Terry Pearson’s Blog

Glenn Beck posted a phenomenal video about the rapid growth of total dollars in circulation. See below:

Any time a government inflates their money supply, it lessens the worth of a single unit of money. When your grocery bill used to cost $100, it now costs $150.

While this presents a tough situation for many people, the theory is that wages will eventually rise to meet the pre-inflationary levels. Then we pay off our debt at less cost (in inflated currency) to us.

In practice, the situation is more complicated.

Once investors find that we give them back dollars that are worth half as much as the ones they loaned us, they realize that an investment in American loans is a greater risk. They call this “inflationary risk”. In order to compensate them for the greater risk, higher interest rates must be paid for every dollar borrowed.

The next in line are commodities. Traders in this area base much of their bids on the value of a currency. If Saudi Arabia is selling barrels of oil for $80 right now, but then the dollar becomes half as valuable, they will demand $160 (or more based on future projections) for that same barrel of oil.

What happens if we don’t want to pay $160? Google the term “price elasticity”. Basically, we will either reduce our standard of living, refusing to buy that high priced oil, or we will pay the higher price and neglect other items we would spend money on.

The hardest his people will be those on a fixed income. If you have to buy necessities, but those prices keep rising, you will eventually reach a point where your fixed income no longer exceeds the new expenses.

The Republican Study Committee has come out with their own market based health care bill recently. It does not have a number yet because House Democrats are refusing to hear it.

If you wish to read the full bill, click here.

Below is a summary of the “Empowering Patients First Act”.

#1:  Access to Coverage for All Americans

• The Empowering Patients First Act makes the purchase of health care financially feasible for all Americans, covers pre-existing conditions, protects employer-sponsored insurance, and shines light on existing health care plans.

#2:  Coverage is Truly Owned by the Patient

• This legislation grants greater choice and portability to the patient, and also gives employers more flexibility in the benefits offered.  It also expands the individual market by creating several pooling mechanisms.

#3:  Improve the Health Care Delivery Structure

• Physicians know the best care for their patient.  That’s why this legislation establishes doctor-led quality measures, ensuring that you get the quality care you need.  It also reimburses physicians to ensure the stability of your care, and encourages healthier lifestyles by allowing employers to offer discounts for healthy habits through wellness and prevention programs.

#4:  Rein in Out-of-Control Costs

• A key concern in positive reform is reining in out-of control costs.  This legislation does this by reforming the medical liability system.  Also, the cost of the plan is completely offset through decreasing defensive medicine, savings from health care efficiencies, sifting out waste, fraud and abuse, plus an annual one-percent non defense discretionary spending step down.

Recently, I watched a video by the ACLU that I actually thought was interesting. No, that is not a typo, I did write ACLU, as in American Civil Liberties Union. Normally, these guys are anything but friendly to conservative causes, but just this once they got it right.

Their video stresses the need to limit government intervention in private citizen’s lives. Keeping your health care records, store purchases, etc. secret should be within your rights.

Now, I rarely agree with these guys, but they got it right. We can’t just blindly trust that every action that government takes is for our own good. We must realize that sometimes personal aspects of our life are personal for a reason.

Once you give that information to a government bureaucrat, they cannot help but use that information to “help you live a better life.” And their definition of better may not match up with what you had in mind.

So before you let Uncle Sam or Big Brother into the doctor’s exam room with you (through ObamaCare), remember that they will bring their bureaucrat friends with as well. Good luck getting quality care then.

Throughout the current health care debate, there has been a sense of emergency to defeat the current ObamaCare package. Unfortunately, we conservatives have needed to move to the defensive to stop the socialization of this segment of our economy.

After the debate is over, we will need to move to the offensive and begin to show the nation just how great free market solutions can be.

In my home state of Minnesota, gubernatorial candidate Marty Seifert has proposed some great free market health care solutions. See his video below:

Some great alternatives to the ObamaCare package include:

• Nation wide competition – Allow people to get and keep health insurance that is offered in states other than their own. Rather than having six options for health insurance in Minnesota, you could have hundreds.
• Health Savings Accounts with Catastrophic Care Insurance – This is a plan where you contribute over the course of your life to a Health Savings Account (HSA). For major medical care (over a certain dollar amount per year) you would receive insurance coverage. Marty Seifert does a great job explaining how this works in the video above.
• Encourage free clinics for the poor – Greg O’Connor, of the Americhris foundation, proposed that we find ways to encourage the growth of non-profit, free clinics around the country. There is currently a network of about 1200 of these nationwide. They cater to those that cannot afford health insurance coverage. If someone needs advanced care, such as a surgery, these places work with local hospitals to get the person into surgery for free.
• Remove mandates from current health insurance laws – Removing mandated coverage for certain avoidable conditions would greatly reduce the cost of health care. Currently, a healthy adult, non-smoking, non-drinking, male can expect to have drug and alcohol abuse coverage, quit-smoking coverage, and pregancy coverage. If a person could eliminate some of these options, they could save a bundle. Following the same path, many people would see the advantage of “cleaning up their lives” and going for the cheaper coverage eventually.
• Tort Reform – When people hear this, their eyes glaze over, but it is true that tort reform would reduce health care costs. If we implemented a loser pays system, combined with maximum lawsuit limits for doctors doing pro-bono work, we could encourage more charity work while providing cheaper overall health coverage.