Another day in Paradise lost

In my opinion, Donald Trump is an ignorant bigoted man who says and does stupid things. This weekend he demonstrated that he and his inner circle are also totally incompetent.

Now let's turn to the Don Quixote party, sometimes called democrats. It is obvious that many of Donald Trump's cabinet appointees appear to be disasters in the making, but it is also quite apparent they are going to be approved by the Senate. So, the Democrats should quit looking like transparent obstructionists. All they are doing is providing arguments for the Ministry of Truth to blame  them for what will be the shortcomings of the Trump administration. Ask pointed questions, vote against them, and get out of the way. For instance, ask Tom Price if he believes that all Americans should receive decent health care, not health insurance. Ask him if it should be provided in the most efficient manner based upon the percentage of GDP that needs to go to healthcare. Ask the EPA nominee if he accepts the view of 95% or so of climatologists that there is anthropogenic climate change. Ask him 100 times until it is obvious he will not answer. Ask him if he will direct the EPA to follow the best available science. Again, be relentless. Hammer on Betsy Devos'previously demonstrated incompetence. But, don't obstruct the vote.

Start talking about the democratic plan to help the middle class and why tax cuts for the rich won't do it. Explain why the TPP or something like it is good policy. Develop and explain a foreign-policy. In other words, start promoting an alternative to Donald Trump's fantasies. And start finding and promoting a candidate for 2020. It appears Donald Trump won the election by promising bread and providing circus. Think of the states you need to win in 2020 and tell them what they want to hear. Did Donald Trump ever explain how he was going to do and accomplish anything or what his domestic and foreign strategies work? If Donald Trump is the disaster I think he will be, the Democrat candidate should win. Although I doubt anybody agrees with me on this, I really think the Democrats should start promoting George Clooney. Everybody loves him and he looks like a president. That should be enough.

White House staff has "Fantastic " meeting

Donald Trump today told sources that the White House staff had an incredible, a fantastic, and absolutely brilliant staff meeting at which the triumphs of the last week where discussed. Donald Trump said that his staff collectively agreed that it was probably the greatest White House staff meeting in history. The amount of brilliant and creative comments were without parallel in history Trump stated. At the end of that meeting there was a standings self-congratulatory ovation. I didn't ask for it he said. It was completely spontaneous but understandable because it was such a tremendous huge success. My Consigliary, Kellyanne Conway,, remarked that it was totally unfair and deceitful that the press never mentioned the incredible successful White House staff meetings and the brilliance displayed there. She is, Donald Trump said, of course a war time Consigliary as we are at war with the press these days and by the way she is undoubtedly the greatest White House Consigliary in history. She is fantastic and brilliant. My son-in-law Jared, said dad that was the greatest meeting ever. As you know Jared is an incredible, a fantastic and brilliant businessman and has been to many many meetings with brilliant , creative people. He calls me dad because he is married to my daughter  Ivanka who is one of the most brilliant and creative people I have ever met She is also a fantastic business woman who is carrying on my tradition in creating spectacularly successful worldwide companies that as far as I know have never been matched in history. I would tell you more about the incredible meeting but as you know it is not my practice to trumpet, no pun intended, my brilliant successes.

The demolition Man

As Donald Trump endlessly told us during the campaign, he built a great great business, a world-class business, one of the greatest businesses ever built. A business so big, maybe huge, that it could lose $1 billion in one year. Now, it appeared that in the last few years that business primarily consists of licensing his name to projects built and financed largely by others. He took great pride in things that he built. Building a hotel, shopping center, the golf course or other types of developments starts with demolishing what is there. Typically there is a plan in place to build on the site. It appears Trump so far focuses on demolishing what has been built over long period of time without any clear idea of the replacement.

His pitch on the campaign was that everything has gone to hell– the economy,  the military,  education. These things have been stolen from the United States by other countries, notably China and Mexico. Trump has an endless list of promises. He is going to pay for them by requiring other countries in some form or another to give them all back. Thus there will be no cost or deficits. Peter Navarro, his economic guru, tells him the cost can be largely if not entirely paid for by eliminating trade deficits with China. Exactly how this would work is not clear.

Today Trump  focused on small businesses. Trump promises a wholesale demolition of regulations that make it impossible to start or expand a small business. If that be true, the regulations in question are largely imposed by state and local governments, not the federal government. During this segment that I saw, no one raised this point.

