The musings of a physician who served the community for over six decades
367 Topics
Downtown A discussion about downtown area in Philadelphia and connections from today with its historical past.
West of Broad A collection of articles about the area west of Broad Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Delaware (State of) Originally the "lower counties" of Pennsylvania, and thus one of three Quaker colonies founded by William Penn, Delaware has developed its own set of traditions and history.
Religious Philadelphia William Penn wanted a colony with religious freedom. A considerable number, if not the majority, of American religious denominations were founded in this city. The main misconception about religious Philadelphia is that it is Quaker-dominated. But the broader misconception is that it is not Quaker-dominated.
Particular Sights to See:Center City Taxi drivers tell tourists that Center City is a "shining city on a hill". During the Industrial Era, the city almost urbanized out to the county line, and then retreated. Right now, the urban center is surrounded by a semi-deserted ring of former factories.
Philadelphia's Middle Urban Ring Philadelphia grew rapidly for seventy years after the Civil War, then gradually lost population. Skyscrapers drain population upwards, suburbs beckon outwards. The result: a ring around center city, mixed prosperous and dilapidated. Future in doubt.
Historical Motor Excursion North of Philadelphia The narrow waist of New Jersey was the upper border of William Penn's vast land holdings, and the outer edge of Quaker influence. In 1776-77, Lord Howe made this strip the main highway of his attempt to subjugate the Colonies.
Land Tour Around Delaware Bay Start in Philadelphia, take two days to tour around Delaware Bay. Down the New Jersey side to Cape May, ferry over to Lewes, tour up to Dover and New Castle, visit Winterthur, Longwood Gardens, Brandywine Battlefield and art museum, then back to Philadelphia. Try it!
Tourist Trips Around Philadelphia and the Quaker Colonies The states of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and southern New Jersey all belonged to William Penn the Quaker. He was the largest private landholder in American history. Using explicit directions, comprehensive touring of the Quaker Colonies takes seven full days. Local residents would need a couple dozen one-day trips to get up to speed.
Touring Philadelphia's Western Regions Philadelpia County had two hundred farms in 1950, but is now thickly settled in all directions. Western regions along the Schuylkill are still spread out somewhat; with many historic estates.
Up the King's High Way New Jersey has a narrow waistline, with New York harbor at one end, and Delaware Bay on the other. Traffic and history travelled the Kings Highway along this path between New York and Philadelphia.
Arch Street: from Sixth to Second When the large meeting house at Fourth and Arch was built, many Quakers moved their houses to the area. At that time, "North of Market" implied the Quaker region of town.
Up Market Street to Sixth and Walnut Millions of eye patients have been asked to read the passage from Franklin's autobiography, "I walked up Market Street, etc." which is commonly printed on eye-test cards. Here's your chance to do it.
Sixth and Walnut over to Broad and Sansom In 1751, the Pennsylvania Hospital at 8th and Spruce was 'way out in the country. Now it is in the center of a city, but the area still remains dominated by medical institutions.
Montgomery and Bucks Counties The Philadelphia metropolitan region has five Pennsylvania counties, four New Jersey counties, one northern county in the state of Delaware. Here are the four Pennsylvania suburban ones.
Northern Overland Escape Path of the Philadelphia Tories 1 of 1 (16) Grievances provoking the American Revolutionary War left many Philadelphians unprovoked. Loyalists often fled to Canada, especially Kingston, Ontario. Decades later the flow of dissidents reversed, Canadian anti-royalists taking refuge south of the border.
City Hall to Chestnut Hill There are lots of ways to go from City Hall to Chestnut Hill, including the train from Suburban Station, or from 11th and Market. This tour imagines your driving your car out the Ben Franklin Parkway to Kelly Drive, and then up the Wissahickon.
Philadelphia Reflections is a history of the area around Philadelphia, PA
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Philadelphia Revelations
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George R. Fisher, III, M.D.
Obituary
George R. Fisher, III, M.D.
Age: 97 of Philadelphia, formerly of Haddonfield
Dr. George Ross Fisher of Philadelphia died on March 9, 2023, surrounded by his loving family.
Born in 1925 in Erie, Pennsylvania, to two teachers, George and Margaret Fisher, he grew up in Pittsburgh, later attending The Lawrenceville School and Yale University (graduating early because of the war). He was very proud of the fact that he was the only person who ever graduated from Yale with a Bachelor of Science in English Literature. He attended Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons where he met the love of his life, fellow medical student, and future renowned Philadelphia radiologist Mary Stuart Blakely. While dating, they entertained themselves by dressing up in evening attire and crashing fancy Manhattan weddings. They married in 1950 and were each other’s true loves, mutual admirers, and life partners until Mary Stuart passed away in 2006. A Columbia faculty member wrote of him, “This young man’s personality is way off the beaten track, and cannot be evaluated by the customary methods.”
After training at the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia where he was Chief Resident in Medicine, and spending a year at the NIH, he opened a practice in Endocrinology on Spruce Street where he practiced for sixty years. He also consulted regularly for the employees of Strawbridge and Clothier as well as the Hospital for the Mentally Retarded at Stockley, Delaware. He was beloved by his patients, his guiding philosophy being the adage, “Listen to your patient – he’s telling you his diagnosis.” His patients also told him their stories which gave him an education in all things Philadelphia, the city he passionately loved and which he went on to chronicle in this online blog. Many of these blogs were adapted into a history-oriented tour book, Philadelphia Revelations: Twenty Tours of the Delaware Valley.
