Comments on: Let’s stop making disasters more disastrous

By: Rhett Yurgin

Rhett Yurgin — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:46:59 +0000

I don’t know who to address to voice an idea, so I figured I’d just send this to you.

In view of the current debate on “Health Care Reform,” I’ve completed my own bill to replace the deficient one making its way through congress. I present to you Yurgin’s

Comprehensive Healtcare Reform Plan, and it is the only plan that will work to permanently fix our now defunct system.

1. No state shall be allowed to make or enforce any law that bars any insurance company from operating within its borders.

2. Medicare/Medicaid taxes shall be repealed effective immediately. The Federal Government is responsible for providing funding for insurance to all currently insured through

these programs.

a. Persons aged 52.5 years and older are eligible to receive tax credits equal to 10% per year of Medicare/Medicaid taxes paid for up to 10 years after passing.

b. Persons aged 42.5 years through 51.4 years are eligible to receive tax credits equal to 5% per year for 10 years of Medicare/Medicaid taxes paid for up to 10 years

after passing.

3. All insurance policies written are considered legally binding contracts. Failure to comply with contract obligations will result in the seizure of all the insurer’s

assets, to be distributed among policyholders in proportion to the amount of premiums the insured has paid minus the claims the insured has received, minus a fee for policing

the distribution of assets.

a. Insurers will be allowed a period of 2 years to review and rewrite contracts as deemed necessary.

b. Policies written before passage of this bill are not subject to section 3 of this bill.

There are roughly 150,000,000 jobs in the US right now. The average wage among those jobs is $720/week. 5% (contributions from employer and employee to medicare/medicaid) of

$720 is $36 per week. This amounts in 5.4 billion dollars, per week, immediately injected back into the American economy. To save you the math, this is equal to a $280

Billion dollars per year tax break, not figuring in the money that people will get back that has been unconstitutionally seized from them.

Contracts are to be enforced. I personally don’t care what the contract is, as long as both parties agree to it. There is nothing stopping an individual from demanding

certain services, but there is nothing to coerce any other individual to provide that service. What I did not address is tort reform; I don’t believe that it’s relevant to a

debate on health insurance. Ideally, a patient would agree to a service by a doctor in full view of the risks involved with any given procedure. With such clear cut

definitions laid out in any contract, there really isn’t a market for any doctor to be sued if he is acting in an honest manner; those that would defraud a patient, or make a

real mistake, would be penalized in accordance with the contract rules.

Very simple. Open the market to Capitalism and watch individuals compete. As with any action involving Liberty, we cannot forsee the consequences of individuals acting of

their own free will; however, we can all see the consequence of individuals acting according to a prescribed sequence of events.

By: Ann Moore

Ann Moore — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 03:26:09 +0000

Thanks for this excellent article Mr. Bowden. I’ve shared it with my email friends. None are Objectivists but I like to nudge them into reality as often as possible.

By: Sandy Rosenthal

Sandy Rosenthal — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:17:10 +0000

New Orleans is not simply defying nature at the taxpayers expense. Katrina revealed structural flaws in the region’s flood protection and exposed blatant civil engineering mistakes. And those mistakes were made by your Army Corp of Engineers.

It’s important to our recovery that America understand that the August 2005 Flooding was a federal responsibility, that the federal government’s levees failed. Federal Judge Stanwood Duval recently found the Army Corps of Engineers responsible for most of the flooding in New Orleans and both responsible AND financially liable for all the flooding in nearby St. Bernard Parish during Hurricane Katrina (civil action 05-4182).

And this is not a distinctly Louisiana problem!  

With the majority of the American population living in counties protected by levees – and with the most important ones built by your Army Corps – this is clearly an issue for all of us.

This is about far more than a lawsuit. Judge Duval’s ruling was a wake up call to all of America, that huge changes must take place in the way important flood protection projects are chosen, funded and implemented.

Sandy Rosenthal, founder of Levees.org
http://www.levees.org

By: Editilla~New Orleans Ladder

Editilla~New Orleans Ladder — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:44:20 +0000

Tom, do you drive a Ford Pinto to work every day over the I-35 Bridge in Minnesota by chance?
Who pays when they lied about the safety?
This latest Duvall Ruling pays out around $750,000 to half dozen plaintiffs. The potential litigation is still very much up in the air as Your Corps of Engineers threatens to appeal this true finding all the way to the Supreme Court.
Your attempts to paint this with a Red Herring of Entitlement on top of already doled-out Entitlement fails to note the spread among 5 states of this Hurricane Recovery Funding you cite.
Perhaps you think you don’t need the 2nd busiest port in this hemisphere, or cheaper oil and gas, but that is no excuse for your ignorance of established LIDAR Data showing that 51% of New Orleans is in fact above sea level. You of all people should have know this before printing something so stupid as: (This is not a shocking development. Once Uncle Sam took on the job of flood protection for a city situated in a below-sea-level bowl, it was readily foreseeable that any negligence would increase the population’s exposure to the kind of disaster that Katrina brought.)
Uhm…Katrina missed the city and hit MS.
Our levees and flood walls failed in 56 places.
The Corps admitted culpability for this in open Federal Court, in their own studies and before Congress.
It is an established Fact: Katrina Did Not Flood New Orleans on 8/29/05.
So, please stop using this lie that “Katrina flooded New Orleans because the city is below sea level” in order to strengthen your own doctrine.
Surely Rand was bigger than this.
Instead, we could settle this Defective Product Liability and move on to addressing the failing infrastructure in other cities.

Rather than throw the entire country out with the flood water, let’s think instead on how we can modernize our national civil engineering priorities, a thing we must have as a functioning nation.

Thank you

By: John Phillips

John Phillips — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:29:51 +0000

Radical reform in this case will mean no tax money for New Orleans. This is a good idea. The town will disappear, as it should. The river will return to its many-mouthed condition, as it should. Private companies might want to dig a shipping channel, or find other privately funded transportation aids. Good idea! Thanks.