Open Letter to the President

In your State of the Union address, you said you were interested and willing in hearing ideas.

A quote popularly mis-attributed to Mark Twain states: "For every problem there is always a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong." In the world of political "problem solving" I would restate this as "For every problem there is always a solution that is simple for the laity to understand, ideologically obvious, and in the real world, wrong." Or, to grab a sound bite from an unrelated topic, Democratic Senator Evan Bayh succinctly sums up this principle in stating, "I think this is one of those things that sounded good in theory, but in practice doesn't work so well."

I solve problems for a living. My customers don't care about ideology, wishful thinking, or the earnestness of good intent, they only care about whether or not their problem is solved. Thus I don't have the luxury of solutions based in ideology or wishful thinking. If I am to solve my customers problems I have no option but to create solutions the are pragmatic and within the realm and limitations of reality. "Sounds good in theory" won't solve my customers problems. To do my job, my solutions must actually work in practice.

Unfortunately, politicians never seem to think past "sounded good in theory" and we are left being stuck with the fallout of "in practice doesn't work so well." And not thinking past "sounded good in theory" wouldn't be so bad because then we could at least discuss and debate that and work through to practice. Unfortunately, politicians mistake ideology for theory. So restating Senator Bayh's statement for how politicians really work would be "sounded good ideologically, but in practice doesn't work so well." In my view, this is descriptive of not just Republicans or Democrats, but nearly the entirety of American politics today. And I don't think I'm alone on this.

If you and other politicians are serious about regaining the trust of Americans, politicians must cut through the "sounds good in theory" and start delivering "works in practice." The first step is for politicians to stop trying to bludgeon each other into submission with their ideological clubs. If politicians can't get past that, all hope is lost. It is one thing to listen to what the other has to say and proceed to ignore it, it is another thing entirely to attempt to completely muzzle the other from even saying anything. The attempts of Democrats to completely shut out Republicans from any participation goes beyond the pale and is the height of arrogance, regardless of how you view Republicans. It is unconscionable that Democrats can't even extend that same courtesy to fellow Americans that they apparently want to extend to those outright acting to harm this country. I applaud your meeting with Republicans as a step in the right direction, albeit a small one, to correct this. But even a small first step is sometimes the biggest.

I applaud the effort to call for more civil debate and working together and treating opponents first as fellow Americans. It is very disheartening to see politicians debate policy and legislation not on the basis of merit but on the alleged villainy of the opponent, and "bi-partisanship" apparently meaning the opponent is supposed to surrender to an ideological bludgeoning. It seems to be a widely held belief that the only way someone else can have a differing opinion is if they are evil. In this way, it is then "justified" to ignore the opponent and shut them out of the process. It never seems to be considered that it is not "evil" that is the reason for the dispute, but that one or the other could simply be wrong. The "debate" devolves into who is evil rather than the merits of what is being said. It's politically easier to call someone evil than to prove yourself right and them wrong. If your opponent is evil then by political definition you are right and they are wrong. QED. Except that in reality, they are neither evil nor wrong by extension just because they have a different opinion. Another saying is "never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to ignorance," which I think is at the heart of your call to treat opponents as Americans first. The problem is that attribution to malice provides political justification and expediency in discounting opposition. If the attribution was ignorance, this would then carry an obligation to at least have a discourse with the opposition.

I see in you an internally conflicted individual. You seem at times to shoot from the ideological hip and at others to take aim with reason and pragmatism. I think that you have a capacity to approach problems pragmatically but yet too often you have a knee jerk reaction to the issues to "shoot from the ideological hip." The"shoot from the ideological hip" President Obama gives us things like an edict to close Guantanamo before fully understanding the ramifications in the reality of that order. Ideologue Obama votes against a troop surge in Iraq while pragmatist Obama orders a troop surge in Afghanistan. "Shooting from the ideological hip" produces statements like "the cop acted stupidly." (I guess in a choice between a white cop and a black man facts aren't important when you have ideology to tell you who must have "acted stupidly")