He was a true Renaissance Man, interested in everything and everyone, remembering everything he read or heard in complete detail, and endowed with a penetrating intellect which cut to the heart of whatever was being discussed, whether it be medicine, history, literature, economics, investments, politics, science or even lawn care for his home in Haddonfield, NJ where he and his wife raised their four children. He was an “early adopter.” Memories of his children from the 1960s include being taken to visit his colleagues working on the UNIVAC computer at Penn; the air-mail version of the London Economist on the dining room table; and his work on developing a proprietary medical office software using Fortran. His dedication to patients and to his profession extended to his many years representing Pennsylvania to the American Medical Association.
After retiring from his practice in 2003, he started his pioneering “just-in-time” Ross & Perry publishing company, which printed more than 300 new and reprint titles, ranging from Flight Manual for the SR-71 Blackbird Spy Plane (his best seller!) to Terse Verse, a collection of a hundred mostly humorous haikus. He authored four books. In 2013 at age 88, he ran as a Republican for New Jersey Assemblyman for the 6th district (he lost).
A gregarious extrovert, he loved meeting his fellow Philadelphians well into his nineties at the Shakespeare Society, the Global Interdependence Center, the College of Physicians, the Right Angle Club, the Union League, the Haddonfield 65 Club, and the Franklin Inn. He faithfully attended Quaker Meeting in Haddonfield NJ for over 60 years. Later in life he was fortunate to be joined in his life, travels, and adventures by his dear friend Dr. Janice Gordon.
He passed away peacefully, held in the Light and surrounded by his family as they sang to him and read aloud the love letters that he and his wife penned throughout their courtship. In addition to his children – George, Miriam, Margaret, and Stuart – he leaves his three children-in-law, eight grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, and his younger brother, John.
A memorial service, followed by a reception, will be held at the Friends Meeting in Haddonfield New Jersey on April 1 at one in the afternoon. Memorial contributions may be sent to Haddonfield Friends Meeting, 47 Friends Avenue, Haddonfield, NJ 08033.
Ever since financial markets got jittery in August 2007, pundits generally agreed that things would not settle down before the second half of 2008. That seems to have been a safe thing to predict, but not exactly the same as confidently predicting that things will change for the better in the summer of 2008. Things could, unfortunately, get a lot worse.
Let's try to predict how history will remember these puzzling times. So far, the problem has been an American home real estate matter; America built too many houses, particularly in Florida and the West Coast. Houses were built because they could be sold, so the source of the difficulty was cheap credit for mortgages, and that was, in turn, traceable to Arabian oil prices and Far Eastern industrial progress. But never mind the cause, the event was a domestic American home mortgage issue, with the rest of the world sort of looking on. Whenever America got its mortgages straightened out, the crisis would be over. The other way history may describe things is far more ominous. Prosperity for the Middle and Far Eastern countries generated more wealth than their primitive banking systems could manage, so they exported it in the form of world inflation. America was pioneering in some innovative credit and investment streamlining, which was not entirely rationalized when it suddenly got toppled by a tsunami of world credit excess. Wall Street and Washington were the actors in stage center, but the underlying problem was a world problem, taking years to correct, and requiring heroic efforts to save it. If it could be saved. Politicians and news media will emphasize any mistakes, but a solution will depend on whether or not we get some bold successes. The second quarter of 2008 will begin to show whether we need to keep cool or blow the bugle.
To some extent, it was necessary to wait the better part of a year to see how strong our beleaguered institutions would prove to be, how many of the dubious mortgages would actually default, how many of the innovative lending practices would have to be forbidden, or revised. For example, it unnerved many people that so many "subprime" mortgages defaulted in the first year after the house was bought, suggesting that the house purchase was wildly inappropriate. On examination, however, it turned out that overzealous lenders had skipped the normal practice of insisting that money be set aside in escrow for tax and insurance payments. When tax and insurance collectors demanded immediate payment, the borrowers just skipped payments on the mortgage. Lenders will probably avoid this trap in the future, but if not, legal prohibition is fairly simple because it is so obvious. However painful this small problem may prove to be, its correction will be soon forgotten.
Paul Volcker
The international issues are much more difficult. From August 2007 to April 2008, American interest rates went steadily down; by their standards, they went down a lot. Many hot money investors took this as a sign that America was going to pay off its debts by deliberately provoking inflation; European countries have done this for centuries, even including England under Sir Stafford Cripps. That's why the gnomes of Switzerland keep vaults full of gold, and the oil moguls of OPEC have learned to keep their oil in the ground. Indian women bought more gold bracelets to jangle around, and the Australian markets went through the roof. Two governors of the Federal Reserve, including Philadelphia's own, voted against lowering interest rates "at this time". Paul Volcker, who once smashed the economy in order to smash inflation, hasn't spoken out yet, but simply trotting him out to a banquet is sufficiently vocal testimony at this stage of matters. No one has yet mentioned the hyperinflation episode of the Weimar Republic, but that episode was so catastrophic no one has to mention it in Germany or Austria; everybody remembers. As a matter of fact, the Europeans are so concerned to show the euro is strong, it is actually excessively strong and will surely be moderated. Our strongest ally in this Kabuki dance has been China, but a few rash words about Taiwan would test that severely. Are we trying to inflate away our mortgage debts -- absolutely not. Will we be able to prevent a serious recession by "stimulating" the economy -- it remains to be seen.
