I had an interesting conversation with my doctor the other day. He was saying that in the 1960's, there was about 1 administrator for every 10 physicians, most health care costs were payed out of pocket, and as a result, most insurance covered a significantly smaller percentage of total costs. This all makes sense. The science of health care has developed so many new and wonderful opportunities to treat people in the last fifty years, but all that progress was not achieved without cost. Furthermore, the government steps in more and more to regulate the industry of health care to do what doctors are clearly unable or unwilling to do for themselves, and enforce the Hippocratic Oath. We all know how in bed all doctors are with the Pharmaceutical companies, and then there are all those needless tests to justify the extravagant cost of otherwise pointless equipment and procedures!
Anyway, the net result of all this regulation is that today the ratio is reversed - we now have about 10 administrators for every doctor! So for every new doctor we've added 100 administrators in the past half-century. That's really eff-d up. That means that the cost of care covers not only the expertise of the doctor, but also the salaries of all those administrators. My doctor went on to generalize that most of the administrators in the next building over were needed for compliance to Federal, State, and Local government regulations. Translation: skyrocketing health care costs are a direct result and are primarily driven by the increasing influence of government.
And now thanks to Democrats this country has just created a massive new regulatory requirement on health care. That means more administrators, not fewer, and like I've always said, costs can only go up. Any savings claimed is a total lie.
Furthermore, he described how under government programs such as Medicare, the government tells the provider what it will pay, and of course the provider has no recourse. So as the cost model goes up and the price model goes down, who gets squeezed? Doctors, of course, because patients don't see administrators, and therefore can have no emotional reaction to them. It's the same thing with schools: Always threaten to fire teachers, never administrators, because teachers teach and we see them everyday, but nobody knows what the hell an administrator does.
He predicts that the best and brightest will no longer go into medicine. People may still be motivated by the job, but without appropriate financial incentive many of the high-achievers will affect their desired lifestyle in other fields that are not so heavily controlled. And why wouldn't they? These are the people who make it all work, and the government wants to penalize them for their effort. Screw that.
So get ready to see your primary care physician replaced by a nurse practitioner or PA or worse! That much is an absolute certainty. It's only too bad we can't inflict the same quality of health care under socialism on the a-holes who created it.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
The Future Of Education
It is a well-worn maxim that in this country people achieve via education. Its generally true in life; people with a college degree are more prosperous than those without, with some notable exceptions. Americans tend to elevate those who have persevered despite convention - those who have succeeded by their tremendous work ethic and force of will are more respected than those in similar positions who traveled the more direct route.
The truth of the matter is that the number of people who succeed in life solely on their own merit is very small. Society wants to see that degree on your resume. It is important as a symbol that you have made the effort and been through the process, and the reason its important is because the people reading the resume have the same experience and expect it from those they wish to hire. In this respect society has conditioned itself to value education not for education's sake but for the promise of future returns that are only indirectly related to having the degree.
Educational institutions, on the other hand, are fully invested in selling the education for the sake of the education. They have to be, otherwise all the tangential fluff built into achieving an education would be valueless, and then the perceived value of the education would fall short of the experience.
Consider "general education credits." Every four-year public college requires some number of G.E.s to graduate. But G.E.s are just fluff that distract students from the core coursework that leads to the desired degree. Do I really need to learn how to play golf and volleyball to build a SQL query? And how does Music Appreciation or Film or Biology of Aging help me discern project scope? These are not trick questions. Universities bone up on G.E.s so they can justify all manner of expenditures, from professor's salaries to new buildings to overhead and everything in between. If they can't keep pushing the volume of fluff then they would fail to support the need for more and more money from students and taxpayers. In this way public colleges are self-perpetuating redundancies. The critical element to their ability to continue operating within this model is the lie of prestige.
Public colleges compete with each other for the best faculty and the best students. And because people who have previously graduated from those institutions want to raise their own stature, they consider their educational experience superior and seek candidates from the same, creating a perceived value for that institution that can influence perspective students. The value is almost baseless, and yet the university latches on to it as a reason they are better than the next school down the road. They can then say just about anything and expect to receive endless taxpayer dollars, most of which, when you really boil it down, is meaningless to the ultimate goal of the typical student.
