every household in a modern civilization. This has provided a great deal of comfort in our daily lives.

Without so much as a thought, we can flip a switch, and turn on a light in a dark room, operate this fancy computer I get to use on a daily basis, and charge up the ipod, and all manner of portable appliances we have become dependent upon in our daily lives. When we are thirsty, or need to wash our clothes, the turn of a faucet handle will provide a seemingly unending supply of fresh water, and almost if by magic, the things we find no longer useful in our lives, can be put in the trash bin to go off to who knows where … but it isn’t here, and that is the important part … or is it?

When I began considering the massive integration and collective cooperation we have as a society, the geek in me began to see subtle flaws in its implementation; then the more I dwelt on the issue, the more important these flaws became, until I can no longer take anything for granted; danger, grave danger, lies everywhere, and we as a society are blind to its inherent flaws. Sure, I like a nice hot shower, probably more than most folks; to get that shower though, I have to rely upon lots of other people; people I don’t know, to do things that quite frankly, I don’t understand. The public works people maintain the public water supply, and actually keep the city’s waterline in proper working order; send off water samples for tests, treat waste water, and scope out new well sites among the vast number of other things they are required to do, to actually get water out of the ground, or reservoir, and out to the populous. The electrical workers have to maintain not only the power generation plant, but they also have to install and maintain tens of thousands of miles of high power electrical lines to get the power out to the customer. Power generation facilities across the continent are connected in very complex and highly volatile network, and require tens of thousands of people, on a daily basis, just to keep it working. Our trash is collected and consolidated into huge holes in the ground, designed to hide the excess of our ways. In essence, we just live our daily lives and use these things without a thought about any problem or potential problem that might exist in the system … and that is a very dangerous situation to be in.

Last week when the news broke, about the earthquake in Haiti, we were complacent … oh, another earthquake in a place most of us had never given a second thought to … but when the gravity of the disaster began to become real for us (thanks Anderson Cooper), we realized that this was much more than your run of the mill earthquake; if there even is such a thing. No, this was much worse, this was the complete collapse of an entire society of people; an entire country is in turmoil, and despair is the nicest thing they have going for them. This was devastation like we have never seen before. Outside of collapsed schools, homes, businesses, and government buildings, were throngs of people, hundreds of thousands of people, displaced. There are perhaps, 2 million people or more, whose daily lives are affected to a degree that we can barely fathom, yet here we sit oblivious to the dangers our own highly integrated society has built for itself; oblivious to the havoc we would face if we were to have our own infrastructure-quake.

Consider that you are reading this, likely on a computer, powered by electricity, generated by a power plant, that runs on uranium, coal, oil or gas. What happens when there is a failure at a power plant? Can’t happen? Think again … across this country, there have been numerous catastrophic plant failures, explosions at solar power facilities, core leaks at nuclear plants, massive turbine failures, collapse of steam pipes, and wind and ice damage to transmission lines … and that was only in the last couple of years. It doesn’t seem that bad though, particularly if you were not one of those affected, without power for weeks on end. As any computer expert would tell you, in order to have a secure and reliable system, you must have redundancy … lots of redundancy. Look at how NASA works … there are redundancy protocols, for redundant systems, for redundant protocols, for backup systems, for backup systems… and yet they still have a track record of having catastrophic, irrecoverable, problems.

That hot shower we take for granted, would be of little concern for those who rely upon a public water source, were that source to become contaminated or unavailable. Consider that, in a town my size, as many as 50,000 people could be left without so much as drinking water, much less bathing water, if a single system goes down. The idea that bigger is better, and consolidation for the common good, is of little concern if you are thirsty.

What we can learn here, is that, smaller, more localized handling of the needs of people will provide a much better solution than massive projects to provide for the masses. Multiple, neighborhood water supplies, will ensure that, in the event of a single failure, the least number of people are affected. If one or more wells stop functioning, there may be a lower capacity of the remaining supplies, but the lower supply is a better alternative than no supply. Electricity generation is another very similar situation… If we have more plants, much smaller than the gazillion megawatt plants of today, spread out in more communities, with shorter transmission distances, the failure of one in a huge network, will be much less problematic than the failure of a single plant providing power to an entire quadrant of the country.

The whole point is, when you put all of your proverbial eggs into a single basket, no matter how big and strong that basket might be, there is a flaw in that basket, a flaw you don’t see … and grandma knew that… thats why she always carried two baskets to the hen house, and why she went twice a day. If one of the baskets failed, she didn’t lose all of the eggs. As a populace, it would do us well to remember that … we need to have many baskets in order to have the least collateral damage in the event one fails. If you learn nothing from the plight of the Haitians, learn this one thing … almost always, a little something is better than no something … and right now, the basket that contained the Haitian infrastructure, has been dropped to the ground by an earthquake nobody predicted.

