A Healthy Debate

Lately, President Obama has been traveling around the country proclaiming that he has the solution to the nation's health care crisis. This may or may not be true. What is certainly true is that we have a health care crisis.

We pay the most per capita of any country on earth for medical services. Yet, our system was ranked 37th best by the World Health Organization . While the results of this survey have been challenged, no matter whether we're number 37 or somewhere higher, it's clear that we're not exactly getting our money's worth when it comes to health care.

The people who have insurance have no idea what health care really costs as they are sheltered from the actual charges. The poor who have no health insurance are protected by laws that demand they be taken care of independent of their ability to pay (as long as they wait long enough before seeking care in a hospital emergency room to get really, really sick). The ones who are really shafted in our system are those who have no health insurance, but do have the ability to pay (or file for bankruptcy). They are charged outlandish fees for every procedure.

I can share one example from my own personal experience. I had an out-patient procedure to break up kidney stones. I was in the hospital for a grand total of four hours. The procedure itself took about 30 minutes. The bill was more than $56,000. Because I had insurance, I paid about $1000 and the insurance company paid about $1000. But if I didn't have insurance, I would have been on the hook for the full amount. This is insane.

I'm sure you've heard similar stories. The bottom line is that things are seriously out of whack.

I have no clue if a government run health system would be better. I suspect it would not. What is clear is that the present system which focuses on pay for services provided has exactly the wrong incentives. Instead of encouraging expensive procedures after we get sick, the system should reward doctors who keep you healthy in the first place. But if your doctor tries to provide preventive care, Medicare, today's model of a government-run health system, will not pay for it.

What a mess!

Is Bigger Better?

I just returned from several days in Las Vegas. It was my first visit in a few years. I came away with a new appreciation of just how large "large" can be.

 

First of all, the new hotels are just gigantic. I stayed at the Wynn, which has 50 floors and 2,716 rooms. This is one of the smaller hotels on The Strip. On the off chance that you care about this, 15 of the 20 largest hotels in the world are located within a two mile radius in Las Vegas.(Click here if you'd like to read the entire list).

 

The second most impressive thing for me in Las Vegas was the size of the buffets. If you have the stamina, you can stuff yourself silly. This is not new. What seemed new to me was the sheer variety of the dishes in a single buffet. Just taking a sample of each item will fill your calorie budget for the next decade. I felt like a failure after only being able to make about four or five visits to the trough.

 

The next item that attracted my attention was the height of the heels that some of the women were sporting. Rather than walk, the women seemed to be shuffling forward. I don't think they flexed their knees at all. It was if they were emulating stilt walkers. I wish I had the marketing ability of the purveyors of these instruments of torture. How they convince women to voluntarily wear these shoes is beyond my understanding. From a purely marketing perspective, it seems a close second to the world's best marketers: the religious leaders who convince their followers to happily blow themselves up.

 

However, the thing that I found most entertaining was the prominent display of boob-jobs on a number of the ladies. Having an education in science and engineering, I made a series of very careful observations. I don't know much about how they price augmentation surgery. However, I can only conclude that it must be comparatively inexpensive to super-size the implants. There is no way anyone would mistake this particular variety of anatomy for the natural form. So this must not be important to the newly endowed. It must be that it is a relative bargain to get the largest size a woman can bear without completely losing her ability to stand upright.

 

All in all it was a fun trip. Mega-buildings, lots of food, interesting shoes and enormous boobs. What more could a guy ask for?

 

Psst...Wanna Buy Some Stock?

If I wanted to buy some stock in an auto company, I could have easily done it. However, my government has decided that they should do it on my behalf.

 

Where in the Constitution does it say that this is the role of government?

 

The US auto industry is composed of domestic and foreign controlled companies. All of the auto companies, whether foreign or domestic controlled, have public stockholders located all over the world. So what difference does it really make to the average citizen (who is not a member of the United Auto Workers union) whether Chrysler or GM survives in its pre-2009 form? As long as it is profitable, cars will be designed and manufactured in the US, employing US workers. Whether the paycheck comes from Toyota, GM or some new startup really is of little consequence.

 

This seems to be OK for other industries, but not the auto industry. I just don't get it.

