Jason Murray

October 14th, 2011

Answer essay to Why U.S. Health Care Costs Aren’t Too High by Charles R Morris

                    Charles Morris starts off his essay Why U.S. Health Care Costs Aren’t Too High by acknowledging the consensus within the US that “American health care is careening toward fiscal catastrophe.  He goes on to compare the health care industry to the farming industry and the growth rate of Intel.  Mr. Morris ignores, or has overlooked a very important part of the cost health care:  the health insurance industry.

            Mr Morris is quite right in his claim that procedure by procedure the prices are falling.  He mentions gall bladder surgery as an example.  This procedure used to be an extremely invasive procedure that left a large scar and required at least an overnight hospital stay.  This surgery is now an outpatient surgery, with the patient spending the night in their own bed and often up and around the very next day.  With the costs of these procedures dropping and the more accurate methods of diagnosis people are saved the pain and discomfort of not knowing as well as the pain of invasive surgery.

            The greater problem is not the individual cost of each procedure, or the greater number of procedures being performed, or even the incredible increase of the diseases of obesity, but the problem from a cost stand point is what stands between the average person and their health care.  The insurance companies weigh and decide what is necessary and what is unnecessary, whom to insure and whom not to.

                    The health insurance industry is one of the fastest growing industries today.  According to Ross Eisenbrey in his report to the Economic Policy Institute in the ten years from August of 1997 to August of 2007 employment in the health insurance industry grew by 52% (1.)  The medical industry that supports this only grew by 26% and even worse the job growth rate in the economy as a whole stood at only 12%.  (Eisenbrey) The other thing that has been growing along with the insurance companies is an entire industry of billing professionals.  As the labrynthian maze of plans, companies, and exclusions widens so does the cost for the doctor to bill his patient.  This is passed on to the patient in the form of increases in the basic cost of health care. 

                    Meanwhile the rates to be insured keep rising and employers are having to pay a greater portion of their profits every year with many passing on some of these increases to their employees resulting in lower take home pay. Mr Morris ignores this economic downside in his essay.

                    While the prices of individual procedures may be going down, the contracts the insurance companies negotiate with doctors lower the prices of individual procedures for the insurance company to pay forcing the doctors to raise the price of those procedures to the general public.  With the growing unemployment and the increasing number of people who are going uninsured today, to talk about how someone might choose to forgo a toy in order to live longer is approaching glib.

            Reed Abelson in his article for the New York Times titled Health Insurance Costs Rising Sharply This Year, Study Shows (Abelson, 1) claims that insurance premiums have grown even more steeply in the past year, close to 9%.  In this same article he reports that the Kaiser Foundation found that the cost to insure a family of four hit 15073 dollars this year.  With costs like this the traditional role of employers as insurance providers is becoming untenable.  Ironically the very legislation that made insurance available to so many people in the latter half of the twentieth century helped to build up the industry that now truly controls how much the true cost of medicine today.

            Meanwhile this same reporter published an article on May 13th of 2011 that the insurance companies were heading into a third year of record profits.  Mr. Morris cannot claim that health care costs are not rising too fast in the US without looking at an intrinsic component of our health care industry. One of the main components of Mr Morris’ argument is that the increase in the GDP of the Health Care Industry is entirely in keeping with historical trends.  This however is not true when you include our Health Care Insurers.  With runaway profits and grossly inflated CEO salaries the cost of health care is rising too fast in the US.  It is just hiding behind the curtain operating the switches and demanding to know who it is that is questioning the Great Oz. 

Eisenbrey, Ross.  Health Insurance Employment Outpacing Providers and All Industry Growth Rates.  Economic Snapshot. September 18th, 2007. EPI.org. Web October 12th, 2011.

Abelson, Reed.  (1) Health Insurance Costs Rising Sharply This Year, Study Shows.  New York Times.  September 27, 2011.  Web October 12th, 2011.

Abelson, Reed. (2) Health Insurers Making Record Profits as Many Postpone Care.  New York Times.  May 13, 2011.  Web.  October 12th, 2011.

An Opinion.

The following is an opinion.  It is an opinion gathered from experience, and research, and listening.  Just listening to people can provide great insight and allow you to state your opinions in a manner which shows that there is basis and value to that opinion. 