Everyone agrees that health care reform is needed. The disagreement is about the best way to go about that. It is unfair to say Republicans have not contributed, when the reality is that they have been shut out from contributing because they have ideas that are disliked by Democrats. Since Republicans had the audacity to disagree with the solutions being proposed by Democrats and didn't blow sunshine up their nether regions, well, that simply couldn't be tolerated and they were shut out of the process. "We'll listen to what you have to say as long as it is to agree with us" is not bi-partisanship. You also refer to the "Party of No" as if that's a bad thing. When the bus is in imminent danger of being driven over the cliff, "No" is the first order of business before suggesting an alternate destination. Today the people and the Republicans are saying "stop the bus!" And before that when Republicans were in the drivers seat, the people and Democrats were saying "stop the bus!" And in both cases, the driver was accused of heading for the cliff out of malice rather than ignorance. And the driver accused those trying to stop the bus as evil for not letting him follow his good intentions even though doing so takes the bus over the cliff. When the only choices we are allowed is to continue over the cliff or to stop the bus, then the "Party of NO" is exactly what we need and it's not a bad thing. Now that the bus seems to be coming to a stop, perhaps now we can discuss an alternate heading that doesn't take us over a cliff.

You claim that Republicans should be happy about working to end deficit spending. Unfortunately this claim shows to independents such as myself as well as Republicans, that you don't fully understand the problem. While eliminating deficits is important, as a matter of budgetary policy it's simply a bait-and-switch for dealing with the real problem. If deficits were the only problem, that is easy solve, simply tax people into oblivion. But that's why people are not satisfied with merely ending deficits, the problem is to stop spending so damn much of our money in the first place. Ending deficits merely means that our children are not being saddled with our debt, it doesn't mean we aren't being taxed into the poor house instead. Just because you stick it to today's taxpayers rather than tomorrow's doesn't make it OK and it certainly doesn't make it somehow free of cost. New spending with $0 in deficit spending is not the same thing as spending $0 more. New spending of $10T with $10T in new taxes would be zero deficit spending. $10T in new deficit spending would clearly a problem. But $10T in new taxes doesn't make it not a problem and somehow negate the $10T cost. The problem then becomes the $10T in new taxes used to zero-out the deficit. It's not so much a problem of who's getting stuck with the bill, as it's a problem of stop racking up such a massive bill in the first place. More government spending without deficits doesn't mean it's free and not yet more burden on taxpayers. You say that all this new spending is being paid for with taxes on other people. We're not that stupid. The new tax bill may be delivered to somebody else, but in the end we're the ones who pay. Just because we're not being taxed directly doesn't mean we're not the ones ultimately paying the bill. Follow the money. It is widely understood that ultimately consumers drive the economy because that's where the money begins. The same principles hold for taxation: consumers are ultimately who pay for government. Money flows from consumers into the economy, taxes merely flow in the opposite direction onto the shoulders of consumers. Saying we're getting a tax cut because you're handing the bill to someone else is just political smoke and mirrors. Every new dollar of government spending might not come directly out of our pocket directly, but one way or another, it eventually does.

"Pay-as-you-go" is a good approach to dealing with the problem of deficits and also the larger problem of out of control spending. This effectively attaches a cost to every new measure. This is like the difference between paying with credit and paying with cash. It is analogous to the difference between "asking permission" and "asking forgiveness". "Pay-as-you-go" requires asking permission. Creating new spending without funding is then like "asking forgiveness." Once the spending has been created it becomes a question of how to fund it, not if it should have been created in the first place. It is too easy to create new spending when you are not on the hook for funding it. Having to fund it up front makes it that much harder to create new spending in the first place. When you pay with credit, it is too easy to put off worrying about how you will pay for something. This is what leads to consumers being in debt to the tune of $10,000, on average, for every U.S. consumer. This is also how deficits and government spending get out of control. When you pay with cash, you have no choice but to deal with the cost at that time and maybe decide you don't really need a thing after all, rather than letting the costs and debt skyrocket into a problem deferred to the future. One key difference that needs to be addressed; however, is that when consumers want to spend more than their income will allow, they can't simply go to their employer and extort more money out of their employer. Government needs to also work within the reality that it can't endlessly soak taxpayers for more and more taxes as if taxpayers were government's personal bottomless ATM. It should not be forgotten that it was the vision of our Founding Fathers that government is supposed to be a means to people making better lives for themselves, government is not supposed to be an end in itself. Government is supposed to help us work for ourselves, not for us to become slaves to government.

