Dear people, wherever you may be,

I’ve just finished rereading Atlas Shrugged for the third time. The first two times (a long time ago) I applied its lessons to the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. Now Ayn Rand’s work seems more pertinent than ever due the events unfolding in my homeland.

The reason I say my homeland is because I’m an expatriate American English teacher living in South Korea. I’ve been living and working in the ROK for twelve years, but I still send in my absentee ballot for presidential elections every four years.

What I’ve been seeing taking place in the USA since January 20 is making me more upset by the day. The mounting deficits, the growing and dangerous dependence on China (many South Koreans are very jittery about China) to finance those deficits, the talk of instituting new (VAT and a big one at that) taxes to help cover those very same deficits, the bailouts of GM, and particularly Chrysler, the attempt to remove choice and private enterprise from the U.S. health care system, the stimulus that went mostly to government drones rather things that would really stimulate, and above all, the despicable behavior of the mainstream media in covering up Obama’s real Chicago background. I had to go and find the red star at the top of William Ayers website all by myself!

All these things have made me very alarmed concerning the future of my country. So I’ve reached one overriding conclusion: it’s time for Americans to revolt against royal authority for the second time in 234 years.

I say this because I don’t believe the traditional legislative process can stop my country’s slide towards the comfortable euthanasia of West European-style socialism. With the idiocy of Bush to guide them, the Republicans have done a very creditable job of taking Dirty Harry’s 357. and pointing it at least at their feet, if not their heads.

So it’s time to revolt. This will be a difficult idea for many Americans to grasp. After all, we are the product of a culture that has been based on the rule of law from its very beginnings back in medieval England.

What I’m talking about is starving the Government Beast. Come next April 15, 2010 don’t send in your tax forms. Refuse to pay! If you’re a small businessman don’t pay your state (If you live in California, New York, or New Jersey, this applies especially to you) or federal business taxes. Don’t pay your licensing fees! When the Bush tax cuts expire in 2011, don’t file! Simply don’t feed the Beast!

If you’re worried about prosecution, there’s safety in numbers. If ten million Americans refuse to pay, the looters can’t possibly oppress more than a very small number of people. If ten million small business people refuse to knuckle under to the New Jealously Class, then the Beast will be truly crippled and will be forced to beg for mercy. View your refusal to pay blackmail to the looters as a civil rights issue along the lines of what inspired Martin Luther King during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and the early 1960s. IT IS NOT YOUR PATRIOTIC DUTY TO PAY HIGHER TAXES! In fact, it can be considered a form of treason to file on April 15, 2010.

Anyway, this has happened before. What most Americans don’t remember or never learned is that in the run-up to the American Revolution the British backed down twice over the issue of taxes. Parliament repealed both the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts in the face of fierce colonial protests. Remember, the looters don’t have the mighty Royal Navy behind them, or ranks of hard fighting British Grenadiers, all they have in their favor is the willingness to submit of a people who have been comfortable for far too long.

If you don’ think this is too wacky, PASS IT ON!!!!

Michael G. Gallagher, Ph.D.
Seoul, Korea
sauruman56@yahoo.com

You’re not delusional in thinking your company should have some patient advocates. They’re called the HR department. That’s another hat the insurance specialist would wear. I’m surprised they don’t already do this for you.

I will say this: an additional $5K per employee per year is a whale of a lot of money, half a million dollars for a company of 100. I suspect that unless your company is in a very lucrative business, it will have to take that $5K from the employees’ compensation, or have a layoff, or indefinitely postpone its expansion plans….maybe that’s what happened to your patient advocate(s). If not and they want to hire one, let me know!

This is a link to a 1992 study comparing life-time medical care costs for smokers and non-smokers, updated for inflation and more recent methods of treatment. http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/research/factsheets/pdf/0277.pdf
In summary, the conclusion is that there is an excess of life-time medical care costs of $17,500 for smokers and an excess of $8000 for former smokers. These excess medical care costs would be off-set by reduced Social Security costs, to what extent I do not know.
This is a link to an abstract of a study of lifetime medical care costs, beginning at age 45-54 for 5 obesity-related diseases: hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, type 2 diabetes mellitus, coronary heart disease, and stroke.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10527295
In summary, the total discounted lifetime medical care costs for the treatment of these 5 diseases are estimated to differ by $10,000 ($29,600 vs $19,600). The life expectancy at this age was reduced by one year. These added medical care costs are for these 5 diseases only and do not take into account the added medical costs of increased accidents, orthopedic disabilities, and cancer rates nor do they take into account the costs of the decreased occupational productivity associated with obesity.

