Maggie's Farm

It’s time for Jimmy Carter to take on Barack Obama on the issue of human rights.  I don’t expect that to happen but it is clearly called for.  Even Jimmy Carter doesn’t deserve for Barack Obama to be called the most incompetent president since Jimmy Carter.  Barack Obama is worse.

I often surprise critics of Jimmy Carter’s presidency by reminding them he returned US foreign policy to an emphasis on human rights, and that laid a foundation for Ronald Reagan’s successes in reaffirming American dedication and actions to support those who  fought to stay freer and to ultimately dismantle the Soviet Union and its Iron Curtain.

Skipping Carter’s own excesses of idealism and grave mistakes in executing foreign policy, which led to many considering his presidency a disaster and voters rejecting him in 1980, and his descent into outright extremism since, read Jimmy Carter’s commencement speech at Notre Dame in 1977, for example.

I believe we can have a foreign policy that is democratic, that is based on fundamental values, and that uses power and influence, which we have, for humane purposes. We can also have a foreign policy that the American people both support and, for a change, know about and understand.

I have a quiet confidence in our own political system. Because we know that democracy works, we can reject the arguments of those rulers who deny human rights to their people….

First, we have reaffirmed America’s commitment to human rights as a fundamental tenet of our foreign policy. In ancestry, religion, color, place of origin, and cultural background, we Americans are as diverse a nation as the world has even seen. No common mystique of blood or soil unites us. What draws us together, perhaps more than anything else, is a belief in human freedom. We want the world to know that our Nation stands for more than financial prosperity….

In the life of the human spirit, words are action, much more so than many of us may realize who live in countries where freedom of expression is taken for granted. The leaders of totalitarian nations understand this very well. The proof is that words are precisely the action for which dissidents in those countries are being persecuted.

Nonetheless, we can already see dramatic, worldwide advances in the protection of the individual from the arbitrary power of the state. For us to ignore this trend would be to lose influence and moral authority in the world. To lead it will be to regain the moral stature that we once had.

The great democracies are not free because we are strong and prosperous. I believe we are strong and influential and prosperous because we are free.

Throughout the world today, in free nations and in totalitarian countries as well, there is a preoccupation with the subject of human freedom, human rights. And I believe it is incumbent on us in this country to keep that discussion, that debate, that contention alive. No other country is as well-qualified as we to set an example. We have our own shortcomings and faults, and we should strive constantly and with courage to make sure that we are legitimately proud of what we have.

Compare that to Barack Obama’s virtual abandonment of human rights and to any pride in a generation of costly and brave resistance to the Soviet Union, and at least to most others who trampled human rights who weren’t necessary to that primary mission during the Cold War.

Brett Stephens summarizes Barack Obama’s abandonments, in China, Sudan, Iran, Burma, and now not even attending Germany’s celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, “a high-water mark in the march of human freedom.”  Obama’s dwindling defenders say he looks forward, not back, or that his vision of a humble US in harmony with other nations will encourage those hostile to be more cooperative.  So far, there’s been exactly the opposite result, as those determined to preserve and extend their despotism and influence are encouraged by US reticence and retreat-after-retreat from Obama’s prior pledges to be firm and resolute.  Stephens concludes:

It also takes a remarkable degree of cynicism—or perhaps cowardice—to treat human rights as something that "interferes" with America's purposes in the world, rather than as the very thing that ought to define them. Yet that is exactly the record of Mr. Obama's time thus far in office.

In the early days of the Cold War it was the moral courage of stout liberals, indeed many being former allies of socialism or communism, who defined the stark difference between the West’s essential core virtue and worth against those who continued to defend or kowtow to its enemies.  These men and women of integrity and grit were my early mentors, and led the free world's resistance to tyranny and repression.

Again, it is time for those with a sincere belief in their primary humanist motivations to stand and dispute the wayward Obama and those who are misled.

An example is the founder and former 20-year president of Human Rights Watch, critical of HRW’s one-sided myopia regarding the Middle East, who writes:

At Human Rights Watch, we always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the ability to correct them — through vigorous public debate, an adversarial press and many other mechanisms that encourage reform.

That is why we sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic and nondemocratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human rights. We wanted to prevent the Soviet Union and its followers from playing a moral equivalence game with the West and to encourage liberalization by drawing attention to dissidents like Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky and those in the Soviet gulag — and the millions in China’s laogai, or labor camps.

When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies….

Only by returning to its founding mission and the spirit of humility that animated it can Human Rights Watch resurrect itself as a moral force in the Middle East and throughout the world. If it fails to do that, its credibility will be seriously undermined and its important role in the world significantly diminished.

