A Deficit of Honest Discussion

No matter which party is in power, the other party thinks that the budget deficit is a vital issue. The party in power, generally, considers it a lower priority.

But, at least for the time being, the GOP has convinced enough voters the issue is critical. So now both parties are talking about how to reduce our country's deficit spending.

Of course nobody is proposing anything that will seriously make a dent at any time in the foreseeable future. Each proposal simply reflects the ideological priorities of the proposer, and suggests cutting programs they don't like.

Anybody can play that game. See how easy it is to trim the deficit by $100 billion.


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Fixing Health Care isn`t the Answer

Politicians of all stripes have solutions to our heath care crisis, whether it's giving everyone access or letting the free market rule.

But you can't solve health care without solving health. Otherwise the current cycle just continues.

That cycle, discussed in my previous column, is based on health fads, each promising to fix our health with new supplements and enhanced foods, and each fad in turn proving to be insignificant or counterproductive. Look for example at the now discredited low-fat craze still driving many diets.

Will today's fads (super fruits, omega-3 fatty acids, and vitamin D) follow the same pattern?

It's taken us 10,000 years to adapt to dietary changes resulting from the invention of agriculture. Some of us still can't eat wheat and dairy. How can we thrive on foods invented in the past few decades or less?

Is an antioxidant really better than fruit? Refined flour better than whole grains? Factory-raised meat better than wild game? Pasteurized non-fat hormone-treated milk better than fresh whole milk? Vitamin water better than real water? "Natural flavor" better than any real food?


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Real Health Foods

Imagine that you are the owner of a health food store who is cryogenically frozen for 200 years. When you wake up, you are told that everything you sold at your store is actually bad for you, and all the stuff that was supposed to kill you is actually good for you.

That's what Woody Allen finds out in his science fiction movie, "Sleeper." But it may also be the key to America's health care crisis.

It turns out that the food industry in this country has been lying to us for decades. Every time they come out with a new product they say is supposed to be good for you, it most likely is just the opposite.

Industry has accomplished much positive. Food is now much cheaper, it transports more easily, it doesn't spoil as quickly and it is much more convenient. People that were starving before are much more likely to be able to afford food.

But this progress has come at a huge cost. Each bit of processing brings a food item one step further removed from the foods we evolved to eat.


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Vote No

Colorado's constitution is ridiculously easy to change. To pollute our fundamental governing document with your own poorly written special-interest trash only requires convincing 50 percent of voters in one marketing blitz.

There may be some hidden benefits among this year's Colorado ballot measures, but to make things easy and make a point I'm voting against them all.

The crème de la crème of over-the-top ballot issues is the group of Amendments 60 and 61 and Proposition 101. Their sheer complexity is reason enough to reject them. Funded by people hiding in the shadows, the goal of these measures is nothing less than destroying state and local government in Colorado.

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Gut Check

It's not easy being logical in forming opinions. We humans are wired to make decisions with our guts, and to manufacture a rational world around those decisions.

We are easily manipulated. A news story with lots of blood convinces us that a minor issue is the problem of the day. For example, the Camera front page has a story about an accident at a flashing crosswalk, and suddenly flashing crosswalks are death traps. We conveniently ignore the fact that most traffic accidents do not happen at these crosswalks.

Then you throw in peer manipulation. One person says that pedestrians don't look before crossing the street. Pretty soon it is common knowledge that pedestrians in Boulder have a death wish and always walk out directly in front of cars without even a glance, an opinion that, if examined logically, couldn't possibly be true.

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Why is a raven like a writing desk?

It's tempting to dismiss today's Tea Party rants. When you hear statements like, "I don't want socialized medicine. And don't touch my Medicare," "I want my country back," and, "Nazis are preparing Obama's health-care reform," you could get as confused and disgusted as Alice at her wondrous tea party and walk away in a huff.

But the Mad Hatter had an excuse for his perpetual tea party -- it was always six o'clock, traditional high tea time. Similarly, for today's tea partiers it's always "morning in America," traditional Reaganesque rhetoric.

In Lewis Carroll's classic story, the Mad Hatter was sentenced to a perennial tea party because he murdered Time. Today's Mad Hater, Glenn Beck, murdered Truth. (The Hatter's top hat was inexplicably labeled "In this style 10/6," and, due perhaps to inflation, Beck's is labeled "In this scare 9/12." )

The Red Queen threatened to off the Hatter's head because of his murderous actions. And Blue State Liberals threaten to off the Mad Hater`s advertisers because of his racist comments.