I was heartened to hear you statement that the best anti-poverty program around is a world-class education. I am a believer in the saying "give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach a man to fish feed him for a lifetime." The solution is not a system that creates more handouts and entitlement programs and creates a "dependence society" that is dependent on those programs, but rather a system that works do develop self-reliance and self-sufficiency so that people provide for themselves and can be competitive in a global economy. And yes, sometimes that means people must be pushed kicking and screaming toward self-reliance. And further, a society that let's the people influence things such as economic policy and the application of science needs to better understand what they are influencing. We don't let the passengers on an airplane make the engineering choices for the engineers designing the aircraft because the passengers lack the education, training, and experience to do that. But when it comes to things such as the economy and health care, this is essentially exactly what we allow. If people are going to be influencing policy on issues such as these, it is in our interest that they have the tools to understand the principles involved. And our elected officials and policy makers are only as capable and equipped as the pool from which they are drawn. Thus our elected officials must also have the tools to understand, explain, and justify the policies they are legislating. If we are to be able to cut through the ignorance and ideology and not be held back by that, people must have the tools to see the way forward. You can't design an aircraft by a committee of laypeople, especially when those people fundamentally have no concept of aerodynamics and aeronautical engineering.

This doesn't mean passengers (and the pilots!) have to be able to design an airplane, but they should be equipped to understand the principles involved enough to grasp the significance of what it is the aircraft engineers are doing. Frankly, it is a problem when people think that having heard the term "supply and demand" along with five minutes of contemplation makes them more of an expert on economics that economists who have made the study of economics their life's work. It's a problem when people think that fundamental economic principles and scientific theories are simply a matter of ideological debate. As if the right ideological argument can somehow make 2+2 not equal 4, or somehow make an object thrown off of a cliff to not be influenced by gravity, or that somehow obstructing the free market can eliminate market influences on the economy. We won't be able to solve our problems when people seem to think that fundamental laws of nature, science, and math and principles of economics are no more than matters of ideological debate or that the way to resolve our ideological differences is with more earnest ideological demagoguery rather than with an understanding of the fundamental principles involved.

The solution to health care is not found with the denial of fundamental economic principles. We don't build airplanes by denying the existence of nature's law of gravity, we build airplanes by harnessing the laws of nature. The same is true for health care, we don't fix health care by denying laws of economics, but by harnessing the laws of economics. People will say that countries with government provided health care are able to successfully provide health care. Well, first, it is debatable as to how well this is achieved. Even if we were to say that these are the best systems we have, that doesn't mean that they are the best possible. I would argue far from it. Governments can also build cars and produce food, but I think when we look at this in comparison to what competitive free markets produce, it is clear which is better. Government farms feed their people, barely if at all. Competitive free markets feed the rest of the world. Governments can produce cars like the Trabant, Yugo, and Volga. Competitive free markets produce cars like Honda, and VW, and Toyota. And yes I list Toyota deliberately. When a company like Toyota screws up we still have other high quality and affordable options. When "government motors" is your only option and it screws up, you just have to accept that. If we want not just marginally acceptable health care but rather the best possible health care on the planet, we can't allow ourselves to be held back by denying fundamental economic principles. If we follow the models of others, then we will have health care that is no better than anybody else's. We didn't create a quality of life, an economy ,and technologies that are the envy of the world by following others. Likewise, we should not limit ourselves in health care by limiting ourselves to what has already been proven marginal at best elsewhere.

I think that fundamentally the take away is that, yes, people want health care reform, but they don't want government take over because having government provided goods and services as your only option simply cannot produce those goods and services with the same quality, affordability, abundance, and advancement as can competitive free markets. The solution to the question is how can we leverage those forces of competitive free markets to produce not only the best health care system the world has seen, but also the best health care system humanly possible? People are clamoring for real health care reform but politicians simply keep warming over the same rejected government programs. I think this is just another example of when the only tool in you tool box is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. The problem is that the only tool in Democrats' ideological tool box is government take over, so every problem looks like the only solution is government takeover such and entitlement programs and handouts all on the backs of hard working taxpayers and government over-regulation that increases costs and reduces jobs. This is not what Americans want. On the other hand, the only tool in Republicans tool box is laissez-faire policies. Americans don't want this either.