Obama isn’t about to listen to conservative critics, indeed he seeks to stifle them.  Perhaps he and his acolytes inexperienced in the great moral battles and sacrifices of the Cold War might listen to allies who know better.  These former liberal leaders owe that to their own integrity and legacy, or else cooperate in its demise.

All the interest groups are trying to protect their piece of the national health care spending pie in the various legislative proposals.  Tort lawyers, the largest contributors to Democrats, have succeeded beyond all others.

Tort reforms that reduce the costs of defensive medicine are off the table in all the legislation.  Now, they want to increase their portion of the pie, by eliminating the right of insurers to recover from tort settlements the amount paid in claims.  Claimants, thus, have increased motivation to sue, the possibility of suits and the awards increasing defensive medicine costs, and tort lawyers gain increased business.

Aetna is the closest “fellow traveler” among insurers to the advocates of ObamaCare, playing a delicate game of seeking like other insurers to increase premiums flowing to it from a mandate to have insurance while avoiding excess claims impact on increasing premiums, reducing private insurance due to guaranteed coverage without a mandate, while increasing the enrollment in a taxpayer subsidized government-plan.

So, alone among insurers, Aetna emailed me today (an independent employee benefits broker and consultant), “Aetna participated (as the only invited insurer) in a discussion among a cross-section of key players in the health care debate: the trial bar, employers, unions, and an insurer.  The convening authority was the senior staff from all three key House Committees.”  The subject: “The issue is whether the House bill should include a trial bar-supported provision to deny insurers (and union plans) the right to recover, from the insured, health care payments when the insured member has already received payment for the very same expense from a court award or settlement.”  Guess what?: “The staff and the trial bar want this provision.”

Recovery by insurers or medical providers from tort awards is currently particular  and complex in each state and federal jurisdiction.  The tort lawyers aim is to in one fell swoop have their way, damn the costs to others than the fees to themselves and the double-payments to clients.

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that tort reform caps on settlements would reduce the federal costs of health care by $54-billion.  The Associated Press concludes: “Even in the health care debate, that's real money.” But, the CBO report only touches on a small portion of the total cost of defensive medicine.

One of the leading doctor-bloggers (not hostile toward much of reforms) wrote in USA Today: “At $210 billion annually [according to various studies; about 9% of total health care spending], defensive medicine is one of the largest contributors to wasteful spending, and it can manifest in many forms: unnecessary CT scans, MRIs, cardiac testing and hospital admissions. A 2005 survey in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 93% of doctors reported practicing defensive medicine.”

The association of major insurers, America’s Health Care Plans (AHIP), finally launched a last-minute counter-attack the day before the Senate Finance Committee vote, to little avail.  It will have even less influence in the legislation negotiations in Harry Reid’s office, only including Reid, Senator Dodd, Senator Baucus and the White House.

Tort lawyers' objectives and influence is clear.  The rest of us are not adequately represented.

P.S.: Good discussion of the context. 

In considering the motivations of Maine Senator Olympia Snowe’s decision to vote in the Senate Finance Committee in favor of sending its unwritten healthcare bill to the full Senate one should understand that aside from any other reasons Maine would benefit.

Snowe has teeter-tottered, basically desiring an expansion of government health care programs, but the decisive factor may well be that she is a Senator from Maine.  Regardless of her political stripe, the best explanation of Senator Snowe’s vote is she wants to bring home the dollars from other states’ taxpayers to provide medical coverage to the voters in her state.

Some of Maine’s latest statistics:

Maine is a gross receiver of $1.41 of federal spending for each dollar of federal taxes paid from the state’s taxpayers.

Maine, however, has one of the highest state and local tax burdens among the states.

Maine’s business tax climate is among the least attractive.

Maine’s Dirigo Health, its attempt at universal health care, is a failure, as in other states. The percent uninsured in Maine did not budge under Dirigo.  Dirigo contains a “public” option, which didn’t work, so Senator Snowe has opposed one.  She, however, has pushed in the Senate Finance Committee to reduce the penalty for not buying insurance, which together with the guarantee of coverage regardless of health condition will result in increased premiums to those who are insured and make a subsidized government plan more attractive.  Similarly, the taxpayers' or overall costs of the expansion aren’t primary to her.

Politico has a discussion of the leverage Senator Snowe may obtain from her vote. Some of those in favor of a more extreme bill fear that.  They needn’t, as now that she has voted in the Finance Committee, her voice can and will be ignored by the Democrat leadership patching up whatever they wish to move forward.  That will likely include some sort of sub rosa “public” plan.

Others notice the bailout of Maine's failed Dirigo, at the expense of other states.  Instapundit wonders "Payola?"