Important differences between Democrats and Republicans were covered in my last post, with focus on the Democrats, and following the theme of Ezra Klein of The New York Times, who claimed that Democrats are united in their belief that the government can, and should, act on behalf of the public.
In contrast, Mr. Klein characterized the Republicans quite differently, The modern Republican Party, by contrast, is built upon a loathing of the government. Many would consider that a gross overstatement, but he did touch on a recognizable theme, especially when one considers certain quotes of perhaps the most popular Republican of the last half century, Ronald Reagan (President from 1981 to 1989). Reagan produced many quotes (see here).Four representative examples follow:
Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. – 1965
Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives. – 1981
Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. (First Inaugural Address on January 20, 1981)
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help. – 1986
President Ronald Reagan
Just so there is no misunderstanding, I am in full agreement with Reagan’s concepts, but I believe they also are consistent with what I often reveal in this space, namely that my political base is also compatible with the views of perhaps the most popular Democrat of the last century, John F. Kennedy (President from 1961 to 1963), Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.
President John F. Kennedy
In my opinion, Mr. Klein of theTimes overstated the Republican view of government. As I see it, most Republicans are politicians, not statesmen, as are their Democrat colleagues, but overall the Republicans have an edge in ineptness.
Some examples: Think of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and contrast her with Republican members of the House Black Caucus. Think of the frequent changing of Republican leadership of House leadership (as opposed to the long tenure of Democrat Nancy Pelosi). Here’s one that made me smile, an incident described by Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska. When recently visiting his Nebraska congressional district, he joined a GOP meeting and told the group, “I am a Christian first, an American second, and then a Republican.”
An older gentleman immediately yelled out, “That is why we don’t like you!” Representative Bacon added, rather dryly, “I wondered what bothered him more, the Christian or the American part.”
Enough of that! I’ll cut this short because tonight is THE DEBATE between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. I dread tuning in, but of course I will. I wrote here earlier a number of times to give my views of the dismal upcoming election with then-candidates Biden and Trump (see here,here, and here). One candidate has changed, but for me the dreariness continues. Surely all voters have evaluated our present contenders and have come to a conclusion. Here’s mine: Kennedy and Reagan they are not!
Important differences between Democrats and Republicans were revealed recently by Ezra Klein in The New York Times (see here). Mr. Klein was laser-focused as he encapsulated the current Democratic party (see below).
Democrats according to Klein
Democrats are united in their belief that the government can, and should, act on behalf of the public. To be on the party’s far left is to believe the government should do much more. To be among its moderates is to believe it should do somewhat more. But all of the people elected as Democrats, from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Senator Joe Manchin, are there for the same reason: to use the power of the government to pursue their vision of the good. The divides are real and often bitter. But there is always room for negotiation because there is a fundamental commonality of purpose.
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT? What grade does Mr. Klein deserve for his summary of the Democrats? I THINK HE EARNED A SOLID A. Next, let’s take a look at his views of the Republican party (see segment below).
Republicans according to Klein
The modern Republican Party, by contrast, is built upon a loathing of the government. Some of its members want to see the government shrunk and hamstrung. This is the old ethos, best described by Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist who famously said: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT? Please give Mr. Klein a grade. He seems to have sharpened his pen here, and even tossed in a bit of exaggeration. Nonetheless, he touched on some truths. I AWARDED HIM WITH A C FOR HIS EFFORT.
Relevance of the above differences
As voters, I would argue, we have an obligation to examine diverging political views and actions, and to determine how they affect us individually, and our nation as well. Since we obviously can’t see into the future, the best we can do is to peek into the past to see how things have gone after government expands, or after it contracts. With this in mind, I’ll take a brief look at the impact of two examples of governmental expansion, specifically laws that were intended to act on the behalf of the public. In a later post, I’ll look at the obverse side of the coin.
Gathered Students
Governmental laws on behalf of college students
The government has acted generously on behalf college students. In 1965, Washington began providing eligible students with Federal Pell grants, which provided funds for expenses needed for students to attend colleges and universities. The establishment of Pell grants basically marked the beginning of a series of governmental laws (summarized here) intended to provide considerable cash as loans and whatnot for financially-strapped college students. How has that worked out?
Over 25 years ago, then Secretary of Education William J. Bennett, argued that, contrary to the intentions of policymakers, increased federal aid actually was making college less affordable (“Our Greedy Colleges,” New York Times, Feb 18, 1987). Bennett argued that the increases in financial aid had enabled colleges and universities to blithely raise their tuitions, confident that Federal loan subsidies would help cushion the increased burden. (For a detailed discussion of this topic, see my earlier post on exorbitant college costs (click here).
