Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S.

But, really, the existing system has faced such problems for a long time and put in place a complicated, disorganized, collection of pieces, patchwork, to respond to it. E.g., there is the Hill-Burton hospital act where to build a hospital can get Federal money but then can't turn away patients who can't pay. So, do 'cost shifting' and charge more for patients who can pay. Or have a city run and funded hospital. Patchwork.

Could we improve it? To borrow from Cheney, no doubt. Could we make it worse? No doubt.

To me, the 'sausage making' process of Obamacare promises a poorly designed product. And the origins and motivations of Obamacare concern me: As I recall, really Obamacare was in its first drafts (did anyone read the 2000 pages enough to do a second draft?) was basically pulled off the shelf from where it had been stored by a health care team under Senator Ted Kennedy. There the dream, Ted did like the "dream", was simple -- socialized medicine.

I suspect that 'socialized medicine' can be made to work well; maybe it does in Switzerland. But I don't trust the results of the people who want 'socialized medicine' in the US mostly just as I don't trust the people who just want socialism in the US. My guess is that too soon we will be paying too much (yes, we are now, also) or screaming about bad medicine like people do in the UK and Canada.

In a sense Medicare and Medicaid have an advantage because they are mostly just payment mechanisms placed on top of what is roughly, very roughly, a 'free-enterprise' system. But if just socialize the whole thing, then can end up with a bad version of the USPS.

I'm not against the Federal Government doing some things: In places what the Federal Government does works out great -- Hoover Dam, Bonneville Dam, TVA, Los Alamos, NSF, NIH, DARPA, funding of the top three dozen or so US research universities, the Interstate highway system, the FAA (the safety and engineering parts; some of the air traffic control parts), in the end most aspects of the USPS, the Agriculture Extension Service of the USDA, the FDA (pretty good on safety, a bit slow on efficacy), and more. For the VA, I don't know: There are complaints about the access and quality, but I know no details.

So, for Obamacare, I'm concerned that in the US 'socialized medicine' is just super tough to get right and that the Nancy, etc. efforts are not even 10% as serious as needed. Then, from the structure of the 'board' or 'panel' appointed by the president, I'm concerned that Obamacare will become a 'political football' that results in low quality health care at high prices.

"Political footbal"? For an example, that's my view of 'climate change' and 'clean energy': For fossil fuels, use 'climate change' as an excuse to tax them and throttle them. E.g., in his 2008 interview at the SF Chron., Obama explained his intention to raise carbon taxes enough to "bankrupt" our coal fired plants -- then 49% of our electric energy and, as I recall, ~23% of all our energy. I suspect he was just posturing, but it was dangerous. Then supposedly about $92 billion of the various 'stimulus' and TARP (I and II) funds went for 'clean energy' but turned out to be make-work jobs and campaign contribution kickbacks. Supposedly since then we've thrown another $45 billion at 'clean energy' -- to me, 99 44/100% about politics, e.g., campaign contribution kickbacks, and the rest water and not at all about energy or the even the climate (in my view, there's no very good evidence that the climate is at risk).

So, with US socialized medicine, I fear 'waste, fraud, abuse' from a political football.

E.g., now we've got NSA: Politics? Sure: No politician wants to get blamed for "being soft on terrorism". So, NSA suspends good judgment and goes overboard -- 'over reaches', e.g., data on calls of 120 million or so Verizon customers, maybe all the US e-mail traffic, maybe all the US phone voice data.

E.g.? Sure: Snowden was a GED, contract, bottom level employee in Hawaii but apparently had his fingers directly on huge volumes of data, all at the NSA supposedly just terrific at 'computer security'. Why? Poor oversight. Poor execution. From the White House, don't give a sh!t about the details and otherwise a political football.

I fear the same for a US national health care system. Yes, what we have could be better, but it could also be worse, and for having it worse Nancy is just the person to lead us there.

Maybe in an honest moment Nancy would have said, "We will just pass it. That's all we can do. Then we will leave the details up to the execution of the Executive branch, in some big office buildings somewhere within 100 miles of the Washington Monument, and pass more bills if really necessary. So, we will just get it started and then let others make it work well." But they don't have to make it work well -- they might just make a mess. I'm thinking, re-engineer and rebuild a Boeing 747 in flight, with people who just started learning about sheet metal.

But in the case in the Obama town hall, supposedly the woman could pay a reasonable amount for health insurance. In that case, just move to a community rated state, wait whatever waiting period if any, get medical insurance at the same rate as everyone else in that 'community rated' state, and be fine.

Could argue that in part Obamacare is a path to 'community rating' for all the states. But some of the states don't want community rating -- as far as I can tell, really only the richest states want that.

My view, in brief, is that Obamacare was not about healthcare. Instead, Obama wanted to play politics and, generally, just wanted a bigger Federal Government to have still more ability to play politics. Nancy wanted a big case of 'socialism' -- Nancy just dreams of socialism, in particular of Big Daddy Big Federal Government taking care of everyone and making everything 'all right', especially for insecure, single women with small children. Really Nancy wants to use the Federal Government to establish a lot of 'social and cultural values' that would conflict with 'limited government'. Nancy wants a big, security blanket, socialistic government providing a basic level of material support and quality of life for everyone.

