Tag Archives: Merriam-Webster

‘Merit’ Under Attack

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Merriam-Webster defines merit as follows:

a obsolete : reward or punishment due

b : the qualities or actions that constitute the basis of one’s deserts Opinions of his merit vary.

c : a praiseworthy quality : virtue but originality, as it is one of the highest, is also one of the rarest, of merits— E. A. Poe

d : character or conduct deserving reward, honor, or esteem also : achievement composed a number of works of merit — H. E. Starr

The concept behind the definition is that something is earned. A person’s conduct, character, or actions deserve either a positive or negative response–generally today it implies a positive response.

The following quote is from an ABC News article posted yesterday:

“I want to just say something about the word that they use ‘merit.’ It is really a condescending word,” Pelosi said. “Are they saying family is without merit? Are they saying most of the people who have ever come to the United States in the history of our country are without merit because they don’t have an engineering degree? Certainly we want to attract the best to our country and that includes many people from many parts of society.”

I would like to point out that the most of the people who came to the United States came before the existence of the welfare state. Their ‘merit’ was their willingness to work to build America. Unfortunately many of the people now arriving lack that ‘merit.’ Many are coming here looking for a free lunch.

I am not opposed to family immigration, but we need to look at the consequences of having family immigration as the majority of our immigration. Uncle Fred might have been a successful farmer in his younger years, but his best years are behind him. His medical needs have increased and his ability to work has decreased. It may be the humane thing to do to reunite Uncle Fred with his family and give him the medical care he needs, but it is the humane thing to do while our veterans are waiting years for medical care that they have earned?

Can we afford to have an immigration system not based on what will help our country remain prosperous? Again, I am not opposed to family immigration, but we need to be certain that the people we bring into America will help build America and not be a burden on the people already here.

Merit doesn’t necessarily mean an engineering degree, but it does mean an ability to assimilate into America, work hard, and be an asset to themselves and to their community.

Thoughts For The New Year

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The following is from In God We Still Trust by Dr. Richard G. Lee:

“Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” from President George Washington’s Farewell Address 1796

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” John Adams, U.S. President 1797-1801

“We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.” James Madison, U. S. President 1809-1817

Dr. Lee also points out how a change in definition of a word reflects a concerning change in our society:

Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828, defines patriotism as follows:

n. Love of one’s country; the passion which aims to serve one’s country, either in defending it from invasion, or protecting its rights and maintaining its laws and institution in vigor and purity. Patriotism is the characteristic of a good citizen, the noblest passion that animates a man in the character of a citizen.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, copyright @ 2004 defines patriotism as follows:

n. Love for or devotion to one’s country.

Noah Webster’s definition includes service; Merriam-Webster’s definition is simply an emotion. Noah Webster’s definition includes action, not just acceptance of an idea.

It is time to return to Noah Webster’s definition of patriotism.

Corporatism In America

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Corporatism is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the organization of a society into industrial and professional corporations serving as organs of political representation and exercising control over persons and activities within their jurisdiction.” It is a serious intermingling of politics and corporations. It is currently what we have created in America with the passage of ObamaCare.

In its October issue, Townhall Magazine features an article entitled, “ObamaCare’s Illegal Insurance Company Bailout.” The article explains the role of major insurance companies in the writing of ObamaCare in such a way that regardless of the impact of ObamaCare, the insurance companies would not lose money. If the law has a negative impact on the insurance companies, they will be bailed out by the American taxpayers.

The article reports:

…Obamacare’s authors created three programs to help socialize insurance company risk.

Reinsurance: Obamacare’s reinsurance program is paid for by a $63 tax on all health plans.  The money then goes to any health insurance company who spends more than $60,000 on any Obamacare patient in any single year. Since the tax applies to all health care plans, but the benefits only go to Obamacare plans, the reinsurance program is really just a transfer of wealth from those who had insurance coverage before Obamacare to those who are now covered by Obamacare.

Risk Adjustment: The risk adjustment program is designed to stop insurance companies from marketing or pricing their plans in such a way that they only attract healthy, and therefore lower-cost patients. The program accomplishes this by assessing the patient population of each insurer and then determining which insurers are covering healthier people and which are covering sicker people. The plans covering the healthy people are then forced to pay money to the plans covering sicker people. All transfers between insurance companies even out.

Risk Corridor: The risk corridor program is intended to encourage insurers to price their premiums low by protecting them from losses if their patients turn out to require more care than anticipated. The program uses a complex formula to take money from those insurers that do not spend a lot of money paying for patient health care, and then gives that money to other insurers that do spend a lot of money on patient care.

So where does the money come from if all insurers spend more money on patient care than anticipated? That is the billion dollar question.

The article quotes an HHS regulation published in May 2014:

“In the unlikely event of a shortfall for the 2015 program year…HHS will use other sources of funding for the risk corridor payments.”

The article explains that according to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the Obama Administration is expected to make $725 billion in net payments out of the risk corridor program in 2015 alone. When you include the increased reinsurance payments, the bailout will top $1 billion.

So why is this illegal? The article explains:

According to long-standing, federal rules, in order for Congress to properly authorize payment, both the directive to pay and amount, and the source of funds for that payment, must be identified.

And while the risk corridor program does identify who is to be paid (the insurance companies), it never identifies where the funds should come from.

This is neither free enterprise or market-driven. It is time to replace ObamaCare with something that respects the free market and puts patients and doctors back in charge of health care. We need portability of health insurance, tort reform, and risk pools (as are used in auto insurance) to equalize the burden among insurance companies. We don’t need government-run healthcare. Government healthcare benefits no one. We need to stop it before it is too late.