Wadeusaf @ 80

There is no question that the use of seat belts saves many years of productive lives and prevents much suffering. However, failure to use them does not injure others except to the extent that others bear the financial costs of treating the resulting injuries. (Admittedly, I leave out the non-economic injuries to loved ones.) The problem, of course, with my proposal–of making those who fail to take care of themselves be financially responsible for the consequences of that failure–is that the injured person who was not wearing a seat belt will not be denied treatment until the ability to cover the cost of treatment is proved; and often he or she will not have that ability. And so, in spite of my attempts to avoid nanny state legislation, I could be persuaded to accept seat belt and cycle helmet laws to protect others from having to bear the financial costs.
My plan of of having persons bear the financial costs of poor personal health care might work with obesity, but even there I do not know if there is the public will to enforce it.

(well considering what is happening, maybe both)

“The People”?

I rather doubt that there will be a flat-out rejection at the ballot box next year. there are just too many of the State’s clients around, there is literally no major opposition to it at the level of the national parties and the whole intellectual and propaganda machinery of the Left will have this.

So the question becomes one of what will it take to undo it all once it is in. Given that we are still struggling with the New Deal programs yet today, It does not look good for the opponents of socialism. I think that the fate of social security is the model. I should point out that CRA is still in place and Fannie and Freddie are still in business. Eventually if this path is taken the USA must decline as a power and a force for light, liberty and freedom. That would seem to be the point. I personally believe that that is a very real intent of the Democrat Party.

It is a much more complicated issue than health care: The root of it is the monstrous intrusion of government into our lives. Either the state is beholding to us, or we are to them. Either we are a nation where individuals struggle to be free–and this of course means economic freedom, and self employment–or we are a nation of serfs beholden to the State. There are no two ways about it.

I imagine that it cannot be turned around until the last Baby Boomer is in her grave. If the 1960′s was the first “boomer revolution” this is the second. As this cadre ages it will just get worse.

All this may seem so obvious that like beating a dead horse, but this is really the truth of the matter.

They will get their health care “reform”, it will be a disaster. It will be hard to undo. Conservative must be in it for the long hall as it will take many years and much national humiliation and ruin to turn it around.

America could well look like Mexico, Brazil or the UK in a handful of years.

I have to wonder if we could even magically place the electorate in some sort of time machine and momentarily transport them to this future if they would turn from it upon their return.

Perhaps. Of course the politicians have to move fast. It is as clear as it could be, as is their treason.

We live in a time when the vast majority of “people in power” are wholly irresponsible, and willfully so. They mean to undo all that this country has been, is and should be. The greatness of America is too much for them; it humliates them.

They must destroy it. They cannot live up to its great history.

What is to stop them?

“The People”. Well one has hopes, but the tea party people better get ready for some i>real oppressive tactics and not just misrepresentations and slander by the likes of CNN. “Our betters” mean to rule us as a new “Nomenkalatur” and a new “Acient Regime”. Have no doubt about it.

For a great many of us the future will be one of returning to 19th century conditions (or even earlier) but this time without the traditional American frame work there to facilitate self improvement.

Historians generations hence will just be befuddled by this all. How did a nation at the height of her success come to decide to immolate herself? Why did we choose suicide when faced with the best of worlds?

Why are we doing this to ourselves?

The answer is buries somewhere in the New Deal, the Cold War and the boomer generation.

The decline in the number of Physicians has been offset partially, by the introduction of the PA. It is not a perfect solution but better than nothing at all. How does this class of Health Care Provider affect insurance costs? Has that program increased or improved the patient to Dr. ratios? (I hope I haven’t given any lawyers any ideas!) Rural communities have a declining as well as an aging population. The current practices at hospitals that require residence within a certain distance or practice within a certain distance to the hospital make health care practice impractical. This has not been addressed and if anything it has been made worse not fixed.

With the increase of the availability of the communications and the computer, especially in rural but also in urban settings the ability to monitor multiple patients at a distance has increased. I know there are issues there but it seems that the distance care would reduce the number of beds required at any given time.

As a practice the use of tobacco by the WWII generation up to the current one is still not illegal. While insurance can and ought to discriminate on the grounds of unsafe practice, the funds available on for remediation of additional care have been set aside, (and no doubt raided like the Social Security laugh box) by various court decrees. Have those amounts been figured into the costs of health care?

Jim Nicholas, I know this puts a twist on your thoughts here but that requirement for seat belts and helmets saves lives. It also increases the heath care required to return a body to a functional state. Are you suggesting that more death (and the resulting gore is a good thing?) or that PIP Auto coverage minimums need to be increased?