Senators Obama and Clinton lets talk about universal health care

Let’s talk US health care

By Melvin J. Howard

Calling on US Presidential candidates Senators Obama and Clinton universal health care for the US is a non starter. Take it from someone who has spent most of his adult life studying the financing of health care globally. I have read all the data for and against a government run health care system. Let me tell you just like a court room drama both sides have their expert witnesses and can show you impressive charts of demographics social and economic trends. Take it from me it does not play out that way on the front lines. There must and I underscore must be a coalition between the private sector and the government in order to include the current population that does not have health coverage. It must be done creatively and take a bi-partisan approach I notice that a lot of so called experts like to compare the US health care system as the big boogie man to the rest of the world. But that’s like comparing apples to oranges the US spent over 2 Trillion Dollars on health care. That is most countries GNP it’s huge. Universal health care for the US is like asking the largest US aircraft carrier to stop on a dime by the way it cannot be done. Turnaround go back to port and load up a additional aircraft carrier ( i.e. the extra bureaucracy that would take to run an all government health system) on top go back to sea and fight the same fight but with the extra baggage. Result it will collapse under its own weight. My door is always open to this important issue if you want to talk. It seems since 1994 every election year Universal Health Care comes up. I vote no to Universal Health Care the US is a free market society it is its founding principals. Besides socialized medicine is not really free remember John Kerry.

The Wall Street Journal

Canada’s “Free” Health Care Has Hidden Costs
By Pierre Lemieux*

John Kerry’s health insurance proposals amount to a “sweeping socialization of [the U.S.] health care system,” writes Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute in a recent Daily Commentary on the Cato Web site. Although Mr. Kerry’s proposals do not echo the frequent calls for imitating the Canadian model, they would keep the U.S. heading down that slippery slope. This ought to alarm Americans. The Canadian system is much more costly than advertised because it is highly efficient in hiding costs.

Proponents of the Canadian model praise its universal coverage and its apparent low cost. Total (private and public) health expenditures are only 10% of gross domestic product in Canada, compared to 14% in the U.S. A study published last August in the New England Journal of Medicine claimed that a third of this difference is explained by lower administrative costs in the Canadian system. But, among its other faults, this accounting ignores the hidden economic costs of Canadian health care.

The Canadian system is built around a compulsory public-insurance regime that provides most medical and hospital services free. Of course, it is not free for the taxpayer, who finances the system at a rate of 22% of all taxes raised in Canada. The Canadian government pays about 71% of total Canadian health care expenditures, compared to 44% paid by the government in the U.S. This translates into public health expenditures of 6% of GDP in Canada and 7% in the U.S.—a rather small difference. More than three-quarters of the difference in total expenditures is due to higher private expenditures in the U.S. [see American Health Care: Government, Market Processes and the Public Interest, edited by Roger Feldman]. Why are private health expenditures so low in Canada? The main reason is that they are illegal, which gets us to the heart of the system’s hidden costs.

Canadian public health insurance is not only compulsory, it is also monopolistic. The system is administered by provincial governments under strict guidelines imposed by federal law and federal subsidies. Private insurance covering publicly insured services is illegal. Physicians are forbidden to accept private payments above the fees billed to the government. Hospitals are public or non-profit, and tightly regulated. Physicians’ fees are determined—or “negotiated”—by provincial agencies. Prices of drugs are controlled. In short, the public supply of medical services is rationed, and there is little private alternative. Hence the apparent low cost of the system.

The hidden costs include the poor quality of services, and the costs imposed on customers (aptly called “patients” in this case) who have to wait in queues.
Quality is subjective and can only be evaluated through consumer choices, but the government won’t let consumers make choices and vote with their feet if they are not satisfied. Anecdotal evidence of questionable quality is everywhere. In a recent piece in Montreal’s Gazette, a Canadian related her own experience, and contrasted the “kindness, discretion and professionalism” of staff in U.S. hospitals, with the frequent rudeness of unionized personnel in the Canadian system.

Long waiting lines are a fixture of the system. The Fraser Institute, a Vancouver think tank, has calculated that in 2003, the average waiting time from referral by a general practitioner to actual treatment was more than four months. Waiting times vary among specialties (and, less wildly, among provinces), but remain high even for critical diseases: The shortest median wait is 6.1 weeks for oncology treatment; excluding radiation, which is longer. Extreme cases include more than a year’s median wait for neurosurgery in New Brunswick. The median wait for an MRI is three months. Since 1993, waiting times have increased by 90%.

Waiting lines impose a real cost, which is approximated by what individuals would be willing to pay to avoid them. Waiting costs include health risk, lost time (especially for individuals whose time is most valuable), pain and anguish. Socialist systems are notoriously oblivious to anguish, discomfort, humiliation and other subjective factors which bureaucrats cannot measure or don’t value the same way as the patient does.