Trump also stated this morning that no one is being detained at US airports because of his reckless imposition of new travel restrictions. That appears to be  inaccurate. Is it a lie to mistate knowable facts when one has the means to determine the accuracy before the statement is made?

Main stream media outfoxed

A guy I know who knows a guy who knows says rumors from an anonymous source say that following Sean Hannity's hard-hitting and penetrating interview with Donald Trump, the fox news network is planning to change its name to the Ministry of Truth. That same source says that the legal department of the former FOXNews has been instructed to file for copyright protection of the words truth, Fact and Lie. This filling is expected to be approved expeditiously as it is clear that the former Fox network is the only news organization to use those terms accurately. Kellyann Conway is expected to be given a dual appointment as White House consular and first minister of truth. When asked if she saw any conflict of interest by a reporter from an unidentified network, she responded by immediately obtaining a restraining order preventing anyone from that network coming within 100 yards of her.

 Other unnamed unreliable sources have  rumored that Donald Trump is requesting the FCC to investigate whether there are too many news channels. He explained that not only does that muddy up affairs that can be nicely handled by only one channel but that it would free up bandwidth for more important use such as reruns of The Apprentice, Ronald Reagan introducing death Valley days and a channel devoted to fund raising by select politicians. He is also said to have remarked that he would like to see a channel devoted to reruns of the Dick Van Dyke show and the Mary Tyler Moore show. He said the recent passing of Mary Tyler Moore reminded him how much he admires loves and respects women which is why he goes out of his way to praise and complement them, even during the heat of the campaign.

Once Upon a time in Baja Canada

An unconfirmed report from an anonymous source says that the heirs of Sergio Leone have agreed to coproduce a new spaghetti Western. Clint Eastwood will reprise his roles. However there will be changes. Instead of wearing a poncho, Eastwood will wear a blue cashmere duster similar to the top coat worn by Donald Trump. In addition, Eastwood will not wear a hat over his eyes but will sport a light blond flowing hairdo. The furled brow and scowl will remain. The plot will be loosely based upon the story line of The Treasure of Sierra Madre. However, in this version, the Eastwood character will journey to Mexico to retrieve gold that has been extracted from the United States by Mexicans. Although the film is not finished, a few rushes are available. One of the most memorable is a meeting between the Eastwood character and a band of Mexican militia. The Eastwood character confronts the Mexicans with the notion that they have illegally crossed the border to extract American gold. In a memorable line, the head of the Mexican militia states" We don't need no stinking borders."

In another unconfirmed report from an anonymous source, Sean Spicer is expected to soon hold an impromptu press conference. At that conference, spicer will discuss Donald Trump's lifelong interest in quantum physics. He will explain that Donald Trump has long been an adherent to the many worlds explanation of quantum reality. Spicer will further discuss the fact that Washington DC is not only a swamp but a singularity, a black hole from which neither light or truth can escape–no Lux, no Veritas. However, consistent with some quantum cosmology, light and matter can pop out of a singularity into another universe. It is from this phenomenon that Donald Trump derives his knowledge of an alternate reality. It is hoped that this will end the silly comments that Donald Trump lies about objective facts. He does not, you are simply looking at the wrong one of many worlds.

Breaking fake news–voting fraud

Donald J Trump today gloated that he won the election by voting fraud. How do you think I won he asked? The polls all had me behind but yet I won. Now you know you cannot fix a  nationwide election in a comprehensive fashion. But, how about a few select states. You will note and remember that my electoral college victory came about by my prevailing in Pennsylvania Ohio Michigan and Wisconsin. That took a total of about 70,000 votes. Think about that. Do you believe  that would be difficult to engineer?

In order to deflect attention, I am announcing a voter fraud investigation to be conducted in California and New York. Those are big states that I lost anyway. The press will be focusing on those two states and never really stop to consider how I won the rust belt.

And now I must turn my attention to another matter. I have long admired how the Chinese ruling group practices what they call State capitalism. I am now going to concentrate my energies on putting such an economic program to work in this country with guess who at the controls. These US businesses will never know what hit them.

Bright shiny objects

I think it was David Brooks who first remarked that Donald Trump remains distracted by bright shiny objects. It is becoming clear that he is not the only one. The electronic press media appears similarly distracted. Today they are all about Twitter, pun intended, by Donald Trump's continuing claim that three to 5,000,000 illegal votes were cast in the presidential election. They can't say enough about it. They endlessly speculate about why he is doing it and what it indicates about him. We know why he is doing it. He is a thin-skinned egomaniac with a total disregard for fact.