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Take Me to your Leader

Everyone is making a big deal out of Scott Brown's recent victory in the Massachusetts senate race, but I can't figure out why.

The Democrats have the presidency and large majorities in both houses of Congress. One party having this level of control is not unheard of, but it certainly is not the norm historically.

The loss of a filibuster-proof majority is significant, but this supermajority only existed for about six months anyway, after Al Franken took his Senate seat in July.

When Obama ran his campaign, he was very clear about his priorities. In fact, much of his plan to help the economy included dealing with the long-term issues of health care, energy and education.

To summarize, Democrats won the presidency and increased their numbers in both houses of Congress after clearly telling us what their plans were. Then they started working on those plans, but found it hard to get agreement on the details. And now a large number of people are ready to dump the Dems before they even get a chance to put their plans in place.

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Immigration Woes (Gringo Ir a Casa)

Immigration reform has been in the news lately. On my recent Mexican vacation, I saw the seriousness of the problem from the other side of the border fence.

Tens of millions of folks from north of the border are crossing into Mexico every year. A million Americans are living there, more than half illegally.

Many Americans move to Mexico because of its high quality, inexpensive health care system. Drugs are widely available and inexpensive. Drug dealers, called "farmacias," are on every street corner, anxious to sell the addict anything she thinks she needs.

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No, You May Not Have this Test for Cancer!

A bunch of Republicans are pointing out that the new suggestions that mammograms and pap smears are overused means that under government health care they would be rationed.

The Republicans much prefer the current system in which the insurance companies ration services like this.

Health-Care Reform that Just Might be Workable

It may turn out that major health-care reform isn't politically feasible now. But that shouldn't stop us from making significant improvements to our woefully inadequate system.

The biggest problems with cost and coverage come from the insurance industry. And the only way insurance companies will learn to play nice without competition from the government is with new regulation.

Insurance companies have become de facto monopolies. If the only health care you can afford is via insurance offered by your employer, the insurance company has no incentive to keep you happy.

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From Fat, Dumb and Happy to Healthy, Wealthy and Wise

Manufacturers use a tool called Pareto analysis to evaluate quality issues. They rank the problems and attack the biggest ones first.

I don't have to draw a Pareto chart to see where to start with health care costs. More than 75 percent of medical expenditures are for treating people with chronic diseases.

Chronic illnesses include cardiovascular disease, cancer, respiratory disease, and diabetes. A large percentage of cases are preventable, or can at least be managed less expensively.

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Strange Combinations

Last weekend I rode in the Bike MS fundraiser for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. It was a tough weekend, covering a total of 175 miles, and I raised over $500.

This got me thinking. What is the relationship between athletic events and charities, and why are they linked? It's not just the MS Society. Lots of bike rides, runs, walks, etc., are tied to fundraising efforts.

But there's nothing inherent with bike riding or any of these other activities that has anything to do with the causes they support. I would have been happy to ride 175 miles without the charity tie in. But they wouldn't let me ride without raising at least $300. I didn't have a problem doing it, as it is a good cause. I know people with MS, and anything I can do to help is worthwhile.

But I wonder about the people I asked for money. Did they contribute because they thought they were supporting me, even though I never even saw the money? Or would they have contributed anyway? Probably not. Something about me riding my bike 175 miles caused people I know to contribute $511 to a good cause, and I'm not sure what it was. I guess I have to go with guilt -- since I made a personal request it made it harder to say "no".

And that's what these charities are counting on: Someone like me to do their job of making people feel guilty enough to contribute money, in exchange for being able to participate in an athletic event.

This is kind of like the strange combination of health insurance and employment. If you think logically about it, it really doesn't make sense for people to get their health care through work.

I guess it probably started with companies trying to attract workers by offering something of value beyond wages. But pretty soon it became expected that they would provide this benefit to their employees. Employers have now gotten trapped in a cycle of increasing health care costs that are not directly related to doing business but which they can't cut back on without big ramifications. And employees are stuck with whatever insurance is (or isn't) provided by their employer, unable to afford their own insurance, and unable to leave a job if they have any significant health issue.

So, just like I have to suck up to everybody I know to guilt them into contributing to a worthy cause so I can participate in a bike ride, my employer has to provide insurance to all its employees so it can participate in the job market.

Kind of makes you want to scrap this system and just start over from scratch.

