In the September/October issue of the American Academy of Actuaries online journal ‘Contingencies’, both Barack Obama and John MaCain are invited to share their policies on healthcare.
McCain’s idea is that the American Healthcare system should operate like Wall St — an idea that is, perhaps, in the current climate, ill-advised.
Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.
I assume his comparison regarding vigorous competition would be the idea that we encourage big insurance companies like, say, AIG to offer ‘innovative products’ like — oh, I don’t know — maybe something like mortgage derivatives where the insurance company sells your health coverage risk on to other organizations unbeknownst to you, foriegn and domestic, bundling thousands of plans together. No need to know which plans are in what bundle — which ones contain the high-risk plans and which ones the low. Just mark them up and sell them on. And we certainly don’t want ‘Big Government’ interfering with the perfect motion of the free market. McCain goes on to say
Consumer-friendly insurance policies will be more available and affordable when there is greater competition among insurers on a level playing field. You should be able to buy your insurance from any willing provider—the state bureaucracies are no better than national ones.
You know, willing insurance providers akin to Lehman, AIG, Wachovia and Washington Mutual. I mean, what could go wrong?
I guess no matter how carefully one plans a political campaign, there’s just no knowing what curve ball might come your way. Given his druthers, I’m sure the last subject McCain would want to be in the headlines is the economy; you’ll remember he cheerfully announced to the world that this was still a subject on which he needed to be educated.
But here we are, staring down the most dangerous implosion of the American economy since the Depression, a situation that has already caused far more damage to the economy than any terrorist ever did — or ever could. Still, McCain insists he’s our man. On Monday he assured us ‘the fundamentals were strong’. Yet a day later we were ‘in a deep crisis’.
His larger dilemma however is how to conceal his 20+ year record of disdain for anything that resembles regulation of the free market and sell himself today as a market reformer. It’s not likely to work.
McCain continues to forget that we no longer live in a world where one’s personal history can be revised on the fly. You can no longer say ‘the fundamentals are strong’ on Monday and insist that you never meant that and that we are (’my friends’) in a deep crisis on Tuesday. You can’t be a deregulating ‘Master of the Universe’ today and the next wag your finger at the market that allowed you the opportunity to own seven houses the next. You Tube has become a time-machine that may make it the savior of American democracy. Bare-faced lying and hypocricy just doesn’t fly anymore.
It’s a win-win situation. ABC get a series of exclusive interviews with the news-star de jour and the McCain campaign confound their critics by at last exposing their fragile veep to the media.
No one was expecting anything but ‘respect and deference’ from Charlie Gibson, everyone’s favorite uncle, and that’s exactly what we (and she) got. For those paying attention, Palin’s non-commital Orwellian like responses were, as Gibson said, ‘a blizzard of words’ signifying nothing. Her prepared responses seemed written by commitee and it was bound to be only a matter of time before she was asked something her handlers had neglected to prepare her for. The moment came when asked about the Bush doctrine. She clearly had no idea what Gibson was refering too.
Her responses lacked conviction and they lacked courage. Clearly she is either unable to - or is not being allowed to - think or speak for herself - for it’s clear how quickly that would get her into even more trouble.
The McCain campaign’s cynical and hubristic dismissal of the Fourth Estate is a play right out of Cheney and Rove’s playbook. Their opinion seems to be that neither they or Palin have a responsibility to allow any information about their candidate for elected office to be released that has not first been vetted, scrubbed and spinned by their campaign staff first; making Palin nothing more than a conservative’s confection.
Watching her with Gibson, it’s clear why the Republican’s are so afraid of the press-at-large devouring this political ingenue with her wilderness mentality and isolationist world view. There is nothing she has learned staring into the bloody carcas of a moose that could possibly prepare her for the vice-presidency of the United States.
Outside of Alaska, few of us yet know much about Sarah Palin, John McCain’s veep pick. We hear she’s a ‘reformer’, a ‘conservative’, a hunter, a pro-life and capital punishment supporter– and an ex-beauty queen who owns the distinction of being voted ‘hottest governor’ by Alaska magazine. We will hear and see much more of her over the next couple on months which will give us an opportunity to ‘flesh out’, so to speak, our opinion of her.
Discussion of her hot librarian physical attractiveness, will be discouraged, of course, as was discussion of Mitt Romney’s head of hair and John Edward’s Ken-doll good looks. Certainly the genes that created her body are less imortant in the current context than those that provided for an ambitious and principled disposition.
The pairing of this vibrant 44 year old with Gramps McCain defies description. Under Alaskan consent laws, McCain is actually old enough to be Palin’s grandfather.
Considering the not altogether unlikely scenario of McCain shuttling off this mortal coil during his presidency, I am reminded of another, albeit fictional be-speckled diva who was called upon to serve in similar (though far more extreme) circumstances.
His brand of god-bothering is common in the US (even in the more liberal enclaves): He speaks with a conviction that could be parsed as arrogance; slipping between scripture and policy as if there were no distinction to be made between the two.
Methinks he doeth protest too much. I have found those who claim their faith as their central raison d’etre are generally missing some essential moral ingredient for which faith acts as an easily adopted, but ultimately untenable surrogate. Kaine reminds me of the guy I had to fire some years ago who perused verses from his leather-bound bible at lunch time and teen porn sites on the company network in the evenings.
As well as missing an essential moral core based on humanity rather than superstition, there is often a paucity of intellect. Kaine told CBS without a trace of irony,
“…If somebody advances an idea or position that’s wrong, then attack them
for having a bad idea. But they are not wrong because they are
religious.”
Nature is not ordered; it is full of the grandest chaos. The concept of a grand plan exists only in the human mind.
Language is the tool we use to describe what that order looks, feels and smells like (this is a tree, that is a rock). We also use words to describe what the world means for ourselves. (She loves me, she loves me not).
How we interact with what we perceive, and how we feel about it is the stuff of the internal chatter that offers us our judgments of the world from one second to the next.
All of us, at one time or another, are failed by that internal narrator who invents stories about ourselves and others - or about the nature of fate - to make sense of the pain it is feeling. The old truths (she loves me) no longer hold and we take a short-cut to new meanings (she loves me not), because above truth, above reason, we crave meaning.
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