And finally, will war, elections, blunders or general jitteriness force us all into a general rearrangement of the currency systems of the whole world, another Bretton Woods Conference let's say? No, of course not. But it wouldn't hurt to have the graduate students in Economics departments perform a few theoretical exercises, just for the practice of it.
For the year preceding, it was general opinion that the financial crisis was caused by $100 billion or so of mortgage-backed securities, mostly California and Florida home mortgages. But around Labor Day 2008 Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the problem became twenty times as large. What that was about is unclear, but seemingly had to do with money market funds being treated as "funds in transit" in consequence of the international monetary agreement known as Basel I, and thus not requiring bank reserves to be maintained for them. It will take time to unravel the intricacies of, and assign the blame for, this mess. However, the markets responded by refusing to trade at now uncertain prices, thus "freezing up". The response of the Federal Reserve was to double the money supply through international markets, mostly using "Central Bank liquidity swaps". The participation of various countries in this action has not been made public.
The doubling of the money supply required borrowing between one and two trillion dollars. After five months, or just after the inauguration of the new Presidential Administration, the markets had seemingly started to function more normally, and the stock market had rallied somewhat. The obviously bewildered leadership of both political parties agreed to the proposal to purchase $1.75 trillion of the troublesome assets, taking them off the market and presumably hoping the markets would function as if they did not exist. By July 2009 this operation was only about half completed. Not only was there disagreement about what these securities were really worth, but the banks which held them were reluctant to allow prices of what they continued to hold to be driven down by comparison with these forced transactions.
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
In any event, the second stage of this huge government bailout of the banking system is projected as follows: The portfolio of assets would be worn down, either by allowing debts to mature, or by selling them at what is hoped will be advantageous prices. Who will buy them is to some extent dependent on the state of the economy, and to some extent on the perception of the fairness of the pricing. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has been assigned the task of designing a public formula for how much to buy or sell, depending on selected indicators of the economy. A public formula is felt to be necessary in order to reassure the markets that purchases and sales are not being made in response to secret information or unsuspected problems.
The reasoning would be that if these assets are sold to speculators at fire-sale prices, the money supply will shrink inappropriately, and the recession will be prolonged by the need to borrow replacement reserves for the monetary system. Unduly profitable sales would probably lead to inflation, since the present level of monetary reserves is twice as large as was thought appropriate, as recently as a year or two ago. But this maneuver by a central bank has never been tried before, and the results may well differ from present predictions. The Federal Reserve is prepared to take as long as ten years to accomplish the complete maneuver, but that plan presumes ten years of recession and five congressional elections. It also implies that the economy could swing between 7% annual inflation, and 7% annual deflation, in the two worst cases, and assuming nothing extraneous happens to the economy.
President Barack Obama
In the meantime, two other ominous notes. Although the nationalities of the lenders have not been made public, one can safely assume the Chinese are a major component. Since they are refusing to lend us money beyond two, and at the most five, years, we would be indefinitely in the position of borrowing short and lending long. In other situations, that imposes a risk of depositors starting a run on the bank. And secondly, it is hard to imagine that Mr. Obama's presently ambitious programs in healthcare, environmental protection, two wars and several election cycles, will be allowed to proceed without enormous public resistance to even further fiscal deficits.
So, right off, what are the disadvantages of lifetime coverage? They would seem to be:
1. At the moment, persons receiving Medicare are excluded from starting Health Savings Accounts. During the debate about Obamacare, seniors were therefore remarkably uninterested in two topics which didn't affect them: Obamacare and Health Savings Accounts. Very few seem to realize that Medicare is 50% subsidized by the federal taxpayer, and therefore few realize they are quite right to be uneasy Medicare might be "robbed" to pay for Obamacare. No politician is comfortable discussing this issue, for fear his party will be blamed for injuring a perfectly blissful status quo. Naturally, everybody likes buying a dollar for fifty cents, and everybody likes to imagine payroll deductions and premiums create an impregnable entitlement. The sad truth is the 50% subsidy, paid for by borrowing from foreigners, practically guarantees Medicare will be eyed as a victim, using the "fairness" argument. Seniors on Medicare, of which I am one, should be immediately in favor of a proposal which forestalls such pressure. Unfortunately, right now every one of them is looking toward the sunset, gambling on outliving a threat they hope will go away.
2. The computer revolution, which makes lifetime health insurance even imaginable, has severely impacted the investment community. It is still difficult to foresee which branch of the existing financial community would be natural allies, or natural enemies, of Health Savings Accounts. A remarkably large segment of the investment community already has HSAs for their personal affairs, and the banking community sees a chance that Bank Debit Cards could displace the huge industry of insurance claims processing. Meanwhile, insurers remain uncertain whether HSAs are a new revenue source or a threat to existing lines of business. The Dodd-Frank legislation is so large and complex it confuses everyone about net winners and losers. Investment advisors have been hit hard by the recession, and are forced to charge $250 per trade when their competitors charge $7.50 for the same service. Just about everybody in the HSA business is uncertain whether HSAs are insurance policies with an attached savings account, or whether they are investment vehicles with stop-loss insurance attached. Things are tough when lobbyists don't even know which committee to lobby. It takes time for HSAs to achieve profitable size, so industry leadership hangs back to see what they look like when bigger.
