"Mission Accomplished" and New York Streets' Shell Games

If you grew up in New York City, or have wandered its streets as a visitor, you have seen people in front of small tables on which there are shells, one of which covers an object (small, like a pea). The object is to get the mark to wager that he can guess which shell covers the pea as the con man moves the shells around, delivers rapid fire patter, and uses distraction and a partner to separate the mark from his money.  The keys to this fraud are rapid movement, distraction, and the appearance of simplicity.  The shell game is a con which separates people from their money because they don't understand what is going on in front of them.

I  wonder whether the well-publicized announcement that our Iraq mission had been accomplished was part of a shell game in which the American people were distracted from the real purpose of their government's executive, advisers and political party while the significant plan was to separate our citizens from $3 billion (and many lives) that the Iraq "mission" has cost, making social and health programs unaffordable and unavailable.  We are now told that we cannot afford schools for kids, health care for seniors, medical care for our poor, or even a clean safe environment because our country has been plunged into near bankruptcy by our social programs.  Was the real plan to be accomplished on the aircraft carrier during the mission accomplished show a carefully staged charade to deplete our financial resources so that the wealthiest country in the world could not afford social justice programs?  Are our pockets now empty - and our ability to provide health care for the poor, sick and elderly wasted - because of  a sophisticated con carried out by a politician who appears to have vanished from the national stage and seems to be forgotten (or hidden?) by his political party?

What Does The Budget Impasse Predict For Health Care?

Prior to the early 1980's, health insurance was a side business of insurance companies.  It is what they had to provide to big employers in order to get their other insurance business which was highly profitable. Then came inflation and things changed.  As interest rates climbed and the health insurance business became profitable, among other reasons, because it allowed the insurers to profit from the "float,"  the insurers suddenly realized that they had hit an inflation gold mine. 

One evening, at a dinner, Justice Arthur Goldberg (who told me that he served on the board of a prominent nation-wide health system) asked me what I thought of President Carter. He really wasn't waiting for my answer - and proceeded to tell me that he thought that Carter was lacking in capacity because he allowed interest rates to climb to more than 22% and that was destructive to our country.

I recall one group of physicians who - in the high interest early 1980s found itself paying more than 14% interest rates on loans it needed to continue its practice - and were only available - you guessed it, from insurers!

The danger of the impasse in the budget process, and the Republican refusal to raise the US debt limit,  is that the uncertainty surrounding the outcome will force interest rates to rise, again rewarding insurers who manipulate their floats, slow down payment to hospitals, physicians and other providers, and reduce access by patients to what may be desperately needed life-saving services.

So, when the national debt ceiling adjustment is blocked by one party, is one consideration of that party the benefit which will accrue to the insurers who fill its campaign coffers?  Is it the strategic ability of that party to further damage our health system. Or is it, as it should be, the well being of the United States of America and its citizens?