Enough. It is totally unimportant. Get back to work. Ask him questions about his trade and foreign-policy. How is he going to tax or use trade tariffs in the case of supply lines, and companies like Apple who do not build plants in China but use Chinese plants to assemble their products? Does he think anti-dumping regulation is sufficient to protect American manufacturers? How is he going to bring back the coal industry? Doesn't building oil and gas pipelines conflict with that? What about basic erosion and profit shifting?

What about foreign-policy. What is his overall strategy in the Middle East? Will he side with Russia and Syria against all rebels? How does he intend to deal with turkey, an ally that is drifting away?

Having backed out of the TPT, what is his far east strategy? And for god sakes, China.

Quit being distracted by bright shiny objects. Ask these questions and other actually important ones relentlessly until you get an answer. You are looking like fools.

24 hour " News"

As we learned in Star Wars, there is always the dark side of the force, the force in this case being the press. The 24 hour a day news channels have to fill the time. They can't fill it with news because there isn't that much. So, increasingly channels such as CNN, M SNBC and Fox have endless panel discussions where  the participants sit around and speculate about the meaning of words lately used by politicians and a lot of trivial matters such as crowd size at the inauguration and the number of votes Donald Trump received and why. To make things worse, these panels are populated by shills from each party who typically are totally devoid of intellectual integrity and are often totally ignorant about important matters. All this does is cement the positions of the partisans who typically watch these programs.

How about trying something different. For instance, Donald Trump just abandoned the TPT and took steps to get the Keystone and Trance Dakota pipelines built. These decisions have economic consequences. Instead of political shills, how about interviewing, or even better arranging a discussion, with people like John Taylor, Glenn Hubbard or Martin Feldman on the one hand and with Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman etc. on the other hand. Have the discussion moderated by someone like Tom Keane of Bloomberg who actually is well-versed in economic analysis.

In other words, quit quibbling about unimportant matters, Report what is actually happening and what is being actually proposed and provide expert ties analysis of these. And, propose direct questions to Sean Spicer or Donald Trump if he appears. Questions such as Will your proposed Health legislation use vouchers and/or Federal subsidies and/or Health savings accounts? Will participation be mandatory? Is the administration going to propose a bilateral agreement with China? What terms and conditions do you see an agreement with China containing? There is little question but that the economic relationship between China and the United States is the most important consideration not only for those two countries but the world. Yet we are hearing nothing.

We have no foreign-policy. So, it is hard to discuss the nonexistent. However, you could interview people with expertise as to specific countries or areas who are generally not thought to be politically partisan. They can discuss the major problems and considerations that must be addressed. It is highly probable that people working for the administration in Congress would listen.

It is time for the press to engage in rigorous fact digging and analysis and quit the bullshit.

"Reform"

One of the top items on the agenda of both Donald Trump and the Republican Congress is what they call tax reform. There is of course no such thing. There is tax change. One person's reform is another person's unrepentant boondoggle. What each plan, vague as they are, has in common are massive tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals. There is, for instance, no discussion of making social security income tax-free. Donald Trump's original tax plan was calculated to create approximately and $11 trillion deficit. His new plan has apparently cut that in about half. However, if one uses" Dynamic" analysis according to Donald Trump's nominee Mnuchin, the deficit starts to magically disappear. This is the same swindle that Paul Ryan has attempted to use in his proposals, all of which have been most charitably described as implausible. As we learned during the Reagan years, tax revenues do not magically increase as a result of tax cuts. Historically, sometimes tax cuts can be a beneficial stimulus and sometimes not. It depends on the situation and who receives the tax cuts and what they do with the money. The tax cuts for major corporations go to recipients that are already awash in cash. They can expected to be used for stock buybacks and perhaps acquisitions. If tax cuts are to be given to these entities, they should being required to devote the increased revenues to Capital expenditures, R&D and wage hikes or the employees. The same should be true of any tax holidays or tax breaks given to the repatriation of overseas funds.

Trump has also stated he is going to repeal about seventy five percent of existing regulations. It is generally expected that if there is to be growth it will be in the small business sector. If that sector is encumbered by excess regulation, it is typically imposed by state and local governments. Most small businesses do not pay corporate taxes. If there be small businesses, however small is defined, that do not have access to capital, tax cuts could be beneficial if the amount of the cuts was used for Capital expenditures or wages. Again, there will be no such requirement.