Since then, college tuitions and fees have continued to rocket upward to astronomical levels. According to USA Today, in June of this year the student loan debt balance in the U.S. totaled more than $1.77 trillion, having increased by 66% over the past decade. Individual students today not infrequently graduate indebted by hundreds of thousands of dollars, a result probably not intended by the legislators who authorized the funds.
Students’ loss, higher education’s gain
There also have been obvious winners, especially those employed in higher education. Increasingly flush with cash, many colleges and universities have doled out grossly inflated salaries to faculty and administrators. To cite one example from my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the annual salary of Chancellor Donna Shalala in 1988 (a time when tuitions had already doubled from two decades earlier) was $95,000; by 2019, Chancellor Rebecca Blank’s salary was $582,607.
The upward swing persists. In mid-2022, the University of Wisconsin Regents hired Jennifer Mnookin to be the new chancellor at a base salary of $750,000. My quick adjustment for inflation revealed that Chancellor Shalala’s salary in 2022 dollars would be $235,365, thus the inflation-adjusted value of the chancellor’s salary has more than tripled since Donna Shalala presided there. Go Badgers!
The question for us common people to answer, I suggest, is whether we favor what Washington has done for college students, or not. Our answer conceivably could influence which party we affiliate with, and how we vote.
Doctor and patient
Governmental laws on behalf of medical patients
This is a second area in which the government has done much on behalf of citizens. Few, I think, would deny that. One can find a listing of the major “health” laws by clicking here. You probably know, from personal experiences and from reports of family and friends, how that legislation has worked out. Some examples follow.
If you’ve been on this earth for several decades, you’ll remember when your doctor looked at you during an appointment, rather than focusing on a computer screen. You will remember that your physician was in private practice (not a salaried employee), and that telephone calls to your physician were answered promptly by a receptionist or nurse employed by that doctor, and that you could get a medical appointment within days or even hours, not weeks or months as it usually takes today. In those past days, there was no “health care industry,” and a time when a visit to the emergency often cost under $100, not the $1,000s or more for brief visits so typical these days. It was a time when few people even carried health insurance because medical costs were reasonable, and individuals who couldn’t afford to pay their medical bills usually had them written off by doctors and hospitals. That’s the way it was when I graduated from medical school.
It’s worth knowing that more changes in our medical care may be coming. Certain politicians today are eager to pass even more laws on behalf of patients, for example, laws establishing a “single payer” system, and laws eliminating private medical insurance, and much more. Will the potential effects of these proposed changes be beneficial? That seems to be another key question that cannot be answered with certainty. What do you think? Do you favor further changes, or not?
Again, our views on the significant changes in our medical care and its soaring costs may also influence the party we affiliate with, and how we vote.
A broader view and final questions
Clearly, there are important differences between Democrats and Republicans. And the above two examples naturally represent only a fraction of governmental influences on our daily lives, many of them vital, such as those affecting our personal liberties, our public safety, our economy, and the security of our borders. Nonetheless, the examples I cited were enacted “on behalf of the public,” “to pursue their vision of the good” to use Mr. Klein’s phrases (their vision, of course, refers to the vision of “good” according to the Democrats). Having considered all of that, I suppose it is a mysterious mix of these multiple governmental roles that somehow determines our own political views. If so, that raises interesting questions for all of us, which are: can we identify the specific factors that generated our personal political views? Do we know why we call ourselves a Democrat, a Republican, an Independent, a Socialist, or a Communist? Were we influenced by family views, or opinions of friends and colleagues, or our natural kindness for others, or our independence? Or have other factors influenced us? Have we carefully examined our current candidates, or what they promise, or do we automatically lean toward someone who represents the party we identify with? I’ve had a go at all of these questions. Believe me, it was a chore. If you give them a try, have fun!
Alert, next time I’ll continue my exploration of important differences between Democrats and Republicans, focusing on the party that loathes government.
You okay with this? I’m not! Health care costs have zoomed into the stratosphere. And what the government pays for Medicare and Medicaid ultimately comes from the pockets of us taxpayers. As I have argued here before (click here to see), increasing government involvement surely has been a major factor in the incredulous increase in health care spending. For example, in 1975, health care spending was $550 per person compared with more than $11,000 per person in 2017. Yep, you calculated correctly, health spending increased by more than 2,000% over 42 years. Can you think of anything else that has gone up that fast? As I mentioned in the reference above, a profit-generating machine has taken over healthcare. Today I’ll focus on one part of that money grubbing machine.
Nurse Visits Made Insurers $15 Billion
Above is the headline of a front page article in today’s Wall Street Journal. The article reveals how Medicare Advantage insurers employ nurses to visit their insured patients, and perhaps to collect extra government cash. Here’s how it works. The insurers send nurses millions of times each year into the homes of Medicare Advantage recipients, not to treat them, but to look them over, run tests, and ask dozens of questions. During this roughly hour visit, nurses also can add diagnoses to the patients’ records. From these new diagnoses, insurance companies collected an extra $1,818 per visit (on average from 2019 to 2021). (The more diagnoses a patient has, the more money the Medicare Advantage insurer collects from the government.)