A good friend of mine recently had a small rant online about the not based in science claims about food, wheat, sugars, etc.  I chimed in because in the time I've been cooking, researching food, and learning how to cook a healthy, yet tasty and complete menu, I've found that there is a lot of misinformation about food, the effects of food, and the American diet. 

Let's start with wheat.  I've known people with real problems with gluten.  I have a friend who was recently diagnosed with Celiac Disease, a condition in which gluten makes the small hairs inside your intestine basically lie down and turn you into a funnel for the food you eat.  This is a serious and potentially fatal condition that is made easier to bear thanks to people thinking that a gluten free diet is going to make them healthy.  The gluten free craze has resulted in bakeries, restaurants and even breweries developing flavorful gluten free products.  Celiac Disease is a fairly rare condition, however, and the people in the world that are truly sensitive to gluten is a very small minority.   This doesn't stop people from eliminating gluten from their diet in a desperate attempt to make themselves feel better. 

The problem with the theory that gluten is at the root of all their problems is simple.  Wheat is at the base of the food chains for practically every society in the world.  Countries like Italy and France do not have the health problems, the obesity, or the diabetes that we do as a society.  Within our society the groups that have higher rates of obesity, diabetes and health problems do not eat a lot of wheat as a rule.  The problem is not gluten, or sugar, or fatty foods, the problem is excess.  Many people who eliminate gluten from their diet probably do feel better for a short time, not because they have eliminated gluten but because they have taken one form of excess from their diet.  Americans have wheat at every meal.  Toast with breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, dinner rolls at dinner, and cookies, pastries, or cake for dessert.   This is 4 to 6 servings of wheat a day.  Usually in most diets this is also not the only starch they have, hash browns at breakfast, french fries or chips at lunch, and potatoes or rice with dinner.  This excess is what is the problem.

If people simply looked at their diet and balanced it better, ate smaller portions, avoided getting seconds and thirds, chose to ate roasted potatoes instead of fries, left the gluten out of one meal, or left the soda pop in the cooler, they would feel better without denying themselves something they enjoy.

We avoid high fructose corn syrup but buy things sweetened with GMO sugar beet sugar instead.  We demonize sugar but continue to eat it in its many forms believing that by eschewing processed sugar we are somehow more righteous.  If we as Americans started by avoiding the excess our society has suckled, if we just look at our ingredients, if we try not to eat too much of one thing, we will live healthier, longer, more productive lives.  If we, however, continue to live in excess, and by excess I include excessively eliminating basic foods from our diet, we will continue to suffer from the many problems associated with our excessive behavior.

In short, my opinion is that it is not gluten, sugar, or even high fructose corn syrup that is at the base of our health problems but the excess of our lives.  Excessive eating, dieting, restricting, buying, and living our lives in excess.  The old motto to "live simply, that others may simply live" needs to be the refrain we hear more often.

May 28th, 2014

2 Guns, 2 Men

the bullets
fly by like bees
stopping the screams

You can't take
my rights my guns
2nd amendment

he turns
just like death
staring coldly

the government
wants to take
my guns!

his finger tenses
he pulls against
the spring

I need to
protect myself
against the foreigners

the bullets
fly out like a swarm
stopping the screams

As he stands
proudly holding
a gun designed

the screams
are quiet and
the blood is so red

a gun designed
only to kill
other human beings

Two men
one screams about his rights
one doesn't scream at all
he just uses the gun
for it's only purpose
to kill

This is my comment on the dangers of thinking of Tax cuts simply as tax cuts and not addressing the damage the leaner budgets have posed to important things like education.

Written last winter.

Cutting Dangerously.