3. There are lots of small advantages, but one big disadvantage. The transition from one system to another takes a long time, perhaps a lifetime for some.
How can we navigate a transition that might take a century to complete?
Transition Strategy. The general answer to the long transition period lies in providing more than one method to close the transition gaps. Start from both ends, and then find one or more methods to break into the middle. If life insurance saves money, use some of it to overfund parts of the system as an incentive. When you find people are gaming the system, drop the feature which permits it. If some goal is accepted to speed up the transition, calculate what it is worth to accomplish it, and limit the feature as the transition speeds up. The method proposed in the ****previous**** chapter will certainly work out, but a newborn baby will be a Medicare recipient before children's insurance is complete for everyone. The rest of us have already lost some years for compounding, while some of us are already on Medicare and are, as they say, entitled. Therefore, we propose two additional ways of getting to the goal. Reducing the cost of healthcare is one, to be taken up in Chapter ****. That one works for everyone's finances at any age.
The other method, which suits people of working age, is the present topic. It has two possible solutions, the issuance of special revenue bonds, and offering inducements for dropping Medicare. In the present environment, just using Medicare as a transfer vehicle is unthinkably unwise, politically. Reducing Medicare can only be brought up as a voluntary exchange, long into the future when the financial attractiveness of the HSA approach is so well established it has no political downside. It can be used to pay for non-medical retirement costs after HSAs demonstrate they can comfortably cover medical ones. At that point, it would no longer have the stigma of "robbing" Medicare but might be politically acceptable as making some use of unspendable double coverage.
Special Bond Sales. The safer approach is, therefore, to issue bonds to smooth out bumps in what is in some respects an equity investment. To match present cultural patterns, it should be recognized that working parents now fully assume the medical costs for their children, but have only a moral liability for the medical costs of their retired parents. Therefore, our culture might accept bond indentures with similar structure, but in one of the cases resist an identical bond issuance which differs significantly from accepted local patterns. In fact, it is difficult to imagine enacting any proposal which does not generally respect societal patterns. An important feature would be to start HSAs at an early age, adding as much as 26 years to the duration available for compounding. At 10%, that would be almost four doublings of the investment, and a fairly good start toward the initial goal of $80,000 in the account by age 65, while still starting with relatively small investments in childhood. True, a bond issue would have the interest to pay, but since the interest payment stays within a family it might be designed to seem less burdensome than taxes. It is a curiosity that U.S. Treasury bonds are entirely general obligations, unlike state bonds. There may be a good reason why federal bonds for specific projects are agency bonds, but someone else will have to explain it. The two purposes for which special bond issues might be considered are: respect for society's wishes with regard to parent/child discipline, divorce and illegitimacy issues; and to smooth out gaps in coverage necessitated by nonlinear relationships between revenue and expenses at different ages.
Proposal 16 :Congress should authorize special limited-use bond issues (or Federal agency bond issues) for two Health Savings Account purposes: to fund accounts of late age at enrollment within the transitional stage who have difficulty attaining self-sustaining status; and to create a permanent bridge between age groups which are in chronic deficit and age groups which are in permanent surplus, to the extent that such particular age disparities remain in balance. In both of these cases, it is calculated the accounts will eventually come into permanent balance after a full transition has taken place within current demographic trends.
Comment: With the passage of time, it should be possible to identify age groups (for example, the first five years of enrollment) which will eventually come into balance with other age groups which permanently generate a surplus. Knowing aggregate lifetime coverage will itself bring these two groups into permanent balance, it is sensible to borrow from one and loan to the other during early transitions, at minimal interest rates. Having provided for eventual coverage of these secular risks, it becomes more reasonable to extend favorable rates to them during early transition. When the slots are fully loaded, so to speak, there will always be secular fund imbalance between age groups, where market rates are always needed to cover the overall plan design. The intent of these two interest rate levels is to distinguish between a transitional phase which is temporary, leading to an equilibrium loan imbalance which is a natural part of the design.
As a practical demonstration of the superiority of equity investing over zero-sum fixed income, an invisible psychological value cannot be overstated. If our nation expects for longer longevities to rely increasingly on investments rather than salaries, it must broaden its experience with sensible risks. Whether we like the idea or not, we are collectively taking long strides toward a rentier culture, where our main hope of advancement lies in greater willingness to understand and buffer the reasons for market volatility. One of the features of even this attenuated risk-taking is to recognize that a few people will start their investing at the bottom of a dip, while most will start at the top of a peak. The long-term result will smooth it out, but some people are destined by the luck of their birthday to make more profit in an equity market, than others. And some people are destined by the timing of their illnesses to end up with less money in the account than others, too. It may not seem fair, but tampering with investment cycles will not improve it. By establishing a system of buy-ins, both as a transition step and also for late-comers, the opportunity of market-timing is created. Almost nothing is more discredited as an investment strategy than market-timing by amateurs, but it probably cannot be completely avoided here, and will probably exaggerate the differences in account size achieved by members of the same age cohort. Somehow, the attitude must be made general, that nobody can make anything at all in the accounts if we return to annual premiums; all extra money in these accounts is "found" money. The books will not balance completely at all stages, so it becomes a political question whether to forgive the difference (as Lyndon Johnson did in 1965) or to define it as a subsidy (as Barack Obama seems to be planning for his start-up insurance system.) Perhaps in accounting for residual medical costs at the end of life, a way can be found to equalize outcomes, but it seems unwise to tamper directly with such large amounts which are mainly responding to the world's inherent volatility.