Apparently Trump and his advisers do not believe in comparative advantage. He seems to be arguing for the essentially a closed economy. He today backed the United States out of the transpacific agreement. During the campaign and now there has never been a discussion of the terms and effects of that agreement. Those who know something about it, believe it to be beneficial to the United States. There is nothing wrong with jawboning business entities and seeking to persuade them to produce more in the United States. But if Trump wants to decrease trade deficits and increase exports, he is going to have to have a much more thoughtful plan. He also needs to understand that the people he purports to care about, the middle-class, need inexpensive imports. It continues to appear that as far as economic policy is concerned, magic and fantasy will rule the day.

Heaven to Betsy

Trammps pick for Secretary of Education is one Betsey DeVos. She and her husband, whose family owns Amway, have long been major contributors to Republican conservative causes. In the past, someone like Betsy would have been rewarded by being named ambassador to Luxembourg or something like that. Betsy is a long time supporter of charter schools. There can be little question that an element of her crusade for charter schools is a strong antiunion bias. She also appears to be a religious ideologue. At her hearing she exhibited  surprising ignorance about many educational issues and strongly overstated the success of charter schools. She seemed to suggest that all communities should have both a regular  public and a charter school. There was not much discussion of cost. Her constant theme is that parents should have a choice of where their child goes to school. She is therefore strongly for vouchers. Many parents are against regular public schools because of political or religious ideological concerns as opposed to the quality of education. Some are legitimately concerned about the quality of their neighborhood public schools. To people like betsy, the answer is not improving the quality of all public schools which is what public education should be all about. Charter schools should be laboratories to see if alternative educational techniques can be created and applied across the board. What they tend to be is money making opportunities for the well-connected to run numerous of them. In fact all charter schools should show greater educational gains than regular public schools because the parents are more motivated and there is more outside help as a result. In fact, the results of charter schools are mixed with many showing dismal performance. If Betsy really wants choice to be the operative principle of creating a better school results she is giving choice to the wrong group. She should allow all young children to choose their parents so that they could have well educated parents who make decent incomes. That would go along way towards solving the problem.

Rex Tillotson, Trumps candidate for Secretary of State at his hearing said he had never discussed China with Donald Trump. Actually one wonders if any of the candidates have ever had a serious discussion of any subject with Donald Trump. You may recall that the co-author of Trump's book, the art of the deal, wrote that Trump had no intellectual curiosity and a minimal attention span. This of course matches his proclivity to use Twitter . The only subject that Donald Trump discusses at length is his own greatness and his vague plans to share that greatness with the world.

I read today the opinion Pages of both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. It appears we have elected two different presidents

The Oaf of office

Friday Donald Trump takes the oath and becomes the Oaf of office. He now has the Republican controlled Congress stewing because of his claim that he is nearly completed a plan to replace the affordable care act. This plan will ensure everyone, decrease deductibles and be less costly . This is not what the Republican Congress has in mind and of course it is impossible. Our citizens need health insurance and that the cost issue is the total cost in percentage of GDP to the country to provide reasonable healthcare to its citizens. Now, the odds are that Donald Trump really has no plan. But, he certainly has Congress upset.

Putin continues to demonstrate how easy it is to manipulate Donald Trump. Tell Donald Trump how great he is and that those who criticize him are wrong, malicious and disreputable. Donald Trump is amazed at Putin's insight and intelligence and judgment.

One interesting thing about Donald Trump is that he substitutes adjectives for analysis on a wholesale basis. He doesn't explain or analyze his foreign policy, just says it will be huge and tremendous. The people he nominates are brilliant. Of course, Donald trumps IQ test is simply to read a bank balance. It appears that, other than Putin, Trump is making World leaders extremely nervous. He undoubtably believes this to be a strategic accomplishment. It can be a tactical advantage in the short run to confuse and confound. And the United States does have the advantage of being the most important and powerful nation on earth. But it is difficult to imagine that Donald Trump will do anything other than make a complete mess of things using these tools. He has made it impossible promises to the American public which he seems to think will be paid for by the rest of the world. Guess what, those other countries also have citizens with demands. When he takes on China, he had better remember that an authoritarian Government has a natural advantage in contesting with a messy democracy.

