Presidential polls going down from the start of the presidency in the US?

A lot of people make a lot of noise about the polls of President Obama going down. However, a closer look on the tracker for polls from Gallup shows that most presidential polls go down. Nearly the only exception is that of Bill Clinton's that showed a steady rise all through his presidency. And this was despite the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the failed health care bill.

I'm intrigued about the fight between the Democrats and the Republicans. It seems to me that it is all about which is the American way of this century. Is Obama going to change Robert Kagan's Dangerous Nation into a nation that truly minds its own business and that speaks more softly? Or are the Republicans going to mow him down to a Carteresque existence. As Carter, he is intelligent, and that carries the risk of trying to solve problems by himself instead of leading with his political intelligence.

It is early to guess, but I feel President Obama is going to get his second term, somehow. The main reason is that America is going to be dependent on opinions in the world. The other view, that of Cheney, scares people in for example Europe. However, I remember from the election campaign that China is more Republican.

Health Care Reform in the US

Op-Ed Columnist - Health Care Realities - NYTimes.com: "Right-wing opponents of reform would have you believe that President Obama is a wild-eyed socialist, attacking the free market. But unregulated markets don’t work for health care — never have, never will. To the extent we have a working health care system at all right now it’s only because the government covers the elderly, while a combination of regulation and tax subsidies makes it possible for many, but not all, nonelderly Americans to get decent private coverage."

As the recess of Congress for a month is beginning next week people are currently summarizing the situation of the debate concerning the Health care reform in the press. Read about the notion of free markets not working for health care in Krugman's blog the other day but here he make more solid arguments for this.

There is a discussion now on the public component of the reform and Krugman rightly points out that the government is already deeply involved. Nancy Pelosi said yesterday on The Huffington Post blog that the health insurance industry are the "villains". On the other hand Karl Rove said that the US have the best health care in the world and most people are insured and so it shall be. Charles Krauthammer said that Obamacare is in retreat and that yes Obama will get a bill coming Christmas that he can call reform but not much will change and that a European style health care would not materialize.

David Brooks pointed out the other day that the health care business in the US is a budget of the size of Britain's total economy. It is of course easy to understand that it will take quite a lot to make changes in this system when only half the public think there is a crisis at all.

If it is true that the Americans have the best care in the world, it might be interesting to speculate if it is necessary with a private system to achieve this? The Americans have many of the best schools also but schools are different because the quality of the students matter whereas patients are the same in the best and the worst hospitals.

If the free market doesn't work for health insurances, and we just discovered that banks don't work either, which according to Alan Greenspan gave rise to the financial crisis, maybe the free market theory have severe problems or limitations rather? Banks, health care and the military! Important institutions indeed. What do they have in common? They deal in the livelihood of people.

The Arab World?

The Economist have a Special Report on the Arab World this week. One article have some intriguing information:

"From 1980 to 2000 Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Syria and Jordan between them registered 367 patents in the United States. Over the same period alone South Korea registered 16,328 and Israel 7,652. The number of books translated into Arabic every year in the entire Arab World is one-fifth the number translated in Greece into Greek."

Now, the population of Arabia has doubled the last 30 years and one comment is where shall they find work for all these youngsters. In Sweden we complain about the unemployment of young people but this is something else.

Only one percent of Arabs think of themselves as citizens of the world which probably explain the little interest in what is written in other languages.

I got a feeling reading the Report that the Arabs want to be by themselves. In their own way. The question asked was: will all these youngsters let the rulers have a status quo?

Government benchmarking?

Jakob Heidbrink – Meddelanden från juridikens maskinrum: "Överslagsvis är alltså en knapp åttondedel av alla grundskolor friskolor, och dessas elever är alltså knappt femtio procent bättre än de kommunala skolorna: tror någon att vårt utbildningsproblem eller vårt skatteproblem ligger i vinstutdelningen till friskolornas aktieägare? Jämtin fuskar i sin argumentation, och hon gör det så dåligt att 15 minuters research på nätet leder en rätt."

I have followed the debate Carin Jämtin started a few days ago and Heidbrink is the only one that has pointed out that the "friskolor" performs better than those of the commune. In Sweden we apparently currently have a system that is benchmarked on how the government performs. Private activity goes in and makes a buck on the funds the government think is reasonable to pay. I see no problem with this. On the contrary it may be the best way historically to work health care, schools and general care. Starting by government benchmarking and then work from there with improvements.

The reason I'm bringing this up is that the US have a health care system, that started with private care, have ended up being twice as expensive. Some people even claim that the system is running amok and that it is currrently failing. The main argument for the American health care system was apparently to maintain patient-physician relationships. In Sweden the "husläkarreform", or house physician reform, has taken care of this problem as well.

"A Failed System"?