Ironically, the Medicare Advantage system was thought to be a lower-cost alternative to traditional Medicare. For a government perspective on its insurance plans, click here. In this system, private insurers are paid a lump sum to provide health benefits for the seniors and disabled people in this federal program. This program now covers more than half of the 67 million seniors and disabled people on Medicare. But things haven’t gotten cheaper. They have zoomed upward. You okay with this? I’m not!
Nurse home visit
As to be expected, adding nearly two grand per visit (had having lots and lots of visits) generates real money. According to a WSJ analysis, the added diagnoses during those nurses visits contributed about $15 billion to the insurance companies over the three years examined.
How are those diagnoses by nurses made? Here’s one example from the article. Nurse practitioner Shelley Manke, who used to work for the HouseCalls unit of United-Health Group, was part of that small army making home visits. She made a half-dozen or so visits a day, she said in a recent interview.
“Part of the routine”
Part of her routine, she said, was to warm the big toes of her patients and use a portable testing device to measure how well blood was flowing to their extremities. The insurers were checking for cases of peripheral artery disease, a narrowing of blood vessels. Each new case entitled them to collect an extra $2,500 or so a year at that time.
But Manke didn’t trust the device. She had tried it on herself and had gotten an array of results. When she and other nurses raised concerns with managers, she said, they were told the company believed that data supported the tests and that they needed to keep using the device.
“It made me cringe,” said Manke, who stopped working for HouseCalls in 2022. “I didn’t think the diagnosis should come from us, period, because I didn’t feel we had an adequate test.”
Other nurses interviewed by the Journal said many of the diagnoses that home-visit companies encouraged them to make wouldn’t otherwise have occurred to them, and in many cases were unwarranted.
A growth industry
As you might imagine from the above numbers, the home-visit conglomerate is expanding.United-Health’s subsidiary, HouseCalls, sent nurse practitioners to the homes of more than 2.7 million people last year. This was nearly matched by CVS’s Signify, which performed about 2.6 million home visits in 2023. But to make those visits, the insurance companies need to get Medicare Advantage recipients to agree to a visit, so call centers bombard those recipients with invitations for home visits, “In the case of Humana, auto-dialing them as many as ten times, according to former managers.”
As I was on my walk today, I spoke with an acquaintance in his front yard, telling him about the post I was planning to write. He told me he simply turns down all offers for a home visit from his Medicare Advantage insurer. Quite simply, he sees no reason for such visits.
The insurers, of course, have a reason. United-Health and CVS Health, owner of both Signify and Aetna, said the house calls help patients by, among other things, catching diseases early and making sure people are taking their medicine properly. The insurers said they relay home-visit findings to primary-care doctors.
A contrasting view
I think the program is a boondoggle. Remember that $15 billion mentioned above, the amount generated by home visit diagnoses in 2019 to 2021? Well, the costs actually were much more (see below). Why? Perhaps mainly because insurers can add diagnoses to ones that patients’ own doctors submit. Apparently this was incorporated so the insurers could catch conditions that doctors might have neglected to record. Is it possible that those insurers have discovered that adding diagnoses adds more income? (Don’t know why I thought of that.) Maybe one reason is the WSJ’s analysis. For example, it found many insurer-added diagnoses were for patients who received no treatment for that presumed disease, or one that contradicted their doctors’ views. Hmm! You okay with that? I’m not!
And the haul was much bigger. Insurers actually received nearly $50 billion in Medicare Advantage payments for those three years for the diagnoses they added to their insured members (and for conditions that no doctor or hospital treated). Many of the insurer-driven diagnoses were outright wrong or highly questionable, according to the WSJ. (The $15 billion from home visit diagnoses was included in the total $50 billion paid to insurers. It’s not clear to me who was responsible for the diagnoses that generated the extra $35 billion.) You okay with this? I’m not!
A lesson from this?
Perhaps this mess will aid you in your decisions as you go to the polls this November. If you believe that government funding and government control of much of the economy in these United States is salutary, I imagine you will find candidates who promise what you wish for. On the other hand, if you believe that we have become overly dependent on governmental handouts, not to mention restrictive laws galore, you likely will have difficulty finding candidates who fit your needs. After all, nearly all running for office these days are full of promises (and often much more).
As I’ve mentioned several times in this blog, I have been a Jack Kennedy Democrat since my university days. I think government had grown to be huge and unwieldy. Therefore, any candidate who offers reason and hope, and stands for a smaller government, will get my vote.
“Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”
Pop quiz on successful immigrants. I’m posting this because it goes against much current thought, and some of the facts I’ve learned surprised me. More importantly, I believe there is an important take-home message from this pop quiz. Please continue reading.
After digesting the clues below, can you identify what country these immigrants came from? Admittedly, it is a relatively small group that makes up about 1.35% of our entire USA population (1). But this group has been astonishingly successful. Their median income amounts to nearly twice that of white households and three times that of black households (2).
Immigrants from this country are highly educated. Two-thirds have college degrees, and 40% have postgraduate degrees. Not surprisingly, they excel in many areas. For example, members of this group serve as CEOs of major companies, including those shown below. Can you name the country now? Below are more clues.
Immigrants from ??? are CEOs of these companies
Here are more clues for solving this pop quiz on successful immigrants. These specific immigrants are highly represented in the professions. Many are lawyers or academics. According to one source (2), 1 in every 10 students entering medical school belongs to this ethnic group. This same source reports that this group has the lowest divorce rates of any ethnic group in the country, and that it owns 60% of all hotels (that astonished me!)
If you haven’t guessed by now, the answer is: Indian Americans! I learned this from today’s column by Tunku Varadarajan (“an ethnic Indian immigrant in the process of becoming an American“) in TheWall Street Journal (2). I was prompted to pass the word along because of the importance of Varadarajan’s take-home message, which is best expressed in his own words.
Take home message:
“Indian-Americans have achieved a breathtaking amount in this country in a couple of generations. What’s impressive is both the range of their success and that they have succeeded entirely on their own steam. No ethnic or racial favors have come their way from schools, colleges or government. At least until the recent Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action, it was a disadvantage to be an Indian student applying to an Ivy League school.
What Indians don’t specialize in is grievance. There is no Indian lobby pushing for increased “representation” in this or that economic or political sector, no pressure group ululating for ethnic enclaves, or for information to be provided in a language other than English. . . It is deeply unfashionable to speak these days of the American Dream. To do so marks you out, in certain circles, as anachronistic or sentimental. But if there’s one group that holds fast to its belief in the American Dream, it’s Indian-Americans. Unapologetic about their drive to thrive, they are rightly scornful of those who would say that America is a place that thwarts people on the basis of race.”
Question for readers:
What do you think of the Varadarajan’s statements, and of his opinions?
Biden – Trump fallout. Multiple echoes from Thursday’s presidential debate continue to thunder loudly across the country, and across the entire world for that matter. No surprise there. The debate fanned sparks having international consequences. Because of my impression that most European leaders much prefer Biden over Trump, I took time to see what politicians in those countries thought of the debate. Here’s a representative sampling:
From Politico: Europe’s press was stunned by Joe Biden’s “near-catastrophic” performance. . . . Finland’s Yle called his performance a “disaster.” Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra said Biden acted “confused” with a “hoarse voice,” and Poland’s Onet declared that Trump “put [Biden] on his back,” calling it “sad to watch.” . . France’s Le Monde called Biden’s stumbling over his words a “shipwreck,” adding that Trump “was able to roll out lies without contradiction,” while Britain’s Economist said Biden’s “horrific debate performance casts his entire candidacy into doubt.”
Two aging pugilists
From CNN: “Hard to watch” is how multiple foreign diplomats described Thursday night’s debate between Biden and Trump to CNN. “It is a sad reality that Biden is old, and he is getting older. We saw it. I had difficulties understanding what he was saying, and I understand English pretty well,” said a second European diplomat. It was “a bad night for Biden,” said another.
From Financial Times: Concern over Biden’s age, mental acuity and ability to beat Donald Trump in November’s election has been steadily rising in European capitals this year. . . That rose further on Friday morning as European officials watched Biden’s disastrous debate performance in horror, with many taking the rare step of openly criticizing a sitting US president.
U. S. Reaction
I’ll start the responses on our side of the pond with a bit of whimsy. Business mogul Mark Cuban reported on X that he had asked ChatGPT to select the best candidate based on “communication skills, clarity, problem-solving abilities, and overall professionalism.” How did that turn out? Here are parts of the “artificially intelligent” Bot’s response.
“It would be challenging to decisively hire either candidate without further evaluation of their professional capabilities and specific job fit.” (Not many would disagree!)Regarding Biden, the AI Bot gave pros to Biden for “extensive experience in public service,” “empathy” and “social awareness.” It gave cons for the 81-year-old’s lack of “coherence and clarity” and “focus and consistency.”
Regarding the former president, ChatGPT liked Trump’s “assertiveness and confidence” and “economic focus,” while citing the 78-year-old’s emphasis on “financial performance and business acumen.” However, ChatGPT downgraded the former president for using “hyperbole and exaggeration,” and for his “grandiose claims” that might “raise concerns about his reliability.”
