On Selling Paranoia, Or, Conservative Emails, Examined

It seems that many of those who are regular guests of this space are committed to a worldview based on some degree of reason and rationality.

That’s a handy thing if the “Covert Alarm Locator Apparatus” in your Isaac Daniel® Compass Global 1000 GPS sneakers should happen to fail and you need to find your way back to where the rest of us are; sadly, not all voters are equipped with such a helpful worldview.

Luckily for them, there are lots of conservative “mouth organs” ready to fill the “information gap”.

They send out lots of emails every day, spreading their Word, and as a public service I receive several of them; this to help keep track of just what’s out there, exactly.

If you ever wondered why otherwise normal people believe some of the craziest things about “Obama’s Secret Death Care And National Virgin Sacrifice Program”, have a look at some of the things I get every single day, and it might all make a bit more sense.

Pithiatism [G. peithein, to persuade + iatos, curable] 1. Hysteria induced by suggestion. 2. Mental disorder cured by suggestion.

--”Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary”, 11th Edition

It is my friends at Human Events (“Leading Conservative Media Since 1944”) who seem to be the most assiduous in keeping my inbox full, and every day a weird combination of political missives and “exiting promotional opportunities” are arriving out of the ether.

Who is Human Events?



Human Events is an offshoot of Eagle Publishing (as is RedState), and they’re performing several functions in the Conservaverse: they help spread The Word by gathering all the usual suspects, all in one place (the contributor list at Human Events includes Michelle Malkin, Pat and Bay Buchanan, James Inhofe, “David Feherty, Civilian”, and the Wango Tango guy himself, Ted Nugent), they are a daily reinforcer of the Daily Talking Points, as evidenced, again, by my inbox…and they are also one of the reasons Conservative books always seem to jump to the top of some bestseller list or another upon their release, a topic to which we’ll return shortly.

Additionally, they’re a source for others, both political and commercial, who seek access to a mailing list, which is why, from time to time, I also receive emails from Ann Coulter and Chuck Norris—and why I recently received the insider scoop on how gold is being accumulated by Central Banks and that I better get some too…before it’s too late.

Here’s what else has been coming in:

The Tea Party Express sent me an email just this morning to let me know they would be “on tour”; this action taking them from Searchlight, Nevada (read: Harry Reid) to Washington, DC:

“…Since the Democrats in Congress are so determined to ignore the will of the voters, and force a government-run healthcare fiasco down our throats - as part of the step-by-step slide towards socialism - then we here at the Tea Party Express will "Just Vote Them Out" one-by-one.

So fellow patriots, here's an update on the launch of Tea Party Express III and the "Showdown in Searchlight."

First, we want to thank you all. You've taken a lot of pressure off. In just the past two days we've raised over $15,000 and now have only $65,000 left to raise by March 27th.

We have just 10 days until the launch of "Tea Party Express III: Just Vote Them Out" national tour, and the kickoff event: the "Showdown in Searchlight" mega rally..."

Fun Fact: The Tea Party Express has apparently been making enemies and influencing people among the Tea Party activists themselves, based on a perception that the group is a front for the Republican Party and that the extreme behavior of some members of the group is bad for the larger Tea Party movement.

My take on this: if they’re supposed to be raising money for the Republicans, and they’re having trouble raising $80,000 for themselves…well, it would appear that the Republicans are going to need unlimited corporate donations (thank you so much for that, Supreme Court…) if they hope to stay in business.

An Action News Update!

Even as I’m writing today’s story, this just came in:

“ObamaCare Vote Imminent, Pelosi May Have Votes

He's Pledged To Shove ObamaCare Down Your Throat Even If It Kills Him…

…Barack Obama may have given Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid a deadline to ram ObamaCare through Congress, but knowledgeable sources in Congress are telling us that Pelosi will push the Senate-passed bill to the floor of the House of Representatives the very second she believes she has the votes to shove it down our throats... or maybe even sooner…

…And we don't need to tell you what's at stake. You already know about the extreme cuts in Medicare... the rationing... the crippling taxes... and the long waiting lines that we may all be forced to endure for substandard medical care.

"... bankrupting the insurance industry and undermining the free market is a stated goal of some healthcare reform advocates. ... the goal of healthcare reform is to create a system that bankrupts private industry and leads to socialized medicine. And that is a goal shared by Barack Obama."…"

(Emphasis is original)

The email goes on to suggest that a donation of up to $1000 would be very helpful to enable the sender to “Blast Fax” every Member of Congress…et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

You may have already noticed a recurring theme in these messages: the fear of things being shoved down throats is ever-present among Conservative Messengers—which, to me, either suggests something about the lack of imagination over there these days…or the lack of a fully-developed sense of joie de vivre; something that may have impacted folks like Larry Craig and David Vitter and John Ensign, all of whom, on certain occasions, have presumably done a bit of throat-shoving themselves.