A Québec physician, Dr. Jacques Chaoulli, is suing the government for not allowing patients to pay for better care. The Supreme Court of Canada will hear his appeal of lower-court rebuttals in June. Last month, a class-action case was launched against Québec hospitals on behalf of 10,000 breast cancer patients who, since October 1997, have had to wait more than eight weeks each for post-surgery radiation therapy.

Liberalization proposals are met by the “two-tier system” bogey man—that if choice is allowed an unequal system will develop. But if directly paying a doctor is illegal, there are legal ways to jump the queues. As pointed out by Professor Livio Di Matteo of Lakehead University in Ontario, what now exists is a three-tier system. The very rich (like Robert Bourassa, the late Premier of Québec) go to the U.S. for rapid, personalized, high-tech treatments. The second tier is made of “the well informed and aggressive, who can push their way to the front of the treatment line.” The poor and those with no connections get stuck in the queue.

At least two Indian groups are now considering building private clinics or hospitals on their land—just as other sorts of illegal-elsewhere trade thrive on Indian reserves. Yet, Canadians who patronized such clinics would still be prohibited from purchasing private insurance to cover the service, leaving the opportunity only to the wealthiest.

As noted by Harvard professor Patricia Danzon, another hidden cost of the Canadian system comes “from forcing everyone to have the same level and type of insurance,” whatever their individual preferences are.
One last cost should not be ignored: the loss of personal responsibility and the habit of dependence on the state. Opinion polls show that Canadians are generally proud of their public health insurance. Indeed, for most people, any basis for comparison has been made illegal. Auberon Herbert, a libertarian Member of Parliament in late 19th century England wrote, “If government half a century ago had provided us all with dinners and breakfasts, it would be the practice of our orators today to assume the impossibility of our providing for ourselves” [see The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State and Other Essays, by Auberon Herbert].

*Pierre Lemieux is a Research Fellow at The Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif., and Co-director of the Economics and Liberty Research Group at the University of Québec in Outaouais, Canada.

CENTURION TO CHANGE DIRECTION

Keeping pace with the ever changing markets Centurion will no longer be principals in health care infrastructure projects. Centurions will seek to achieve its financial objectives primarily by investing in both public and private shares of health related companies.

There are no limitations on the kinds of securities or instruments in which Centurion may trade including distress debt. Consequently, we may cause the Company's assets to be traded in all forms of equity or debt securities, financial instruments or agreements, including but not limited to domestic and foreign preferred and common stock, convertible securities, warrants, rights, bonds, money market instruments, commodities, options and derivative instruments. Such securities may be publicly traded on an exchange, listed in the over-the-counter markets or privately placed with a limited trading market.

What is a Merchant Bank and what will be Centurion's role.

A question I am often asked is, 'What exactly is Merchant Banking' and what will Centurion look like when the restructure is completed. Therefore I felt an overview explanation might be a useful way to answer some of your questions. Keep in mind Centurion’s focus is the health care industry.

Before defining Merchant Banking and it’s origins, probably a good place to start is asking the question; ‘WHEN DID MODERN BANKING AS WE KNOW IT TODAY BEGIN’ ?

Many people still confuse the introduction of currency as the beginning of modern banking, but the two are not connected. Coins were minted for centuries before banking began in England, even the Celts were using coins before the Romans introduced their coinage system in fifty five (55) BC. For the Romans, the magic number of division for coins was Twelve (12), and coins were always issued as a unit of weight, for example the English term pound appeared as Pondus in Latin, Pfund in the Germanic, Pund in Old Norse, and in the Roman Empire, the unit of weight was called a ‘Libra’, which represented Twelve (12) Unciae or ounces.

The principal Roman unit of weight for what we know as a pound, was the Libra, after the small Constellation, 7th sign of the Zodiac or, ‘The Scales or Balance’. Roman coinage was made up of the Solidus (gold) and the Denarius (silver). One Denarius equalled one ounce of silver, and it required 12 Denarius or (12 ounces of Silver) to equal one ounce of gold (i.e.) One Solidus, and 12 Solidus or (12 ounces of gold) to provide sufficient weight to equal One Libra. Britons, after 4 centuries under Roman domination, became so familiar with this economic structure and culture, that the Libra, Solidus and Denarius abbreviated to L.S.D. became shorthand for its system of Pounds, Shillings and Pence, which survived almost 2,000 years.

Conversely on Banking, William the Third of England and Ireland (William of Orange) introduced banking by an Act of Parliament in 1694, William needed to finance his war against France, and he knew raising these monies through taxation would not be popular, so he issued debt instruments in the same way governments today issue treasury bills, and similar, placing them out on the open investment market, and thus was created the Bank of England, (i.e.) ‘The Central Bank of England’. In this manner William raised what was an extraordinary sum of money for the time, One Million Two Hundred Thousand Pounds (GBP 1,200,000.00) and thus started the tradition of government debt. The Bank of England was nationalised in 1946, and the British Government is now it’s chief customer.