President Joe Biden
More focus on Biden
From my perspective, and as I hinted in an earlier post (see that here) the debate has triggered more talk, and more written comments, about Biden than it has about Trump, especially questions regarding whether Biden might withdraw from the race. A select number of Democrats, and even newspapers such as the New York Times, have recommended that he drop out. That said, I see no sign that Biden’s camp is planning to throw in the towel. I’ve sifted through members of Biden’s inner circle, and I’ve detected mainly clenched jaws and stony, resistant expressions.
And here is even fresher evidence from just a few hours ago. The President reportedly joined a Zoom call today (July 3) with campaign and Democratic National Committee staff. A published report (see here) quotes Biden as follows: “Let me say this as clearly as I possibly can — as simply and straightforward as I can: I am running … no one’s pushing me out. I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win.”
Trusted reporting
Remember Carl Bernstein, one of the duo who exploded with the Watergate story? Well, the veteran journalist is still at it. He recently said that White House insiders have been aware of Biden’s limited cognitive abilities, and that over the past year several have taken their concerns to Ron Klain, the former White House chief of staff (and still one of Biden’s top advisors although he is now chief legal officer at Airbnb). According to Bernstein’s report, Klain dismissed those concerns. I wondered why but I recently found what I consider to be a reliable source, and one that provided an encyclopedia of information. Please keep reading.
You may know the source: Politico: I checked out the reliability of Politico on MediaBias/FactCheck, which is summarized in the illustration below. Credibility looks good!
Report of Politico reliability
The Politico article I found rings with the sound of old-time journalism, the kind practiced by Carl Bernstein and at one time by thousands of others. This particular article reveals inside information pulled from multiple sources and details are reported in clear, declarative sentences. Those in the White House may (or may not) explode when they read it. Below is a sampling, and at the end I’ll provide the URL to the site so you can read the entire sizzling article. Some excerpts:
Over the course of his presidency, Joe Biden’s small clutch of advisers have built an increasingly protective circle around him, limiting his exposure to the media and outside advice. . . . inside the White House, Biden’s growing limitations were becoming apparent long before his meltdown in last week’s debate. During meetings with aides who are putting together formal briefings they’ll deliver to Biden, some senior officials have at times gone to great lengths to curate the information being presented in an effort to avoid provoking a negative reaction.
“It’s like, ‘You can’t include that, that will set him off,’ or ‘Put that in, he likes that,’” said one senior administration official. “It’s a Rorschach test, not a briefing. Because he is not a pleasant person to be around when he’s being briefed. It’s very difficult, and people are scared shitless of him.”
The official said, “He doesn’t take advice from anyone other than those few top aides, and it becomes a perfect storm because he just gets more and more isolated from their efforts to control it.”
Shredding Biden’s inner circle
The article also shreds Biden’s inner circle, as shown in a few representative passages below.
Following the debate, the pervasive view throughout much of the party is of Biden’s inner circle as an impenetrable group of enablers who deluded themselves about his ability to run again even as they’ve assiduously worked to accommodate his limitations and shield them from view.
“The fact is, there wasn’t an open dialogue about whether he should run except for the people who would benefit from him running,” said a Democratic operative close to the campaign. They described the inner circle (as being) convinced “that this was going to be about Trump, not about Biden, and at the end of the day, people just wouldn’t vote for Trump. But here we are, we’re sitting in July, and the race is about Biden, and it’s about a trait you can’t fix.”
“I think the Biden team is pretty insular and doesn’t really care what anybody says,” said one senior House Democrat, who described a palpable and growing fear among vulnerable Democrats that they may lose because of Biden.
Group-think abounds
“There’s definitely groupthink,” one Democratic donor-adviser said about Biden’s inner circle. “They’ve known each other a long time. They’re kind of a team of rivals. But they’re not going to challenge him.”
Another operative painted a similar picture: “They don’t take dissent,” they said. “If you try, then you don’t get invited to the next call, the next meeting.”
Click here to read the entire detailed Politico article
My Biden-Trump Error. Wow! I did not see that debate coming. I thought I was on solid ground when I made my prediction about the aftermath of the Biden-Trump tussle. I would have given odds on it, but, to be honest, I missed by the proverbial country mile. Here’s what I said hours before the Biden – Trump clash. “After the debate, those with vested interests on either side will declare their combatant the victor.” See here for that post.
Two elderly combatants
Well, the fight didn’t turn out the way I expected it would. I thought President Biden, with his week-long preparation aided by 16 advisers at Camp David, would manage to get through the bout with relatively few gaffs. And I doubted that former president Trump could slide through the 90 minutes without unseemly eruptions. I was wrong on both counts!