(For extra credit, discuss amongst yourselves: Is all this throat-shoving talk having an effect on some people’s attitudes about the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” issue?)

Ann Coulter wrote me today to let me know that:

“…I have a plan!

… We can't have a free market in health insurance until Congress eliminates the antitrust exemption protecting health insurance companies from competition. If Democrats really wanted to punish insurance companies, which they manifestly do not, they'd make insurers compete…”

We interrupt Dear Coulter’s message for a quick Fact Check: the House did indeed vote on February 24th to remove that antitrust exemption, with all 19 dissenting votes coming from…wait for it…Republicans; the bill, known as HR 4626, is now on the Senate’s Legislative Calendar.

We now return you to Coulter, still in progress:

“…The very next sentence of my bill provides that the exclusive regulator of insurance companies will be the state where the company's home office is. Every insurance company in the country would incorporate in the state with the fewest government mandates, just as most corporations are based in Delaware today.

That's the only way to bypass idiotic state mandates, requiring all insurance plans offered in the state to cover, for example, the Zone Diet, sex-change operations, and whatever it is that poor Heidi Montag has done to herself this week.

President Obama says we need national health care because Natoma Canfield of Ohio had to drop her insurance when she couldn't afford the $6,700 premiums, and now she's got cancer.

Much as I admire Obama's use of terminally ill human beings as political props, let me point out here that perhaps Natoma could have afforded insurance had she not been required by Ohio's state insurance mandates to purchase a plan that covers infertility treatments and unlimited OB/GYN visits, among other things.

It sounds like Natoma could have used a plan that covered only the basics -- you know, things like cancer…”

Again, a quick interruption: if I had the power to know in advance what diseases I was gonna get in the future…and whether fertility might or might not be an issue one day…why would I waste my money on health insurance premiums when I could do a whole lot better in Las Vegas—and get free cocktails at the same time?

“…Of course, an insurance company has to be able to refuse NEW customers with "pre-existing conditions." Otherwise, everyone would just wait to get sick to buy insurance. It's the same reason you can't buy fire insurance on a house that's already on fire.

That isn't an "insurance company"; it's what's known as a "Christian charity."…

… Right now, insurance companies are protected by government regulations from having to honor their contracts. Violating contracts isn't so easy when competitors are lurking, ready to steal your customers…”

(Emphasis is added)

I assume that that last paragraph will become an important Talking Point for Republicans looking to blame Democrats for recent insurance company behavior, and I’ll be looking for this argument to appear in debates from now until November.



Wanna hear something even weirder than the idea that Democrats are what’s making the insurance companies deny their customer's claims for care related to their pre-existing conditions?

Even as these groups are trying to either reinforce or get me to change my worldview, they’re also constantly trying to get me to buy stuff, including the Swivel Sweeper G2, a certain set of “As Seen On TV” knives, and, ironically, EcoCanteen stainless steel water bottles.

"It's Free, But We Make It Up In Volume"

Finally, a few words about Conservatives and their books.

I get, on a regular basis, the chance to have important works of Conservative literature sent to me at rock-bottom prices, assuming I either subscribe to something or join some club that’s planning to save Our Great Nation from…most likely, from people like me.

So how can so many people make money giving away books?

It works like this: groups like the Conservative Book Club purchase thousands of copies of a book by [insert name here], using money that appears to be donated from private sources and PACs.

Since the bulk purchases are timed to occur as the book is released, it’s possible to create “Number 1 Best Sellers!” more or less on demand…and then I begin to get emails offering me the book for a price far below the cost of production.

A perfect example: Dick Morris sent me an email, just today, to let me know that I have only have a few days left to take advantage of Newsmax’s offer to get my free copy of “Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown”, a book that seeks to help me profit, as you might have already guessed, from the Next Global Financial Meltdown.

Check out what the Newsmax email says about how bulk purchasing works:

“…I knew that YOU should have this information too. So at great cost to Newsmax, I purchased more than 10,000 copies of this book to GIVE AWAY - completely free (just pay shipping)!

They were gone in a matter of days . . . so I purchased another 10,000. Those, too, were snatched up just days later. So, I arranged for another shipment.

Only a few copies are left . . . and this is your last chance to claim one for yourself. If you were to go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble, you would pay around $28 retail for this book. (By the way, both of these retailers are out of copies!) …”

(Emphasis is almost original: underlined words were changed to italics.)

(Quick Fact Check: As of March 18th, Barnes & Noble and Amazon are both selling the book, new, for $16.34, down from the $27.95 retail price, and both appear to have the item in stock…along with Wiley and Borders and a1Books and papamedia and even the UK’s Book Depository.com, who will let you have it for the apparent lowest price anywhere: $15.99—with “free shipping worldwide.”)

As you can see, Newsmax acknowledges they purchased more than 20,000 copies of the book, and possibly as many as 30,000…and I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that’s a big part of the total sales for this title. In fairness, however, I could not locate BookScan or other sales data for this book, so that’s just a guess, and I could be wrong.