Recently I had an unusual experience. It intrigued me so much that I had to write about it and lately, as evidenced by my lack of blogging activity, I just haven’t been inspired to write about much. Perhaps that is the writers block that causes some consternation among many fellow writers. But I’ll give it a try and see if I can still muster enough fortitude to put together a thoughtful post.

I am a member of or have been a member of many different organizations in the last 25 years or so. Most of the time they are specific cause charities, for example boys clubs or scouts. For the purpose of this entry, I’ll not identify the organization I am writing about because I really do believe in their cause, and wouldn’t want the people involved to become pawns in yet another political debate.

I wasn’t the first nor the last to enter the board room as the meeting was getting underway. As is customary, the opening ceremony was completed and the course of business had gotten underway. When it came to new business, it was posited that considering the substantial devastation in Haiti and the fact that aide organizations across the world are clamoring for funds to get supplies and people on the ground there to help, it would be nice if we too would contribute to the cause. On the face it seemed like a great idea, although our annual budget is pretty low, we could put together a care package of $250, it might not be much, but it would certainly help. If more people did it, then the dollars add up pretty quickly.

Now spending money is something that I enjoy. I also really like helping people, regardless of their situation, I call it my compassionate guilt complex. When I am able and sometimes when I am not, I give of my time and money to help others. This is a weakness that I have, but I am willing to bear because of the joy that I get from knowing I was able to help someone in need. But this was different. This was money from an organization that had come together for a specific purpose, whose charter laid out the rules of conduct and whose members agreed to abide by that charter.

In many ways it is very similar to our federal government and our own system of laws. To draw a complete comparison, we can liken the Constitution to the club charter, the President would be the board chair, and the Congress would be the board members, finally the citizens of this country would be akin to our club members.

The ‘President’ called the question … after the requisite motion and second as required, ‘Congress’ entered into debate over this bill. The sentiment was unanimous. The people in Haiti are having a really tough time of it and we have the desire to help them. Considering there wasn’t alot of real discussion going on, I asked a simple question. “Mr President, does our constitution allow for us to spend money on the people in Haiti?”. The ‘President’ was honestly shocked by the question, and after a couple of minutes simply stated that it did not. So I followed up with “If our constitution doesn’t allow for us to do this, why are we even entertaining this bill?” The resounding, almost unison response from the ‘Congress’ was “Its the right thing to do to help these people. We can and we must!” … now if that sounds like a mandate, it surely did to me … its the right thing to do, we can do it, so we must do it … At this point there was much bickering and arguing back and forth between those who saw that the truth is, regardless of whether we want to do it, it is neither right nor can we just do it. As an organization bound by laws and rules, we must abide by those or risk losing the confidence in the citizens that elected us to our position. When the final vote was cast, the bill failed by a 1 vote margin.

Clearly this wasn’t our government in action, but it was a really close approximation in the private world, however the reaction was right on par with what one might see from the citizens who desperately wanted to see this bill pass. Immediately I began receiving comments about how I must hate the people in Haiti or how can I ignore their plight. These sentiments, while on the surface seemed to be correct, they were far from the truth. Regardless of how many times I said I had nothing against them and really wanted to help them but my hands were tied, as it would have been against our charter to authorize such an expenditure, they would have no part of it.

Finally, I made a comment that would cease the discussions and quieted the naysayers. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a $50 bill and laid it on the table. Of course it was already earmarked for gas, but I needed to make a point. I told the entire committee that I was donating $50 toward the recovery efforts in Haiti right then and there, and I would gladly accept any personal donations from the members of the board, up to a total of $250. After a few seconds of shock, the murmuring quieted down and I instructed the members to see me after the meeting so we could coordinate our $250 donation. Amazingly, but not unexpectedly, there was not one person who took up my offer to fund a private initiative.

Sure it was OK as long as it was someone else’s money they were giving away, but the end result was that I made my point. People feign compassion when it makes them look good, they feign conservatism when it makes them look good … in fact people generally do whatever they can to make themselves look good, except, and this is a big one, except when it requires that they actually do the deed.

So what does this teach us? If you are really concerned about people, don’t be a fake conservative, don’t let your compassion go awry and by all means, don’t fall for the rhetoric about certain things being the right thing to do. The right thing to do is to live within the constraints of our laws and rules, and if you don’t like them, work to change them.

