Obamacare: A Nixon Legacy?


Dr. Gary North reviewed this video.  Parts of it he likes.  

The segment on Nixon is terrific. The tapes reveal the connection with Edgar Kaiser. The key fact is this: Nixon heard about this plan on February 17, 1971. He then had a speech written for him, which he delivered on national TV the next day. The video reported this, but did not mention it. It is clear that Kaiser and Ehrlichman had the whole package ready to go. Nixon approved it without having read it or even thinking through the implications. This was the #1 source of HMO's in U.S. history. Nixon had given no thought to the whole program. It changed American medicine.

He definitely likes the video but doesn't have high hopes for it.  

The video was posted in 2014. The video as of this week had 96 views. It took two years to get this. Maybe there is another posting of this video online with more views, but with under 100 views in two years, this project was a failure. I have rarely seen any YouTube video with so few views.

We need lots of videos like this one. But they take lots of time to produce. There is no guarantee that anyone will view them.

Then there is this fact. They change nothing. Ever. 

There is no one better in assessing government programs than Gary North.  He understands Congress. He worked inside its bowels for a few years under Ron Paul.  This point here is not so much hopeless as much as it is practical.

Voters cannot get Congress to repeal a bad program. Congress will only make it worse. We never see repeal -- only "repeal with replacement." Once there is a constituency for a program, it's forever.

In other words, don't waste your time on federal activism or federal legislation.  His antidote? 

There is only one way to kill a program: the bankruptcy of the federal government. They all must go down together. It is politically impossible to kill them once they become law.   

It's coming.  So he says.

Though Dr. North did admit that he finds national politics entertaining.

I love national politics. It's a three-ring circus: Senate, House, and White House.

The big economic issues are never addressed, such as:

1. The unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare: $210 trillion (present value)
2. Federal Reserve policy
3. The extension of administrative law -- 81,611 new pages in the Federal Register (2015)
4. Tax reform: 74,600 pages
5. The causes of, and solutions to, the flattening of households' median real income since 1965

There is a reason for this silence: there are no politically acceptable solutions. "Don't ask. Don't tell. Don't worry."

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