Let’s face the fact that no one likes the health care system. Doctors hate it. Hospitals hate it. Insurance companies hate it. Employers hate it. Insured employees hate it. Uninsured people hate it. The rich hate it. The poor hate it. I can’t think of the last time that someone stopped me in conversation and said, “I just love the health care situation in this country.” In my lifetime that has never happened.

Let’s agree one this. It’s completely broken. We all hate it.

If you were to see the true balance sheet of your families expenses, chances are health care would rank #1, #2, or #3. If you are self-employed you know the exact cost of your health care coverage per month. For those of us who get it through our employers we don’t see that monthly bill… but let me tell you, it’s expensive! Typically, an individual is about $300, a couple about $700, and a family around $1,000 per month. Rank that it your balance sheet and you’ll see that the big three expenses in your household are likely housing, health care, and taxes. Whereas housing and taxes largely track with inflation, over the past decade the cost of health care has increased 8-10% per year.

So when your politicians stand up to block reform you need to start asking questions!

If 99% of the people in your neighborhood recognize that health care is broken and needs to be fixed and your congressperson stand against changing the system you need to start following the money trail.

- What kind of money is your politician receiving from the health insurance lobbyists?

- Who is donating to that persons campaign fund?

- When they go to parties, out to eat, or on trips in Washington… who foots the bill?

- Who does their spouse work for? Their other relatives?

- What committee does that person sit on?

- Who are that persons new allies?

- What boards does this politician serve on in their private life?

Follow the money and you will see why elected officials stand in the face of health care reform. This is about money, not politics. Lots and lots of money. These politicians (Democrats and Republicans alike) have to protect the cash cow that keeps their jobs in Washington.

I have a very strong opinion on who broke health care… which is why I am so happy to see who is trying to fix it. My opinion is that the Clinton Administration killed health care in an effort to reform it. In 1992, the Clinton Administration amended the laws for directly marketing prescription drugs to consumers. Suddenly, the air waves were flooded with drug commercials. People would start to go to their doctor and demand a name brand drug. Consequently, the usage of drugs shot up and the cost of prescription coverage began an upward spiral that is still out of control today. Drug companies, driven by Wall Street’s hunger for profit, searched for new drugs to market, and then took full advantage of antiquated intellectual property laws. While no one would argue that pharmaceutical companies shouldn’t profit from their products, no President has taken on the very core issue of out-of-control drug costs. The patent rights of drug companies have never changed. Read up on generic drugs and you’ll see that the drug companies consider cheap equivalents the enemy and not the solution. Ultimately, the drug industry is about money and not about health care. Lots and lots of money.

HIPPA is another Clinton-era health care reform idea that is destroying health care in America. Signed into law in 1996 and enacted, coincidentally, a month after George W. Bush took office in 2000, the law has a great name with a horrible cost. The provisions require health care companies to make their business as inefficient as possible for the sake of alleged privacy and security concerns. Basically, enacting and enforcing the new laws costs billions of dollars per year when health care companies already had a vested interest in protecting privacy, making sure insurance was portable, and making sure digital records were secure. The law just increased the health care industries administration costs by 10% across the board to be certified as compliant. It made doctors get paid slower. It made it more difficult to get quality customer service. It added hundreds of checks and balances for things that weren’t systemic problems. And most of the law made your insurance anything but portable! In the end, HIPAA has only made your health care more expensive.

Clinton’s inability to protect the not-for-profit health insurance (mostly BlueCross/Blue Shield plans) from being bought out by for-profit businesses ruined the balance between quality health care and profitability. In the mid-1990′s regional health care companies started using their ample cash reserves (aka, the holdings of an insurance company) to purchase other regional plans, go public, and liquidate their cash reserves. Overnight, publicly traded companies like Anthem and Well Point bought out not-for-profit companies across the country. (They actually merged in 2004 to make a mega-insurance giant.) During the Clinton administration the number of private not-for-profit health insurance companies went from about 100 to 3-4. These small plans had always lived off reserves in bad times and banked money in good times. They had kept costs low. They had kept rates reasonable. But once these for-profit companies took power they demanded annual profits. Something the industry just couldn’t do every year!