But so what? Colleges have been selling the value of the education as-is for generations. Why does anyone care what the actual value is? There are two primary reasons. First is that education is the number-one expense for almost every state in the country. I live in Wisconsin, where the budget for education, including K-12, accounts for a full third of all state expenditures - more than $10 Billion annually! It's no secret that Republicans have been trying to promote alternatives to public schools for more than two decades, but the education lie is so ingrained in the public psyche that liberal scare tactics continue to subdue efforts to privatize K-12 or even allow fundamental choice in where children can go to school. The teacher's union in this state also wields far too much influence, and decades of liberal-mindedness with respect to government provided and controlled education has resulted in the incestuous corruption that is the inevitable end to all such endeavors.
The second reason is that the philosophy of education is changing as economies globalize. All but one of the programmers around me are either from India or Bangladesh. In those countries the competition for a quality life is so severe that young people are focused like a laser on achievement. Distractions lead to failure, and that includes wasting time taking G.E.s. As our workforce looks for the best candidates for today's skilled jobs, foreign talent is often given priority consideration, and justifiably so. Four-year colleges are not built to fuel this workforce, and the academic elite often work actively against it. Technical schools were supposed to offer this alternative, but society does not treat an Associate's Degree as having equivalent value to a Bachelor's Degree, regardless of what is actually learned.
The new battleground is secular private colleges. The University of Phoenix is not going away, and its scaring the pomp and circumstance out of the public institutions. Today on NPR the lead story was about the increased enrollment at for-profit colleges. There is a fierce demand right now among people who are looking to get an education without all the fluff and get into the workforce and on with their lives, and as community colleges fill up, private colleges are opening more doors. This is an obvious threat to the status quo; government does not control these and as a result loses some of its control over the people who attend them. More disturbing is the thick fabric of elitism that has been cultivated among academia for hundreds of years does not exist at private educational institutions, where professors and administrators are employees, and subject to the demands of the business of education instead of the fantasy of public institutions imbuing students with great knowledge and wisdom, almost as if by osmosis.
The NPR report was predictably negative toward the University of Phoenix. They brought out an "Expert on education" - and we know she's an expert because she wrote a book about it - who said, "There's no incentive to provide a quality education." Now if by "education" she was referring to the style-over-substance approach employed liberally by major public universities, then she's probably right. But the intent of the sound byte was to say that what students are taught at for-profits is not as good as their public counterparts.
Only a liberal could try to make this argument, because liberals always fail to trust the market force of competition. Every time. In fact, the opposite is true - it's public colleges and professors with tenure who have absolutely zero incentive to teach their students anything useful. Once you commit to a particular source of education you as the consumer have absolutely no control or influence over the quality of that education. And since the supply of education is rationed by the state, perspective students are limited in choice, and must either settle for what's available or pay significantly more to try to go out of state. In a real sense, the NPR "expert" was using the tired old liberal trick of attacking her enemy by using what she knows to be the fatal flaws of her ally. This is so when her opponents say her argument is ridiculous she can dismiss it out of hand.
The biggest problem liberals have right now is that they cannot meet the demand, and by their own words cannot risk denying someone an opportunity for education, so private colleges like the University of Phoenix will continue to expand enrollment and also lure quality teachers whose interest extends beyond academic elitist cronyism away from public institutions. The balance of education is slowly shifting, and for the better.
In the long run the result will be a better skilled, more equipped American workforce to compete globally in the 21st Century. It will also mean less reliance on the state, and less direct control by liberals over developing minds through curriculum. And beyond just the educational considerations it should translate directly to government spending restraint as the shift moves more toward private and away from public funding of higher education. At least it ought to.
These are all excellent goals worth fighting for, and one of the main reasons why all is not lost in America.
The truth of the matter is that the number of people who succeed in life solely on their own merit is very small. Society wants to see that degree on your resume. It is important as a symbol that you have made the effort and been through the process, and the reason its important is because the people reading the resume have the same experience and expect it from those they wish to hire. In this respect society has conditioned itself to value education not for education's sake but for the promise of future returns that are only indirectly related to having the degree.
Educational institutions, on the other hand, are fully invested in selling the education for the sake of the education. They have to be, otherwise all the tangential fluff built into achieving an education would be valueless, and then the perceived value of the education would fall short of the experience.
Consider "general education credits." Every four-year public college requires some number of G.E.s to graduate. But G.E.s are just fluff that distract students from the core coursework that leads to the desired degree. Do I really need to learn how to play golf and volleyball to build a SQL query? And how does Music Appreciation or Film or Biology of Aging help me discern project scope? These are not trick questions. Universities bone up on G.E.s so they can justify all manner of expenditures, from professor's salaries to new buildings to overhead and everything in between. If they can't keep pushing the volume of fluff then they would fail to support the need for more and more money from students and taxpayers. In this way public colleges are self-perpetuating redundancies. The critical element to their ability to continue operating within this model is the lie of prestige.
