Notes from around the Human Experience…
WELL MR KNOW-IT-ALL, WHAT DO YOU GOT?: Lost in the cacophony surrounding Republican attempts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is what this nation’s healthcare system really needs:
It needs the government to butt out.
Gaylon For Congress: Vote Early, Vote Often: We said this every hour on the hour when we were the Libertarian nominee for the United States Senate in 2014 and the US House last year. Few mainstream voters were willing to embrace this concept fully, but most found it intriguing.
It should be something every concerned voter thinks about because even the most casual glance shows that our government is mucking this up. Doctors and health insurers must have the same access to the free market that other businesses have.
Dry, Technical Matter: Doctors and health insurers answerable to a free market of consumers instead of government rules and regulations will be obliged to produce the services the public wants at whatever price the market will bear, just like every other business. The quality of care will increase and prices will come down.
A Warm, Personal Remembrance: We can still recall Dad paying for our doctor visits with a personal check and it would not surprise me if those days returned. Health insurance would be reserved for long-term, catastrophic or other illnesses, its original purpose.
Fly In The Ointment: Right now neither doctors or insurers are truly answerable to the consumer. The doctor is getting paid by the insurance company and the insurance company in most cases is getting paid by an employer. The consumer is completely left out of the equation.
This is wrong, and one of the reasons the American medical system is such a fiasco. Returning doctors and insurers to the free market will make both answerable to us consumers. Doctors in competition with each other will be forced to deliver the best service at an affordable cost. Liberated from the web of government intervention, insurers will be able to offer policies consumers want. Costs will come down.
The Bottom Line: As always, we get the government we elect. We elect people who do not have our country’s best long-term interests at heart and we get the imbroglio we have now. We will not get anything better until we have the courage to demand it at the ballot box.
TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME: Two 300-game winners meet in a major league baseball game for the first time on this date in 1890. Meeting in New York, Pud Galvin of the Pittsburgh Burghers starts against Tim Keefe of the New York Giants in a Player’s League matchup. The Giants would beat the Burghers 8-2 that day.
More Dry, Technical Matter: The Player’s League was one of three major leagues in 1890, along with the American Association and the National League. 1890 was the Player’s League only year of operation.
And You Wonder Why You Don’t Get Invited To More Parties: Galvin and Keefe would meet three more times, and the feat would not be accomplished again until Don Sutton met Tom Seaver in 1986, a game we happened to be at. Sutton would become an old hand at this, later meeting 300-game winners Phil Niekro and Steve Carlton, and the feat was last accomplished in 2005, when Roger Clemens met Greg Maddux.
Great Moments In Meeting To Partition Germany: President Harry Truman, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill begin meeting in Potsdam, Germany on this date 1945, to decide how to decide the future of Germany, which they had defeated in World War II. The conference would last until early August, and would result in German being divided into four sections and Nazi leaders being tried for war crimes.
FunFact: Churchill was lost his job as prime minister during the conference, and was replaced by Clement Attlee on July 25.
It’s A Small World, Especially When The Plumbers Are On Strike: Disneyland opens on this date in 1955 to the media and other invited guests.
Fly In The Ointment: The opening was not magical. One, the plumbers were on strike. Walt Disney was given the choice of working drinking fountains and flushing toilets and chose the latter, which left a lot of people thinking it was a ploy to sell more soda. Also, some concrete and been poured that morning and hadn’t set yet, so people, particularly women in heels, got stuck. It was also insanely hot, 101 degrees, and in finest southern California tradition traffic was a mess.
No, We Don’t Have A Funny Lead Line For This One: Two walkways collapse into a tea dance at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City on this date in 1981. 114 people are killed and over 200 are injured. The investigation found that changes into the walkways steel tie rods was responsible for the collapse. It would remain America’s deadliest structural collapse until the World Trade Center collapsed in 2001.
Quote Book : We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. – Albert Einstein
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: Maryland and Virginia were the states that contributed the land that would become Washington, D.C.
Today’s Stumper: When Disneyland’s monorail system open? – Answer next time!
Gaylon was the Colorado Libertarian Party’s nominee for the United States Senate in 2014 and the United States House of Representatives in 2016. All told, he was able to con just under 70,000 to vote for him.