There are several other serious matters. They will be briefly noted, and then an omnibus solution presented, the IIOO. Let's answer one inevitable jibe immediately: How can poor folks afford this? Answer: They have to be subsidized, that's all, just as they are in every other proposal including Obamacare. It's important to face this because neglecting it is the route by which every deficit has been incurred, every budget unbalanced. People who spend other people's money on healthcare characteristically have higher than average health costs themselves. But the novel discovery is Health Savings Accounts have generally proved to reduce costs by 30%. When both approaches operate at the same time, results are not reliably predicted but can be monitored. Miscalculations usually result in debts, dropped options and dropped amenities. A politically appointed board would be wise to refuse an assignment to address this, unless contingency instructions are clear, and remain out of their hands. When Congress eventually discovers how to put a ceiling on the national debt, effective answers to this related issue may become more apparent.
Transition from Term Most transition problems (shifting from one-year coverage to lifetime coverage) have to do with whether you are a child, whether your children are gone and forgotten, or whether you are supporting everybody else in your family. As the saying goes, how you stand will depend on where you sit. The unique borrowing problem here, is complete transition takes so long, groups will differ significantly on whether to unify forward (child to grandparent) or backward (grandparent to child), until it can be worked out how to borrow as a child and borrow for a time as a grandparent, depending on particular situations. What's to be avoided is intergenerational borrowing as groups; we've tried that. The benefits of invested premiums are obvious to all groups, but the arrangements must be debated thoroughly in order to avoid just kicking the can down the road. Almost any arrangement would suffice for a brief transition, but this transition would take so long it would amount to a Constitutional Convention when it was over. The eventual goal is to place the cost burden largely on working people age 26-75 since that is the only age group in direct contact with the national economy. The tricky part is to utilize other age groups during the transition -- and then slowly work out of it. Don't forget a third generation will intervene -- their own children, as well as their parents and grandchildren. The whole construction is a job for actuaries, but the modern use of index funds put on the table the potential of a diversified investment, absolutely without stock-picking, at favorable rates of interest, allowing room for cyclicity of the economy. America seems to need increased fertility, and the compound income might make it possible, but if it is not carefully examined, it might act as an inducement for women to delay their first child even longer than they presently do. As long as you don't get overwhelmed by too many transition issues at once, almost any intergenerational problem would be eased by generating more revenue. At ten percent, money compounds to double itself every seven years, and the resulting sums can boggle the mind. But if they are not planned for, the extra money will either vanish or induce people to act like a deer frozen in the headlights.
Making ten or twelve percent on safe investments may seem impossible to those who have recently lost thirty percent on the stock market, and of course, it is not guaranteed. That is why lifetime health insurance based on fixed income securities cannot be presented as guaranteeing payments for future services; only equity securities (stocks) can do that, and even they, mostly don't succeed in real terms, or net of inflation. Lifetime health insurance should only promise to supply a substantial portion of future health costs, and has little hope of doing so except for two possibilities. If the taxpayers would stand for it, you might deliberately overfund the accounts; since they won't, it is necessary to induce some to do it voluntarily and shrug your shoulders at those who don't. That probably won't work, either, so we are left dependent on our scientists to reduce or eliminate medical costs. They are willing enough to try, but of course, they can's guarantee. You can gamble on its happening, or you can wait until it is a sure thing. We are decades into fiat currency without the semblance of backing by monetary metals and must feel our way. However, the bright side of our present financial system is that transaction costs are steadily declining for reasonably safe passive investing. Professor Ibbotson has demonstrated that total market averages have been remarkably steady for asset classes over the past eighty years, and probably will safely remain so for another century, but that's another assumption which might go wrong. When you get down to it, you either go ahead or you don't. That's all. Investing in the total domestic stock market of America, the investment is guaranteed by the full faith and credit of America, just as surely as if invested in U.S. Treasury Bonds, and it pays a little better in return for its increased volatility.
Still another question comes from people who rightly believe there is no free lunch: Where does the extra money come from? A fast answer is that it comes from correcting a blunder of long standing, called the "pay as you go" system. To some extent, this problem began with the original Blue Cross plans of the 1920s, but it was elevated to its present stature by the Medicare and Medicaid proposals of 1965. By the pay/go approach, this year's premium money is spent for this year's sick people, not the people who paid the premiums. That ruse helped get the program started, but it means current unspent premium money is quickly gone, and thus it means no compound interest or investment income is generated by rather huge revenue collections in the future. Since health expenses rise with advancing age, a great deal of floating premium money might be invested for many decades, if only it had not already been spent. Actual projections are surprisingly large, but I would prefer that others announce their calculations, employing the motto of "Underpromise, but over-perform."
Other substantial sources of reserves exist, nevertheless. Health Savings Accounts now in operation are reporting 30% savings; since it is unlikely this record can be maintained with inpatients, who are generally older, overall savings may well turn out to be closer to 15%.