Public colleges compete with each other for the best faculty and the best students. And because people who have previously graduated from those institutions want to raise their own stature, they consider their educational experience superior and seek candidates from the same, creating a perceived value for that institution that can influence perspective students. The value is almost baseless, and yet the university latches on to it as a reason they are better than the next school down the road. They can then say just about anything and expect to receive endless taxpayer dollars, most of which, when you really boil it down, is meaningless to the ultimate goal of the typical student.
But so what? Colleges have been selling the value of the education as-is for generations. Why does anyone care what the actual value is? There are two primary reasons. First is that education is the number-one expense for almost every state in the country. I live in Wisconsin, where the budget for education, including K-12, accounts for a full third of all state expenditures - more than $10 Billion annually! It's no secret that Republicans have been trying to promote alternatives to public schools for more than two decades, but the education lie is so ingrained in the public psyche that liberal scare tactics continue to subdue efforts to privatize K-12 or even allow fundamental choice in where children can go to school. The teacher's union in this state also wields far too much influence, and decades of liberal-mindedness with respect to government provided and controlled education has resulted in the incestuous corruption that is the inevitable end to all such endeavors.
The second reason is that the philosophy of education is changing as economies globalize. All but one of the programmers around me are either from India or Bangladesh. In those countries the competition for a quality life is so severe that young people are focused like a laser on achievement. Distractions lead to failure, and that includes wasting time taking G.E.s. As our workforce looks for the best candidates for today's skilled jobs, foreign talent is often given priority consideration, and justifiably so. Four-year colleges are not built to fuel this workforce, and the academic elite often work actively against it. Technical schools were supposed to offer this alternative, but society does not treat an Associate's Degree as having equivalent value to a Bachelor's Degree, regardless of what is actually learned.
The new battleground is secular private colleges. The University of Phoenix is not going away, and its scaring the pomp and circumstance out of the public institutions. Today on NPR the lead story was about the increased enrollment at for-profit colleges. There is a fierce demand right now among people who are looking to get an education without all the fluff and get into the workforce and on with their lives, and as community colleges fill up, private colleges are opening more doors. This is an obvious threat to the status quo; government does not control these and as a result loses some of its control over the people who attend them. More disturbing is the thick fabric of elitism that has been cultivated among academia for hundreds of years does not exist at private educational institutions, where professors and administrators are employees, and subject to the demands of the business of education instead of the fantasy of public institutions imbuing students with great knowledge and wisdom, almost as if by osmosis.
The NPR report was predictably negative toward the University of Phoenix. They brought out an "Expert on education" - and we know she's an expert because she wrote a book about it - who said, "There's no incentive to provide a quality education." Now if by "education" she was referring to the style-over-substance approach employed liberally by major public universities, then she's probably right. But the intent of the sound byte was to say that what students are taught at for-profits is not as good as their public counterparts.
Only a liberal could try to make this argument, because liberals always fail to trust the market force of competition. Every time. In fact, the opposite is true - it's public colleges and professors with tenure who have absolutely zero incentive to teach their students anything useful. Once you commit to a particular source of education you as the consumer have absolutely no control or influence over the quality of that education. And since the supply of education is rationed by the state, perspective students are limited in choice, and must either settle for what's available or pay significantly more to try to go out of state. In a real sense, the NPR "expert" was using the tired old liberal trick of attacking her enemy by using what she knows to be the fatal flaws of her ally. This is so when her opponents say her argument is ridiculous she can dismiss it out of hand.
The biggest problem liberals have right now is that they cannot meet the demand, and by their own words cannot risk denying someone an opportunity for education, so private colleges like the University of Phoenix will continue to expand enrollment and also lure quality teachers whose interest extends beyond academic elitist cronyism away from public institutions. The balance of education is slowly shifting, and for the better.
In the long run the result will be a better skilled, more equipped American workforce to compete globally in the 21st Century. It will also mean less reliance on the state, and less direct control by liberals over developing minds through curriculum. And beyond just the educational considerations it should translate directly to government spending restraint as the shift moves more toward private and away from public funding of higher education. At least it ought to.
