It is a good thing that Paul Ryan was chosen by Mitt Romney
to run with him on the same ticket as they seek to get elected president and
vice president of the United
States . I make this judgment not because it
will be good for America
and the world if they win but because it will be a good dry run for Paul Ryan
to have run at all. This experience should prepare him for when the time will
favor him best -- which could be four years from now or later -- at which time
he could run for vice president or even president. And when you consider Ryan's
young age, the wait should not be too much of a bother.
You get a sense of all this when you read his publication:
“The Path to Prosperity. A blueprint for American renewal.” What grabs you when
you read his words, and expose yourself to his thoughts is that he is a sincere
young man who is endowed with an above average intelligence. He is concerned
about the state in which his country finds itself, and he wants to do something
about it. The trouble is that while showing a high degree of maturity for
someone his age, he may not have matured enough to turn his concern into
realistic approaches and policies that will help him realize his goals.
This becomes apparent when you discover that he has not yet
connected in his mind the ideas that have a natural affinity with each other.
For example, being on the campaign trail for a number of days, he has talked
about the dysfunctional state of governance in America , especially the Congress
which is an institution he knows well having worked there for fourteen years.
He also criticized President Obama for not being enough of a leader, promising
that he and Romney will lead. These are big thoughts you say to yourself, but
you wonder if the dysfunction of which he is talking, and the lack of
leadership to which he is pointing are clichés he tosses in the air because
other pundits are tossing them, or if they are a part of a bigger picture he
has in his head.
When people who are mature add experience to their maturity,
they paint a complete canvas of reality as they see it. This would be a picture
in which all the parts fit together and form a smooth and integrated whole.
When new information is made available to these people, or when they live
through a new experience, they modify the canvas to make it conform to the new
reality while still maintaining the integrity of the picture. By contrast, when
people lack experience, they show a deficiency when they start to describe
complex situations. What they do is toss in the air clichés that do not fit
together. Instead of painting a smooth canvas, they create a collage of pieces,
the edges of which may blend in a few places but clash almost everywhere else.
You see an example of this in Paul Ryan's publication. Under
the subtitle: “Restoring Economic Freedom,” he writes this: “The President's
health care law is the crown jewel of the new crony politics.” This is without
a doubt a cliché he picked up because everyone else has been tossing it. The
trouble is that it clashes with what he has been saying about the dysfunction
of governance and about the lack of leadership he says is displayed by
President Obama. You come to this conclusion because past presidents who have
shown strong leadership abilities were the ones who brought together big
government, big business and big labor to iron out the right deal when the
nation found itself in difficult times – as did, for example, President Kennedy
when he brought under the auspices of his government, the big steel companies and
the big labor unions.
The current health care situation being a difficult time in America , you
would expect Ryan to urge a formula under which the executive branch would
bring to the table all the stakeholders so as to iron a deal that will satisfy
everyone. But this is not what he asks for. Instead, he complains about this:
“The law [ObamaCare] increases the discretionary power of the bureaucrats [and]
of those … in the health care industry that are big enough to secure themselves
a seat at the table.” What he dislikes about the law is that the bureaucrats
are unelected and unaccountable, he says. What did he expect? That all
bureaucrats be elected to form a congress of several million bureaucrats?
Clearly, Paul Ryan needs time to blend all the notions inside his head, as well
as fashion a complete and smooth canvas that is not the mere tossing of clichés
he plucks from the air.
Under the subtitle: “Strengthening Health and Retirement
Security,” he writes this: “The new health care law empowers bureaucrats at the
expense of patients and providers, setting up … a board … tasked with cutting
Medicare through formulaic rationing.” This too is a cliché that has been
tossed in the air since before Paul Ryan was old enough to know what formulaic
rationing means. And yet, to explain it, he uses another cliché that is no less
false in describing what was intended by the legislators who passed the law.
This is the sentence he uses to describe what he has in mind:
“One-size-fits-all Washington based decisions to restrict certain treatments
punish beneficiaries by hitting all providers of the same treatment with
across-the-board cuts, with no regard to measures of quality or patient
satisfaction.” This is a mouthful, I tell you.
What is misinformed about that passage, and where it
misleads the public is that it confuses buying insurance with buying a tie, for
example. To see this, we look at the expression: “One-size-fits-all.” Unlike a
tie that you take it or leave it because it fits you or it does not; because it
satisfies you or it does not -- an insurance policy has a basic coverage to
which you can add a few more things, if you like, but for which you will be
asked to pay a higher premium.
Now, when the insurance policy deals with a situation where
a human life may be involved, such as auto insurance, fire insurance or health
insurance, a basic premium is requested for the basic coverage that will be
necessary. And this is what is provided in the law that Ryan is condemning;
something he does, not because he knows what he is condemning but because he
threw at it a cliché, the origin of which he probably does not know because he
never bothered to check.
However, something similar to that kind of coverage exists
in all the advanced nations, including here in Canada where I live. Being a
senior, I don't even pay a premium and I am covered for everything that is not
cosmetic. If I want that, I can buy additional coverage. But get this now my
friend, when it comes to the drug plan, they make exceptions where needed. For
example, if a new drug comes to market that my doctor (and my doctor alone)
decides is good for me, I get it and pay nothing extra no matter how expensive
it is. When the drug goes past the patent period and is copied by the cheaper
generics, I am supposed to switch to them unless something about them clashes
with my condition, in which case I stay with the original. In fact, I am now
taking one such drug despite the fact that it costs several times the generic
copy. In my books, this is not one-size-fits-all, and neither is it rationing.
If it were, I would have said: give me more rationing because it keeps me alive
and I like it.
This is quality good enough for me; quality that satisfies
me fully. But if someday I develop a different need or a different taste, I can
always buy additional coverage and pay a premium for it. In fact, there are all
kinds of companies advertising all the time about the extended coverage they
would provide for what premium. So far, I have said to them thanks but no
thanks. This is my prerogative; it is my choice – because when the law was
enacted here, no Paul Ryan was around to deprive me and my compatriots of it
using demagoguery or misinformed and misleading clichés.
This young man, has some ways to go before acquiring the necessary
experience which, when added to his innate intelligence, could develop into a
formidable asset for his country. But if he gets the honor too soon, he may get
caught in the day to day operations, and end up as only a flash in the pan that
could have been but never was.