6.12.2009

Red Sucker that Works – Alternative to Socialized Medicine

Paralleling my piece yesterday on socialized medicine, I found a piece here written by a Mr. Steven A. Burd that offers up some insight and annihilates the Obamanation talking points on a government takeover of health-care. Who is Steven Burd? Well I’ll give you a few hints.

  1. He’s a member of the evil 1% that the Left wants to tax into oblivion.
  2. He’s the CEO of a Fortune 500 firm, a giant corporation – Boo!
  3. Based on his initiatives, his company has used market-based reforms to keep their company health-care costs flat since 2005, while industry costs have risen 38%.
  4. He founded the Coalition to Advance Health care Reform.

Give up? Mr. Burd is CEO of Safeway Incorporated. As remarked above his company has headed a company health-care plan that has kept costs flat. The Safeway plan capitalizes on two main themes –


  1. 70% of all costs are the direct result of behaviour.
  2. 74% of all costs are confined to heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity.
  3. Therein, 80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes is preventable, 60% of cancer, and over 90% of obesity. Safeway takes the above data and assumptions and balances company premiums based on several main factors – tobacco usage, maintaining a healthy weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Talk about a stark contrast to the Kennedy bill which implicitly casts a blind eye on upon behaviour and healthy/harmful habits. Socialism versus market-based reform, simple as that.

Intrinsically, Safeway Inc. and Mr Burd’s program stops the trend in health-care inflation, ie. rising costs. I am reminded of yesterday’s read of the Kennedy-Dodd bill. Nothing in that bill would address the rising cost paradigm, it simply puts a socialized blanket over the whole system, a solution that will do nothing more than exacerbate the problems in health care. The difference is that you as a taxpayer will be footing the bill for your fellow man. Individual initiative versus collectivism put on display. The free market always has a solution if it is allowed to work, the Safeway alternative proves that.

Based on how effective this problem is, I would venture to say that the Obamanation’s mentor Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, rule #12 will come into play if the Safeway solution is deemed in public discourse to be a safer way….

#12 – “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.” Click here for the list, here, for the Alinsky Obamanation connection.

Update 1 : Investor’s Business Daily has a great piece today here that shows that the AMA is expressing concern regarding the so called ”public option”, releasing a statement saying that it would “threaten to restrict patient choice.”

Update 2 : So called ‘moderate’ Dems, Blue Dogs are unifying in fear the the ‘public option’ may crowd out private insurance. Story here.

Update 3 : Why Mommy is a Palin Supporter has my two pieces up, she has specific points of urgency to stop this march to socialized medicine too.

Update 4 : I must be doing something right at the Left Coast Rebel, I am blessed to have some of the smartest, most articulate readers in the blogosphere. These from yesterday’s socialized med piece I wrote –

Nick from It’s Just My Opinion wrote –

“This is a socialized medicine conversion, 100%, no room for misinterpretation or private industry competition whatsoever.. It’s also not nearly as obtuse as the backdoor socialism the Obamanation is imposing on the banking industry through regulations on TARP banks, after forcing the banks to take TARP money. At least this is a straightforward and direct adoption of socialism, with no pretense of being anything else. There’s always a chance that this will finally be the abuse which is atrocious enough to push the people over the edge, and galvanize the resistance to the tyranny of the Obamanation (here’s hoping).”

Conservative Generation from New Conservative Generation wrote –

” I don’t understand why people are so surprised that health care costs so much. Hospitals have surgeons sitting around reading magazines on the chance someone needs emergency surgery. It is absolutely inefficient, but this is what people want. I’d rather pay higher prices to have him sit there just in case I need him.People need to stop thinking that they can have it both ways. You either get amazing health care for a lot of money or mediocre health care for a more affordable price. Or mediocre government health care for a more expensive price.”

Ananda Girl from Oodles of Funch, a personal story –

“I am always against the government being involved in my life in any way. I learned the hard way. I have unfortunately used government programs in the past and decided that I was far better off with no insurance than the hoops and red tape involved with Oregon’s health plan. I gave up. They did stupid things… such as assign my kids to a dentist who lived 65 miles away from us. Not one, but two towns over. That dentist then forced us to sign a paper saying that we understood that we were not allowed to make compliant against shoddy care or to sue if a mistake was made. This I was told by the OHP folk was perfectly acceptable! They refused to allow me to switch dentists.
I pay for everything myself now. it is worth it to me to avoid the headache involved when dealing with the government. I should also mention that we had to re-do the red tape paper work every 3 months and it would take them a good month and a half to decide if we were going to be accepted. So half of the time we could have been using it was wasted. It was in short a nightmare mess! The Fed. will not do any better. I guarantee it.”

And lastly, Red from Caught Him With a Corndog “What is with this embrace of socialist policy by the American left? Where is this coming from? It has to be miseducation and disinformation. I like my choices. I work for my choices. And guess what? Right bout of the gate everybody has options. Everyone has choices and has made them. It’s what the individual does with the choices the individual makes that matters. I’m sorry if some folks have made bad choices and find themselves up a creek when it comes to health care but don’t expect me to a) pay for yours and b) acquiesce to further tax penalties if my employer and I aren’t on a “federally approved” (read: not worth the paper it’s printed on) health care plan. We recently switched providers because our current plan went up 29%!! We are in for a fight people.”