I could agree with Nancy except I fear that her hands on the economy would make the economy so sick it couldn't provide what she wants, that is, she will choke the goose that lays the golden eggs. If Nancy could actually do a good job, then we have something to discuss; I just fear that Nancy will make a mess, a disaster. To me it's first mostly a matter of simple competence at execution and not 'political principles' or 'social philosophy'. I just think her boat will leak and not float.

And, yes, even if in simple terms the execution is good, there will be the issue of motivation -- if the 'floor' provided by the Federal Government is high enough, then a lot of people will try less hard and the goose will lay fewer golden eggs.

But I believe that the founding fathers saw this possibility and designed the system to keep this from happening. In particular, the SCOTUS is darned serious; they understand with crystal clarity the threats to the Constitution and the US. Their main job is to defend the Constitution. To this end, they are plenty bright, are awash in power and independence, have plenty of resources, and do have the respect of the citizens. So, I believe that the SCOTUS will do the right things.

It could even be much like those "basic income" schemes being floated around here; the government pays out up to a certain cap to cover basic preventative and "major life function" care. If people want fancier doctors that's fine, but they have to pony up the excess themselves.

I think the best examples of government interaction with the business sector have come when the government says this is what needs to happen without enforcing how it has to be done, and then letting entrepreneurial types figure out how to do it best. I see no reason why healthcare has to be fully nationalized, or why ObamaCare can't be the first step toward a system like that.

There are some connections with some of the content in 'The Art of Loving', especially his -- rough quote:

"The fundamental problem in life is getting security in face of the anxiety from the realization that we are vulnerable to the hostile forces of nature and society. Human intelligence enables this realization. For responding to this anxiety, only four approaches have been tried, (1) love of god, (2) love of spouse, (3) membership in groups (get praise, acceptance, approval, feeling of belonging, coalition, support), and (4) 'orgiastic' behavior (sex and drugs) to suppress the feelings of anxiety."

So, the "idolatry" can be seen as another response to the anxiety, that is, a false approach to (1)-(3).

Fromm had another one, that can regard as a 'secret scorecard'! He explained that in a good case of love, the couple gives to each other knowledge, caring, respect, and responsiveness. So, in "knowledge" they keep each other informed on their thoughts, feelings, concerns, desires, etc. In "caring", they actually, actively care about each other. In "respect" they respect the other person, e.g., don't regard them with contempt or to be manipulated or exploited. For "responsiveness", they 'respond' to each other, e.g., don't do what was long in the Sunday newspaper cartoons of the wife talking to the husband over the breakfast table and the husband behind a newspaper repeating "Yes, Dear. Of course, Dear. That's right, Dear. That's nice, Dear. Yes, Dear.".

Then take these four 'attributes' and evaluate them for couples you know. If the couple gets a bad grade on all four, try to short the stock of their marriage, if it is possible to do that! Or be very cautious about marrying one of their children!

That little scorecard can give some surprising results: Can discover that some couples are going along for decades with what externally to the community looks like a good marriage but according to the scorecard really would like to knife each other in the back! Or, people can put on some really big acts.

There's more, from Fromm, and still more if combine Fromm with some other good sources (of which I know only a few).

Here's an exercise: Watch 'Roman Holiday'. There the reporter Bradley (Gregory Peck) and Princess Anna (Audrey Hepburn) were from the beginning basically lying to each other about whom they were but slowly mutually but silently worked past the lies. Then evaluate the scorecard: They did great. On each of the four, they started off okay and then grew to a grade of A or A+. Then they were in love. Otherwise they showed it by only quite subtle means, but it was convincing and enough. The writer (Trumbo), director (Wyler), and the actors did fantastic jobs. Fromm's scorecard wins again!

People really in love will likely be doing well on Fromm's scorecard whether they have heard of the four items or not. If they are not in love, are pretending to the public to be in love, and have not heard of the four items, then there is a really good chance that their act is not working and they are showing that they are not in love by getting bad grades on the scorecard.

I doubt that Trumbo or Wyler had read Fromm, but they knew enough about love to give a really good presentation of it including on Fromm's scorecard.

Note: I call Fromm's four attributes a 'scorecard'; I doubt that Fromm ever did!

That Fromm's little four item scorecard can look like X-ray vision through the public 'presentation' of couples trying to pretend in public to have a good marriage is to me amazing and astoundingly valuable. Some of the best information about anything I ever got.

One more exercise: The first item on Fromm's scorecard is giving knowledge. Well, that is a form of 'intimacy'. If you are in a romantic relationship without intimacy, then you are in deep trouble! On the other hand, if meet a girl and soon she is telling you lots of things from between her ears, then that's intimacy and inviting a romantic relationship. I've been in 'romantic' relationships where the girl was much more open about what was between her legs than between her ears. Or in 'Roman Holiday', they started between their ears and slowly worked down to, say, a nice hug and a kiss. In real life, it can be much more common to start below the waist and maybe move up, maybe never get above the shoulders, and only rarely get between the ears.

Or, in middle school it can appear that a lot of the mothers told their daughters to stay away from boys, not to talk to them: "Don't tell them anything. If they ask 'why', just say 'because'. Say it over and over until they feel insulted and give up." So, such mothers know that this way they can throttle a path toward intimacy for their middle school daughters.

Fromm's amazing.