Outsourcing Overhead

 

 

 

Hillary Care is back.  But it’s not really Hillary Care because Newt Gingrich is promoting it also.  In fact, it isn’t even health care.  It’s just being promoted under the heading of health care - as a means to get costs under control.  So how do they propose to do that?  By cost shifting and smoke and mirrors.   Here’s how:

 

As Hillary explained to the Families USA Health Care Forum today on C-Span, the idea is to have a national electronic medical information data base.  Rather than your medical history being stored in your doctor’s office with diagnosis, procedure and billing information at the insurance company, your full medical record would be on the government’s data base of medical records. 

 

The insurance companies, hospitals and providers would save money because they wouldn’t have the Information Technology (IT) costs of maintaining your records.  The effect is that these providers shift their costs of maintaining medical records to the taxpayers.  And as a bonus… you lose your medical privacy as well as paying for Phase I of a national health care system.  She’s hoping that you won’t figure out that it would be impossible to move to a national health care system without first building the infrastructure.  A national system of electronic medical records is that infrastructure.     

 

As with most government solutions these days, this solution doesn’t address the real problem which is that the health care system is a profit making system on essential services.  In the world of business, this is a license to steal… and steal they do.  And with the taxpayers picking up a big chunk of their overhead costs, they will make even more money at your expense.  

 

Hillary proposes to shift the focus of medical care to prevention of illness - as if regular checkups prevents disease.  As she said, “behavior modification” will be a big part of the savings.  If you don’t do what the government tells you to do, the bill for medical care won’t be paid.   Which, when translated to the real world of how these things are implemented, it means that if you get sick, it was because you were not “following ze rooles”.  If you are overweight, you smoke or drink, if you are foolish enough to get old…too bad for you - you won’t be covered. 

 

Hillary also mentioned DNA testing as a reason for the government to take over your medical records.  She said - and rightly so, that an employer is not likely to want to hire you if you have a DNA defect that will give you a propensity for some dread disease.  Why she thinks that the government won’t use that same information to deny college loans, military training or service or a government job, I have no idea because if the information is available, they will use it too - as a cost savings tool. 

 

In the current U.S. business model of outsourcing everything except the cash register, an argument can be made from a business point of view, that it would be cheaper to have the government take over many cost centers of their businesses.  They don’t care who takes it over - as long as it increases their profits.  And that’s really what Hillary Care is about.  It’s about the government picking up the outsourced costs of IT for the health care industry.  But the health care industry is not the only one that is outsourcing their overhead. 

 
 

Freight Asset Tracking

 

Recently when the stories of lead toys, lead paint, dangerous design flaws, etc. on imports from China, we learned that Mattel, formerly one of America’s premier toy manufacturers was just a “Brand Manager”.  What that means is that they’ve outsourced nearly everything and they are just a shell.  The company is really a COMMUNIST Chinese company with just a front operation in this country.  All they do here is the advertising, selling and the pocketing profits (for export) that they split with COMMUNIST China. 

 

The International Corridors being built in our country are designed to reduce costs for importers of goods from COMMUNIST China.  It will be cheaper for them to use Mexican labor in Mexico for bigger profits here…KA CHING!   But it’s not just about roads, the importers and their “partners”, the biggest of which include Walmart, Fed-Ex, UPS, etc. the corridors will be “smart highways” with RFID sensors and command and control centers and network servers to “track assets”.   Of course this is all being done under the guise of security.  The fear is that the COMMUNIST Chinese might just slip us a nuke.  But hey… we don’t want to interfere with commerce… KA CHING! 

 

So instead, the U.S. taxpayers will fully automate our highways, use our satellite systems for GPS positioning and take the outsourced overhead costs of freight tracking from the importers so that they and their COMMUNIST Chinese partners can increase their profit margins.   Oh… and you’ll get a benefit too.  You’ll be able to get weather and road conditions in your car as you are driving  and the toll road lessee will be able to send you a bill for each mile you drive on their highway that you paid for. 

 

And that’s not all.  You, as the American tax payer are paying to have automakers design and include devices in your car that will save insurance companies money.  These systems are part of the “smart highway” system too.  Disabling and collision avoidance (remote control devices) are being installed in commercial vehicles - and they will be put in your car too - if they aren’t already. 

 

When you understand what the “smart highways” are about, then you will understand why the governments are going to toll roads.  There is no way to cost justify these computer systems as a public benefit.  In fact, they are a significant part of a surveillance system that is totally contrary to American values, history and heritage.  By leasing the highways, government officials are doing the cowardly thing of letting their “private partners” put the surveillance systems in place. 

 

 

Personnel Records and Procurement costs

 

The computer systems that are being implemented in the schools are cradle-to-grave records of a person’s education and work history.  This information will be available to prospective employers to advertise their jobs via networked state systems that link to the government “Guest Worker” system.  How can that be you say?   Well, you can’t control the entry of “guest workers” into the country without having the data on the domestic labor market.  What are the needs?  How many? What kind?   How many workers are in the pipeline and how many are ready to go?

 

These systems are never mentioned in the same circles and it is no doubt the hope that the majority of people won’t figure it out because these two systems - education and workforce will be government management of the labor market.   Add this to the national health record, and you have outsourced a significant percentage of business overhead costs to the government - not to mention the surveillance and control capabilities it gives the government.  

 

I could go on and add REAL ID, NAIS Animal and Premise tracking, and other systems, but you should have the idea at this point.  The COMMUNIST boa is around our necks and it’s beginning to squeeze. 

 

The solutions coming out of Washington DC are “free trade” and reducing costs for corporations so that they can compete.  Washington DC’s corporate solutions are feeding the boa that is strangling us.  The only way to compete with China is to become like China - implement a totalitarian state and make slaves of people.  But even then we won’t be able to compete because of the population differences and the best education in the world - available to every citizen will not solve the problem.   The only thing we can do is to cut the head off the boa and unwind it from our collective national body.  That means putting high tariffs on imports from low wage countries to level the playing field of the cost of production.   Is that protectionism?  Yes it is and to those  who ask that question, I say…’Isn’t America and the American way of life worth protecting?’   And if the answer is no, then you should get the hell out of the U.S. and move to China because that’s the system you want.    

        

 

Vicky Davis
October 21, 2007

Vicky L. Davis was a Computer Systems Analyst/Programmer who spent 20 years designing and writing computer systems for large corporations and state and local governments.  For 15 of those years, she worked as a Contractor, which gave her exposure to a wide variety of different businesses and their internal applications and operations.   She has traveled extensively and has lived in nine states in the course of her life’s adventure.