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16 comments:

blackandgoldfan said…

Any time someone else picks up the tab, people stop caring about the cost.

First, I say let the free market regulate the cost of healthcare. When there's competition, prices keep themselves in check.

Second, we need to quit paying for those who are here ILLEGALLY. This is a mammoth drain on the healthcare system. That would include repealing the stipulation that if you're jumping the border to have your baby here, he/she is automatically a U.S. citizen. No proof of citizenship (driver's license, state-issued ID, etc.)? So sorry. Sounds cruel, but how much longer can the American people afford to keep doing this???

Third, assign a copay for those on Medicaid. That would at least cut back on many unnecessary trips the generational welfare crowd makes for minor afflictions. I have an anecdote on therightstuffbng.blogspot.com in a post entitled "A Two-for-One", or just click on healthcare label.

Bless you for getting the truth out there, LCR!!

Left Coast Rebel said…

BlackandGold – Economics 101 and basic human nature is getting thrown out here. Why? So that the Left can insert their cronies into 17% of the US economy and run it into the ground. I will link you on your mentioned article on my next run at this health care thing. You are so right about illegals too, it should just be basic common sense…

conservative generation said…

What a crazy idea…make health care insurance more like…insurance. Like I said, crazy 🙂 jk

Left Coast Rebel said…

Conservative Gen – In the era of the Obamanation, common sense is crazy…..we are living in the twilight zone!

Left Coast Rebel said…

Conservative Gen – BTW, what do you think about the Alaska pipeline that Palin is touting? I'm writing a piece on her again and want to know what you think….

conservative generation said…

Sure, send it along or let me know when you post it. I'd love to comment!

Nick said…

Well said.

Although, I have to add that I am, in general, 100% opposed to the Obamanation plan and creeping socialism in general, surprisingly I do think that a public option could work, if it were done correctly, and structured to be a safety net for people who needed it and whom the country had a vested interest in keeping healthy. There are a lot of caveats there, though, and I'd rather not see any public option whatsoever than whatever the lunatic left-wing fringe would propose, and/or transform my concept into: it would be better to abandon the whole concept than be railroaded into the Obamanation's socialized medicine system.

I guess I would state my opinion on the concept in general as: I would be in favor of a [sort of] nationalized health care program, if and only as long as I (or someone explicitly approved by me) was personally in charge of all aspects of it, and it was guaranteed to cease to exist when that was no longer the case. However, faced with the prospect of such a program crafted and run by the Obamanation, I strongly prefer no such program. Since the prospect of getting someone trusted by the anti-socialism movement actually in charge of anything in the Obamanation is about as likely as California spontaneously fixing its budget problem and becoming fiscally responsible overnight, I'd say I'm strongly opposed to socialized health care.

Ananda girl said…

You are absolutely right… we the people… need to take some responsibility for our own state of health. It always makes sense to avoid problems with wise choices when possible rather than have to make repairs to health gone sour.

Conservative Scalawag said…

I can summurize socialize medician in two words, nanny-state and euginics. Control how you live,and calculate how cost effective it would be to keep you alive.

Left Coast Rebel said…

Ananda – You are so right!

Scalawag – Rationins is a simple fact of every socialized system, that's the way to stop this thing!

RightKlik said…

You hit the most important key points. Unfortunately Washington is more interested in centralizing power than in improving healthcare; voters are more interested shirking responsibility than in taking care of themselves.

Left Coast Rebel said…

RK – I know that those truths are a sign of the times, we just have to put the cause and effect of this out there!

Andrew33 said…

We're not living in the twilight zone, were living in the Weimar Republic circa 1929. in 1929, things seemed o.k. on the surface. by 1931, a wheelbarrow full of money would by the crumbs off the floor of the bakery. That is what happens when you borrow and print so much money as a nation that people don't know what to do with it all. One thing about the coming "shuttle launch inflation", super rich elitists that got us into this mess will be either drop dead poor or fighting a world war. WW1 and WW2 were preceded by world recession.

Andrew33 said…

The solution to health care is simple: eliminate insurance companies altogether. having everyone pay a group that pays for medical care seems like having too many hands in the cookie jar. Eliminate insurance and doctors will have to charge what people could afford like they did in the past. Now doctors charge insurance companies 1000 times the true cost of a procedure. Then insurance companies sue doctors every chance they get to recoup their money. If we went to a system where patients paid doctors, heath care would be affordable and profitable.

Andrew33 said…

Keemo said that the Asian Leopards union is going to file suit over that Alaskan pipeline because it will affect the patterns of migratory birds that ALs depend on for food. The Asian Leopards union also wants full retirement benefits.

Andrew33 said…

Check out Resistnet.com. very cool site. up ther with 912.

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