The Donald Trump Selfy

I have been to Cancun recently. As in common with most tourist destinations, One sees a lot of selfies being taken. It occurred to me that the selfy is a perfect metaphor for Donald Trump. Everything is about him. He lives a truly solipsistic life. There is no independent reality out there which he needs to know or understand. Whatever pops into his picture of himself is more than adequate. He is similar to the French statesman, whose name I don't right now recall, probably Napoléon or some Louis, said. The state is me. Having accomplished what nearly everyone said could not be accomplished, and doing it in a way that everyone said would not work, Donald Trump feels no need for advice nor consent.

Apparently someone told him over the weekend that the Mercedes, Audi, And the BMW Automobiles are manufactured   in Germany. He now is focusing on Germany and finds Angela Merkel no more trustworthy then Vladimir Putin. He undoubtedly believes he can require those automobiles to be manufactured in Pennsylvania Ohio Wisconsin or Michigan. Either that or prohibitive tariffs.

As we proceed towards Friday and the total eclipse of intelligence in the White House , we are getting closer to seeing what he will actually attempt to do. It will be interesting to see how the Republicans who have been railing against what they perceive it as an autocratic White House will have to say about Donald Trump. To paraphrase e e Cummings, how do you like your blue-eyed boy?

Trump versus truth

Over 50 years ago George Orwell wrote a great essay entitled "politics in the English language". The essay demonstrated how politician used language to obfiscate what they were up to.Later he followed up with 1984 where lying took the place of obfiscation.

Today, at his you should excuse the expression press conference Donald Trump was engaged in step one. When it came to the intelligence report, he either refuse to answer or simply attacked  the press for reporting. He also refused to let CNN ask a question. At this point, there is no question that Trump will double down on his mendacious ways and continue to attack journalists who accurately report what he says and does. Most of the heavy lifting in this effort will be done by his surrogates, spokesman, apologists and strategists. This group will neither cease nor repent.

Journalists need to see they are in a war. They need to be as blunt and direct as is Donald Trump when he attacks  them. Every day they need to report every new misstatement, Falsehood and inconsistency. They need to hammer at the implausibility of his promises and what he is actually doing that is inconsistent.

Yesterday Carl Bernstein, a real journalist, called Kellyanne the Minister of propaganda. David Brooks last week remarked that Trump continued to be distracted by bright or shiny objects. It is necessary to belittle and make fun of Donald Trump because it is all that he understands. He also is so thin-skinned that he cannot stand it and will it expose himself increasingly as the fool he is.

This is a sad state of affairs but it calls for realism. Absent some epiphany, the Trump we have seen and are seeing is what we are going to get.

It's about Donald Trump

Donald Trump's reaction to his briefing by the intelligence committee yesterday was both remarkable and predictable. He was and is obsessed with the notion that it was entirely his brilliance that caused him to win the election and no other forces were involved. To that end, he cannot accept but he was told because it suggests that the Russians intentionally attempted to affect the election in his favor, whether they actually did so or not. This is unbearable to trump because it suggests that maybe the election was affected by the Russians and maybe they wanted him to win.

This is still the same Putin that invaded Georgia during the Bush administration, attacked and annexed the Crimea, invaded the Ukraine, bombed the anti-Asad forces in Syria and is now rattling his swords in the Balkans. He does not wish to the US well. Given that, why would he wish Trump to win the election? If we choose the most obvious answer, it is because he believes Trump to be susceptible to manipulation. In fact, egomaniacs tend to be the easiest to manipulate. Trump is revealing himself to be a breathtaking combination of ignorance, arrogance and incompetence.

We now await kellyanne or one of his other apologists to appear in the next day or so attempting to deflect from what we have just seeing. They will wish to discuss only some version of blaming whatever Russia did on the Obama administration and perhaps its predecessors. They will not wish to discuss what Russia actually did and why. Further, they will state that Mr. Trump has strategies to deal with Russia, Syria, North Korea, Etc. That will be revealed at a later date.

It becomes more and more clear that Mr. Trump is a potential disaster. If he is unwilling to listen to the intelligence Community, given his ignorance he will be totally adrift. One of the great dangerous about this man is he will seek to prove that he is smarter and more clever then anyone else in government. We can expect bold stupid moves. In the area of foreign-policy, the president has a great deal of authority and discretion. In the wrong hands, that is more than troublesome.

Who lies?

The media is engaging in a sophomoric self-indulgent and tedious discussion of whether when Donald Trump lies they should so report it. Donald Trump is basically a creation of the electronic media. First it was the apprentice which gave him national prominence. Then it was all the" earned media" during the republican primaries that constantly had him before the public. Now the media seems unable to do its job. It obviously takes itself very seriously but not doing its job very seriously .