These are all excellent goals worth fighting for, and one of the main reasons why all is not lost in America.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
The Unspoken But Actual Immigration Argument
I've been reading a lot lately online and in print, and also seeing on TV the pundits expounding on all the wrong arguments regarding illegal immigration. It's not useful to reiterate the nonsense, so I'll get right to the heart of the real issue: Votes.
This all about votes. Its always been about votes and it always will be about votes. Democrats desperately want to convert 10+ million illegal immigrants into 6+million votes for Democrats. It's pure numbers; as long as illegal immigrants are likely to vote 60% or greater in favor of Democrats, Democrats will continue to push for those people to not only be allowed to vote but encourage them to bring their family and friends across to do the same.
That's the basic difference between people and party. A liberal would have an actual reason for wanting to allow an illegal immigrant to stay and be provided food and shelter and even work - that's just how they think. And a conservative would have an equally compelling reason to send them back, whether it be security or crime or services fraud or what have you. But the parties are focused solely on gaining and expanding power.
I do believe that fundamentally, conservative Republicans are much less likely to be driven by votes and much more likely to be guided by moral and legal convictions than Democrats, who ore exclusively devoted to the goal of growing power and government control. What is absolute is that people are merely pawns in this chess match between Democrats and Republicans. They are being manipulated for a specific agenda, and for no other reason.
This all about votes. Its always been about votes and it always will be about votes. Democrats desperately want to convert 10+ million illegal immigrants into 6+million votes for Democrats. It's pure numbers; as long as illegal immigrants are likely to vote 60% or greater in favor of Democrats, Democrats will continue to push for those people to not only be allowed to vote but encourage them to bring their family and friends across to do the same.
That's the basic difference between people and party. A liberal would have an actual reason for wanting to allow an illegal immigrant to stay and be provided food and shelter and even work - that's just how they think. And a conservative would have an equally compelling reason to send them back, whether it be security or crime or services fraud or what have you. But the parties are focused solely on gaining and expanding power.
I do believe that fundamentally, conservative Republicans are much less likely to be driven by votes and much more likely to be guided by moral and legal convictions than Democrats, who ore exclusively devoted to the goal of growing power and government control. What is absolute is that people are merely pawns in this chess match between Democrats and Republicans. They are being manipulated for a specific agenda, and for no other reason.
Friday, May 7, 2010
What Happened in Britain?
Well, for the first time in nearly 20 years the Conservative Tories have the most seats in Parliament, though it is not quite a majority which would allow a clear mandate and finally unseat Labour's stranglehold on the political landscape for the first time since Margaret Thatcher.
What's strange (sarcasm), is how a month ago the American media was ecstatic that the progressive Liberal Democrat (redundant) Party candidate, Nick Clegg had gained so much momentum, with one headline blasting that he was as "Popular as Churchill," having garnered a 70% approval rating following the first televised debate.
So it's a complete surprise (again sarcasm) that the Lib Dems actually lost seats during the election. Media on this side of the pond are now scrambling in the wake of this embarrassing showing for socialism, saying that the Conservatives must now deal with the Libs in order to secure power. Whatever. The people have spoken, and Britons are afraid of the legacy of debt heaped on them by 20 years of liberal Labour rule.
America should get a clue, but the spin is more likely to be that conservatives failed to get a majority instead of the fact that Labour lost theirs, with the message being, "don't bail on Bama and Dems here just because other countries are seeing the light." Or in the case of Greece, having finally been exposed for the failures of ultra-leftist governments.
It's going to be fun to watch them fall one by one.
What's strange (sarcasm), is how a month ago the American media was ecstatic that the progressive Liberal Democrat (redundant) Party candidate, Nick Clegg had gained so much momentum, with one headline blasting that he was as "Popular as Churchill," having garnered a 70% approval rating following the first televised debate.
So it's a complete surprise (again sarcasm) that the Lib Dems actually lost seats during the election. Media on this side of the pond are now scrambling in the wake of this embarrassing showing for socialism, saying that the Conservatives must now deal with the Libs in order to secure power. Whatever. The people have spoken, and Britons are afraid of the legacy of debt heaped on them by 20 years of liberal Labour rule.
America should get a clue, but the spin is more likely to be that conservatives failed to get a majority instead of the fact that Labour lost theirs, with the message being, "don't bail on Bama and Dems here just because other countries are seeing the light." Or in the case of Greece, having finally been exposed for the failures of ultra-leftist governments.
It's going to be fun to watch them fall one by one.
