The headline above is a public policy idea for the Trump Administration and for the Republican majorities in the House and the Senate.
Private foundations have an obligation to make lives better, not worse.
Plan ahead: The coming cutback/elimination of the Affordable Care Act will create transition challenges for the poorest and most vulnerable individuals and families. The line item Climate Change should be replaced by Health Care in foundation budgets.
People come first!
Comments welcome!
Thanks for this: never underestimate the power of the vote. Watching until the early hours, was like watching American group think of the most “independent” and positive manner, and if that sounds like an oxymoron, that is a good one. State after state, a clear vote for taking control of a seriously important destiny: one that impacts global policies and individual communities world wide. We wish Mr. Trump and his team a very successful transition, and know that America is already great, because it always has been, and continues to be the biggest experiment in Democracy ever known.
Rob:
Pertaining to the Environmental and Energy realm: the US (and its states) should adopt technical policies that are genuinely Science based.
Right now, our energy and environmental policies are written by lobbyists — who are paid to represent either the economic and/or political interests of their clients. Any connection of their policies with Science is inadvertent and accidental.
Such unscientific policies turn out to be much more expensive than projected, accomplish much less than promised, and have numerous unintended (but predictable) negative consequences.
The solution is simple: require that all technical policies be truly Science based.
This is a great idea, Rob! There will indeed be transition pains when Obamacare gets repealed and replaced (as it should be), and the tens of millions now being spent on climate-alarm-related activities could be far better used helping the poor through that transition.
What we effectively have for a health care system is an hollow pledge with no skin in the game by the beneficiary that they have paid anything into the system. This increases doctors patient load by 30% and cuts their time with each patient accordingly. For most of us we can’t even get to see a doctor and only get seen by a nurse practitioner. So for those who can afford it we seek concierge medicine on a cash payment basis. For those with less means, “universal coverage” under Obamacare only means that those who qualify for subsidies can use it but many don’t have the cash to pay the deductibles and avoid the doctor altogether thus still eventually ending up in a hospital emergency room with a critical condition. I support Robert Bradley’s call to dissolve the system and abolish all Climate Change funding by the Federal government and divert it to the medically vulnerable and reestablish a new health care financing system.
In a report “Federal Climate Change Expenditure Report to Congress” (August 2013) the breakdown of the climate change expenditures was an obscene $21.4 billion, broken down as follows:
US Global Change Research Program $2.658 billion
Clean Energy Technologies $7.933 billion
International Assistance $893 million
Natural Resourced Adaptation $110 million
Energy Tax Provisions That May Reduce Greenhouse Gases $5.129 billion
Energy Payment in Lieu of Tax Provisions $4.710 billion
Total $21.408 billion
See here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/legislative_reports/fcce-report-to-congress.pdf
I live on the east side of the pond but I have always felt that the USA is my second nation for the fact that US policies have always been of utmost help to Europe and the rest of the world. What happens in the US will always reverberate across the whole planet. Reagan had destroyed the Soviet Union while his predecessors kept communism at bay. Europe is free because American boys gave up their lives together with those of other European nations to save us from tyranny, three timss last century.
With the election of Obama began the road down a slippery slope which nearly neutered the US miltary, sent jobs to China, put Israel at risk by empowering Iran and letting Isis have a free run in Iraq and Syria not to mention terrorism inside the US itself.
I had lost all hope of the USA saving itself from self destruction but Trump did the impossible (God’s intervention?) and swept all the spiders from the White House, now he will sweep Wall Street and the institutions; FBI, IRS, the military,foreign policies, the big lie of climate change and of course chsaper enery which will result Iin more jobs and more money remaining in the poor man’s pocket.
Amen to all the above. Just don’t leave out the crony environmentalism of deep decarbonization and all of the UN agenda it entails.
Totally agree. There are too many such matters that are real and present threats to our well-being that should be addressed with the funding and attention that is being given to global warming.
Great idea. Keep Energy in America Great Again
[…] after the election of Donald Trump last November, I posted a provocative piece, 1) Eliminate Obamacare 2) Challenge Private Foundations to Divert all Global Warming Spending to Hea…. With a climate reset coming, and the imperative to repeal or shrink Obamacare, I saw an […]