What has been proffered under the guise of "health care reform" is not health care reform but health care financing legislation. Consider going to a restaurant. The issue has devolved into paying the bill with cash, credit, or debit. This doesn't fundamentally change the bottom line on the bill. In fact, what is being proposed not only doesn't address the cost of what we are eating, but also attempts to pay the bill for everyone else's meal as well. This doesn't make our cost go down, it makes it go up. The way to bring down the bottom line of the bill is to change what items are ordered and, more fundamentally the cost of producing the items on the menu. Unfortunately, it's much more "simple" and "obvious" to argue over how to pay the bill than to address what drives the cost of the bill in the first place.

So here is what we should be doing. First, forget about single payer or the so called "public option". The statement about a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong applies to "single payer" and the "public option". And saying that there are a few medical professionals that advocate single payer, or some such, is nothing other than the same argument by creationists that claim that a few scientists believe creationism somehow proves evolution wrong in the face of all of the other scientists who say otherwise. The first thing that needs to happen before we can extricate ourselves from this ideological morass is to step back and understand what is insurance. In your address, you stated "...who are just one illness away from financial ruin" and this is at the core of what health insurance is supposed to do, no more, no less. Ask your advisors what exactly is the fundamental insurance business model and the math behind it. Our current health care "insurance" and what we are asking of it is far from this. At best we are asking insurance to be a financier, at worst we are asking it to be an agent of socialization. This is largely why our health care system and the proposed "solutions" are such a mess. Insurance companies have been pushed, and are being pushed further, into roles for which they are ill equipped and not the best solution. One of the first things that should be obvious is the issue of "pre-existing conditions." When people buy auto insurance, it is pretty much obvious that if you've had an accident and then buy insurance, it is completely absurd to expect to pay for the accident that you had before the policy was active because that is fundamentally not how insurance works. Yet people are completely baffled when "insurance" companies don't cover pre-existing conditions when that is precisely the health care equivalent of expecting an auto insurer to pay for an accident you've already had. I also disagree with the assertion that insurance should "cover preventive care." This is not the job of insurance. We don't expect our auto insurance to pay for oil changes because this is not insurance and is not financially effective. If we did this, the insurance company would simply bill us for the oil change and tack on additional charges to provide that "service". So why do we expect our health insurance to provide this "service" and why are we surprised when doing so makes it so expensive? Why would you give money to an insurer that you know 100% you are going to ask for it back, only so that the insurer can keep some of it by acting as a middle man? This isn't "insurance." Isn't this better served by a different financial business model? The answer to this is HSAs that really work and that are not a farce. The company I would for provides it's employees' just such a program. Our HSA is managed by a finance company, not an insurance company, and has the ease of use of a debit card (literally). I am baffled as to why insurance company financed preventative care is to be preferred to financing through actual financial institutions. But that's part of the problem, that we have become so conditioned that insurance companies should not only handle the actual insurance aspects of health care, but also all other aspects of paying for health care and we really need to get away from that. Insurance needs to get back to focusing exclusively on the business of insurance and not of running the entirety of health care. And in as much as insurance companies should focus on the business of insurance, that also needs to be conducted in an environment of a competitive free market. And no, adding just one more dysfunctional "competitor" to a dysfunctional market doesn't somehow make it a healthy functioning market that will reduce costs. The only way to do this is to fully enable the forces of a competitive free market and this starts with eliminating protectionist regulation. This is not meant as a recipe for health care reform but rather to point out that we can't devise health care reform by denying fundamental principles. You can dress a pig in a tutu and expect it to magically become a ballerina. Pigs are good for what pigs are, and that is not ballet and a tutu won't change that. Similarly, we can't simply layer on more legislation on top of our misconceptions of how we think health care ought to work and expect it to magically provide quality, affordable and abundant health care to everyone. Before anything can work, we must first get the fundamental principles right. And this includes not mistaking ideology for fact.

