Obama likes to say that his plan does not kill private insurance.  He likes to say that he is “adding choice”.  This is patently false, and you should be scared.  If the Obama plan passes (currently in debate in the House!), you will eventually have no choices except the government choice.

The House plan allows employers to chose:  either they can provide private insurance and pay nothing to the government plan, or they can simply pay 8% of payroll to the government and everyone gets the government plan.

Today, employers are already paying more than 8% of payroll for healthcare premiums.  In fact, small businesses are paying between 11% and 14% of payroll to health insurance premiums.  With medical costs rising, this figure is only going up.

So even if your employer doesn’t switch to the government plan now, they eventually will.  A reduction in wages by 6% can be achieved by switching your healthcare provider?  What board of directors *wouldn’t* switch?

Now you might, like Obama, believe that the health care insurers are making too much in profits, so the private insurers just need to reduce prices.   I’m sure they will try to compete with the new taxpayer-funded pricing.  Keep in mind, however, that while a cut from 14% of payroll to 8% of payroll is only a 6% savings for the company, that represents a 43% drop in revenues for the health insurer.  These companies will need to cut costs to reflect the new pricing; which roughly translates to a 43% drop in covered care.  Because of the reduced coverage, this will give employers all the more reason to switch the the simple, no-overhead plan – the government plan.  As more employers switch, more private insurers will go out of business.   It is just a matter of time.

Oh – and how did the government calculate the figure for an 8% payroll tax?  Nobody knows!  Should it be 9%?  7%?  Nobody knows!  It appears to be a number masterminded to drive Health Insurers out of business.

Obama is about taking away freedom and taking away choice.  Government healthcare does improve healthcare for 10% of Americans, but it makes healthcare worse for 90% of Americans.

We’re in a recession, and unemployment is high.  Some level of government stimulus is a good idea.  But how do we determine which programs are good? Is “Cash for Clunkers” a good idea?

I evaluate spending proposals by considering what long term value is being built.  The government can inject cash into the economy, but after the short term injection, will value remain in the economy which can benefit us for the long term?  Or is it just a short term spend?

Cars for Clunkers is a short term fix.  It adds cash to the economy for a short period, and allows Americans to continue consuming more goods than we probably need.   What happens to cars?  They get consumed – they get driven, used, and eventually (5-10 years later) get scrapped.  So when the government signs up to spend $5B on cars, they’ve injected a temporary cash boost to the auto-industry, and helped consumers get some “stuff”.  But in the end, Americans receive no long term value from this cash injection.  And when the government stops spending, the auto makers will need to layoff the workers they hired to accommodate the short term needs of the boost.

A better use of money is to build things of value.  If the government wants to create jobs, it should invest in building things.  Building schools, improving roads, and building national or local infrastructure builds long term value.  Unlike the car which will wear out in a few years and provide no value, building a school lasts for decades.  Not only do the citizens building and running the school benefit now, but the school is still usable by our children and grandchildren in the long term.

Tell your congressmen to vote no on any short-term cash injections.  All spending should build value.  If your senator can’t show long term value in their spending, it is not worth it.

The bleeding hearts will give you statistics like, “22,000 adults died in 2006 because they did not have health insurance” as a reason to support the Obama Health Care Plan.  While that is sad, Obama’s plan DOES NOTHING to solve this particular problem.

Let’s break it down.

America has about 3.5M homeless.  1.4M of those are children.  That means 2.1M adult homeless people.  How many of these people have medical insurance?  None.

For the adult homeless, let’s assume a fixed distribution between 19 and 75, and lets assume they have a typical life expectancy (although they probably live less).  That means that at least 38,596 of them will die this year.  Will many of them die because they didn’t have health insurance?  Of course!  But unless Obama’s magic health care plan can also solve homelessness, these statistics aren’t going to change one bit.  So the whole claim that this is a problem with our insurance program is bunk.

Make your own conclusions about Obama’s health care plan.  But when you hear these ludicrous arguments about “number of uninsured Americans”, “number of Americans to die without insurance”, “high cost of insurance” – remember these statistics are very complicated and never accurately summarized in a pithy headline.

I received the following letter from Senator Boxer today.  Inline are my thoughts.

Dear Friend:
I need your help.
Making sure America’s families have access to affordable, quality health care is a complex challenge, but one we simply cannot afford to ignore any longer.

Who is ignoring it?  I’m not; you’re not.

The status quo is unsustainable:

I agree.

46 million Americans have no health insurance.

Yes, we also have about 30 million unemployed Americans.  If you will focus on growing employment, many of the 46 million will be able to afford health insurance.  You point out that health care costs too much; how will your plan reduce the cost of healthcare?

America also has about 60 million smokers.  About 9 million of the 46 million uninsured people you mention are smokers – should they be allowed to continue smoking while we are paying for their healthcare?  Is it fair that they don’t pay for their own insurance when they’re buying cigarettes which kill them?

The U.S. spends more than twice as much on health care per person than most other industrialized nations, yet we rank 29th out of 30 industrialized nations on infant mortality.

This doesn’t appear to be true (see stats).  While it is sad that the mortality rate is not lower, it is not clear that this is an indictment of the American medical system.  Moreover, how is your plan going to fix it?  I don’t see any evidence that it will.

America has the best medical care in the world – bar none.  Americans don’t fly out of country to have surgery – to the contrary, foreigners fly here to have surgery.  The best medical care costs money, and the counter examples you provide are not representative of the entire system.  Yes, we should work to reduce the infant mortality rate, but we should do many things – including cure cancer too.

Employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have more than doubled in the last nine years.
And, a recent study found that, if we do nothing, families in many states, including California, will have to spend 40% or more of their pre-tax income on health insurance through their employer.

Yes – why are they paid pre-tax?  Why do health insurers get paid with pre-tax dollars while the rest of us are paid with after-tax dollars?  Stop subsidizing the medical industry with pre-tax dollars and costs will come down.

The time for action is now.

I agree – you mentioned that already.  But your plan doesn’t even address the problems you’ve listed, so I don’t think it is a good one.

What about the rising cost of malpractice insurance?  Why don’t you fix that?  Oh – right – your husband is a lawyer.  You wouldn’t want to take away his revenue stream.

As I work with my Senate colleagues to craft healthcare reform legislation, I ask you to help me by sharing your stories and experiences – both good and bad – with our healthcare system. 
Please go to http://boxer.senate.gov/features/healthcare/submit.cfm  to share your stories with me. 
I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you for the letter.

Sincerely,
Barbara Boxer
United States Senator

As of last week, I’m now officially a member of the WebKit team – or at least they were annoyed with enough of my fixes that they decided I should be able to checkin on my own.  I wish I had tons of time to do more work on WebKit.  Hopefully I will free up soon.

The headline may sound like a joke, but it certainly is not. While the European Union stews over whether Microsoft should be forced to bundle competing browsers (like Chrome, Opera or Firefox), Microsoft is proposing the opposite. “Fine”, Microsoft has conceded. “If it’s not our browser, then users don’t get any browser. Happy now?”

Personally, I don’t think Windows will ever ship without a browser. But I’m pretty happy with the proposal, because distributors will pick up the slack by bundling a browser that makes sense (e.g. the browser vendor that paid the most).

And of course, we can’t ignore the irony. 10 years ago, when Microsoft was killing Netscape, Bill Gates himself testified that the browser could not technically be removed. It couldn’t be done. Here we are 10 years later, when it’s a little more convenient, and now, well, turns out it can be done!