So with rising cost of administrating plans, rising costs of drugs, rising costs of the technology required to live within the laws, and a new requirement to turn an annual profit… where was the only place to get more money? Consumers.

The health care industry has a lot to hide and a lot of interest in making sure fundamental changes don’t occur. They are going to protect their interest. Drug companies don’t want to reform the marketing laws or the patent laws, so their lobbyists will funnel billions to members of Congress they think they can influence. For-profit health insurance companies have actually learned to like the cash-cow known as HIPPA, so they will fill pockets to make sure that doesn’t get reformed. And Wall Street requires both drug companies and for-profit health insurance companies to turn a profit… so they will cough up lots of money to make sure reform doesn’t happen.

I firmly believe Clinton broke  health care. That’s why I’m happy to see Obama trying to fix it. This isn’t Democrat vs. Republican. This is a President acting on behalf of the people of this country who need health care reform today. They can’t wait until 2010.

In the end, if people like you and me don’t ask simply questions and publicize the answers we won’t see health care reform, in any form, happen. Again, this isn’t politics… this is about money to them. (To us it’s about our health as well.) The drug companies and insurance giants want to stay the same!

What about the press? Sadly, I don’t think we can count on the media to chase this story. They are on the take as well. Turn on the radio or TV and you’ll see ads like crazy from the health care industry saying they don’t want reform. It should be no surprise that CNN, NBC, CBS, Fox, or ABC aren’t following the money trail, they are all on the take too.

I’ve had several people ask me about the President’s speech in Cairo yesterday. Here are a few thoughts.

- I like the new methodology of this president. He recognizes that you can’t walk into every situation and say, ““We’re America, we know how to do everything.”
- President Obama understands that culture is important. He gets that you can’t walk into a foreign country and expect the audience to understand what you are doing and saying if you only do things in “American ways.”
- President Obama and his cabinet are proving that they are willing to listen and learn. Talk to anyone who isn’t American or do some traveling outside of North America and you’ll understand that this is important. Americans suffer from ethno-centricity… it is our greatest weakness as a people.
- President Obama understands that aggression without diplomacy just leads to more violence. President Bush never seemed to get that. Dick Cheney seems to think that the United States is modern day Rome. In a nuclear world you can’t maintain pax romana. Just like Rome fell because of its arrogance that it was too big to fall, Bush was leading us down the same road.
- President Obama understands that we living in a pluralistic society. Conversely, his approaches seek to work within pluralism as opposed to trying to fight it. Bush is an extremely intelligent man. But he let his personal ideology leads us array.
- President Obama doesn’t see the war on terror as a holy war between Muslims and Christians. Just like the Koran talks of world domination by Muslims the Bible speaks of the same for Christians. Read Revelation from a Muslim perspective, can you see why they might think we intend to steal their land? By changing the language from religion to justice or other issues… I like our chances better.
- President Obama is using his Islamic background as a diplomatic advantage for our nation. When he quoted the Koran and pronounced words correctly in this speech, this is a very good thing. It shows respect for Muslim culture. I can imagine this got the hard core Republicans panties in a bind… as if Bush never quoted the Koran! He would have used Arabic words if he could have pronounced them!
- Acknowledging the United States was wrong to torture people is good diplomacy. Just look at the ill-will the Vatican fostered by not acknowledging their role in the Holocaust for so long. The first step towards recovery must now be backed up with “living I’m sorry.” Bush/Cheney still think torturing people was right.
- President Obama’s approach is akin to good missions work. You cannot go into diplomatic situations with an attitude of “I’m smart, let me lead you to the right answer.” You have to meet people half way and ask them to give up some of their presuppositions and prejudices as well to meet you half way. Bush would have seen this as an act of cowardice when in the rest of the world sees it as an act of courage.
- President Obama acknowledges the fact that you can be the world’s sole superpower with enough nuclear and financial power to destroy the planet 10 times over. But that doesn’t equal peace. In order to stop the war on terror you have to be a part of fixing the problems that caused it in the first place. Bush/Cheney used a might = right methodology that just didn’t work.