Over the years I have searched, much like many others, for the methods by which I can achieve recognition and praise; after all, who doesn’t want accolades for the things they achieve, for the goals they reach and the toys they possess. Isn’t that what drives our constant need for competition?

Lets look at how sports figures all across the world compete for that elusive crown of victory. Athletes are willing to put aside sleep, pain and family for the prize of achieving that ultimate goal at being a winner, to be great at what they do. There is no mountain too tall, no ocean too deep and no river too wide that will keep them from working toward that pinnacle. Frequently we hear how football players continue to force themselves to strive on despite having a torn ligament in a knee, something that would bring the toughest person down, but somehow, they push through the pain and continue. There are baseball players that seek to achieve greatness through the use of injections and supplements designed to increase muscle mass to improve their game, and yet, many of these sports figures, great in their own mind, fail to achieve what they want most.

In the political arena we have politicians who sell out their constituents for the promise of power and fortune, but in the end they end up despised and even hated. The ever increasing nature of divisiveness in politics has created but a few “statesmen”, the rest simply slip into obscurity for eternity, failing to reach that goal of being remembered for grand achievements.

Even in families and the workplace we have folks who go about their daily activities looking for that next grand scheme that will propel them into fame, that will grant them riches and glory, but alas here again, the vast majority of these fail to reach their goal.

Considering that my own life experiences has taught me a lesson or two or a hundred, I have to look back and see what I did that was so different from those who have achieved greatness, at least as far as I can tell. To do this I have to consider what kind of greatness I am observing. As best as I can tell, there are two distinct ways to achieve greatness as is defined by popular culture.

The first, which isn’t really greatness at all, is notoriety, being known for doing something that others have not, or would not. In this category, we have all sorts of people who believe they have achieved the reward. To see this, one need only look at people like Nero and Caligula, Dahmer and Kaczynski, Osama and Atta et.al.

The second, which is probably the more classic example of greatness, has people like Washington and Jefferson, Ghandi and Mother Teresa, Marino and Babe Ruth, and others who throughout their lives made it a point to do what they love and love what they do. To achieve greatness in the minds of others, to reach that lofty place where others would admire and respect their achievements. But what each of these have in common is not that they achieved greatness, but rather that they did so without the expectation of accolades .. ok maybe Marino and Babe Ruth wanted accolades, but it is a nice sentiment, and from all indications they took particular interest in their fans, something lost on many folks today.

So after all of this, if I haven’t lost you, the real question is; “How can I achieve greatness?” – it is achievable, but it isn’t easy. Remember those ball players who play through pain, you will have to play through your adversities as well. You will have to seek out those things that are blocking your goals and move beyond them, put them aside and reach for that elusive mark, but even then that mark is unsatisfying if you have not done it for the right reasons. There is one quality that supercedes all in the quest for greatness, and that is the motivation behind such a journey. If you are seeking greatness for the sake of greatness, then you are doing it wrong, however, if you are not seeking greatness, but you are doing what you believe in for the sake of others, you will achieve it.

Several months ago I wrote a bit about how the American people were being fed a huge lie about insurance, i.e. how we all need insurance and how if we all had it, then the cost of medical care would be lower. Frankly I think insurance is quickly becoming government sanctioned extortion, particularly considering the proposal to force people to purchase insurance or face a fine on top of the taxes to pay for someone elses health care. It isn’t clear whether you would be allowed to have health care if you are forced to pay a fine, but I wouldn’t put it past our government to preclude those fined from obtaining government health care.

We Can’t Afford Socialized Health Care

There are several factors to remember when talking about a nationalized health care system and the biggest of them is probably the fact that we can ill afford to pay for it. Consider the points I raised in the previous article regarding the fact that insurance is a business. Currently, medicare costs are bankrupting the system, and presumably the new socialized health care will follow a similar model … pay as you go. As it has been pointed out by many people other than myself, the current “pay as you go” mentality of the government is nothing more than a huge ponzi scheme whereby benefits to previous subscribers are paid for by new subscribers. This means, that at some point, as is now evidenced in both Social Security and Medicare, the new system will be ill prepared to provide for the combined proposed benefits of the subscribers and as a result will either have to cut benefits substancially or it will have to exact more taxation from the subscribers (you and I) to pay for this monstrosity.