Biden’s mental deficits were more obvious to me than I had anticipated; his hesitations when losing the thread of his thoughts were painful to watch. Throughout the debate, I wondered how his Democrat supporters would defend his performance. More on that below.
Equally surprising to me was Trump’s relatively calm behavior. Nevertheless his hyperbole was annoying. “We had the greatest economy in the history of our country.” “He (Biden) caused the inflation and it’s killing black families and Hispanic families and just about everybody. It’s killing people. They can’t buy groceries anymore. They can’t.”
If you’ve read this far, your interest is obvious and I recommend you check out a more complete, and I think thoughtful, review of the debate by NPR. See here for that. And here’s another one well worth reading (see here).
After the debate ended (which I watched streaming on NBC Now), I switched to my local PBS station for instant analysis of the event. The most common expression among the row of commentators, mostly left-leaning, was funereal. And they quickly obliterated my prognostication, blowing it into tiny pieces. Rather than supporting Biden’s performance, they decried it, zeroing in on details of his poor performance. They also reported in some detail how their contacts had indicated that prominent Democrats were slipping into panic mode.
Does this raise the possibility that one of these two unpopular presidential candidates will somehow be sidetracked? That Democrat leaders will pressure President Biden to release his delegates at the Chicago convention so another candidate can emerge? I’ve learned my lesson. After my Biden – Trump error, I’ll refrain from giving political predictions, at least for now.
Biden – Trump Fracas: Bets? Do you have money on this brawl? If so, be warned. It may be hard to collect. After the debate, those with vested interests on either side will declare their combatant the victor. Are you going to watch the fracas? The debate itself starts at 8 p.m. central time on CNN (and simulcast on NBC NOW) but live coverage begins two hours earlier. More information can be found here. As I read somewhere, “It’s not going to be the Lincoln-Douglas debate.”
Nonetheless, this skirmish is of great importance. One of these two men almost certainly will end up in the Oval Office for another term, even though, according to polls, neither pugilist is popular. I’ve written about that problem before, see here, and here, for recent examples. Most of us would prefer to have other, may I use the word?, thugs in the ring tonight, but, as the saying goes, what is, is. So, we have two old guys, 81 and 78 (okay, mere youngsters from my elevated view at 92) about to slug it out.
We need better candidates!
The preparation for this unusual debate (even before the Fourth of July) by each man must have been intense. I haven’t heard how Trump has prepared, but I’ve seen reports that President Biden spent the week at Camp David with 16 advisers helping him prepare for tonight’s free-for-all. Wouldn’t you like to know what those 16 recommended? As for former President Trump, the most likely emphasis should have been on training the man to keep his cool. His boiling-point obviously lies at record-low levels. In other words, we have an old man with obvious mental inadequacies about to battle a nearly as old convicted felon. Nice choice!
My greatest worry about Trump is his labile emotional state, his manner of lashing out at (former) friends and supporters, his unpredictability. Who, including our international friends and foes, can guess what he will do at any moment? My worries about Biden are less about his age and mental capacity and more about his his record as president, e.g., his colossally botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, his abandonment of the Southern Border, and the resultant flood of immigrants, his inflationary spending.
Biden – Trump Fracas: Bets? Not for me. But come November, I will not vote for either man. Rather I will do what I think many of you will do. My decision will come down to which person I detest more, which lightweight I will vote against. I doubt I will draw any lasting conclusions from tonight’s event. But I definitely will watch the debate. I hope you do too.
Wild pharmacy prices: Buyer beware of what you pay for your medications. A few hours ago, I bought some eye-drops at my local CVS pharmacy. The price for the drops, which contain two active ingredients, was $48.23 when using my Medicare Part D insurance (I won’t mention the insurer, because I’m generally pleased with the program). Out of curiosity, I checked that price against what GoodRx would provide a free coupon for the same drops today. Well, had I used that free “non-insurance” coupon, I would have saved a few bucks, paying only $37.56 for the drops. (More information about GoodRx Holdings can be found here.)
Cost varies
What? I paid more by using my insurance than I would have paid by simply using a free coupon? Yep. I’ve produced the evidence. Not only that, but last month I paid over $140 for a month’s supply of another medication that I had bought last year for just over $40 (when using my last year’s Part D insurance with another provider). I just checked the GoodRx site now and saw the price at CVS with a free GoodRx coupon would have bought the same product for under $40. Wow! That would have been over $100 cheaper. Go figure!
Please understand that I have no financial interest in GoodRx, nor do I have any reason for mentioning this other than to report what seems to be a rather uneven system of pharmaceutical prices. And it is another example of the exorbitant cost of medical care (see here for an earlier post on this subject). There is, of course, more to the drug story. Read on.
