Obama is a true capitalist

My health insurer is Anthem Blue Cross. Anthem plans on a rate increase of as much as 39 percent for its customers with individual policies and this has me worried. How in this "free-market" and "capitalistic society can insurers raise prices as much as they want without fear of losing customers?

I have the answer for you:

The health insurance industry is exempt from federal antitrust laws, allowing just a few insurers to become so dominant that the customer has nowhere to go. Now this sentence will be tough to take for all the anti-Obama haters but on Tuesday he announced his support for a House bill that would repeal the health insurers antitrust exemption. Thus allowing competition in the market place.

Insurance companies have been exempt from antitrust laws for over fifty years. The original bill (McCarran-Ferguson bill) was signed into law in 1944 by FDR as a temporary measure and was set to expire in 1947. As a result of a negligent congress the insurance companies are easily able to gouge customers and deny coverage. There is no legal mechanism for preventing firms from price fixing. If you really believe in capitalism and the free-market you would be outraged that normal competition does not exist in the insurance industry. Why has this bill never been repealed by Democrats or Republicans? Hmmmm......let me take a wild guess here. Could it be that these massive insurance companies were giving huge dollars to all candidates, supporting pet projects and donating to PAC's. Wait, how could this be? I thought one side was good and the other side was bad? Ahhhh..........my head hurts.
When I began teaching in 1999 I paid $88 dollars per month for my health care. My last year of teaching (2008) I paid $249 a month for my health care. Have you ever heard of a health care company going broke?
So why did our President come out at this time in support of repealing the antitrust exemption?
Like a master chess player he is boxing the Republicans in. How can the Republicans, the party of the free-market, be in favor of keeping this exemption? If their supporters are honest about their priorities they just might get a tiny bit mad about all those Republican socialist running around the country who do not want to change health care. Heck, I might even attend a tea party to throw those socialist Republicans out of office.

Going off the grid aint easy

OK, I have a confession to make...........I was unable to fully go off the grid this past weekend and live in an electronic free world. If I was student, I would not have work responsibilities, and it would be MUCH easier to ignore my ringing cell phone at 7:30 am on Saturday morning. It was a call from Phoenix and one I had to take so my e-fast was blown before I got out of bed. However, I did have two messages from Stilts and K-Black telling me that Indicator was pumping and since I already answered my phone........why not drive my car to surf the hill? When we fall, we fall hard. So I threw my board in the back of my car and drove to go surf and it was glorious. A beautiful day, a few friends out, nice waves and plenty of sunshine. I just decided to start my 24 hour cycle when I got home about 2 in the afternoon. It was nice to just read, nap and putter around in my garden. (I think I just described Jeff's ideal day) I found that it was really easy to stay off the computer, easy to not watch TV, but very hard not to put in a movie on Saturday night. I woke up Sunday morning feeling great and took a walk to check the surf. The surf was good and I left my car at home and walked down to surf Topaz. It was another nice day and at 2:00 that afternoon I turned on my phone to call a special someone for a very romantic Valentines Day that included a sunset walk on the beach (how cute). All in all it was a good experiment and it was much harder to go off the grid than I thought.