 

I wrote some time ago (November, 2008 and December, 2008) that the solution for the ailing US car companies was a pre-packaged bankruptcy. This is exactly what is happening with Chrysler. The ironic upshot of the present plan is that the company is actually being kept alive by the government's infusion of billions of our dollars so that it can be taken over by Fiat. Didn't someone notice that the headquarters of Fiat was located in Italy?

 

By the way, it really irked me when I heard President Obama rail about the private entities that did not go along with the government's plan in which the private entities get pennies on the dollar for their secured Chrysler debt. It seems to me that they have every right under our system to plead their case in court if they think this will result in a better outcome.

 

The bottom line is that the government is not interested in the bottom line. It is a political institution that responds to political pressures. It should exit itself from this mess as quickly as it can.

Knowing The Future

I haven't posted anything for a while.

 

But I have a good excuse: I've been pretty busy pondering the future.

 

It all started with the analysis of my genome. Last month I volunteered to participate in a program in which I gave a sample of my DNA to an organization that's amassing genomes from a broad group of people. They're comparing them to the diseases that the test subjects already have or will get. They then attempt to correlate specific genes with the probabilities of actually getting those diseases.

 

The web site www.23andme.com describes the program. It's pretty interesting, assuming that you're interested in this sort of thing.

 

The whole process starts by spitting into a tube and mailing it to their lab. After a few weeks of waiting, the results are available on their web site. You can choose to share it with others. If you'd like to see my genome, just email me and I'll tell you how.

 

One thing my genome says is that I'm unlikely to be a sprinter. They were right on: I'm definitely not a sprinter.

 

It also said I probably have blue eyes. My eyes are green, or gray, or some color that's not blue. Well, it's not perfect.

 

On the more serious topics, like what diseases you'll get, it becomes more complicated. First of all, it's all presented as probabilities, not definite proclamations. So, for example, you may find out that you have a much higher chance of getting cancer than the general population. But then you're faced with the question of what do you do about it. In some cases, you may start to think about preventive surgery to remove the potential site of the cancer. This is pretty scary stuff.

 

This naturally leads to the question of whether you really want to know what the future holds, especially if it's bleak. Isn't science wonderful?

 

Alphabet Soup Spells Blah

I'm getting lost. There's old programs like the FDIC insurance program to protect bank depositors. There's the new Obama Stimulus Package. And then there's TARP, TALF, EIEIO (no, wait, that's a song from kindergarten), along with seemingly dozens of other new catchy-named programs emanating from the nation's capital. All are intended to reverse the economy from its current downward death spiral.

 

Yesterday, Warren Buffett was pontificating on CNBC that the economy had "fallen off a cliff" but would eventually recover. Well, duh ... yeah, even Jimmy Buffett could have said that.

 

There's universal agreement that the stock market is a leading economic indicator. It almost always starts its recovery six months prior to economic upturns. So the question that I would have liked Warren to answer is "When will the recovery take place?". Once we know that magic date, a monkey could throw darts at the stock market listings and pick winners, just as long as he tosses those darts six months earlier.

 

An old stock market adage is: "They don't ring a bell at the bottom (or top)". This is really too bad; it would make things a whole lot easier. As I write this, the stock market has just rallied for the first time in weeks. Is this the bottom or just a "dead cat bounce"? Who knows? Check back in several years and we'll be able to figure it out.

 

So what's the average investor to do? Just listen to the experts and when you think that enough of them agree on a common course of action, immediately do the opposite.

 

Failing that sure-fire piece of advice, it seems to me that the Obama Administration and Congress can help jump-start the economy and the stock market with one simple action above all others. Reduce or eliminate the taxes on dividends and long term capital gains. This single action will pump huge amounts of cash into start-ups and the stock market, revitalizing the economy and creating jobs.  Obama is scaring the bejesus out of potential investors worldwide because he's talking about raising these taxes instead of lowering them.

 

One other thing. It might be a good idea to hold gold or some other hard assets in your portfolio. While I know that the current concern is deflation, at some point, the massive creation of money is going to set off a jumbo-sized round of inflation.

 

No! I don't have any idea when that magic date will occur. I sure wish I did.