According to an article I just read online, and I assume will appear in tomorrow’s edition of The Wall Street Journal, the so-called saving of drugs by 90 day mail delivery actually is more expensive. Below are some quotes from that article headlined: Mail-Order Drugs Were Supposed to Keep Costs Down. It’s Doing the Opposite.
“Drugs delivered by mail are costing multiples more than those picked up at a store counter. Markups were as much as 35 times higher than what other pharmacies charged, according to a recent analysis of millions of prescriptions in Washington state.
“At the urging of firms that manage their drug benefits, employers have turned to mail-order pharmacies to save money on prescriptions. The pharmacies promised to sell medicines to employees at lower prices than their bricks-and-mortar rivals by buying larger quantities from drug makers and providing 90-day supplies.
“Instead, the opposite is happening. Drugs ordered through the mail-order pharmacies are costing more, raising employers’ spending. . .
Image by Valeria GB from Pixabay
“That is partly because of price markups on prescriptions filled by mail-order pharmacies—especially those owned by the pharmacy-benefit managers, or PBMs, themselves—according to employers and consultants who have reviewed businesses’ drug spending.
“One employee’s three-month supply of a prescription for a generic antidepressant, fluoxetine, cost Unity Care about $100, more than twice the average price that retail pharmacies paid for the drug. The same fluoxetine prescription could be purchased from the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug pharmacy for about $12.”
Quite a saving, wouldn’t you say? Twelve bucks versus about a hundred? Wild pharmacy prices: buyer beware. Below is more from the article, presenting data revealing that mail order pharmacies, which do not have the expenses of brick and mortar stores, are charging exorbitant prices.
“Generic prescriptions dispensed by mail pharmacies were marked up on average more than three times higher than prescriptions filled by bricks-and-mortar pharmacies, according to a recent analysis by 3 Axis Advisors, a healthcare research firm.
“Branded drugs filled by mail were marked up on average three to six times higher than the cost of medicines dispensed by chain and grocery-store pharmacies, and roughly 35 times higher than those filled by independent pharmacies, according to the analysis, which looked at 2.4 million claims by self-insured employers in Washington state from 2020 to 2023.”
Wild pharmacy prices: buyer beware!
ADDENDUM: After I published this post, my daughter-in-law, a hospital pharmacist, sent me two other sources for low-priced medications that are worthy of checking. You can learn more about them by clicking Here, and Here:
Biden versus Trump: Again? I know, you’re probably sick of the story, as am I. I’ve covered aspects of this dismal presidential race in earlier posts (see here, here, here, and here). But the bad vibrations from these two bunglers keep jangling the nerves of most of us. Just today, a former editor and now columnist for the The Wall Street Journal (see here) lamented the deficits of each. Here is part of what he wrote.
Like a good movie, a successful presidential campaign requires the willing suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewing public. . . . Almost none of us believe all the implausible promises we are told. No candidate is the model of national leadership they all purport to be.
Unfit protagonists
What makes this contest especially unusual is that this must be the first contest in which those close to the two main protagonists know only too well more reasons to doubt the fitness of their man for office than do the voters at large. I’ll interrupt here to say Baker’s point may be true, but if you don’t realize that neither Biden nor Trump has the capacity to be a strong and reliable leader, you simply haven’t been paying attention.
On President Biden’s side, the louder the protestations we hear from his aides that his age isn’t a problem, the more we can be certain that it is. “Behind closed doors, Biden shows signs of slipping,” as a Journal article put it recently. The energy Democrats exert rebutting the story is all you needed to know about its accuracy. . . .
I would wager that if you fed the president’s senior associates a truth serum and then asked them if they were confident he could do the job for another four years, the honesty you would hear would scare the living daylights out of you.
Trump’s character
But the fictions we are being asked to believe about Donald Trump are equally far-fetched. Though he too is showing indications of age-related decline, it’s not his competence that’s primarily at issue but his character. The public has had a good chance to see the measure of the man by now and most continue to think it unsuited to the presidency. As it is with Mr. Biden’s closest associates, you can rest assured that those who have worked closely with the man are swallowing doubts so large they have lumps the size of basketballs in their throats.
Photo by Ernie Journeys on Unsplash
Buying votes?
There is, of course, so much more to consider, starting with what can only be described as their ploys to buy votes. Who would argue that Biden wasn’t attempting to buy votes with his welfare spending and student-loan forgiveness? Some commenters have speculated that his ploy may come back to bite him, the bite provided by voters who have paid off, or are paying off their student loans, and perhaps even by those with mortgages and other types of loans that aren’t being forgiven.
