America is no longer the world’s manufacturing powerhouse.   We’ve subcontracted out that heavy lifting to China.
But we still excel in the softer disciplines–especially marketing and advertising.
But you’d never know it from the ham-handed manner in which the administration is trying to persuade the country to adopt health care rationing.
We have an administration still in campaign […]

It appears that the Soviet-style (one public plan for all) health plan initiative is now off the table.
The public is now aware of the gaping chasm between the words and deeds of the new administration, and is skeptical about any reform that might boost the lot of the disenfranchised at the cost of diminishing their […]

That’s about as ugly a headline I ever hope to write.
But I can’t claim authorship–credit the quote to former Colorado Democratic Governor Dick Lamm, who immortalized this phrase when he suggested that seniors (aging baby boomers…aka the pig in the demographic python) had a duty to die, so as to prevent Medicare and Social Security […]

Health care will become a universal entitlement sometime this year.
The only question now…is how to pay for it.
My proposal is hardly original.  It was, in fact, a cornerstone of the McCain campaign last year.
And that would be to tax health care benefits paid to employees by their employers.
Since fairness is the dominant theme in this […]

I’ve saved the toughest one for the last.
Reforming Medicare and Medicaid.
Not to mention the push to bring the 50 million uninsured in under the tent of coverage.
Currently, the Medicare tax is 1.45% for both Employer and Employee…and unlike Social Security, there is no wage ceiling exempting the top 10% of earnings.
All wage income is subject […]

There may be a solution to the dizzying array of retirement accounts we now face.
It will likely be forced on the political hierarchy by events that threaten to spiral out of control.  We know that “reforms” will be applied to the entitlement programs…not because Congress has finally found the courage to do so…but because demography […]

I just finished reading David Brook’s May 15 column in the New York Times “Obama spending theory rests on cuts in health costs“…and it confirmed my worst fears.
I don’t fault the President for trying to reform health care, but I am dismayed by his boundless naivete.  Or cynicism.  I can’t tell the difference anymore.
None of […]

That’s what the judge tells you when sentence is passed.
And so it goes for long term wealth management.
Here’s an interesting mismatch to ponder:
A survey sponsored by America’s Health Insurance Plans polled a thousand women ages 30-59 this past November.

Sixty percent of the women polled said that the economy had had a significant to moderate impact […]