Sarah Palin added an interesting new twist to the process: SarahPAC (and, yes, Virginia, there really is a SarahPAC) spent more than $60,000 to purchase copies of her own book, allowing her to convert campaign donations into ordinary income that she can spend any way she wants; the books were then given away, at no charge, to donors…and now the cycle begins anew, as a second book has been announced.

All of this is reflected in how book sales are reported, with the New York Times adding a dagger (ɫ) to the description of certain books on its bestseller lists, which:

“…indicates that some bookstores report receiving bulk orders.”

For the record, Mitt Romney’s new book, currently atop the Hardcover Nonfiction list, has two such daggers.

Add all of this together, and what do you get?

How about: a combination of events that are likely associated with a lot of today’s…Pithiatism.

A never-ending vicious cycle of self-affirming impending doom and Swivel Sweepers, delivered to your mailbox every day, until you can’t remember if Buy One, Get One Free* (*Just Pay Additional P&H) refers to a consumer product or the possibility that a Death Panel will commit you—and your family—to a beyond-top-secret Conservatives-Only Gulag soon to be established at the corner of Castro and 18th; located in a fortress built above the GBLT Historical Society’s current offices and staffed by Rainbow Stormtroopers especially chosen by Nancy Pelosi herself.

It’s a scary, scary world out there, my friends…and if these folks have anything to say about it, it’ll stay that way.

On Selling Paranoia, Or, Conservative Emails, Examined

It seems that many of those who are regular guests of this space are committed to a worldview based on some degree of reason and rationality.

That’s a handy thing if the “Covert Alarm Locator Apparatus” in your Isaac Daniel® Compass Global 1000 GPS sneakers should happen to fail and you need to find your way back to where the rest of us are; sadly, not all voters are equipped with such a helpful worldview.

Luckily for them, there are lots of conservative “mouth organs” ready to fill the “information gap”.

They send out lots of emails every day, spreading their Word, and as a public service I receive several of them; this to help keep track of just what’s out there, exactly.

If you ever wondered why otherwise normal people believe some of the craziest things about “Obama’s Secret Death Care And National Virgin Sacrifice Program”, have a look at some of the things I get every single day, and it might all make a bit more sense.

Pithiatism [G. peithein, to persuade + iatos, curable] 1. Hysteria induced by suggestion. 2. Mental disorder cured by suggestion.

--”Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary”, 11th Edition

It is my friends at Human Events (“Leading Conservative Media Since 1944”) who seem to be the most assiduous in keeping my inbox full, and every day a weird combination of political missives and “exiting promotional opportunities” are arriving out of the ether.

Who is Human Events?

Human Events is an offshoot of Eagle Publishing (as is RedState), and they’re performing several functions in the Conservaverse: they help spread The Word by gathering all the usual suspects, all in one place (the contributor list at Human Events includes Michelle Malkin, Pat and Bay Buchanan, James Inhofe, “David Feherty, Civilian”, and the Wango Tango guy himself, Ted Nugent), they are a daily reinforcer of the Daily Talking Points, as evidenced, again, by my inbox…and they are also one of the reasons Conservative books always seem to jump to the top of some bestseller list or another upon their release, a topic to which we’ll return shortly.

Additionally, they’re a source for others, both political and commercial, who seek access to a mailing list, which is why, from time to time, I also receive emails from Ann Coulter and Chuck Norris—and why I recently received the insider scoop on how gold is being accumulated by Central Banks and that I better get some too…before it’s too late.

Here’s what else has been coming in:

The Tea Party Express sent me an email just this morning to let me know they would be “on tour”; this action taking them from Searchlight, Nevada (read: Harry Reid) to Washington, DC:

“…Since the Democrats in Congress are so determined to ignore the will of the voters, and force a government-run healthcare fiasco down our throats - as part of the step-by-step slide towards socialism - then we here at the Tea Party Express will "Just Vote Them Out" one-by-one.

So fellow patriots, here's an update on the launch of Tea Party Express III and the "Showdown in Searchlight."

First, we want to thank you all. You've taken a lot of pressure off. In just the past two days we've raised over $15,000 and now have only $65,000 left to raise by March 27th.

We have just 10 days until the launch of "Tea Party Express III: Just Vote Them Out" national tour, and the kickoff event: the "Showdown in Searchlight" mega rally..."

Fun Fact: The Tea Party Express has apparently been making enemies and influencing people among the Tea Party activists themselves, based on a perception that the group is a front for the Republican Party and that the extreme behavior of some members of the group is bad for the larger Tea Party movement.

My take on this: if they’re supposed to be raising money for the Republicans, and they’re having trouble raising $80,000 for themselves…well, it would appear that the Republicans are going to need unlimited corporate donations (thank you so much for that, Supreme Court…) if they hope to stay in business.