There are many signs that the new administration is doing a lot to better our place in the world’s opinion. I know Americans don’t believe this… but people really don’t see us as having the moral legs to stand on to call ourselves the world’s superpower. We see ourselves as something we are not in the world. While Obama’s methods make conservative Christians cringe… they need to put down their Obama-hating lenses long enough to see that he really is doing some incredible things.

It bears reminding conservative Obama-haters that John F. Kennedy was not liked by hard core conservatives during his presidency. Of course, looking back we now see a President most would agree did tremendous things for human rights and the advancement of America as a world power.

I suppose I’m just naive. With nearly every state clamoring about a loss of jobs why aren’t more states raising their hands and saying, “Yes, we’d like those detainees in my state. Give us the money to build the prison and we’ll house them forever.” Actually, Colorado is asking for them.

If I’m Jennifer Granholm, I’d lobby to build a new Supermax prison in Saginaw or Flint. A billion for my state as well as $200 million per year to look after them? Sign me up!

It’s silly to make the inference that somehow these detainees will be allowed into general population. Just like its silly to assume that the country is somehow more safe because they are in Cuba vs. them being in the United States. It’s a prison. It’s not like they are going to walk out and get jobs! There aren’t any jobs to be had!

Of course, there are real reasons to keep them off of U.S. soil. If they are brought to the United States it implies that they are legally detained. I think there is an open debate as to whether the United States can legally detain people indefinitely.

Should Guantanamo be closed? It’s become a symbol of how the Bush administration handled the war on terror. For that reason Obama wants it gone.  He wants to fight terrorism in a different way. ItClosing it doesn’t really solve the problem… but Obama is now caught in a catch-22. He now has the information he didn’t have when he made the campaign promise to close it. But now if he doesn’t close it he has to admit that Bush was right to have it there in the first place.

What do I think about Barack Obama speaking at Notre Dame’s commencement? I think it is awesome!

While I wasn’t fortunate enough to attend Notre Dame, I did grow up around the campus… spending more than my fair share of time trespassing and dreaming that I could go there. As the largest employer in my hometown you don’t need to be an alumni or staff at the school to get the feel for Notre Dame. So take my opinions with a grain of salt. I grew up pretty close to campus and spent a lot of my time squatting in the library in high school.

With that said, here are 5 things that come to mind about our President speaking at Notre Dame on Sunday.

1. There is racial tension on campus. Indiana, as a whole, still has a long way to go in relations between whites and blacks. Notre Dame has experienced significant issues along racial lines as recently as 5 years ago when Ty Willingham was fired as head football coach. For as long as I can remember there has been this weird thing that while the football team and basketball team (the pride of the campus) has been predominantly black… the majority of students are white. Walk around the campus and you’ll see people from dozens of ethnic backgrounds. Pakistani’s, Israeli’s, Russians, Indians, on and on. I love that the University continues to be proactive in addressing the tensions.

2. Notre Dame isn’t the most Catholic place on earth. While Notre Dame is largely seen as the bastion of American Roman Catholicism, it is also a modern university. Like any modern university there is an acceptance of divergent points of view. Just like Harvard doesn’t have every policy dictated by its religious background, Notre Dame doesn’t have every move governed by the Vatican. You don’t have to be Catholic to attend the University, nor do you have to be Catholic to teach at Notre Dame. More than most Presidents, Barack Obama is qualified as an academic… who knows, once this gig as President is over he may be teaching in the law school!

