Today, the Senate backed away from their bill amendment to add some Congressional oversight to these Czars because the Whitehouse pressured them to kill the bill. The proposed amendment was in an Interior Department environmental appropriations bill on the Senate floor, proposed by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who sought to simply restrict federal funds for the expenses of White House-appointed czars unless these two conditions were met:

1. Every czar would respond to “reasonable requests” to testify before Congress on matters related to the office.
2. White House-appointed czars are required to issue a report to Congress twice a year.

It’s tough to comment on this because we need all President’s to have presidential powers so that they can accomplish their ever ambitious, especially if a congress is playing dirty pool while a President is trying openly and legitimately get some campaign promises accomplished. But out Constitution has checks and balances for a reason—they are President, not King for a reason. So I liked Senator Collin’s call for more transparency, and I don’t think she was overboard here with her requests, but I’m cautious with my support of this because I do not want Congress to have too much power either, especially during times where congress would be led by the opposing party to the President. Transparency and blue sky sunshine on all government is always a great preventative to most problems.

It gives a bad appearance for the Democratic Congress to fold sold easily like this and kill the ammendment this way simply because the Whitehouse pressured them; this looks bad and it didn’t need to be, the Whitehouse could have acknowledged that some transparency is needed and offer an alternative idea, that would have been better.

We need to see Congress require some standards that keep these Czars in legal check, especially regarding their job description and mission. I’m seeing too many extreme cases where the word diversity or green is used, but they seem more preoccupied with indoctrinating an progressive (socialist) ideology. It’s not right for the President to hire all this questionable staff without any accountability, so there needs to be some improvement here.

A Czar cannot be allowed to operate outside Article II Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States, which says, “and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.”

This long, single sentence says that the President nominates, but the Senate approves all of the senior leadership positions. In addition to Ambassadors and other positions specifically mentioned, examples of those not stated directly but legislated later would be: Homeland Security, IRS, CIA, FBI, NSA, and NASA, etc.

The President is allowed to hire advisors who will research and prepare a proposal to him. But when you envision an advisor, you would expect them leading a small team of researchers, statisticians, subject matter experts in their field, some writers and maybe some lawyers; and they would research things, attend or host some committee meeting with Congress, and then make recommendations to the President.

But my fear is that we have Czars who are doing something much different, and are embedding their ideology directly into our Bills through the use of Amendments.  Time will prove my fears wrong or right—I hope that I’m wrong.

Glenn Beck of Fox News has received the largest single recognition for publically showing that many of the President’s Czars have radical idea compared to mainstream politics. He carefully and methodically quoted from each person directly using their own words, which were quite extreme and had roots in socialism (often called progressivism now), Marxism, and communism.

Beck was instrumental in raising awareness to Van Jones, who later resign his position after a massive public outcry immediately resulted.

Beck and many others, including myself, fearfully watch the FCC Chief Diversity Officer, Mark Lloyd because of his radical views, especially his whitepaper, “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio”. 

Healthcare Basics

Healthcare does have some complexities, but there are some basic fundamentals that the industry is founded upon, which unfortunately get clouded up in the news media, and sadly by politicians.

Insurance Pool

The most important concept to healthcare insurance is the Insurance Pool. It’s so obvious that people miss it—but this is vital if we’re serious about keeping costs low.
It’s a simple concept: vast numbers of healthy people pay into a system for the few who become sick and the handful who become catastrophically sick. We all hope that we won’t need it, but it’s there if we do.
If there are high numbers of sick people with high medical costs, then the average cost per member, per month (PMPM) will be high, which forces high premium costs;  and if the PMPM costs are low then we can have low premiums. The only way to accomplish low PMPM is to have large numbers of healthy people and to lower costs for those who become sick.

Multiple Pools

There is a misconception where people, especially politicians and editorial columnists, want to break out different insurances pools for various “good ideas” that they dream up—it’s not a good idea. Here are a couple examples that sound good, but are not:

• Let’s offer a 3-tier pricing system based on how healthy you are; discounted rates for really healthy people, average rates for most people, and a higher rate for those who have high medical costs.
• Let’s offer big discounts to large groups of insurance; e.g. large unions, companies, coops, state employee, etc.
  If you do this, it’s called Diluting the Pool, which rapidly drives up the costs for those who are sick or don’t belong to a large union or group.

Let’s take the first example. The healthy people will enjoy cheaper premiums, but the sick people would not be able to afford the premiums that it would require to support their huge PMPM costs.

Anyone who wants to break up separate tier structures just doesn’t understand the simple premise for insurance: we all pay a small premium to pay for the few people who are sick—it’s something that we pay and hope that we don’t need, but we’re happy that it’s there if we need it.

The healthy pay for sick, and there’s no way around that, other than kick sick people to the curb to die because you want cheaper health premiums, or magically for someone else to pay the bill.

What about the person who says, “I represent XYZ union, with 20,000 members, we want a deep discount.” The insurance company has a pool of a million people or more! Competition drives each insurance company to charge the cheapest rate that they can for everyone or they will go out of business. If they give too many discounts to large groups then they will have to offset those revenue losses by charging more for the unfortunate individuals who don’t belong to a large group—in essence the individuals will be subsidizing the large union’s premiums. That doesn’t sound fair.

What Does This Mean

The best, fairest way, is for each insurance company to keep their PMPM costs down for one large insurance pool. It also means that we need to lower our PMPM costs, and that’s accomplished through the following:

• Increase competition by allowing insurance companies to easily do business nationally
• Work with the states to create more uniformed laws in the healthcare industry, especially with tort reform
• Streamline electronic medical records into a single format
• And SUCCESSFULLY come up with prevention concepts that work—we save money and people live better live when we prevent sickness in the first place