Even as I’m writing today’s story, this just came in:

“ObamaCare Vote Imminent, Pelosi May Have Votes

He's Pledged To Shove ObamaCare Down Your Throat Even If It Kills Him…

…Barack Obama may have given Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid a deadline to ram ObamaCare through Congress, but knowledgeable sources in Congress are telling us that Pelosi will push the Senate-passed bill to the floor of the House of Representatives the very second she believes she has the votes to shove it down our throats... or maybe even sooner…

…And we don't need to tell you what's at stake. You already know about the extreme cuts in Medicare... the rationing... the crippling taxes... and the long waiting lines that we may all be forced to endure for substandard medical care.

"... bankrupting the insurance industry and undermining the free market is a stated goal of some healthcare reform advocates. ... the goal of healthcare reform is to create a system that bankrupts private industry and leads to socialized medicine. And that is a goal shared by Barack Obama."…"

(Emphasis is original)

The email goes on to suggest that a donation of up to $1000 would be very helpful to enable the sender to “Blast Fax” every Member of Congress…et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

You may have already noticed a recurring theme in these messages: the fear of things being shoved down throats is ever-present among Conservative Messengers—which, to me, either suggests something about the lack of imagination over there these days…or the lack of a fully-developed sense of joie de vivre; something that may have impacted folks like Larry Craig and David Vitter and John Ensign, all of whom, on certain occasions, have presumably done a bit of throat-shoving themselves.

(For extra credit, discuss amongst yourselves: Is all this throat-shoving talk having an effect on some people’s attitudes about the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” issue?)

Ann Coulter wrote me today to let me know that:

“…I have a plan!

… We can't have a free market in health insurance until Congress eliminates the antitrust exemption protecting health insurance companies from competition. If Democrats really wanted to punish insurance companies, which they manifestly do not, they'd make insurers compete…”

We interrupt Dear Coulter’s message for a quick Fact Check: the House did indeed vote on February 24th to remove that antitrust exemption, with all 19 dissenting votes coming from…wait for it…Republicans; the bill, known as HR 4626, is now on the Senate’s Legislative Calendar.

We now return you to Coulter, still in progress:

“…The very next sentence of my bill provides that the exclusive regulator of insurance companies will be the state where the company's home office is. Every insurance company in the country would incorporate in the state with the fewest government mandates, just as most corporations are based in Delaware today.

That's the only way to bypass idiotic state mandates, requiring all insurance plans offered in the state to cover, for example, the Zone Diet, sex-change operations, and whatever it is that poor Heidi Montag has done to herself this week.

President Obama says we need national health care because Natoma Canfield of Ohio had to drop her insurance when she couldn't afford the $6,700 premiums, and now she's got cancer.

Much as I admire Obama's use of terminally ill human beings as political props, let me point out here that perhaps Natoma could have afforded insurance had she not been required by Ohio's state insurance mandates to purchase a plan that covers infertility treatments and unlimited OB/GYN visits, among other things.

It sounds like Natoma could have used a plan that covered only the basics -- you know, things like cancer…”

Again, a quick interruption: if I had the power to know in advance what diseases I was gonna get in the future…and whether fertility might or might not be an issue one day…why would I waste my money on health insurance premiums when I could do a whole lot better in Las Vegas—and get free cocktails at the same time?

“…Of course, an insurance company has to be able to refuse NEW customers with "pre-existing conditions." Otherwise, everyone would just wait to get sick to buy insurance. It's the same reason you can't buy fire insurance on a house that's already on fire.

That isn't an "insurance company"; it's what's known as a "Christian charity."…

… Right now, insurance companies are protected by government regulations from having to honor their contracts. Violating contracts isn't so easy when competitors are lurking, ready to steal your customers…”

(Emphasis is added)

I assume that that last paragraph will become an important Talking Point for Republicans looking to blame Democrats for recent insurance company behavior, and I’ll be looking for this argument to appear in debates from now until November.

Wanna hear something even weirder than the idea that Democrats are what’s making the insurance companies deny their customer's claims for care related to their pre-existing conditions?

Even as these groups are trying to either reinforce or get me to change my worldview, they’re also constantly trying to get me to buy stuff, including the Swivel Sweeper G2, a certain set of “As Seen On TV” knives, and, ironically, EcoCanteen stainless steel water bottles.

Finally, a few words about Conservatives and their books.

I get, on a regular basis, the chance to have important works of Conservative literature sent to me at rock-bottom prices, assuming I either subscribe to something or join some club that’s planning to save Our Great Nation from…most likely, from people like me.

So how can so many people make money giving away books?

It works like this: groups like the Conservative Book Club purchase thousands of copies of a book by [insert name here], using money that appears to be donated from private sources and PACs.

Since the bulk purchases are timed to occur as the book is released, it’s possible to create “Number 1 Best Sellers!” more or less on demand…and then I begin to get emails offering me the book for a price far below the cost of production.