Naturally, Trump is not far behind. He just floated the lure of exempting worker tips from federal taxes. Consider how many people that might appeal to. Huge numbers of workers depend on tips for an adequate income. To me, the proposals of each man are as obvious as if they were standing in front of polling spots and handing out crisp bills of varying denominations.
No matter where you stand politically, I would wager that your thoughts are not far from a phrase in Gerald Baker’s column. We are in an alarming condition: My fear of the other guy is slightly larger than my fear of my own guy.
In short, in the upcoming election, it appears that the majority of us will not be voting FOR anyone. Rather, our vote will be against the guy we fear the most. Yikes! And November is still more than four months away. Biden versus Trump again? Brace yourself!
Personal note:
Regular readers will have noticed that I’ve been quiet here for a few weeks. Part of the silence was due to a short trip, but for most of my time I’ve been attending to a huge number of tasks that have accumulated for various reasons. I’m still trying to catch up, but I won’t disappear from here for too long.
Bill Maher’s grave warning appears in today’s issue of the Wall Street Journal (18 May 2024. ). His entire article [a must read] can be found here. That article, “Red and Blue America Can’t Just Go Their Separate Ways“, warns of the dangers lurking in our increasingly divided country.
“I love historians,” Maher begins. “In college, I majored in history. But I don’t buy the stance that historians are always selling on cable news that “America’s like a cat—it always lands on its feet.” I don’t buy that just because something didn’t happen before, it can’t happen now. Rome didn’t fall and didn’t fall and didn’t fall—and then it did.”
Does that sound ominous?
Here’s more from Maher: “One night on the road I had a driver who hailed from Bosnia. He left because the city of Sarajevo became a war-torn hellscape, and he said to me: “What I am seeing here now is exactly what I saw in Bosnia then. Next-door neighbors who despise each other.” He was telling me that hate on this level can only be sustained for so long before becoming actual war.“
“For decades Sarajevo was a diverse city where Serbs, Croats and Muslims lived together as friendly neighbors. In 1984, they hosted the Winter Olympics. Eight years later, people were getting shot by snipers when they went out for milk. Nobody thought a war like that was possible in Europe so “ late” in history. They believed Europe had passed the point of being vulnerable to such a thing. It hadn’t, and never will, and neither will we.“
Woman hurrying through “sniper alley” in Sarajevo
A personal note
I was living in Germany a couple of years before the civil war in Yugoslavia erupted in 1991. While in Freiburg, I had a long conversation with a professor from Sarajevo. The man described tensions mounting in his beautiful city, tensions so powerful that he was certain that they could only escalate. War, he predicted, would break out. It did! Below is more from Bill Maher’s grave warning:
“Donald Trump’s middle name might as well be “existential threat”—and I have not been shy about calling him that myself. But the other side sees Democratic control of government in exactly the same way, and it’s unfortunately no longer the case that they’re completely wrong about that. When both sides believe the other guy taking over means the end of the world—yes, you can have a civil war.“
Don’t forget Northern Ireland
“Or think about Northern Ireland, which went through a period where political hatred, born of religion, turned into something called “the Troubles,” which meant the hatred got so bad it could not be contained by the usual means of disagreement. So people lived with bombings and snipings and urban warfare.”
“In America, our warring factions aren’t Catholics and Protestants— but that same level of hatred, of “otherization,” is happening between Democrats and Republicans. We’ve grown less religious, but that’s because politics has become our religion. We used to pray for the nation. Now each side prays the other doesn’t destroy the nation. On one side, the Church of Woke wants to cleanse us of our past, and on the other, the Cult of Trump wants to resurrect it.”
Can it happen in the U.S.? Here’s Maher’s take
“Don’t tell me it can’t happen here. Trump rallies are filled with words like “enemies of the people” and “ human scum.” They talk of people to be locked up. Liberals are described as weak, lame, coddling and oversensitive. Which are strong words from a bunch of mouth breathers, knuckle draggers and Bible thumpers.
Yes, I’ve been guilty of saying things like that, but I’m going to try to stop, because I’ve learned that the anti-intellectualism on the right doesn’t come primarily from stupidity; it comes from hate. Telling people you think they’re deplorable is what makes them say, “You know what? I’d rather side with Russia than you.” If we want to stop this descent into civil war, we have to stop hating each other.”
“We used to pray for the nation. Now each side prays the other doesn’t destroy the nation.“
Second personal note
If this post doesn’t worry you, perhaps you should consider a recent poll that found 43% of Americans believe it is likely that civil war will break out within the next ten years. See that information here. As Bill Maher’s grave warning reminded us, “Rome didn’t fall and didn’t fall and didn’t fall—and then it did.“
If you missed my first post about Bill Maher, you can find it here. And, if you think Bill Maher’s warning should be better known, please pass this information along. And in the meantime, please don’t hate anyone based on their political preferences.