The Meaning of Tri{athlon}: The Hearts and Minds Behind the Swim, Bike & Run

This anthology of 15 essays, written by every day triathletes, is about humans doing what they were meant to do. In these pages, you’ll read why these triathletes love their sport. They are the men and women you meet every day. Some of the authors have regular jobs and some are retired. Some of them are barely out of school and some are grandparents. They are the fast one and they are the not-so-fast one but they all compete from start to finish just the same. You’ll read stories of triumph and defeat, of finding oneself and leaving one’s old self behind. They write about meeting new love on the course and leaving love-gone-wrong in the dust. For these athletes, triathlon is more than a sport, it's a way of life. And, that’s the way it should be.

Excerpt from "Triathlon as Evolution" written by yours truly:

It was August 1997, and I was rapidly approaching that time of life when many guys might consider getting a Porsche or a cute blond girlfriend or some other flashy distraction. On one Saturday morning I happened to read in the paper about something called a triathlon being held the next day. I was intrigued.

I didn’t know anything about the sport. In fact, I hadn’t participated in competitive sports since I was on a swim team at age nine or ten. But, as a mild-mannered, geeky, relatively active but noncompetitive kind of guy, I thought I could finish the race.

With my experience on a childhood swim team I figured the swim would be easy. As an occasional bike commuter, on weekends I often enjoyed riding up into the foothills, so the cycling wouldn’t be a problem. And, even though I’d never done it before, how hard could a bit of running be? If worse came to worst, I could always walk.

So, my wife, Caron, and I peddled our mountain bikes to Boulder High School to register me for the Boulder Peak Triathlon. It’s an Olympic-distance race, although I didn’t know what that meant at the time. A newbie in the worst way, I asked all the dumbest questions: What do you wear? What is a wet suit? Can I ride my mountain bike? Somehow I missed the crucial ones: Why am I doing this? What should I have done to prepare?

I'm Sick of Waiting for Socialized Health Care

I had the opportunity to spend a couple of days in Canada last week. While I was there I thought it would be a good chance to do a little informal research into how their health care system really works.

"Fixing" our health care system is clearly near the top of the list of things for our incoming President and Congress to work on. And everybody here seems to have an opinion. Obama wants to bring us "socialized" medicine, according to John McCain. But socialized medicine, he warns us, results in rationing of care and long waits.

Well, Canada truly does have socialized medicine. And nothing Obama has proposed comes anywhere near to what they have. But in any case, I asked three Canadians I had the chance to talk to what they thought of their system:

• The software engineer
• The business executive
• The retired factory worker

The first thing to get out of the way is wait times. Every person I talked to confirmed that there are long waits for certain things. If you want to schedule non-emergency surgery you may have to wait six months. I was told that the government is working on improving this, because of the number of complaints, but it seemed to be an accepted fact.

Can you get your hip surgery quicker if you are willing to pay? Well, I heard of one man who paid out of pocket to come to the U.S. and get his new hip. It cost him $40,000, but the money was burning a hole in his pocket and being in his 80s he really valued the time more than the money. I also heard that, depending on which province you live in, you may be able to pay for improved service locally, but that in some provinces that would be illegal.

The other thing you may have a long wait for is a first appointment with a doctor or specialist. (I guess this is similar to some popular providers in the states.) Again, that could be months. Now, once you have become a client of the doctor, I was told that immediate appointments were available. The executive and the retired factory worker told me they were getting appointments the next day when needed.

Interestingly, I also heard that employers may supplement the health care plans of their employees. For example, they may add prescription coverage, or may upgrade from a ward to a semi-private room.

The retired worker's biggest complaint? When he turned 65 and switched to the Canadian equivalent of Medicare, they switched one of his drugs. Instead of taking one pill per day he had to take two.

What about the cost? The executive told me she is in the highest tax bracket, with essentially no deductions, and that she pays 47% of her paycheck in taxes. For comparison, the highest tax rate in the U.S. is 35% federal, 7.65% payroll tax, and 4.6% state income tax (here in Colorado), for a total of 47.25%. Hmm. That doesn't count the insurance costs that are also deducted from your paycheck.

So what do they think? My software engineer doesn't like it. He doesn't like the rationing, and the inability to get the care he wants when he wants it. My business executive loves it, because people can't go bankrupt because of a catastrophic medical problem. And my retired worker feels lucky compared to his brother, who lives in the U.S. and has no health care after being forced into early retirement.

So what's the bottom line? First, it will be hard to sell government run health care in the U.S. It seems like it can be done at a reasonable cost. To do so, however, will require some rationing. And given that, people in this country will not tolerate being told they can't get the care they want.

To be successful here, socialized medicine must include the ability for employers to supplement the insurance, and it must include the ability for individuals to pay for unrationed care.