3. Notre Dame has given honorary degrees to the last eight sitting Presidents. The South Bend Tribune does a great job documenting who has received degrees (much more than Presidents) and just looking at the list, you’ll see that this fervor has more to do with the media being bored than it really being a true issue for Notre Dame. Hank Aaron, Neil Armstrong, William F. Buckley Jr., J. Edgar Hoover, Erma Bombeck, Stephen Hawking, Coretta Scott King, Harper Lee, Condoleezza Rice, Bill Cosby, Lech Walesa and Elie Wiesel.

4. It is an honor to have a sitting President speak at your commencement. Whether you are a Republican or Democrat or even from another country… it’s an honor to have your commencement address delivered by the President of the United States. I’m totally jealous. I have no idea who the guy was who spoke at my graduation. Nor do I remember a single thing he said.

5. This is really about dragging the President into the abortion debate. Let’s call it what it is, right? Notre Dame has a long history of inviting the President to speak at commencement. Certainly looking at that list above you don’t see a list of people who agree with every point of Roman Catholicism. This is a transparent attempt by the media to bring the old lithmus test thing into the Supreme Court nomination process. Watch how CNN and FoxNews do it. They feature a story about Obama at Notre Dame and then segway into the Supreme Court discussion without tying the two. We’re not that stupid!

HT to GeoEye

I am filled with joy while watching the Inauguration. It is a memorable moment I’m happy to share with my kids. It is a celebration of a three part system of government. The executive system is sworn into office by the judicial system on the steps of the representative system. The distribution of power is one of the most enchanting things of our government. It’s fun to see that celebrated so peacefully today.

Like so many people, I am filled with hope today as Barack Obama takes office. Change is a word that rings true in my ears. This morning as I was reflecting on the day I couldn’t help but realize that Barack Obama fulfills my dream pretty well… He is crazy enough to change the world, literally. In his case, his dream is being fulfilled and that gives little people like me hope that my crazy dreams for change can come true too.

I’m as excited about the Obama presidency as everyone else seems to be. But I have to say… all of the hype about Obama kind of scares me.

I thought it would be good, 24 hours before Barack Obama kicks off the biggest party in Washington D.C.’s history, to reflect back 8 years to throw out some cautionary perspective. Come on the wayback machine with me…

# 1 President Bush took office with high expectations. He was the no nonsense conservative outsider who was going to bring pride back to the White House. Sound familiar?

#2 We were all sick of Bill Clinton. OK, maybe not everyone. But the news hounds were crying about last minute pardons and whether or not Bill Clinton would be further prosecuted for his breaching the law while in office. Sound familiar?

#3 Bush was a reformer. He had a proven track record in Texas. With a republican majority in Congress and a couple of Supreme Court justices getting ready for retirement, happy days were ahead for the republican party. Sound familiar?

#4 Bush was a centrist. He talked a lot of trash about working with democrats. His “No Child Left Behind” action was right out of the democratic playbook. (Minus the money to make it happen.) But when it came to picking his cabinet it was all hard core conservatives. Sound familiar?

#5 Bush was a populist. As Bush took office, people celebrated! Inaugural balls “for the people,” tax cuts for everyone, and magical checks in the mail were very popular moves. Sound familiar?

#6 Clinton was openly mocked on every channel. As the Bush presidency began Saturday Night Live, David Letterman, and Jay Leno all lined up on a regular basis to make fun of Bill & Hillary. As Bush took office the media showed a lot of respect. The Bush twins were off-limits to the media and seen as innocent lambs. Sound familiar?

#7 Democrats hung their heads in shame. In 2001, the democrats were clearly not in power. The more they fought for Al Gore and the more they complained about how Bush stole the election, the more the public said the democratic party is out of touch. Sound familiar?

This all reminds me again of God’s people. Our hope isn’t in government. Our hope isn’t in a leader. Our hope isn’t in our church. Our hope isn’t in the economy. Our hope isn’t in our family. Our hope is only in Jesus.

