EXPAND MEDICARE TO REPEAL OBAMACARE?

In the August 1 WSJ, conservative Peggy Noonan (a spech writer for President Reagan) says she thinks Obamacare will gradually be replaced by expanding medicare.  What a surprise!  Is there a liberal out there that wouldn't love that?

A reason that conservatives have such a hard time coming up with an alternative to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare is that Obamacare IS the conservative health care plan.  It is not that liberals like the ACA, it is that it was the best plan that Democrats could get past.  There are DINOs in the Democratic Party (Democrats In Name Only) that had to be catered to.  So an attempt was made to appeal to DINOs and Republicans to vote for the plan.  Republicans voted against it and oppose it only because it was proposed by a Democratic administration.

An unusual feature of the ACA is that an attempt was made to PAY FOR IT.  Republicans don't like to pay for health care.  President Reagan, for example, instituted the plan where hospitals with emergency rooms had to take all comers whether they could pay for it or not.  But he left it up to the hospitals to find a way to pay for this service.  Ditto President Bush (Bush-43) with Medicare D, the prescription drug plan where no attempt was made to pay for it.  And Republicans seem to try to repeal all attempts to pay for Obamacare (e.g. the business mandate and the tax on artificial limbs and replacements).  It is a disappointment that Republicans, supposedly the party of fiscal responsibility are so irresponsible on health care.  It is as if Republicans don't want health care for the poor at all.  This is strange because the Republican Party has been taken over by Evangelicals.  They even criticize John Kasich, an evangelical with a small e, for accepting the Federal Medicaid money.  He believes that Christians need to take care of the less fortunate among us.  After all Poor and Poverty appear 446 times in the bible.*

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/03/poor-and-poverty-appear-446-times-in.html

SOME MYTHS HELD BY CONSERVATIVES

Perhaps the biggest myth held by conservatives is that denigrating  Muhammad was not the trigger for the diplomatic outpost attack in Benghazi even though there were demonstrations throughout Islamic nations.  We have had two 9/11s since Benghazi that appear to have been peaceful.  Where are the embassy attacks since Benghazi?  Besides, the sainted President Reagan had two embassy attacks, both worse than Benghazi and also had the Marine Barracks disaster to boot; yet conservatives forgive him for these.

Another myth is that if we had left 10,000 or 15,000 troops in Iraq everything would be fine there.  They are apparently unaware that President Bush did exactly that in Afghanistan when he pivoted to war in Iraq.  The Taliban had been pushed into Pakistan where they regrouped and came back stronger than ever.  Only a brutal dictator can keep Iraq together.

Then there is the Red Line in Syria over poison gas.  When Obama drew the Red Line in Syria if Assad didn't comply he would bomb Assad's retreat.  Assad offered to give up his poisons weapons in exchange for not bombing him and Obama accepted it.  If conservatives wanted to say that just getting rid of the poisonous gases was insufficient, they would have a valid point, but they feel that bombing Assad would gotten rid of him.  Though undoubtedly we could have destroyed many buildings, killing Assad was unlikely.  He undoubtedly would have been in a bunker  And if we did kill Assad, wouldn't ISIS take over?  We have the example in Libya of what happens if we aid a mob in helping take out a brutal dictator.  At best you have chaos and ISIS sympathizers seem to be taking over Libya.  President George H.W. Bush realized this when he had Saddam's troops on the run in Iraq in the Kuwait War and stopped the U.S. advance.

It could be that conservatives actually know all the above and are just using their arguments for political purposes, but I suspect many really believe these myths.

REPUBLICANS AND HEALTH CARE FOR THE POOR

So the electorate in its wisdom has turned congress over to the party that caused the problems.  But all may not be lost.  For example, President Reagan instituted the rule that Emergency Rooms had to take all comers.  This was huge.  I think it was one of the two most major things of his presidency (the other was breaking the Air Traffic controller's Union).  Having Emergency rooms be the primary care source for the poor was maybe as large as the ACA, though it drives up the cost of those that can pay.  And then President Bush (43) got passed (if barely) Medicare D, the prescription drug provision.  Of course it had the weird "doughnut hole" that wasn't covered but it was huge too.  A benefit of having Republican  presidents pass health care provisions is that they remain unopposed.  You don't hear of any opposition to Emergency Rooms having to take all comers even though it clogs the emergency rooms.  You also don't hear opposition to Medicare D.  Neither of these had any attempt to cover the costs.  It is only the ACA that is opposed, certainly because it was passed by Democrats even though it was a conservative bill and attempted to cover the costs.  Like Medicare D, it is flawed but was the best bill that could have passed.

MUAMMAR QADDAFI AND ME (Biographical)

A concern of the 1980s was acid rain. A program was formed called the National Acid Precipitation Program or NAPAP for short. The National Park Service (NPS) was in charge of acid rain damage to materials, including building stone. In 1983, they requested someone from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to help set up stone test sites. I was Assistant Chief Geologist of the Eastern Region at the time and had plenty to do; however, none of the scientists who knew something about building stone or acid rain dissolving carbonate minerals would volunteer for the duty. The Assistant Chief Geologist for Program said in a meeting that it would be a pity if the U.S.G. S. couldn’t respond to the request. Though I knew nothing about building stone and little about climate, I volunteered. I thought I would learn something about climate in the job. It turned out that I didn’t, but my previous experience helping set up the Lunar Sample Program in NASA proved invaluable. I also had a certain knack for conflict resolution that became important as progress was made setting up the stone detection sites. The NPS also wanted me to examine memorials, monuments, and other stone buildings for pollution damage. I begged off saying that I knew nothing about this subject, but they asked me just to do my best effort. The first monument to be examined was the Jefferson Memorial, which was completed during WW II because President Roosevelt thought it would be good for the morale of the nation. I was accompanied by a well known mineralogist from the USGS who knew nothing more about pollution damage to stone than I did. It was a memorial I had been to as a tourist many times and never noticed any problems. It was amazing, however, that when you started to look for stone damage, you could see it all over the place. We had carte blanche to examine the memorials and monuments so we even went up on the roof and down into the basement which I didn’t know existed before. There were long, perhaps a yard long, and thin stalactites coming down from the ceiling as acid rain filtered down through cracks in the main floor of the memorial. On the roof, there were small clots of grayish material standing slightly above the surrounding marble, i.e. in positive relief. Sometime later, I remembered that I had forgotten to measure by how much relief these clots were so I requested permission from the NPS to go back up on the roof again and got permission from the Park Police to do so. When I got to the kiosk guarding the stairs to the roof, the guard called someone on the phone and then someone else. These calls were taking quite a bit of time so I asked what the problem was. The guard told me that Qaddafi, the dictator of Lybia, had threatened to kill President Reagan so permission also had to be obtained from the FBI and CIA. I said, “For heaven’s sake, why didn’t you tell me. I would rather these organizations had never heard of me. I would have come back some other time.” I did, however, get permission to go up on the roof and got my measurements. It was true that from the roof of the Jefferson Memorial you did have a good, if distant, view of some windows in the White House.