As we near Christmas this year and people talk about retail sales, shopper counts, and whether or not opening at midnight on Black Friday is effective our representatives in Salem and other capitals across the country talk about tax cuts and budget cuts.  These are lauded as necessary, the tax cuts to shore up a weak economy in which 1 in every 10  people is unemployed, and the budget cuts to keep the state economies solvent and keep states out of bankruptcy or insolvency.  The problem no-one is addressing is what long term effects of these cuts, the tax cuts being a reduction in state income and the budget cuts reducing state spending on important programs, in particular education.
Portland, Oregon is a case of devaluing education.  Our public schools currently have the shortest school year in the nation meeting the required minimum.  Over the past ten years Portland has closed at least two elementary schools, and a high school.  Through attrition and layoffs class sizes in elementary schools such as Glencoe elementary in Southeast Portland or Madison high school in Northeast Portland have grown to in the case of Glencoe near thirty elementary students per teacher at Glencoe to between thirty and forty high school students per teacher at Madison.  In addition programs such as metal arts, music and art have been marginalized or closed completely at most Portland public schools.  Only schools with a strong PTA seem able to hang onto any form of arts.
Meanwhile The state of Oregon has had an increase in the number of students enrolled while staying at the same expenditure per student for the last four years even though inflation continues to increase (ORDE.)  Oregon has dropped to 32nd in the nation in per student spending and Salem wants to cut even more (IES).  Meanwhile Salem wants to continue to cut due to decreased tax revenue and decreased federal spending.  At the same time our leaders in Washington DC are wrangling over extending a middle class tax cut that will equal less than 100 dollars in the average person’s pay per month.  This barely even covers gas expenses for the average family.  The primary sticking point for the Republicans seems to be upper income tax cuts.  
Since 1980 the agenda of anti tax crusaders has been to lower taxes paid by the very wealthy and corporations.  The problem with this is every tax cut is basically a form of spending.  There is a basic cost of running our country and education our popluace and every time you reduce the governments income you have to make cuts to programs that are designed to educate, protect, and insure the health of the populace.  The Capital Gains taxes are the largest single item tax cut dropping from the same as regular income to only fifteen percent since these tax cuts started.  For some reason this income has been pulled out as more deserving of preferetial taxation over the income that people make by getting up and working as doctors, nurses, teachers, school bus drivers, baristas, etc.  
We as a nation need to decide which is important; the education of our children or paying a few hundred dollars less in taxes for the average person or the special treatment of a class of income that doesn’t have to do with a daily commute or an office, or an end product.  As the average person cannot gain from the average tax cut it is time to stop the cutting.  Stop tax cuts that benefit a very small minority of the populace, stop cutting programs that benefit a very large majority of the populace.  


Oregon Department of Education.  Actual Operating vs. Capital expenditures per student Report, 2003-2004.  Oregon Department of Education web site.  Web. 5th December, 2011.  

Oregon Department of Education.  Actual Operating vs. Capital expenditures per student Report 2008-2009.  Oregon Department of Education web site.  Web. 5th December, 2011.  
Institute of Educational sciences.  Revenues and Expenditures by Public School Districts. School Year 2006-2007 (Fiscal Year 2007) .  Web 5th December, 2011

Revenues and ExpePublic School Districts: School Year 2006-07 (Fiscal Year 2007)

This is a response essay written last fall.  It is in response to an essay by Charles R. Morris.  His essay can be found here.  The health care industry or rather the insurance industry that accompanies the health care industry is one of my favorite cash cows to take aim at. Paul Ryan before he was chosen to run as Mit's Vice President Nominee put forward a comprehensive budget that invisioned a Medicare that was privatized.
I can think of no other one thing that would so insure the dissolution of Medicare and insure the increase in cost for Health care. 