With just under 2 weeks until Barack Obama is sworn in as president you can kind of feel the excitement in the air flowing from Washington. Every news anchor now lets their tongue slide across the words, “President-elect Obama” as if they’ve been practicing it their whole lives. I can’t hear them say it and not think of the joy in the streets on election night in Chicago.

Reflecting on that, I saw something I wrote exactly one year ago. It made me wonder if this hope for our next president will be true of Barack Obama.

In an age where news is so emergent, where technology develops so fast, and where so much more is known today than was known yesterday… I want a president who changes their mind. I want a president who doesn’t “pre-decide” on every single issue and go on their voting record into the future, but can be convinced by the evidence presented. I want a president who responds to the present situation. I want a president who cuts the baby in half to come up with the best solution. I want a president who has the best interest of the nation in mind and not the best interest of himself or his party.

All this to reiterate: The winner of the 2008 election will be the candidate who captivates the American people’s attention with ideas, uses the internet the best, and can prove that they can/will lead the American people.

Flip-flopper? So 2004.

Not to sound like Rush Limbaugh, but “I predicted that” the weakness of John Kerry would be the strength of the candidate who won the election. One candidate said ‘I will lead the way I always have” and lost in a landslide to the one who said, “it’s a new day and we need to make decisions in the present.”

I just wonder if it’s going to be as easy to do that now that he’ll be our president?

My other reflection is a fear. I am fearful that too many, especially the young, have put their hope in Obama. He is just a man. He will fail. He cannot live up to everyone’s lofty expectations. The change they voted for won’t be seen much on January 21st. And I hope that disappointment in Obama doesn’t lead to bitterness for our government.

Now that we’re a bit removed from the elections the picture is getting more clear to see how exactly Obama won roughly 70% of the electoral college. While I’m sure there are tons of political types on television who will take the politics of it apart, I thought I’d offer some observations of the campaign from a marketing perspective.

#1 Obama’s website was an amazing expression of web 2.0. There were tons of places to leave comments and get involved. You could create an account at my.barackobama.com and even get lists of people to call! McCain’s site tried to catch up but, like Hillary Clinton’s failed site before him, it was too little too late. I said over and over again that the candidate with the best website would get to move to the White House, do you believe me now?

#2 “Change” as a campaign slogan. Obama told supporters, “We’re going to bring change” [inclusive language] and that left McCain with the only marketing response available, “this is what I’m going to do.” [singular language] A “we” message is always more appealing than a singular “me” message.

#3 A better chant. From the onset of Obama’s campaign tens of thousands of people chanted “Yes we can!” at rallies. I was shocked to hear it for the first time at the RNC and doubly shocked to hear “drill baby drill” as the chant of the Republican party rallies. It’s as if they didn’t care about voters in the middle or swing voters at all. “Drill baby drill” is offensive on a lot of levels and a horrible marketing slogan!

#4 Obama got on the right side of attack ads. It’s not that Obama didn’t have nasty ads, it’s that he took the defensive stance of “that’s all they have is negative campaigning” first. So every time the McCain’s marketing campaign put out an attack on Obama, the Democrats had already put the defense in the head of their people watching the ads. “That’s all McCain has left… negative ads.” This is not just good politics it’s good marketing!

#5 The pendulum was swinging to the left hard favoring Obama. I think the person who could distance himself from George W. Bush the most (from a marketing perspective, that is.) faired the best. The pendulum of American politics had swung super far to the right with GW Bush to the point that it was just going to swing hard to the left. In the process, on election night you saw some traditional Republican states go to the Democrats. There was no way to market a conservative agenda in this election, which was more evidence that Palin was the wrong candidate for VP. McCain would have done better, from a marketing perspective, with a more liberal VP pick. Going to the right of himself was a bad marketing move… conservative religious voters were already locked in.

#6 Rock star status. Let’s face it… Obama’s ability to draw massive crowds had a huge impact from beginning to end. The McCain campaign drew small crowds of mostly white supporters to their rallies. This was never more clear that at the party conventions. Games sprung up on Twitter to find the minority at the RNC. Again it was the popular “yes we can” vs. the small “I have the experience.” Tough on marketing for mass appeal.