Inflation helped a lot to pay off the original startup costs of 1965, but at least nominally it is true the debt has been paid. We are now free to invest that ancient transition cost, so to speak, as long as we don't try to spend the same money twice. But there is considerable squeamishness about the public sector acquiring equity in the private sector, so Treasury bonds are about the only public sector investment the public will easily allow. Investment experts are however almost unanimous in feeling that equities provide greater long-term income (see graphs by Ibbottson) and security against inflation. On the other hand, if private individuals invest in common equity with index funds, less resistance is encountered. Any way you look at it, some investment income is better than no income, and for long-term investment, equity is better than debt. For political purposes, it would seem best to restrict investments to U.S. companies, and index funds are less controversial (i.e. "gambling with my money") for most small investors than actively managed funds, because the savings mostly come from reduced investment expenses. John Bogle is telling the world that 85% of most total return is diverted back to the financial industry, and this is one way to rebalance that. Fifty percent of investors would do better than average, fifty percent would do worse because of broad diversification, but not much worse, because total index diversification is fast approaching a maximum. Meanwhile, compound interest would be at work, and most people would be astonished to learn how large the long-term appreciation would grow. Tax-free, diversified, and long-term.
Finally, the question arises: how can you tell whether income from this source would equal the terminal care costs of fifty years from now? You can't, of course, you can't. But this transfer and invest scheme would generate a whole lot of money that presently isn't being generated. If it isn't enough, we will have to do something in addition. The monitor and mid-course correction system are expected to detect when more money is required to balance the books, and therefore more money will have to be invested in the Health Savings Accounts. If savings are insufficient, either subsidies or borrowing will have to be resorted to. Experts sometimes will be wrong, so revenue should be raised somewhat higher than the experts think we need. And if it all goes wrong, if we have an atomic war or an expensive cure for cancer, there is always the national debt. Which is where we began, isn't it.
Independent and Impartial Oversight Organization. (IIOO)After reviewing the complexities, it seems best to create an oversight body with more time and expertise that can be expected of representatives who are subject to periodic election. However, Congress must make it clear that it retains ultimate authority to break from the normal routine, occasionally concentrating its attention on conflicts between expert opinion and public opinion.
Working backward, a mixed public/private system needs an official backer of last resort, a function which cannot be delegated, and an experienced crisis management team in place with the authority to act within defined limits, most of the time. The last resort has to be the full credit of the United States, just as unfortunately it now is with Medicare. What's mainly needed is a sort of Federal Reserve in the very narrow sense of an independent management team, under the direct governance of a Board whose composition is half public, half private. To be useful, it needs a monitoring authority provided by a mandate from Congress, a comparatively limited amount of regulatory authority of its own, intentionally limited by adequate board representation from all stakeholders. The Board needs to be constantly told what is going on, and it needs general authority and trust to act in an emergency. Many proposals require a system of mid-course corrections particularly in the first decade of operation, at the same time the Board must not usurp Congressional authority.
Congress, on the other hand, must have the restraint of private oversight by technical experts who can appeal to the public, to make very certain it does not feel it has a new piggy bank. Corruption is one thing; misjudgments are quite another. Once in a while, we manage to construct such an agency.
Although this book promised, and I hope delivered, a detailed discussion of how Health Savings Accounts might work if Congress unleashed them, the original question remains. Where does so much money come from? Well, in one sense, it comes from saving $350 per year, starting at age 25 and ending at 65, earning 8% compound interest. That's if longevity remains at 83. We assume the average person has medical expenses, but we don't know how to estimate them, so we put $350 a year in escrow, and average person has to contibute more cash for medical expenses at 80 cents on the dollar (the tax exemption) until experience shows he has five or ten years pre-paid, or until he reaches an estimated cash limit. Somewhere around that point, he can stop contributing, both to the escrow fund and to incidental medical costs, until the fund catches up with him. In plain language, he gives himself a loan if his expenses are too high. These figures are based on current average costs, so the money is calculated to be present in the fund but poorly distributed. After experience accumulates, these numbers can be readjusted from present over-estimates..
The prudent way to manage future uncertainties is to over-fund them and transfer any surplus to a retirement fund.
Planning For The Future.
Curiously, if longevity goes to 93, it would seemingly only require $150 per year in escrow instead of $350. Longevity could only add ten years if we had some medical discoveries in the meantime, so let's say both the added longevity and the added cost of it, appear fifty years from now. Our hypothetical average person born today contributes $150 per year from age 25 to age 50, when he discovers increased longevity requires him to contribute $ yearly until he is 65. After that, he is all paid up until he dies at age 93. Yes, he has Medicare to account for, but his payroll withholding has already paid a quarter of Medicare cost, and if he pays Medicare premiums he will have paid another quarter of Medicare. His lifetime Health Savings Account escrow contribution would contribute $ per year, which is the present deficit of Medicare, currently being subsidized.
The amount of contribution to the escrow fund could be reduced to actual costs over time, but the prudent way to manage uncertainties is to over-fund them, planning to roll any surplus over to a retirement account. Three-hundred-fifty million Americans, times $350,000 apiece in lifetime medical costs, results in a number so large it requires a dictionary to pronounce it correctly. Cutting it in half still suggests a financial dislocation of major proportions, so out of whose pocket would it come? Even if it's a win-win game, dumping that much money into the economy sounds destabilizing. These are not legitimate reasons to avoid it, but it seems hardly credible it could happen without someone noticing a big difference. What does it do to the monetary system?