Now before I get off on a tangent, let me explain why you cannot afford nObamaCare. Under the current proposal, every citizen in the US or under US control would be required to purchase insurance with the caveat being “if they can afford” to purchase it. I have checked out various insurance programs, considered their cost, and determined that the median family income of  $67,019 a year would probably allow some families to purchase group policies, while others would not. The reason for this is that outside of a group policy as provided by an employer, major medical policies can vary from as little as $350 a month per individual to $1700 a month for a family of four. Now if we consider that an insurance company is a commercial enterprise with aspirations of making a profit, you have to believe that the costs are that high for a reason, and that reason is they have to cover the costs of providing the care.

So what might put you, the average citizen, in the $350 category as opposed to something higher? Consider that your age, health care history, home state, and gender play a huge role in determining your rates, and while race is not immediately asked of applicants, you can rest assured that it plays a factor as well, despite the efforts by government and insurance companies to make us believe otherwise, it is quite obvious to insurance companies that African-American males have a higher health care cost than any other gender/race group of people. The insurance companies know this, and you can bet they have a method to insure they are not exposed unnecessarily. There have been reports of gender and race bias in the application of benefits that seem to unfairly target minorities. Whether this is by design or because of other social issues remains to be resolved. Regardless, the equitable access to health care is expensive, especially if you have any pre-existing conditions.

The bottom line, is do you trust government enough to allow them to dictate whether you can afford to pay $350 a month for single coverage or as much as $1700 a month for family coverage? I doubt most have that kind of faith in our government .. I know I don’t.

Limited Choices for Care

Under the proposed system, your health care will look similar to that of Europe or Canada where it has been reported that medicine is not provided because of cost or treatments denied based on where they live, in fact, under most conditions, patients are barred from paying for the procedures themselves.

According to British journalist Melanie Phillips, the British model, which many in our own government have taken direct clues from as to what they would like to see in the US, has become a matter of life and death with dire circumstances.

” Britain has some of the worst cancer survival rates in Europe, and as some doctors privately acknowledge, one reason is that NHS patients are prevented from buying the most effective drugs.”

She futher states as a matter of policy that the NIH causes physicians to cease treatment for an illness if the patient or patient’s family purchases any enhancements to the treatment. For those who are part of the envy class that hate people for being good money managers and savers instead of spenders, this means that evil rich people have to get the same crappy medical care as the rest of the population, except what they fail to realize is that refusal to allow a person medical care is the exact opposite of their mantra for improved coverage and improved care. I suppose it is only a bad thing if it is somebody else that is refused care. I have a sneaking suspicion that the lawmakers in Washington will not be forced to see the same sub-par medical practitioners as those who will be part of the socialized health care they are advocating so vehemently.

I have listened intently for several months to Dave Ramsey and I believe his methods are based in sound fiscal ideas and analysis of human behavior. I wanted to expound upon his “Debt is Dumb” phrase and express some ideas that many folks may not understand.

In these uncertain economic times, we often ask ourselves just what we would do if we were one of the thousands who have lost their job due to the economic downturn. Well, the fact is that many of us would do nothing and some would find something else to do in the meantime.

It isn’t really rocket science and there is no magic solution. The facts are pretty simple. If you owe a creditor and you cannot pay them, you will lose your posessions if they are security for the debt. The simplest solution is often the most profound once we take time to examine it closely. What you should be asking yourself isn’t “Who is going to help me?” but rather, “How am I going to deal with this problem?” the answer you come up with may mean the difference in losing everything or just some things.

If you cannot meet your obligations, you need to consider several alternatives. The first of which is to remove yourself from the ability to utilize credit. Credit is your enemy and is the reason you are in the situation you are in right now. To quote Dave Ramsey, “debt is dumb”. If you don’t have the cash, then you don’t buy … period! Next you look at your assets and decide which of them you can sell quickly and on your terms … it must be on your terms because if it is on the banks terms, you lose every time. At least if you sell it yourself you may gain something from the sale, you certainly will not from a bank sale. The third step is to get another job to pay debts that you are short of paying. Even if the job is minimum wage, the money earned to pay your mortgage is a whole lot less than the equity you may lose if you don’t pay your mortgage. Remember the banks are not your friend.

Now that you have a minimum wage job and still can’t survive, you must look at the various “things” you posess and begin to cut away. Immediate things that come to mind are, going out to restaurants, cable television, internet access, cellular or household telephone and gasp … vacations. Cut cut cut .. when you don’t think there is anything else to cut, check again. I promise you that it is there. You just haven’t reached that level of dispair … yet. If things don’t change immediately for you, you can bet you will reach despair. The decisions become much easier at that stage. It seems that so long as we are beholden to our “things” we have a difficult time making rational decisions that could well mean the difference between being poor and being homeless and poor.

Don’t wait too long to change your habits. The sooner you start, the better off you will be.