A perfect example: Dick Morris sent me an email, just today, to let me know that I have only have a few days left to take advantage of Newsmax’s offer to get my free copy of “Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown”, a book that seeks to help me profit, as you might have already guessed, from the Next Global Financial Meltdown.

Check out what the Newsmax email says about how bulk purchasing works:

“…I knew that YOU should have this information too. So at great cost to Newsmax, I purchased more than 10,000 copies of this book to GIVE AWAY - completely free (just pay shipping)!

They were gone in a matter of days . . . so I purchased another 10,000. Those, too, were snatched up just days later. So, I arranged for another shipment.

Only a few copies are left . . . and this is your last chance to claim one for yourself. If you were to go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble, you would pay around $28 retail for this book. (By the way, both of these retailers are out of copies!) …”

(Emphasis is almost original: underlined words were changed to italics.)

(Quick Fact Check: As of March 18th, Barnes & Noble and Amazon are both selling the book, new, for $16.34, down from the $27.95 retail price, and both appear to have the item in stock…along with Wiley and Borders and a1Books and papamedia and even the UK’s Book Depository.com, who will let you have it for the apparent lowest price anywhere: $15.99—with “free shipping worldwide.”)

As you can see, Newsmax acknowledges they purchased more than 20,000 copies of the book, and possibly as many as 30,000…and I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that’s a big part of the total sales for this title. In fairness, however, I could not locate BookScan or other sales data for this book, so that’s just a guess, and I could be wrong.

Sarah Palin added an interesting new twist to the process: SarahPAC (and, yes, Virginia, there really is a SarahPAC) spent more than $60,000 to purchase copies of her own book, allowing her to convert campaign donations into ordinary income that she can spend any way she wants; the books were then given away, at no charge, to donors…and now the cycle begins anew, as a second book has been announced.

All of this is reflected in how book sales are reported, with the New York Times adding a dagger (ɫ) to the description of certain books on its bestseller lists, which:

“…indicates that some bookstores report receiving bulk orders.”

For the record, Mitt Romney’s new book, currently atop the Hardcover Nonfiction list, has two such daggers.

Add all of this together, and what do you get?

How about: a combination of events that are likely associated with a lot of today’s…Pithiatism.

A never-ending vicious cycle of self-affirming impending doom and Swivel Sweepers, delivered to your mailbox every day, until you can’t remember if Buy One, Get One Free* (*Just Pay Additional P&H) refers to a consumer product or the possibility that a Death Panel will commit you—and your family—to a beyond-top-secret Conservatives-Only Gulag soon to be established at the corner of Castro and 18th; located in a fortress built above the GBLT Historical Society’s current offices and staffed by Rainbow Stormtroopers especially chosen by Nancy Pelosi herself.

It’s a scary, scary world out there, my friends…and if these folks have anything to say about it, it’ll stay that way.

On Fighting The Madness, Or, Send This To A Deather

We are coming down to the home stretch on healthcare, and we have seen the results of the first couple of rounds of crazy that have been sent forth in an effort to stop the process.

In addition to the Town Halls, opponents are flooding the email inboxes of America’s “low information” voters with no end of lies. Those emails are getting passed around and around and around, and by now some of them have probably appeared in your inbox.

But it’s summer...and who has time to respond to this stuff?

Well, guess what, Gentle Reader: I’ve already done the hard work for you.

Today’s story is an email response that you can send right back to your “inbox friends”. It’s a reminder of some of the frustrations that we all share in this country and some explanations of what’s being proposed...and a few words about socialism, to boot.

So get out there and copy and paste and forward and reply, and let’s see if we can’t fight the madness, one email at a time.

There is a whole lot of talk about health care reform these days, and a lot of it is designed to be confusing, instead of helpful.

To cut through some of that confusion, let me ask you a simple question: is your health insurance stressing you out more than it should?

If you worry about paying for drugs you might not be able to afford, if you don’t go to the doctor as much as you should because you recently pawned your last gold bar to cover a margin call on your AIG stock...or if the odds of getting your insurer to take care of what you thought they’d cover are lower than hitting 13 on a double-zero roulette wheel...we need to talk.

This conversation won’t be about death panels or secret camps or black helicopters or any of that silly stuff. Instead, let’s talk about a few things that we’re probably all worried about, and then let’s talk about some ideas that might make things better.

So first off, why do we even need reform?

How about because we pay about twice what the rest of the word pays for health care—and we don't get good value for the money.

The US spends almost three times as much as the UK, and twice as much as Canada, per person, for health care—and of the top 50 countries in life expectancy...we come in 45th.

Canada, the UK, Cuba...and 40 other countries...also have lower infant mortality rates than the US.

That is not good; and over the long term it's killing businesses and, by extension, the larger economy. Not to mention, as consumers, we deserve better.