If it is assumed funds generated by this system are ultimately used to pay off accumulated debts, the result should be some degree of deflation. The Federal Reserve has already purchased several trillion dollars worth of bad debt so debt repayment would not seem to pose a threat. By contrast, inflation could become a threat if corporate taxes are reduced too rapidly, but presumably, we have learned the lesson of lowering Irish corporate taxes too rapidly. Because of international ramifications, we have to assume this threat would be recognized. Because of the nature of compound interest, it has the least effect in its early stages, and there would be sufficient warning of inflation to mobilize action. Interest rates would probably rise, but there is a cushion of several years of subnormal rates, and most people would feel the elderly have suffered enough from low rates to justify some relief.
A certain amount of trouble resulted from using the "pay as you go" model, in which current premiums pay for current expenses. That is, the money from young healthy subscribers pays the bills of old, unhealthy, ones. By that reasoning, the original subscribers in 1965 got a free ride from Medicare and never paid for it. The debt has been carried forward among later subscribers, and although it is a debt which still remains to be paid, it seems very likely no one would ever collect it. Each generation makes it a little bigger by adding subscribers and running up hidden debt charges, but at least it is accounted for. In a way, there is enough guilt feeling about this matter, that it would probably be politically safe to create a balancing fund, to be used in case there are monetary issues with this unpaid indebtedness.
Let's remember that a major part of the health financing problem can be traced to the unequal taxation exemption of big business, which traces back more than seventy years to World War II. No one welcomes reducing net income in half by any means, but reducing corporate income taxes might just be one of the few ways it could be an inducement.
No taxes, no tax exemption; it sounds pretty simple until you review the trouble the Irish Republic got into when it reduced them too fast. But when corporate taxes are the highest in the world, and international trade is threatened -- is certainly the best time to do it. And politically, when wealth redistribution has just been given a thorough pounding in the polls, is also a good time to advance the idea. If everyone would be reasonable about the details, an important tool for managing international trade could be fashioned out of needed healthcare reform. It certainly is a double opportunity.
A fiduciary puts his customer's interest ahead of his own.
The End of The World?
One way or another, the success of Health Savings Accounts will depend on crossing the tipping point, where investment income is greater than borrowing cost. These accounts will be forced to do a great deal of internal borrowing, particularly at first, when some financial information does not exist, and therefore must be deliberately over-funded. We have a reasonably workable idea of total health care costs and longevity, but an uncertain grasp of the shape of the revenue and cost curves in the middle. Inevitably, certain age groups will be in chronic debt, and others will run protracted surplus; the situation demands low-cost internal borrowing. Meanwhile, the overall prediction can be made that healthcare costs will generally be lower for young people, higher for the elderly. If the premiums of young people can be invested at least 8% net, the system should work. When we learn common stocks are averaging 11% returns, and investment intermediaries frequently capture 85% of it, the whole idea of passive investing is ruined until this is repaired. Requiring Health Savings Account agents to be, and to act like, fiduciaries is just about mandatory. A fiduciary puts his customer's interest ahead of his own. The day of opaque pricing must come to an end.
We mentioned earlier, Roger G. Ibbotson, Professor of Finance at Yale School of Management has published a book with Rex A. Sinquefield called Stocks, Bonds, Bills and Inflation. It's a book of data, displaying the return of each major investment class since 1926, the first year enough data was available. A diversified portfolio of small stocks would have returned 12.5% from 1926, about ninety years. A portfolio of large American companies would have returned 10.2% through a period including two major stock market crashes, a dozen small crashes, one or two World Wars hot and cold, and half a dozen smaller wars involving the USA. And almost even including nuclear war, except it wasn't dropped on us. The total combined American stock market experience, large, medium and small, is not displayed by Ibbotson but can be estimated as roughly yielding about 11% total return. Past experience is not a guarantee of future performance, but it's the best predictor anyone can use.
During that most recent prior century, we had a lot of crisis events, which normally bump the stock market up and down. A standard deviation is an amount it jumps around, and one standard deviation plus or minus includes by definition two-thirds of all variation. During the past ninety years, the standard deviation has been 3 percent per month or 11% per year. Standard deviations for the whole century are not meaningful because of more or less constant inflation. Throughout this book, we repeatedly describe investment income as 10%, for a simple reason: money compounded at 10% will double every seven years. Using that quick formula, it is possible to satisfy yourself what 11% can do if you hold it long enough. Since no one knows what will happen in the next 100 years, it is futile to be more precise. We may have an atomic war, or we may discover a cheap cure for cancer. But 10% is about what you can reasonably expect, doubling in seven years if you can restrain yourself from selling it during short periods when it can deviate less or more. The most uncertain time is immediately after you buy it before it has time to accumulate a "cushion". As we see, your money earns 11%, but it isn't necessarily what you will earn.
Your money earns 11%, but that isn't necessarily what you will earn.