Answer essay to Why U.S. Health Care Costs Aren’t Too High by Charles R Morris

           Charles Morris starts off his essay Why U.S. Health Care Costs Aren’t Too High by acknowledging the consensus within the US that “American health care is careening toward fiscal catastrophe.  He goes on to compare the health care industry to the farming industry and the growth rate of Intel.  Mr. Morris ignores, or has overlooked a very important part of the cost health care:  the health insurance industry.
    Mr Morris is quite right in his claim that procedure by procedure the prices are falling.  He mentions gall bladder surgery as an example.  This procedure used to be an extremely invasive procedure that left a large scar and required at least an overnight hospital stay.  This surgery is now an outpatient surgery, with the patient spending the night in their own bed and often up and around the very next day.  With the costs of these procedures dropping and the more accurate methods of diagnosis people are saved the pain and discomfort of not knowing as well as the pain of invasive surgery.
    The greater problem is not the individual cost of each procedure, or the greater number of procedures being performed, or even the incredible increase of the diseases of obesity, but the problem from a cost stand point is what stands between the average person and their health care.  The insurance companies weigh and decide what is necessary and what is unnecessary, whom to insure and whom not to.
           The health insurance industry is one of the fastest growing industries today.  According to Ross Eisenbrey in his report to the Economic Policy Institute in the ten years from August of 1997 to August of 2007 employment in the health insurance industry grew by 52% (1.)  The medical industry that supports this only grew by 26% and even worse the job growth rate in the economy as a whole stood at only 12%.  (Eisenbrey) The other thing that has been growing along with the insurance companies is an entire industry of billing professionals.  As the labrynthian maze of plans, companies, and exclusions widens so does the cost for the doctor to bill his patient.  This is passed on to the patient in the form of increases in the basic cost of health care.  
           Meanwhile the rates to be insured keep rising and employers are having to pay a greater portion of their profits every year with many passing on some of these increases to their employees resulting in lower take home pay. Mr Morris ignores this economic downside in his essay.
           While the prices of individual procedures may be going down, the contracts the insurance companies negotiate with doctors lower the prices of individual procedures for the insurance company to pay forcing the doctors to raise the price of those procedures to the general public.  With the growing unemployment and the increasing number of people who are going uninsured today, to talk about how someone might choose to forgo a toy in order to live longer is approaching glib.

    Reed Abelson in his article for the New York Times titled Health Insurance Costs Rising Sharply This Year, Study Shows (Abelson, 1) claims that insurance premiums have grown even more steeply in the past year, close to 9%.  In this same article he reports that the Kaiser Foundation found that the cost to insure a family of four hit 15073 dollars this year.  With costs like this the traditional role of employers as insurance providers is becoming untenable.  Ironically the very legislation that made insurance available to so many people in the latter half of the twentieth century helped to build up the industry that now truly controls how much the true cost of medicine today.

    Meanwhile this same reporter published an article on May 13th of 2011 that the insurance companies were heading into a third year of record profits.  Mr. Morris cannot claim that health care costs are not rising too fast in the US without looking at an intrinsic component of our health care industry. One of the main components of Mr Morris’ argument is that the increase in the GDP of the Health Care Industry is entirely in keeping with historical trends.  This however is not true when you include our Health Care Insurers.  With runaway profits and grossly inflated CEO salaries the cost of health care is rising too fast in the US.  It is just hiding behind the curtain operating the switches and demanding to know who it is that is questioning the Great Oz.  



Eisenbrey, Ross.  Health Insurance Employment Outpacing Providers and All Industry Growth Rates.  Economic Snapshot. September 18th, 2007. EPI.org. Web October 12th, 2011.

Abelson, Reed.  (1) Health Insurance Costs Rising Sharply This Year, Study Shows.  New York Times.  September 27, 2011.  Web October 12th, 2011.

Abelson, Reed. (2) Health Insurers Making Record Profits as Many Postpone Care.  New York Times.  May 13, 2011.  Web.  October 12th, 2011.

As the run up for the 2012 presidential race began to shape up last spring Gingrich in his usual style stirred the water with his conservative oar and said something that could be construed as racist.  I decided to confront some of the conservative dogma about the food stamp or more correctly the SNAP program. I can remember being an eleven year old when my mother left her abusive husband and she, Anton and I lived in a subsidized apartment building in Bellevue's Overlake district.  I remember that the food stamps were really food stamps back then and there was a stigma to us using them even then.  Without the food stamps my mother may not have been able to live on her own and make sure we ate healthily.  During my research for this article I posted some comments about SNAP on Facebook to see what kind of response I would get.  I found that conservatives AND liberals both had negatives images of this program.  One such image was burned into a large base by an "expose" of the SNAP program by a local TV station.  They showed how you could by drinks at Starbucks with an Oregon Trail card, (the EBT card Oregon uses instead of stamps.)  When I checked on this I found that this was only at Safeway Starbucks franchises.  This was brought about because Safeway changed the coding of cold drinks and pastries at their Starbucks franchises to "grocery." This enables someone to buy these expensive beverages and pastries with an EBT card.  Why did Safeway make this change?  Is it because they don't think people with SNAP cards should be denied Frappucinos.  I doubt it.  I can imagine a group deciding how to raise revenue in a management meeting and someone coming up with this as a revenue stream. 