We also want to provide for the nearly 50 million Americans that have no coverage at all, for a couple of reasons:

First, it's extraordinarily expensive to have uninsured people showing up at the emergency room. For a good example, consider the cost of treating a relatively simple cholesterol problem with drugs instead of a paramedic response, an ambulance ride, and heart surgery followed by a stay in the hospital.

The average family with health insurance is today paying about $1000 a year in extra premiums that they wouldn't be paying if we could find a way to cover those 50 million people—and if my guess is correct, there are a lot of families that could use the extra $1000.

And for what it's worth, not having insurance is already killing about 18,000 Americans every year.

So that's the uninsured...but what about the insured?

Right off the bat, here's something you should think about: we can expect the cost of the average family's health insurance premium to double by 2020 to roughly $23,000 a year...which is almost $2,000 a month.

If we can't slow that rate of growth, there's going to be a whole lot fewer people getting health care through work—and for several years now employers have been trying to get workers to bear a larger portion of their health care costs.

Plus, insurance companies are increasing profits by looking for more and more ways to cut off policyholders, or by refusing to renew insurance for those clients who do file claims.

And once you get cut off, no one else is likely to allow you to purchase insurance...which means the number of uninsured is growing all the time.

We have also seen the cost of deductibles go up (with $5000 to $10,000 deductibles looking like the wave of the future)—and all of this means that insurance companies are doing great, while the customers are getting the short end of the stick.

Did you know that more than 60% of the Americans who filed for bankruptcy in 2007 did so because of medical bills? That's not all: more than ¾ of those 900,000 or so newly bankrupt families had health insurance when they went broke.

What about this whole "putting bureaucrats between me and my doctor" thing?

How many people have health insurance that requires pre-approval for procedures or pre-approval to see specialists, or drug formularies that charge different prices for generic and brand-name drugs?

All of those things exist because of insurance company bureaucrats that at this very moment sit between you and your doctor.

So those are some of the problems.
Here are some ideas about how to make things better:

—We could tell health insurers that they can't use "preexisting conditions" to deny people coverage, and that they can't just cut people off for the crime of needing care. This allows more people to have access to health care, and it also reduces bankruptcies, since insurers wouldn't be allowed to simply deny coverage when claims come in, leaving families to pay both the health insurance premiums and, later, the medical bills.

This is the least controversial part of the reform plans before Congress today.

—There are proposals to create more competition among insurance providers, the idea being to use market forces to keep private insurance companies from drawing so much money out of the system as profit. This would be in the form of one or more insurance plans, operated by some new entity, for which members of the public would be able to "buy in" and get coverage that they can't get today.

The idea here is to create a large new pool of insured persons, which allows the insured group to negotiate for better prices on drugs and procedures and office visits and medical equipment—and if you allow anyone to sign up it can force private insurers to either match the price of the "public option" or lose customers.

Businesses would be required to either pay for coverage for their workers or a tax if they don't. Small businesses would be exempt, but we are not sure how small exactly "small" would be as of today.

This public option proposal is very controversial, and insurance companies are spending over a million dollars a day to shut the idea down before it gets out of Congress.

—The most controversial reform proposal is to create a "single-payer" system, which is what Canada has today. At the moment, this is not likely to be part of the program that comes out of Congress, if any program does.

In the Canadian system, people keep their own doctors and the Province where you live becomes the insurance company. You go to your doctor, who then bills the Province. Everyone is entitled to an insurance card, which means everyone has coverage. All of this is paid for with tax dollars.

That's also how Medicare works, and there are people who suggest the best way to do healthcare reform would be to simply enroll everyone in Medicare.

The catch would be how to control costs while providing care for all, and that's the last thing we'll talk about here.

Right now it looks like it would cost about $1 trillion, over ten years, to provide coverage for roughly 50 million people.

Remember the conversation we had about how treating high cholesterol problems with drugs is cheaper than treating heart attacks? It turns out it's so much cheaper that about $700 billion of that $1 trillion can be found with that change and other similar changes, like treating people before they have diabetes instead of dealing with the disease later.

That leaves us roughly $250 billion short. In 2003 we gave a substantial tax cut to people with especially high incomes, and Obama has proposed ending that tax cut. This would cause people making more than $1.2 million a year to return to the same tax rates they had from the 1990s until 2003.

If the public option is made widely available, the insurers tell us, private industry could never compete...but that's not as certain as insurers would want you to believe.

Consider the electricity market: in Washington State, Puget Sound Energy, a private company, operates side-by-side, literally, with "public options" like Seattle City Light and Snohomish PUD, and seems to be doing just fine—and they've been doing just fine for roughly a century.

A final point: there is a lot of talk about how government providing health care is "socialism".

Maybe it is.

But you know what? In America we also have socialized police and firefighting and EMS, and socialized streets and roads and libraries and sewers and airports and Post Offices...and socialized National Defense.