Today in the Wall Street Journal Donald Trump was quoted as saying that the media lies. Those lies appeared to be based upon the practice of accurately quoting his inconsistent statements. Hello pundits, when he lies say so. And while you are at it, how about relentlessly posing questions to tromp, by printing or stating them as he is not going to make himself available for questioning, such as what is your job creation plan? How are you going to bring back more coal mining jobs? How are you going to bring back good manufacturing jobs to the rust belt? Do you have any real plans other than tax cuts for corporations and the individually wealthy?

Donald Trump should be relentlessly questioned. It is becoming increasingly clear that, to paraphrase Flip Wilson what we saw is what we get. While the media is having its endless and tedious introspective dialogs, remember that Trump himself, and his republican colleagues, relentlessly called Hillary Clinton is a liar. Trump also used promiscuously the phrase lying Ted Cruz.

It is just possible that blunt language is highly effective with the voting public.

Media, do your job and quit giving us endless streams of Kellyanne Conway explaining why day is actually night.

Our new fearless leaders flounder on

It should come as no surprise that any group or concept containing the word intelligence would be anathema to Donald Trump. He doesn't need any pointy headed professionals explaining things to him. He knows things that other people don't. It would be wonderful if someone could surreptitiously film and distribute his meeting tomorrow with the heads of the intelligence agencies. It could be some of the most entertaining political satire, even if inadvertent on the part of Donald Trump, since Groucho Marx was the prime minister of Fredonia.

On the economic front, during the the campaigns it was, One thought, Clear is that perhaps the only Area of agreement twixt the R's and the D's was the need for infrastructure development and the con -comitent creation of jobs. Now the Republican Congress is going to delay any consideration of infrastructure development for at least 100 days. They seem to have no concept that there is a lag time between authorization and the start of construction. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Republicans cling to their fantasy that unleashed market forces will cure all. They seem obsessed with their economic models, particularly those favored by Paul Ryan, even though nonpartisan economists have consistently called them implausible. It is of course difficult to predict the future but these guys can't even look backward with clarity. I had thought that Kenneth Arrow, who received a Nobel prize for the economic model he created, long ago concluded that the conditions for those models to work are never met.

We are going to see if a sexually obsessed big businessman will be a successful leader of the country. It certainly worked for Italy with Berlusconi.

It is healthcare, not a health insurance that is needed

In common with many, I was disappointed with the affordable care act. The Democrats had a great opportunity but lacked resolve. They did not pass the public option aspect of paying for healthcare. Undoubtedly, many were scared off by the effective insurance industry charge of 1992 the 1993. So, the Democrats adopted what was essentially the Republican counterproposal in 1993 one of the great missed opportunities of all-time.

Now, republicans are up to bat. They tend to talk mostly about better health insurance as opposed to healthcare. They are perhaps the most mendacious group of politicians in our history from day one they call the affordable care act a job killer which it clearly was not. They seized upon Obama's statement that if you like your Health insurance you can keep it. Why none of his handlers inserted the simple statement" for the vast majority of Americans" in front of that phrase I'll never know.

The Republicans led by Paul Ryan and Mike Pence are claiming the affordable care act was an unmitigated disaster. The response of the Democrats should be simple. If it is a total disaster as you say, why not just repeal it? Return to the status quo ante of the Bush administration. Nobody should be unhappy. The Republican answer will be some sort of nonsense about driving down the cost of health insurance by market forces and competition. They apparently have never looked at the demand curve nor the fact that in many states market share is our highly concentrated. They also seem to ignore the fact that the cost of healthcare is at the provider level. At this juncture, all health insurance does is provide an administrative cost approximately 15% more than Medicare. The insurance payment scheme is a dinosaur. Health insurance is not really an insurance product anyway. One ensures against costs which may arise. Other than those who have a swift and sudden death, everyone will have health costs and they will largely occur later in life. Paying for healthcare needs to be similar to social security. Everyone should pay over a lifetime including while they are healthy.

In Mike Pense/s state of Indiana, With the blessing of the administration they were allowed to adopt a Medicaid expansion plan but call it Indiana care. It has worked well and incorporates many of the methodologies built into the affordable care act to lower provider costs and make healthcare providers responsible for results instead of the number of procedures. Oddly enough, Pence. doesn't mention this.

I repeat. The Democrats should simply say if it is as bad as you say repeal it, obviously nobody would care and would be happy to return to the wonderful days I'll healthcare under the Bush administration.