This article is slightly dated as it is now over six months old. 


The Conservative Agenda; Methods of Argument On the Subject of SNAP (formerly Food Stamps);  Ideology vs. Sensibility.

“President Obama is the most successful food stamp president in American history,” (Rucker)

    With that statement Newt Gingrich brought SNAP into the forefront of the current political debate as the Republicans fight for the right to challenge President Obama for the Presidency in 2012.   This is not a new issue; the Republicans have been trying to dismantle this as well as other social programs since the Reagan Presidency over thirty years ago. The arguments aren’t new either, and examining these arguments may give us a view into what is needed to counter them.  By reviewing some key concepts and phrases we can gain a greater understanding of what it is that makes these arguments so palatable to their audience.  We also gain a greater understanding into what kind of defense is needed for those who feel that SNAP is an important, vital, and necessary social service for our Country.
    First we need to know a little about SNAP.  The food stamp program began in 1939 as a solution to both undernourishment and starvation brought on by high unemployment and food surpluses which were driving farmers out of business right here in our own country.  Milo Perkins then secretary of the new program said “We got a picture of a gorge; farm surpluses on one cliff and under-nourished city folks with outstretched hands on the other. We set out to find a practical bridge across that chasm.” (United) Over the next four years the program reached about half the counties in the United States and helped over twenty million hitting a peak of four million people.  The next phase in the food stamp story came at President Kennedy’s hands.  He oversaw a program that still required the purchase of food stamps but eliminated the surplus requirement of the program.  In 1964 Johnson requested that Congress make the food stamp program permanent and with the passage of HR 10222 food stamps became a permanent part of the fabric of the social programs of the Unites States.
    During the early 1980s the Food Stamp Program came under fire from the largely conservative White House of Ronald Reagan and the congress.  Several changes were made largely to eligibility requirements.  A gross income requirement was added and retirement income became countable in the income computation.  States were allowed to require applicants as well as recipients to be searching for a job and voluntary quitters were subject to likely cutbacks or cutoffs.  The late 1980s saw more changes but instead of cutbacks these changes were intended to help eliminate the domestic hunger problems and the program was amended to increase benefits, add an education credit, and eliminate the earned income tax credit as income.  
    Now as we come into a contentious race in 2012 with a government that is seen by many as overspending all social programs are under fire.  Social programs such as Medicare, and Medicaid, SNAP or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly food stamps) are seen as “entitlements” and are easy targets for pundits gearing up for the summer and fall election season.  Since these programs are used primarily by the poorest and least voiced members of our society the answer to the attacks is decidedly a quiet, almost meek one.  
    In his article “Four Absurd, Damaging Right Wing Lies About Food Stamps”   Jake Blumgart looks at four of the most common statements critics of SNAP use when talking about SNAP (Blumgart).  Instead of addressing these four statements as inherently wrong minded we are going to start by examining the thought process and the reasons the critics of SNAP use each of these statements.  
    Blumgart’s first example is the argument “The program is rife with fraud and abuse.” Fraud and abuse are two very negative words used equally by representatives and pundits from both sides of the aisle.  By implying that the program is rife with abuse and fraud anyone who uses a SNAP card is by association guilty of perpetuating fraud.  This argument appeals to the law and order type of person who usually votes with the idea of making their town, city or rural area safer.  It also separates SNAP recipients from those who don’t participate in the program by associating even those that are legitimate with the people who do commit fraud and abuse.  
    The next argument he takes on is the comment that “There are too many “hipsters” and college students on food stamps.”  This argument appeals to an older voter class that distrust the eternally trendy and the young.  It also appeals to a group of people who cheer when New Gingrich says ““Students take fewer classes per semester. They take more years to get through. Why? Because they have free money. I would tell students: ‘Get through as quick as you can. Borrow as little as you can. Have a part-time job.’ But that’s very different from the culture that has grown up in the last 20 years.” (Tumulty)  College is taking longer and costing more for most students these days.  By indicating that the college students are in it for a free ride makes programs designed to help college students such as Oregon’s SNAP assistance for college students much more vulnerable to attack and attrition.  Ironically the SNAP program for college students does require that they carry a part time job with at least 20 hours a week worked.
    Blumgart then goes on the attack the argument that “Recipients “waste” their benefits on unhealthy food.”  This argument is a no brainer for the right because it is one that is perpetuated by the media.  Fox 12 news in Portland, Oregon did a feature in which a news reporter went with a SNAP recipient and with the woman’s SNAP card they were able to purchase at a Starbucks franchise stand inside a Safeway a piece of pumpkin bread and a caramel frappucino for $5.25.  While the article goes on to say that Safeway has changed their policy to allow people to buy cold drinks and pastries with their SNAP cards by simply categorizing them as  groceries the damage is already done because what people have taken away is that people use their SNAP cards to purchase expensive wasteful beverages.  (4)  This argument redirects anger about companies that are abusing their access to state money by allowing people to focus on the recipients of the benefit.  It is always easier to blame a nameless, faceless person rather than a company that may be an employer or the only convenient grocery store.