These reforms are only a start and do not address the core business of health care and it doesn't address how to provide health care to those who can't afford it. For that I think we can look to a model that we already know basically works. Our system of free market agriculture is the worlds largest producer of food and as a result, feeds a significant portion of the world. On the other hand, we look at countries whose "solution" is for government to provide food and they are in most cases only marginally able to even feed even just themselves. Why would we think health care would be any different? No, the answer to extending health care is not for government to provide it to everyone with the only possible result that no one gets particularly great health care, if at all. The best solution is for the forces of competitive free enterprise to produce the highest quality, affordable, and abundant health care with government assistance for those who cannot afford it themselves. If we can feed the world with this model, why would this not produce the same result in health care? However, we do need to beware of the "freeloader" mentality. I worked hard and made wise choices so that I would not be dependent on government for my needs, including health care (in spite of liberals' attempts to force me into dependency on government). Now, what should not happen is that the "reward" for my hard work is to not only provide for myself but also those who are too lazy to take responsibility for providing for their own needs or those who make unwise choices and are unwilling to deal appropriately with the consequences. When people make life choices, they inherently understand that they have an obligation to provide food and shelter for themselves. What should not happen is for people get a pass on their obligation to provide their own health care and pass that obligation on to those of us who do take the responsibility to shoulder our own obligation for ourselves. Some people claim that there is a "right" to health care. Let's say for the sake of argument this is true, that does not somehow extend into a right to expect other people to provide that. Even if you have a right to health care, you don't have a right to take it from other people. If there is a right for people to demand other people to provide them with health care, then who do those people providing them their health care get to demand provide their health care? And what about my right to keep what I worked so hard for? If you want what I have, what gives you the "right" to just take it from me rather than working hard and making wise choices yourself as I have done? This is part of the problem with the proposals in the legislation that deal with how to pay for the legislation. It presents a kind of "Morton's fork" in that if you can afford your own health care then you can obviously afford to pay for other peoples' health care also. I think this is at the core of why unions are opposed to the proposed taxes, or fees, or however you spin it, that are to be levied on peoples' health care plans.

The way to provide quality, affordable, and abundant health care is not through direct government control. Attempting to suppress or subvert free markets is not the solution. The most effective solution is to leverage the free market mechanisms that are already know to be effective in producing quality, affordability, and abundance in every other market. And introducing a dysfunctional "public option" "competitor" into a dysfunctional market doesn't magically transform it into a healthy, functioning market. One of my favorite illustrative stories is this. Years ago the Lotus Formula One race team embarked on a program to develop "active suspensions" for their race cars. An "active suspension" is one where computers and hydraulic rams directly control the movement of the suspension rather than with springs and shocks. What they discovered is that this approach yielded inferior results and at greater cost and complexity than conventional methods. What was realized is that the classic spring and shock suspension was far more effective than direct control. The point being that if direct control could not produce better results over natural physical elements in something as relatively simple as a race car suspension, how can we conceivably hope to produce better results with direct control in something orders of magnitude more complex? Just like leveraging existing elements produced superior results to direct control for race car suspensions, we already have fundamental economic elements that can naturally produce quality, affordability, and abundance. As in race car suspension engineering, the best economic results are obtained by better leveraging the already naturally occurring and understood elements rather than attempting to directly control the system in contradiction to the governing physical or economic principles.

I also disagree with the constant scapegoating and vilification of lobbyists. I'm not saying that lobbyist don't wield undo influence. What I am saying is that in the political debate, everyone has a right to make their concerns heard and considered about how policy and legislation affects them. An important tool to enable people to express their concerns to politicians is through lobbyists and special interest groups. The point being that lobbyists and special interest groups perform an important function in a democratic system and should not be universally vilified out of hand because that access gets abused at times. It is a two edged sword. Lobbyists and special interest groups give the voices of the people access to politicians to have their voices heard. At the same time, that access creates opportunity for abuse. And really what are lobbyists and special interest groups? A lobbyists and special interest groups represent a collection people, Americans, who have a particular focus, and have a right to express their concerns about the impacts of legislation the same as any other American. It is a key feature of our system and the intent of our Founding Fathers that just because you are in the minority does not mean you have fewer rights. Even those in the minority have equal rights as anyone else. Being in the majority does not give anyone the right to infringe the rights of others and being in the minority does not forfeit your right to protect your rights against abuse by the majority. Lobbyists and special interest groups are the important tools available to those who may be in a minority position to protect their rights against the tyranny of the majority.