#7 We vs. Me. I’ve alluded to this a couple of times but it deserves more attention. Obama would say “we can bring change to Washington” a lot and McCain often said “I know how to change Washington.” Which is more appealing? Which is easier to market? I’d like to know how I can be a part of changing our nation much more than I’d like to support a single person, claiming to be a maverick, who claims to know how to change Washington. It was a marketing trap McCain couldn’t get out of!

#8 The Fey/Palin connection. Unlike some other people, I think Tina Fey actually helped Palin from a marketing perspective. When you looked at the polls it was clear McCain would lose several weeks ago, from an electoral college perspective. In making fun of Palin I think Saturday Night Live actually created a hit out of a dud. I have no doubt that there will be a hockey mom on tour with Women of Faith soon.

#9 Bad color choices. I don’t mean race. I mean the colors of the campaign merchandise, websites, emails, etc. McCain’s stuff looked very presidential and reminded voters of the incumbent Bush. Go back and look at some of Obama campaign stuff and you’ll see how he used colors to distinguish his campaign from it’s “blue” heritage. In their minds blue = President Bush = bad. McCain’s Indiana State flag rip-off just reminded your sub-conscious how much he looked and talked like Bush. Bad marketing move there. The flipside is that once Obama hit the homestretch and it was clear he would win the election… nearly everything he did was using Presidential colors. His acceptence speach was one penguin away from being a White House event.

What about you? Where did you think Obama or McCain did a good or bad job from a marketing perspective?

Note: I originally wrote this to publish on November 6th. But it was clear most folks weren’t ready to think abstractly about the elections just yet… are you ready now?

I’m always amazed at my inability to blog from NYWC. I think it’s a combination of my insane schedule and a lack of good internet connectivity. More importantly, I feel like I don’t have much to share while in the midst of NYWC since I’m soaking it in so deeply.

So here are some random thoughts in no particular order.

- I’m looking forward to getting season one of “NYWC as a YS staffer” out of the way. 2008 has been a major learning curve for me. I feel like I admit ignorance way too much. I look forward to 2009 because I’ll be more useful beyond what I was able to handle here. I know that is gray and fuzzy, I don’t want to bore anyone with details.

- I’ve said this before but I want to say it again, people are people no matter what they do. I’ve had some stirring conversations with speakers and authors… but I’ve also had very similar conversations with people who don’t write or speak for a living.

- Nashville is a great convention location. I love the arena environment!

- A ton of people asked me if the convention gets boring having gone to all 3. No, not boring. Not really repetitive. If it were boring I would need to find a new job.

- I have huge respect for convention volunteers. My only frame of reference is a PGA Tour event. I think it’s a lot like that. Simply put, if we didn’t have the volunteer we couldn’t do it. Thanks to our volunteers!

- I’ve gotten more sleep than in Pittsburgh. The reality is that my body is just waking up at 5:30 AM Pacific time. My roommate, Andy Thompson, thought I was kidding. With no alarm I woke up at exactly 5:30 on Friday morning. Today I woke up at 5:27.

- Security at the Sommet Center is a little crazy. They are diligent, to say the least.

- Is it really Christmas shopping season?

- It’s true. I’m staying over on Monday night so I can get a good nights sleep before going home. I felt like my recovery process after Pittsburgh was elongated by my lack of chillaxing.

- I’m looking forward to checking out the details of Obama’s transition team when I get home.

- Mark Yaconelli, pictured above, brought the funk today.

- I am thankful for Ian [Dude] Robertson. Every time I do an interview I am praying I don’t ruin it. It’s happened, it’s embarassing and every shoot makes me wish I knew more about the camera.

- Just heard this on the Nashville news, “NASA astronaughts are working on their hardest project ever, they are installing a device that will make drinking water out of urine.“