And if you really want to talk about the Founding Fathers and socialism, consider this: among the original 13 Colonies were the Commonwealths of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

Add in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and four of the 50 stars on our flag today represent places that are known not as States, but instead as "Commonwealths"...which, oddly enough, is both about as American and as socialist as you can get.

How's that for a lot of stuff to digest?
To finish, let's summarize what we have.

There are a lot of reasons we want to do some sort of reform:

—we pay more than anyone else in the world for health care, but lots of other countries have longer life expectancies and lower infant mortality rates.

—we need to do something about the nearly 50,000,000 Americans who have no access to care outside of the emergency room, both for moral and for economic reasons.

—in 10 years the cost of health insurance will be somewhere around $2,000 a month for the average family. Businesses cannot afford this, so as time goes on more and more people who now have coverage through their jobs...won't.

—if nothing changes those who are able to keep their insurance at work should expect their employers to move to plans with $5,000 to $10,000 deductibles.

—every year, almost 900,000 American bankruptcies are related to health care costs. 3/4 of those people had insurance, but their insurers refused to cover their medical bills, and they went broke.

—if you have a significant claim, or you lose your job, you stand a good chance of losing your insurance, which means you are not very likely to be insurable again.

We talked about some reform ideas, with protections against "preexisting conditions" and cutting people off for having claims being the most likely reforms to be turned into law, a "public option" being less likely, and "single payer" being highly unlikely.

There is money available to pay for this. Roughly 2/3 would come from treating the uninsured in cheaper ways than we do today, and the other 1/3 could be raised by letting a tax cut for very wealthy people expire.

The good news here is that lots of other countries are doing better than we are, and spending half the money we are doing it; which means there are solutions available that do work and do save money.

If we can put some of those solutions to work here, it would probably help us, too.

On Giant Loads Of Hooey, Or, You Should See My Inbox

The McCain campaign is beyond desperate, at this point, and as you might expect, the emails are full of things McCain supporters would like us to know.

I had one of those emails cross my inbox yesterday morning...and I thought to myself:
“Self...since the author of this email asked me to look up her facts, maybe I should.”

So I did.

Next thing I knew, I realized I was looking at a giant load of hooey.
Follow along, and I’ll show you what I mean.

There’s a lot of talk about Obama and Tony Rezko in this email.
That Rezko made some sort of special deal when Obama purchased his home.

Here’s Obama’s side of the story:

Barack Obama bought his home the same way everyone buys a home, by making the best offer the sellers had. The details are that of a normal, boring real estate transaction by a young family buying the house they expect to raise children in. A couple named the Wondisford's had two properties on the market, a house and an adjacent lot. Barack and Michelle Obama made the best offer on the house, which had been on the market for 8 months. Before the purchase, Obama asked Rezko, a local real estate developer, and for some advice on the purchase. While there, Rezko noticed the adjacent lot and decided to buy it. Neither got a break on the price, as confirmed by the Wondisford’s. The Wondisford's requested to close on the same day to minimize their hassle. You can download the PDF where the Wondisford’s confirm all of this here: http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/acrobat/2008-03/36768343.pdf

Later, Obama purchased a strip of the Rezko’s property to give his kids more room to play, and he paid more than double the assessed value to avoid any claims of impropriety. The Rezko’s later sold the lot to another couple who are building a house on it. And that’s it. The whole thing is remarkable only for its utter lack of any drama or scandal...

This is what the “Chicago Tribune” was reporting, back in January of 2008:

JAN. — Between Jan. 15 and Jan. 23, Obama submits three bids: $1.3 million on Jan. 15; $1.5 million on Jan. 21; and $1.65 million on Jan. 23. He told the Tribune that he does not recall when he learned that Rezko was interested in buying the side lot, or how Rezko learned of the sale. But Obama raised the possibility that he was the first to bring the lot to Rezko’s attention. The senator’s campaign provided a copy of a previously released e-mail from the sellers. In response to questions from the Obama campaign, the sellers agreed that they “did not offer or give the Obamas a ‘discount’ on the house price” because Rezko paid their asking price for the yard.

“[Quoting Obama:] Tony asked me during the course of one of these conversations why I might not be interested in buying the lot and keep the property intact. And I said that, you know, it wasn’t worth it to us to spend an extra $600,000 or so on a lot next door when Michelle and I were really interested in the house. So, he said, ‘Well, I might be interested in purchasing the lot.’ And my response was, ‘That would be fine.’

“And my thinking at the time, and this is just to sort of flag this, this is an area where I can see sort of a lapse in judgment. Where I could have said, ‘You know, I’m not sure that’s a great idea.’ But my view at the time when he expressed an interest was that he was a developer in this area that owned lots, that he thought it was going to be a good investment. And my interest, or my motivation was here’s somebody that I knew who, if this lot was being developed, it’d be better to have somebody who knew, who I knew, who you know would give me schedules, keep me apprised of what was taking place and so forth. So I didn’t object.”