 

How Men Should Pee

There I was, just minding my own business, looking at the comments posted by loyal readers regarding my last post about fighting in hockey, when kaboom, out of nowhere (actually from SpecRiter located in Canada), comes this bombshell: "Saying that fighting in hockey should be banned is like women saying that men should sit down and pee instead of standing... it is just against our nature."

 

Wow! I never really thought about whether it's against the nature of man to pee sitting down, let alone what peeing has to do with hockey. 

Reflecting on men's peeing, I guess I must have always figured you'd stand when it was convenient (usually when number one only was involved) and sit when it was appropriate (when number two was involved). These are not rigid rules. They can be waived, for example, when alone in the woods. Then it is perfectly fine to throw caution to the wind and take whatever stance (or not) you feel like at that moment.

 

Being naturally inquisitive about such important issues, I immediately googled the search words "men pee when sitting". In short order (0.23 Seconds), I was presented with 442,000 results. I never knew so many people were concerned about this topic. Also, all those people and computers at Google must have been sitting around and just waiting for my inquiry judging by how rapidly they delivered so many references on the subject.

 

The number one search result informed me that 40% of Japanese men pee while sitting. This percentage of men sitting is three times as large as the percentage who did so when the survey was taken in 1999. The increase is apparently due to pressure from wives on their spouses to cut down on the urine splashing. It's also interesting to note that the Japanese actually do surveys on stuff like this.

 

Second on the list was a link to a short video from Larry David on the subject. You can view his remarks by clicking here (the video takes less than a minute). I recommend it heartily.

 

As with most activities on the web, you can invest (waste) untold hours researching this topic. For example, I ran across a photo from travel writer Rick Steves that tells us that you won't find a single urinal in Iran. He says it's a "religious thing".

 

All in all, I learned a whole lot while having tons of fun. And I still think that fighting should be banned in hockey (whether or not peeing has anything to do with hockey).

 

Fighting Is Still The Rage

Why do they fight?

Who, you ask? The Palestinians and the Israelis? The Islamic Extremists and the Western World?

 

No, combatants much more relevant to everyday American life: hockey goons, of course.

 

It's once again the time to ask why hockey permits, or even encourages, fighting when all other major sports (with the exception of boxing and its ilk) have effectively outlawed fisticuffs. The latest questioning was precipitated by the recent tragic death of a 21 year old minor league player who lost his helmet and cracked his head on the ice during a fight.

 

When I played eons ago at the lowest amateur levels, occasionally even players of my class would lose their cool in the midst of a skirmish and start throwing punches. But that was not premeditated. It was just the result of the fast play and hard hitting. At the NHL level, fights were common but usually not premeditated.

 

Fighting has now become a ritual in which the designated goon for each team squares off against his counterpart. Usually, they have not had any meaningful interaction with each other apart from exchanging words like "let's go". The fight itself often is preceded by each combatant removing his helmet before the fists fly so they don't break their hands on the other guy's hat. Happily for fight advocates, it's still kosher to break your hands on your opponent's skull.

 

Ostensibly, the fighting is a self-policing action by the players to eliminate the borderline to flagrant stunts that the referees have missed or simply ignored. But that seems hard to believe. If the players see what's happening, it's pretty likely the refs see it too. Also, a fight between the goons is hard to connect logically to actions taken by other players.

 

The only reason why fighting still is a part of the game is because some fans like it. Without this fan support, the ritual would be gone in a flash of a league-mandated game penalty and fine. And that's just what the league should do. No one complains about the lack of fighting during the playoffs when the stakes are too high to give up a roster spot or take any penalties. Fans who are excited about the fights should go to a boxing bout. The rest of us can enjoy the skill and passion of the athletes.

 

Hockey is a religion in Canada and the northern part of the U.S (also known as Baja Canada). It has struggled to become relevant in the rest of America (sometimes referred to as Alta Mexico). Catering to the World Wrestling Federation crowd's sensibilities is not the way to success. The best hope for the NHL is to capitalize on the engaging personalities of its stars like Sydney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin and Joe Thornton, who, by the way, seem like absolute saints when contrasted with the ego-maniacs headlining baseball, football and basketball. This, along with High Definition TV and lower ticket prices, rather than fighting, is what the sport needs.