Monday, May 3, 2010
The Character of Bara Bama
Another White House Correspondents dinner has come and gone, and the only question that remains is, what's the point? At this event, the political leaders of our country intermingle with Hollywood elite and media snobs, creating a petulant blend of verbal diarrhea that could only come when you put that many liberals in one room and try to infuse comedy.
I don't know why we couldn't just stand them all in a line and laugh at them without a word being spoken; their records as bureaucrats, entertainers, and journalists is the ultimate joke.
I bothered to watch some of this event last year, when they had Wanda Sykes as the headliner. She is universally regarded by those who know as being not particularly funny in the way most comediennes are are not funny. Bama, on the other hand, was just not funny because he is a singularly humorless ass. It's well known that taxpayers pay a third party - this year it was the writing team of The Daily Show - to write his schtick, and it's always predictably anti-Republican. You only need to hear his delivery - using the same Shatner-esque phrasology that he speaks in at all of his campaign stops - to realize everything about this man is canned.
What's most revealing is Bama's total inability to to joke about himself. Last year, and again this year, all of Bama's nyuks came at the expense of others, including a couple stabs at the ordinarily cartoonish Joe Biden and Rahm Emmanuel and after that it was like listening to the hysterics of Bill Maher ranting against Republicans simply for daring to be the opposition.
This is important because a person who can't make fun on themselves is a person who can't take a joke. It is these narrow windows that we are allowed to see Bama's true character. He is arrogant, selfish, and most of all vindictive. It's not hard to imagine him in the 1920's shaking down speakeasys with a Tommy gun and then stomping through the bloody pools of those that met his glare. And his actions have done nothing to dispel this vision. His daft handling of almost every diplomatic venture in the last 15 months alone should be enough to castrate him in world opinion (and it's happening, the American media just isn't telling us).
Obama is just a bully. He displays no sincerity or remorse because he feels neither. All he is capable of is self-admiration, and he demands it from those around him. He honestly believes in the cult of his own personality. Is there a more disastrous compilation of traits for the man elected to lead the United States? No one should be laughing so long as that man is in the White House.
Edit 5/7/2010: This week it was revealed that the Campaigner-In-Chief used the term "Teabaggers" when referring to the Teaparty movement. George W Bush would never have disparaged his opposition like that. For some reason only Republicans are required to have class in politics, as the "teabagger" comment is getting zero media play from the "free" press.
I don't know why we couldn't just stand them all in a line and laugh at them without a word being spoken; their records as bureaucrats, entertainers, and journalists is the ultimate joke.
I bothered to watch some of this event last year, when they had Wanda Sykes as the headliner. She is universally regarded by those who know as being not particularly funny in the way most comediennes are are not funny. Bama, on the other hand, was just not funny because he is a singularly humorless ass. It's well known that taxpayers pay a third party - this year it was the writing team of The Daily Show - to write his schtick, and it's always predictably anti-Republican. You only need to hear his delivery - using the same Shatner-esque phrasology that he speaks in at all of his campaign stops - to realize everything about this man is canned.
What's most revealing is Bama's total inability to to joke about himself. Last year, and again this year, all of Bama's nyuks came at the expense of others, including a couple stabs at the ordinarily cartoonish Joe Biden and Rahm Emmanuel and after that it was like listening to the hysterics of Bill Maher ranting against Republicans simply for daring to be the opposition.
This is important because a person who can't make fun on themselves is a person who can't take a joke. It is these narrow windows that we are allowed to see Bama's true character. He is arrogant, selfish, and most of all vindictive. It's not hard to imagine him in the 1920's shaking down speakeasys with a Tommy gun and then stomping through the bloody pools of those that met his glare. And his actions have done nothing to dispel this vision. His daft handling of almost every diplomatic venture in the last 15 months alone should be enough to castrate him in world opinion (and it's happening, the American media just isn't telling us).
Obama is just a bully. He displays no sincerity or remorse because he feels neither. All he is capable of is self-admiration, and he demands it from those around him. He honestly believes in the cult of his own personality. Is there a more disastrous compilation of traits for the man elected to lead the United States? No one should be laughing so long as that man is in the White House.
Edit 5/7/2010: This week it was revealed that the Campaigner-In-Chief used the term "Teabaggers" when referring to the Teaparty movement. George W Bush would never have disparaged his opposition like that. For some reason only Republicans are required to have class in politics, as the "teabagger" comment is getting zero media play from the "free" press.
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