Current events

So the Dems "answered the call of history". That might explain why they couldn't answer all those calls from their constituents begging them not to vote for that crazy health care thing.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of universal health coverage, but I am a tad curious how Uncle Samuel plans to pay for it. Heck, I loved the idea of the 24 buffet on that cruise ship... it's the reality of a week and a half of stomach upset afterwards that I wasn't too keen on. The health care debate does serve as a nice launching point for some thoughts on the current events and how much longer we may have before some of the more gruesome of the end times prophecies come to fruition.

Issue 1) Why did we need health care reform in the first place?

When I was a freshman at the University of Texas, some twenty odd years ago, I took a basic macroeconomics class with about sixty other just-give-me-the-diploma-and-shut-up drones. I only remember one lecture out of the whole business; it was the one that made me change my major. The prof was explaining the concepts of elastic and inelastic demand. For his example of "inelastic" demand he brought up insulin and described how chronic diabetics would give almost anything in exchange for the medicine. That was the goal of a thriving company, he said, to make their product or service so inelastic that the consumer would become utterly dependant. I distinctly remember looking around the room to see if anyone else was even raising an eyebrow at the notion of consumer-slavery being job number one. To my surprise, no, I was the only one who wasn't dutifully taking notes -- sickening.

In the past couple of decades America has lost its moral will. All the the nasty stuff that our founding fathers told us would happen if we turned our backs on God is happening. But America has been a immoral corporate shill for more than just a decade or two, you say? I don't think so. Not entirely.

I think it works something an immune system that has been compromised to a critical degree. Ninety years ago our nation may have caught a bad case of Rockefeller, but it eventually fought it off with chicken soup and anti-trust legislation. Now the white blood cell count is so low that we've got a bad case of Exxon and we can't shake it; we've got Monsanto in our blood stream and worse yet, we've contracted a case of Goldman Sachs so bad that I'm not sure how much longer we've got.

When a nation loses its moral fiber its wealth migrate inexorably from weak hands to strong hands. The vulnerable become progressively poorer and something like health care is a perfect example for how this happens.

Health care prices have been consistently rising by something like 10% to 12% a year. At the same time real wages (wages measured against inflation) have been falling for the last decade or so. How does health care command a higher price against consumers who are steadily less able to pay for it? Because it can. It sells insulin -- and things like it. Now if you have health insurance (and if you don't, you're about to) you may have noticed that you and/or your company has to pay more for the privilege every year, it takes a bigger chunk of your salary, and it was going to keep taking a bigger chunk of your salary every year until a government entity looking out for your interests finally stepped in... unfortunately we don't have that kind of government. Here's what actually happened:

The bill is contrived in such a way that is intended to get the people who voted for it reelected -- once. The goodies (universal child coverage, new rules for dropping coverage, etc) kick in immediately. The paperwork and bureaucratic fun-times don't go live until 2014. By 2018 everything is in place, it becomes obvious to all that this was never meant to benefit you, and hopefully you've forgotten who voted for it in the first place.

2) Who actually benefits from this thing?

The large pharmaceutical companies are probably the biggest winners. They got all sorts of perks with very few strings attached. If you watched Fox News you may have heard that a small group of large insurance providers were also popping champagne corks. I don't think so. Big pharma is sitting at the top of that informational food chain that I talked about in the Man of Lawlessness segments (see: Who is the antichrist). The only value that the insurance companies bring to the table is that they allow the government to offload a certain amount of unpleasant responsibility. In other words: they make a convenient scapegoat. Right at this moment the government of our fine nation is promising to pay for a whole host of things that they can't possibly pay for. when they don't, someone has to take the blame, someone who isn't up for reelection. Yes, I realize the insurance exect's are probably already counting the extra cash from the 32 million new customers. I just don't think that becoming a pseudo-government entity a la Freddie Mac and AIG is going to be a cakewalk at this stage of the game. As we'll see in the next post "government bailout" is going to mean something different very soon.

As a final note, consider that the Bible never endorses one form of human governance over another. Democracy is never propped up as "blessed", monarchies are never derided, etc. God doesn't waste any ink telling us how to govern a country. It wouldn't do any good. No system of government can overcome the moral failings of its people. Communism never looks anything like a "commune", it looks like a tightly controlled caste system where one "comrade" gets the goodies, the other gets a paltry government job. And if you watched the wrangling around health care bill you saw what democracy looks like. It looks like 300 million in perks for Louisiana, it looks like special giveaways for a bank in North Dakota, it looks like the revelation that "universal" health care for children with preexisting conditions doesn't quite mean that -- it looks like 2,700 pages of fine print and promises that have no basis in reality.

Next: the economy and geopolitical rumblings.