TheHill.com - Healthcare must be a right, not a privilege, in America: "Healthcare has been the single biggest domestic crisis facing America for at least the last decade, and yet time and again Congress has applied Band-Aids to cover a gaping wound. Every other American, not including members of Congress, is one accident, illness or diagnosis away from financial ruin in the richest nation on Earth. If that isn’t an embarrassment as well as a call to action, then Congress has truly become indifferent to the American people."

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash) speak up for nationalized health care and means that the current system has failed. There was actually an attempt to introduce national health care for all Americans 1949 but the American Medical Association lobbied heavily against it. Among the arguments were that the physician-patient relation was holy.

One argument that McDermott uses is that the government runs the military and does this well. Why would it not run health care well? This is a clever argument knowing that Americans are sensitive about their safety against national treats but not so sensitive about their health.

The Right to Health Care is not written into the Constitution but it is included indirectly in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness as Life, which occasionally requires health care.

Further Political Integration of EU, or not?

”Skattemedel för miljarder går till EU:s propaganda” - DN.se: "När de i folkomröstningar under de senaste tio åren har fått chansen att säga sitt om ytterligare politisk integration i Europa har svaret varje gång blivit detsamma: nej till införandet av den gemensamma valutan euron, i Danmark 2000 och Sverige 2003, nej till Nicefördraget på Irland 2001, nej till EU-konstitutionen i Frankrike och Nederländerna 2005 och nu senast, nej till Lissabonfördraget på Irland 2008"

Are these arguments not quite weak? Think of all positive sentiments that have moved the development of EU forward. According to democratic rules used, the weak no from Ireland on the Lisbon Treaty was not particularly depressing in the light of 26 positives from other countries.

The economical development of Europe is also a success and the security situation for the individual countries is remarkably improved. Take for example Nicholas Sarkozy's negotiation with Russia a year ago when he managed to stop further intrusion by Russia in Georgia. This would not have been possible with a France outside the context of EU.

I guess it is possible to discuss exactly how much money is going to be used for the continued integration, if further integration is going to happen now when the constitutional court of Germany have in essence prevented at least Germany from further integrating itself. However, I sincerely believe that the best future development of world politics is with a strong EU in collaboration with the US for maintaining the values that the authors seems to dislike in the introduction of the article. If the authors think our civilization is not good enough, do they want to work for a dissolution of EU and the temptation of for example Russia or China to "colonize" us with their values?

Five Major Hurdles to Pass Health Care Reform in the US

TIME Magazine has an article which list the five major problems that legislators fight with to pass the Health Care Reform.

As I have tried to discuss earlier, the question is why there should be any problems for a popular president with clear majorities in Congress to pass this bill. There are the following issues in this now 1000 page bill:

1. Curbing Costs
2. Raising Revenue
3. Coverage Questions
4. Personal Touch from the President
5. Public Perception

Curbing Costs: It is now twice as expensive per capita to insure an American compared to a Canadian. On top of this, the costs outrun inflation and the growth of the GDP. When the Swedish and Canadian Health Care systems cost 10% of GDP, the American costs 15%. What they claim in this article is that it is very difficult to see how costs are going to be reduced in the long run with the proposed bills.

Raising Revenue: It is necessary to raise $1 trillion/10 years to pay for the changes. $237bn will come from fines on employers and individuals who don't comply with new rules. $525bn will come from reductions in Medicare payments to private insurers and money ponied up from drug companies. $37bn will come from corporate and foreign tax changes. The rest of the money $200 to $320bn will have to come from some form of taxation. They have been talking about taxing only people over a certain income, i.e. $350,000 or $1m a year but there are also a number of other suggestions.

Coverage Questions: Both the House and the Senate HELP bills include a public plan that will compete with private plans which is controversial with republicans. This is to insure the 47m people now without coverage.

Personal Touch: The bill from Clinton that failed was made in secret by the president, and his wife, and delivered to Congress for approval. Therefore Obama is almost doing the reverse today and have given Congress the job of writing the bill up. There is, however, a need for input from the White House and this has failed somewhat. President Obama has paid attention to this the last week and have been active with input. Rahm Emanuel, the Chief of Staff, was also in a meeting with the Blue Dogs, fiscally conservative Democrats, this week.

Public Perception: Some people say that Obama is doing "too much, too soon" and the failure of meeting the deadline before the August break for Congress might add to these sentiments. The political wing of the Obama administration--Organizing for America--is therefore going to operate all through the August recess. Obama has 8m supporters on email lists.

As can been seen from this short summary of the article, what David Brooks and Paul Krugman said in their columns this week about going to the core of the cost problem is what must be the most important issue but also the most difficult. There has unfortunately not been any further debate on this issue in the press. The article is very vague on actual measures that would improve the cost situation. The critique becomes serious when cost reductions cannot be addressed properly and when the taxation issue is as controversial as it is.

However, deficit neutrality and reduction of the cost increases are clearly stated goals by President Obama. What is also important is that there is going to be regulations that prevents the insurers from dropping the insured when the costs become high and which will prevent insurers from not accepting the insured if they have preconditions.