I would agree with the popular assessment that government it trying to take on too much. Your argument that there is no reason to not strive for "too much" rings hollow when, for example, on the other hand you argue that prosecuting two wars has distracted us from the fundamental issue of combating terrorists. The issue is simply one of resources and opportunity cost. We lack the resources to prosecute two wars with the resulting opportunity cost of losing focus and dropping the ball on battling terrorism. Similarly Congress simply lacks the resources to pursue the immense agenda that Congress and even the President has laid out for itself. Congress became obsessed with health care with the resulting opportunity cost being the failure to address the more immediate needs of the economy and jobs. We can attempt to solve every major problem that ideology tells us we "must" address and not solve any of them as a result. Or we can choose our battles and solve the most pressing and immediate problems and then move on to others. Health care reform is needed, but health care reform doesn't solve the more immediate problem of putting food on the table and a roof over our heads. Ideologues proclaim all of these issues that "must" be addressed and "can't wait", but if in so doing we fail to solve any of them because resources become spread so thin that no single problem has sufficient resources to solve it, who has really been served and benefited? What is the point in pursuing health care reform if in so doing, we not only fail in producing health care reform, but also incur the opportunity cost of failing to put food on the table and a roof over our heads? It may serve the purposes of ideological pandering to refuse to accept limitations on what can be achieved, but the reality is, yeah, you kinda do have to accept that there are limitations. In a battle between ideology and reality, ideology will always ultimately lose. Denying the harsh reality that limitations really do exist is not the road to solving problems. If you were to deny the limitations of gravity and go jump off a cliff as a result, no amount of earnest, heartfelt ideological denial will prevent the resulting rude awakening. There are numerous programs that can be run your desktop computer. But try to run all of them at the same time and the result is it can't run any of them.

You are right, the people want their money back that has been lent to some financial institutions. However, there s a right way and a wrong way to go about that. If they are in violation of the law or a contract, there are courts to deal with that. If they are not in any violation, then imposing a "fee" is just political vigilantism via taxation and retroactive legislation. It's pretty scary when government decides to legislate punitive measures simply because they don't like someone very much. If government failed to satisfactorily craft the legislation to compel repayment, well that's your screw up (act in haste, repent in leisure) and you don't have a right to retroactively alter the contract with punitive ex-post-facto taxation, or 'fee' as you call it. No one has a right to unilaterally and retroactively impose a new contract on someone just because the one they both signed up for didn't produce favorable results. This is also true with government and it's pretty scary when government thinks it can harass someone, no matter how much disliked, with punitive and arbitrary taxes ("fee" is just a legalese euphemism for "arbitrary taxation" to avoid calling it a tax) just because poorly crafted legislation failed to produce the desired results. It is not OK to pass a poorly crafted law and then expostfacto turn around and say "what we meant to say was..." This is not how a system of rule-of-law works. If you can't write legislation that says what you mean, don't be surprised when you don't get what you expected. And when you don't get what you wanted, move on and let that be a lesson to you to be more deliberative next time. A system where to people are obligated to second guess what the law "really meant", when all they have is the words in front of them, is a system where people must live in fear of government harassment, as they can never be sure of what is legal behavior when the law is left open to interpretation, at best, and at worst, reading meaning into a law that was never intended. In a system of rule of law, the people have an obligation to comply with the law and so too does government have an obligation to comply with not only the law but also the implied social contract of fairness and objectivity in treatment of the people with respect to the rule of law. People are opposed to warrentless wiretapping because once you start down that road, where does it end. Similarly, when government starts reaching into the pockets of law abiding citizens under the guise of a "fee" not because they have broken any laws but just because you don't like them and think they owe you, people are concerned that it will never end and eventually government will start picking their pockets too. It creates a society of fear that you could follow all the rules and still be punished by government. This is exactly the kind of government the first American settlers came here trying to escape.