MERCHANT BANKING - BY DEFINITION
A FORM OF BANKING WHERE THE BANK ARRANGES CREDIT FINANCING, BUT DOES NOT HOLD THE LOANS IN ITS INVESTMENT PORTFOLIO, TO MATURITY.
Merchant Banking is a fee based business, where the bank assumes Market Risk but no long term Credit Risk. Fundamentally, merchant banks originate commercial loans, and then sell them to investors rather than hold them as portfolio investments. The French term for a Merchant Bank is a ‘Banque d’ Affaire’. Aside from debt financing, Merchant Bankers are involved in Corporate Finance - Venture Capital, (risk capital), where the bank advances capital in exchange for equity in the business, or simply places funds into such risk based ventures. These funds typically come from backers in it’s own portfolio who receive an acceptable equity percentage, the bank making it’s money through a fee based structure.

Note: Merchant banks need to be very careful in getting the right mix of investment in their risk portfolio to avoid financial ruin. For example if the portfolio consists of say US$ 10 million to invest in equity, a fool can recognise, that it is better to spread this equally over say Ten (10) companies, than to get excited and invest the entire portfolio in One (1) company. In London after the October 20 1987 stock market collapse, several merchant banks went bankrupt because they ignored fundamental rules, or did not maintain sufficient cash reserves. The competences of management are vital - one needs to know where to emphasize efforts.

Origins of Merchant Banking - Private Banking
German Financier Meyer Amschel ( 1743-1812 ), founded the Rothschild dynasty when he established the Rothschild banking house in Frankfurt. By the time of his death he had already conducted significant financial transactions for European Governments, and left the business to his five (5) sons who set up branches across western Europe.

Notable amongst the sons was Nathan Meyer ‘Baron de Rothschild’ ( 1777 - 1836 ) who founded Rothschild in London in 1804. During the Napoleonic wars, staff were stationed on the battlefields with homing pigeons, where they swiftly reported the fortunes of the British and French armies, often days before the official dispatches had reached Paris or London. In this manner he was able to intervene in the stock market to great financial success, and in fact upon news of Napoleons defeat by Wellington at Waterloo, he was able to sell vulnerable stocks at their high, and a few days later bought them all back at rock bottom prices. The result from this one battle netted Rothschild GBP 5 million which was an enormous fortune in those days.

Baron Rothschild, had interests in businesses other than banking. In trying to simplify his method of getting paid on transactions overseas, he developed what would become known as the forfaiting system to finance his merchant transactions. Very soon all his merchant friends were asking him to help them finance their merchant transactions through forfaiting, and thus began the birth of Merchant Banking. Today Rothschilds remain official gold broker to the ‘Bank of England’ and the Rothschild’s still make gold bars in the family’s private refinery near the Tower of London. It is known as the Royal Mint Refinery and was once part of Great Britain’s Royal Mint.

Merchant Banking is Conversion of Dreams into Reality with the Help of Money, and where Merchant Banking Is a Vision, Investment Banking is a Technique.
Merchant bankers took audacious risks and made enormous profits, but of all their assets, integrity and common sense were the most important. Character was prized more than wealth, and they would rather suffer loss, than tarnish the good name of the firm by any unworthy act. Eventually, the role of the Merchant banker changed from money lender to modern financier, and the private banker then became the intermediary between lender and borrower.

Merchant banking is not a science it is an abstract art, and merchant bankers are laconic people who rarely say more than Ten percent (10%) of what they think. When the banker is an hereditary merchant banker, they say even less, and the credit of these banks falls from Father to Son, with inherited wealth bringing inherited refinement.

Centurion Health and Regent Hills Health

Attention to all Centurion Health and Regent Hills subscription agreement holders please forward corresponding information to the writer so that it may be included in our audit report.

Thank you

Centurion Moving To The Big Apple

As part of Centurion's restructuring plans the company will be moving its head office back to New York this move is to intergrate the company's clientele internationally.

As part of Centurion’s merchant banking activities the company will securitize most of the loans that Centurion originates or will act as arranger for new debt issuers. A large number of repackaging transactions will be privately placed, rather than involving the issue of securities in the public market. We will generally structure the transaction to meet investor preferences and financing needs with their loan portfolios. In particular they will be used to reduce credit exposure against losses from reference obligators, in essences to free up regulatory capital.

Regent Hills Officially becomes a part of Centurion Health Corporation

Regent Hills has become apart of Centurion Health Corporation international expansion plans. Regent will be reincorporated to reflect its new ownership.