    The final argument that Blumgart takes on is “The program is too generous, and food stamps are a significant contributor to national debt.”  This concept appeals to the social conservative that sees the social programs as basically redistribution of wealth.  It also appeals to the fiscal conservative who is nervous about the debt our country has gotten into over the last twelve years.  This argument also appeals to the idea that there is no free lunch and fails to show how large a slice of the national debt pie SNAP is.  By making this statement the right appeals to an emotional anger that many in the blue collar conservative crowd feel towards those they feel are taking advantage of the system.   

    In the recent article “I Got Food Stamps, So Can You.”  Sydney Phillips discusses her recent foray into the SNAP program.  The premise of her article was that it was too easy to get SNAP benefits.  She then goes on to describe the line and the approximately two months’ time it took before she was qualified for her SNAP card.  This argument again appeals to the thought that people receiving food benefits don’t necessarily need it or are taking advantage of the system.  It also subtly implies that people that receive these benefits may be inherently lazy as well (Phillips.)  
    The arguments we just used are the cannon fire for the battle coming up this summer.  As the water cooler political battles begin and the Facebook arguments continue it is good to take a close look at the arguments people use to belittle the programs and social safety net that this country truly needs.  Gingrich, in calling Obama the “Food Stamp President,” isn’t acknowledging the reason for the increases in SNAP program participants.  By using wording that is not necessarily the most appropriate he is trying to capitalize on the Reagan era image of the welfare queen collecting welfare while driving a Cadillac.  It worked in 1980 in Reagan’s election and later work to limit the food stamp program. He is just parsing the facts to make a point and redirect the public’s anger at a person he sees as his final opponent in 2012.  Whether it’s Gingrich or Romney this fall is sure to see a battle of sound bites and one offers and there will be some tense conversations in the bar after work, or even in the break room at work.

Blumgart, Jake.  4 Absurd, Damaging Right-Wing Lies About Food Stamps.  Alternet. 21 November, 2011.  WEB.  8 February, 2012
Brand, Natalie.  FOX 12 Investigators: Food Stamps Used for Frappuccinos. Fox 12 Oregon.  30 November, 2011. WEB.  2 February, 2012.
Phillips, Sydney.  I Got Food Stamps and So Can You.  The College Conservative.  16 January, 2012.  WEB.  8 February, 2012.
Rucker, Philip. Gingrich Promises to Slash Taxes, Calls Obama ‘Food stamp president.’ Washington Post.  13, May, 2011.  WEB.  2, February, 2012.
Tumulty, Karen.  Gingrich: No role model for students?  Washington Post.  28, January,2012.  WEB.  2, February, 2012
United States Food and Nutrition Service.  A Short History of Snap.  16, December, 2011. WEB. 2, February, 2012.

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This blog is meant as an outlet for my research and opinion writings on political, social and cultural issues.  I will post writings here of my opinions, mostly backed up by facts and research, and sometimes by just what I regard as common sense.  The forum will be there for people to respond and post their responses and their own opinions but as this is my blog I will demand facts and references to back up these postings.  Those that I determine to be too inflammatory or without basis in fact will be expunged.  I welcome all thoughtful, polite discussion and look forward to it.  I don't expect you to agree with everything I say but if you disagree let me know why and what makes you believe this.  I will not regard anything on Fox as reality and will not suffer posts that refer to Fox news or for that matter any other Murdoch Syndicate owned news source.

I look forward to our discussions.