Government Health Care? It Should be Called Sick Care

The fiasco over “health care,” which should be called “sick care” is an amazing case of bad focus or problem definition and delineation by our Congress if what we hear of their solution is correct.

Speaker of the House Ryan is working hard for what can only be called “ObamaCare Lite.” Like the beers after which it is named, it is “Love in a canoe,” to allude to a more earthy definition, but it does not solve the problem.

“Health Care” is a misnomer. It is sick care you seek when you are ill. My good friend, William Doran Canon, creator and screen writer of “Mad, Mad, Mad World” a great hit in 1966 was a classic hypochondriac who frequently said to me, “I don’t understand you! You are never sick!” And, every time I responded, “I stay away from doctors!” Bill could not be in a town two hours without having found an internist and a psychiatrist, “Just in case…” He knew Mel Brooks and I am sure was the inspiration for the “High Anxiety” script.

Bill died at age 65 on his sailboat in Santa Barbara harbor after having collapsed, hitting the back of his head I suspect in something related to his medications. His widow told me she filled three bushel baskets with his pill bottles. I would have listed his cause of death, “Doctors.” Their mistakes are the second leading cause of death in the United States. We can only imagine the cost of Bills pills, but the Writers Guild has a lavish insurance plan. Bill was not unique. Studies show America is on a pill kick and we have been oversold on the efficacy of the medical profession.

Doctors practice within the severe constraints of medical practice and it takes years, if not decades, for improvements to get into their literature. We know the development of new medications has a history of too many accidents, both in ways of finding and also overlooking compounds that could be helpful if not effective.

The popular picture of scientists in jungles seeking unique plants is utterly inaccurate. What they really do is talk to natives who try chewing on leaves, compounding poultices and through alchemistic procedures and try them on people immediately! After money or goods change hands these potions are brought home for analysis.

One flaw designed into the process is that of “isolating the active substance.” Manufacturing and photographic chemists know well chemical reactions require the presence of other compounds to facilitate reactions, but are not apparent as they are reconstituted in the process. Water molecules facilitate all reactions happening in solutions by forming intermediary compounds in a series of steps.

That this is the case is demonstrated by “clock” reactions where two solutions are mixed and in a number of seconds, depending on concentrations of the components, the solution goes from clear water to a deeply colored, ink-like solution. The time interval can be seconds to months. The reaction for the setting of pavement asphalt takes four months, for example. Concrete is similar so buildings and bridges are not loaded for periods of time depending on the cement.

Like much else in physical science reactions are not the simple expressions we write on chalkboards. They have many tiny steps like walking down a staircase. We do not leap from upstairs to downstairs and this is the reason mathematical models don’t work as long molecular reaction pathways may wander.

Mathematical equations are abbreviations of reality, but where each step happens in 1/5,000,000th second, the molecular collision rate, that is invisible to us, but there are ways of halting them or exposing the steps. It is all tedious, time and money consuming research, but should be done as much will be learned that will be useful.

The point is that we have much wasted, misappropriated money and talent in “climate change,” “Man In Space” and weapons research such that we can say responsibly we have been badly led by people with personal agendas that have done great harm to many people.

There is a “natural” business cycle that correlates with our Senatorial term and elections. This is a clue to what is really running, perhaps ruining, America, the elected ruling class.

Suppose you are in the US Senate and on the Foreign Relations Committee considering the tariff on Japanese motorcycles. A man calls one of your deputies offering to put $1 million in a Credit Suisse number account for your man in return for a vote eliminating that tariff. In day or two it is done and said deputy confirms by moving the funds to the Senator’s number account in the Bank of Santander.

The only problem with this is that the Senator cannot spend much money without attracting attention, but once out of office he can as he is out of the spotlight and “Who cares?” Meanwhile he realizes his ill-gotten gains would go much farther if he and his friends can engineer an economic downturn permitting them to buy assets “on the cheap,” then, ride them to great profits in the rebound.

Where our economy is largely in these people’s hands this is an opportunity we suspect they have taken as the dips always seem to correlate with Senatorial elections. Japanese motorcycles come in with no tariff while ours going to Japan suffer a 100% protective tariff.

All of this can be uncovered by investigation and that is why the people of Washington, DC are so upset. Many of them are in involved and the most recent of these games is called “Health Care.”