Expecting it and getting it, can be two different things, therefore. And even if Congress establishes it, as they say in Texas, "You can't turn your head to spit." Because, for one thing, most expenses for a management company also come in its first few years, on their first few dollars of revenue. Wide experience with a cagey public, therefore, teachers experienced managers to get their costs back as soon as they can. Until most managers get to know their customers, in this trade, charging investment managing fees which amount to 0.4% annually is considered normal for funds of $10 million, so charging 1-2% for accounts under a thousand dollars is common practice. These things make it understandable that brokers are slow to lower their fees, or 12(1)bs, or $250 charges to distribute some of your proceeds. But our goal as customers is to negotiate fees reasonably approaching those of Vanguard or Fidelity, which have fees of about 0.07% on funds amounting to trillions of dollars. Such magic can only be worked by purchasing index funds from a broker who aggregates them, and also develops a smooth-running standardized service with minimal marketing costs to cover the debit card, help desk, hospital negotiating, and banking costs. And who, by the way, may make really serious income from managing pension funds, so they remain wary of antagonizing corporate customers who get a big tax deduction from giving employees their subsidized health insurance. Remember, stockbrokers are not fiduciaries; they are not expected to put the customer's interest ahead of their own. A broker sells stock to anyone who wants to buy it, even if two successive customers are bitter rivals of each other. One of the better-known brokerage houses advertises charges of $18 a year for HSA accounts over $10,000, but only after it reaches that size will it permit the customer to choose a famous low-fee index fund. With $3300 annual deposit limits, it eats up three years of your earnings even to get there. You really have to feel sorry for an industry experiencing such a general decline of net worth, but the incentive it creates is obviously for you to get the account to be over $10,000, as fast as you possibly can. To many people, those sound like staggeringly large amounts, but they are realistic at this stage of the market, if not entirely accessible to everyone.
The last few paragraphs sound like a digression, but they aren't. The question was, Where does all this money come from? Would there be wealth creation if the system favored the retail customer more, or wouldn't there be. I don't know the answer, but one likely approach is, let's try it.
Let's stop for a moment to review where we are. Several books ago, I announced my conviction that Health Savings Accounts are just about the only alternative to the Affordable Care Act to have completed all the steps of legislation, and many of the steps of establishing a national network. It has been tested over a period of thirty years and has probably discovered and corrected most of the many minor flaws to surface in testing actual operations of a big project. HSA could be implemented nationally during the sort of insurance crash which has been widely predicted. Unless it faces a national last-ditch rebellion by millions of people, a few corrective technical amendments could be added in a week, and the rest of its implementation would be temporarily solved. I'm sure I don't want to see such a thing actually happen, but if it does, I think HSA would get us through the crisis. Perhaps for that very reason, the crisis won't occur because it wouldn't accomplish much except further polarizing people. After all, most people are not desperately sick all at once, and Health Savings Accounts could patch something together for the many who are not desperately sick, while hospitals are full of administrators who know what to do. Without hysteria pushing us, of course, we could do better.
A Necklace of Pearls. A much better approach would be to continue a slightly modified Health Savings Account while we study how to add pearls to the necklace, one by one. It could be done in a year, although two or three years would be better. There are several alternatives available for demonstration projects if there is time to implement several, picking out the best ones. If our Congressmen didn't spend so much time commuting, or in the telephone call center soliciting, they might conduct a surprisingly large amount of legislation. In that sense, adding an atmosphere of urgency might be a good thing. I believe calculations demonstrated there could be plenty of money available to mount a full implementation, with only political and psychological resistance. From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima, we fought an entire World War in that much time.
Topple the Finance System? In fact, I believe the Federal Reserve would be horrified at the prospect of giving thirty million dollars to every citizen, and resistance from their direction would overall be useful in redirecting 18 percent of GDP. We don't operate on a monetary standard anymore, and yet we do. You can't be certain any printing press money would assuredly be redeemed in gold, but on the other hand, we own multiple tons of gold bullion in Fort Knox and similar places. Something could be patched together.
Start with Cost Accountants. My advice would be to start with a large team of accountants, to fan out and assess where the bodies are buried, and how bad the damage might have been. For example, I would love to know what the tangled motives could be, for hospitals to overcharge so drastically for drugs, knowing full well the insurance companies will disallow the majority of such overcharges, and their own business office will discount most of the uninsured bills. There must be some financial motive, probably rooted in some overlap between independent laws, but all I ever got from hospital accountants was a smirk when I questioned it. A whole nation has become infuriated with such billing practices which seldom result in much revenue. It took me years to figure out why outpatient charges tend to be so much higher than inpatient ones for the same service, and why business executives force employees into captive insurance policies in spite of "job lock" and associated unpleasantness resulting from employer ownership of the policies. And so forth. The basic question is, what is preventing market forces from holding prices down. Please don't just give up and ask for more stringent price controls. Just take a hard look at indirect overhead costs, for example. Health insurers surely must know some of the answers; shake tips out of their accounting retirees.
And so we come to reversing the payment flow. If you only increase the revenue, don't be surprised if prices rise to wipe out the profit margin. The first part of this book solves a lot of problems by providing more money to the patients. We must establish a balance between fluctuating costs and cash flow which creates a competition between retirement income and health provider income, each of which is unrestrained. Instead, they should restrain each other if we design the system to encourage it.
109 Volumes
Philadephia: America's Capital, 1774-1800 The Continental Congress met in Philadelphia from 1774 to 1788. Next, the new republic had its capital here from 1790 to 1800. Thoroughly Quaker Philadelphia was in the center of the founding twenty-five years when, and where, the enduring political institutions of America emerged.
Philadelphia: Decline and Fall (1900-2060) The world's richest industrial city in 1900, was defeated and dejected by 1950. Why? Digby Baltzell blamed it on the Quakers. Others blame the Erie Canal, and Andrew Jackson, or maybe Martin van Buren. Some say the city-county consolidation of 1858. Others blame the unions. We rather favor the decline of family business and the rise of the modern corporation in its place.