The email then goes on to make implications that because Valerie Jarrett, who might be Obama’s number one advisor (after Michelle) was born in Iraq, she is somehow a threat to National Security, and, presumably, that Obama is either a terrorist for knowing her...or, somehow, under terrorist control...

“Vogue” Magazine disagrees:

Jarrett's unlikely, unusual, unsumupable childhood began in Iran, where she was born in 1956. Not unlike Obama's being "from" Hawaii or "from" Indonesia, that fact in and of itself is more misleading than it is illuminating. Her parents, both of whom are in their 80s and still working and writing and who live a block away from Michelle and Barack, are academics. Her father, James Bowman, a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago and an internationally recognized geneticist and pathologist, is from Washington, D.C.; her mother, Barbara, an expert on early childhood development, has deep roots and a big extended family in Chicago's Hyde Park. In 1955, the couple moved to Shiraz, Iran, where they stayed for six years as part of a program that sent American doctors to developing nations. When Valerie, their only child, was five, they moved to London for a year and then resettled back in Hyde Park, a neighborhood that has historically been a bit hoity-toity and one to which the Obamas have now brought a whole new level of cachet and bragging rights.

More about Jarret’s “terrorist” past:

She comes from a long line of "firsts": Her maternal great-grandfather Robert Robinson Taylor was the first black person to graduate from M.I.T.; he became an architect and the vice principal of the Tuskegee Institute. Her mother's father, Robert Rochon Taylor, was a pioneer in public housing who was the first black man to head the Chicago Housing Authority, in the forties. Her father not only was the first black person to be given a residency at St. Luke's Hospital but also was the first to be tenured in his department at the University of Chicago. "Every summer my father did research in population genetics, which required him to study diversities of genetic-based diseases across the world, and so we would spend summer vacations traipsing across Africa," she says, as one of her two BlackBerrys vibrates on the granite-topped table we are sitting at with a delivered deli lunch. "One summer we went from Ghana to Nigeria to Ethiopia to Uganda to Egypt and then back to Iran. We would be out in the countryside visiting different tribes, and my father would draw blood and I would help get the syringes together. We spent a lot of time in Mexico, and then we'd go back to England. So it required me to be able to straddle a bunch of different cultures and worlds. It made me comfortable talking to anybody at a very young age, and because I was an only child I spent a lot of time with adults."

The email goes on to claim that “The Times” reported Obama advisor Robert Malley was “fired” because of his contacts with Hamas.

That story seems to be entirely wrong.
The actual facts?

Here’s what “The Washington Post” had to say back in May of 2008:

An informal Middle East adviser to Sen. Barack Obama's campaign resigned Friday after a newspaper reported on his regular meetings with members of the Hamas militant group.

Rob Malley said he wanted to stop being a distraction for the campaign after facing attacks from the blogosphere for months for allegedly being anti-Israel, a charge he denies. Malley is a former National Security Council aide to President Bill Clinton who is now with the International Crisis Group, a nonpartisan conflict-resolution think tank.

Malley's departure comes at a sensitive time for Obama, who appears to be nearing the Democratic nomination but has struggled to win the support of Jewish and pro-Israel voters. Hamas, which won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, refuses to recognize Israel and is dedicated to its destruction.

In reporting analytic reports he wrote for ICG, Malley would interview Hamas officials, as well as Israeli, American, European and other Palestinian officials. The reports, which made clear he had met with Hamas, feature recommendations for key players in the peace process. Malley said he informed the State Department before he met with Hamas and then briefed State afterwards on what he had learned.

"To do my job, I have to meet with savory and unsavory people," he said.

But Malley said that after he fielded a call this morning from the Times of London, which asked about the Hamas meetings, he decided he had had enough. "This was a distraction for me; this was a distraction for them," he said Friday night. "It is absurd, but that is what this campaign is about." (The links were added to the story.)

Yes, folks, you heard that correctly.

In order to learn about Hamas, so that he could inform the State Department about how to develop smart policy to deal with Hamas, which was his job, Malley actually took the time and trouble to talk to people involved with Hamas...and then Obama actually asked him to tell him what he knows, from time to time, so that Obama would, you know, know what he’s talking about; and all of that is, apparently, frightening to the McCain campaign.

And yet what did McCain tell David Letterman just last evening? That part of what he would do to catch Osama Bin-Laden would be to improve our human intelligence capabilities in Middle Eastern countries.

My friends, I could go on and on about this for another 2000 words; but instead, I’ll offer you an allegorical story that makes the point for me.

Imagine that you are diagnosed with cancer.

Would you prefer an oncologist who is so offended at any scientist who looks into a microscope at cancer cells that he refuses to even associate with such an individual...or would you prefer an oncologist who calls up a researcher over at the National Cancer Institute to ask that world-renowned expert, who has offered advice to this oncologist before, what to do about your case?

I know who I would pick...and I bet a lot of you would make the same choice.