If you have done something for someone; especially a number of times over; is it natural to desire (even expect) some level of reciprocation?

Mark

Does anyone believe (or not believe) that the fact that one is a family member, by blood, or otherwise, that there is some obligation for them to always (or most of the time) do things for you; and vice verse?

Mark

A thought occured to me last evening.

I was visiting a local restaurant and as with any Friday night, there were dozens of young people crammed into the dining room. Each seemed to be paired in groups of four, two guys and two gals. While there is nothing remarkable about this in particular, what did strike me as a significant change from the many years ago I would have done the same, is the number of mixed ethnicity couples. Of course I have no way of knowing whether any of the people were a couple as I didn’t take the time to observe them for clues about their romantic tendencies, but the fact they were paired as they were would lend to that perception.

I thought about this for a few minutes and I had to ask myself why I found it unusual. Had I been brought up to believe such things were not supposed to take place? Of course I hadn’t, and after some considerable thought, I believe I may have found an answer.

During my childhood and young adult life, the prospect of seeing couples of differing skin color was unusual, I can only remember two and they weren’t treated favorably by most people of the time. Since our reactions to events in life are mostly a learned response, perhaps I learned from an early age that mixed couples are treated harshly by society and as such, they are to be avoided. Maybe that is why I found this unusual and maybe that trend of ostracizing those who appear differently than ourselves is changing.

I find this refreshing and I take great pride in the fact that so many of our youth have the ability to see beyond differences that would have been frowned upon even 20 years ago. I challenge you to put away preconceived ideas and embrace a society that appears to be learning from our past failures.

You read the title correctly. Insurance is probably the biggest lie perpetuated on the public since the flat-earth crowd. Consider in the US, where the masses have been using and abusing insurance for more than a hundred years. On its face insurance looks like and sounds like a perfect solution. The cost of health care for example, is very high. One would argue that by having health insurance, you reduce your expenses, particularly in a catestrophic event, and thus reduce your overall exposure to financial risk in the process. It seems so good, how on earth could it be bad? Well, consider that insurance companies are not independently wealthy, their wealth comes from the premiums paid to them by subscribers …  like you and I, and our respective employers if we are so lucky as to have them subsidize our premiums.

 
Insurance companies are in business to make money, and as such, the premiums that must be collected from the subscribers must always be higher than the monies paid to health care providers for your care, regardless of whether it is for a $40 prescription or a $150,000 heart transplant, plus associated future medical care. It isn’t difficult to imagine then, that given the cost of health care, we just can’t afford it.

 
So, what is the answer? Well, I didn’t say I had the answer, I only said that insurance as we know it is a big lie … if the associated health care costs are not affordable, then the insurance to cover that health care, by the sheer nature of the beast, cannot be affordable either. The prospect, while pretty on the face, is unsustainable. In 2007, the average cost spent per person in the US for health care was $7600. Therefore, to make things equitable for every man, woman and child to receive benefits, (i.e. be able to go to the doctor for whatever ailment they had), a family of 4 would have had to contribute $30,400 to the insurance pool in 2007. Since it is obvious that most people can ill afford to pay the premiums under these circumstances, it stands to reason that the health insurance companies’ betting that you will not need health care is a winning one. The question then is, if the insurance companies don’t think you will need health care, or at least they don’t think the masses will need it, why have we, as a society put so much emphasis on the dire need of health care? The answer once again is with the insurance companies. The top 25 insurance companies in the US spend $1.5 billion annually telling people how much they need their product. So their job is to convice you that you NEED their product, while betting that you don’t.

 
I don’t have health insurance. It is a calculated risk I take. If the insurance company believes I don’t need their product, then why should I believe them when they tell me I do? It doesn’t mean that I forego health care … far from it. Consider that my total health care premium for 2007 would have been $15,200.00 just for me, not including my family, based on a group rate from my employer. On average that is $1267 per month for health care. I would find it very difficult to expend that amount of money monthly on my health care alone. In fact, if I went to see the doctor weekly, I would spend on average $260 per month without health insurance. Most people visit the doctor much less than that, in fact, I have been to the doctor exactly 3 times in the last 2 years. Once for a full physical, required by an organization I was working with, once for a blood test, and once for the results of those tests. I could not begin to tell you how upset I would be had I spent $30,400.00 to an insurance company to provide $295 in services. If you think health care is expensive, try looking at the true cost of your insurance. I did, and I said “No thanks”. I’ll pay for my health care costs as I incur them, and I will keep the remaining $30,000 in a savings account in case I need catestrophic care.