Obamacare unworkable

I whooped with unrestrained joy when Obamacare passed in the Congress and was declared OK by the Supreme Court.

It wasn’t the national healthcare I wanted and most Western countries provide, but it was a step in that direction.

I had no clue that it would not work because its details were unworkable.

Not many members of Congress read all 381,517 words of the law they voted for or against. There was complication enough in those.

But then came the 11,588,500 words of the special regulations. Twenty thousand pages of those. That’s right, 20,000. Do you think our two members of Congress and two senators read them all? Check out the photo of the regulation pages accompanying this column.

OK, cumbersome and impossible that somebody wouldn’t run afoul of some of those pages of regulation. But overall, we were on the road to something akin to national healthcare, right?

Oh, then came the exemptions. This business and that union didn’t have to comply with this or that regulation right now. But the general citizenry would have to. Oh, the sign-up system didn’t work, so you get a year’s exemption while it’s fixed.

Oh, wait, sorry, you can’t keep the health insurance plan you had, when President Obama repeatedly said you could. People we all knew had very minimal-coverage plans that could no longer be sold by participating insurers.

Oh, and you signed up and got a subsidy because of low income. Last year you got a better-paying job. Now you owe Uncle Sam a refund and you don’t have that in the bank and have to borrow money. So maybe an exemption this time? We’re up to 4 million people exempted, 3 percent of the population — half who signed up last year.

Then there are the Medicare cuts and the quality-instead-of-quantity care directive. Individual doctors are dumping Medicare patients. They and hospitals are graded on results with sick patients. Great. But you and I know many patients aren’t health-minded. They won’t change diets. They ignore critical medicines. The issue is worse in poor and immigrant neighborhoods.

Why should my doctor get penalized if I’ll do nothing to keep my blood pressure and weight under control?

If Medicare Advantage is forced to eliminate gym memberships, how does that help me to keep healthy?

Obamacare became a mess.

We healthcare progressives have to start acknowledging that in public.

We wanted national, single-payer healthcare.

Many of us have it. It’s already out there. It’s called Kaiser Permanente. We could have taxed citizens and made that a shining star system.

Not 20,000 pages. Just a slim document of your benefits. All your medical records on one computer server. Your choice of doctors.

President Obama had the right idea.

But unlike Franklin D. Roosevelt with the Social Security Act and Lyndon Johnson with the Civil Rights Act, he wimped out with Congress.

[so what now? Bob Jones?]

Brian Williams

NBC News said Tuesday it has suspended its chief anchor and managing editor Brian Williams immediately for six months without pay, forgoing the option of firing the embattled newsman for now due to his popularity and past work at the network.

"As I'm sure you understand, this was a very hard decision," wrote NBC News President Deborah Turness in a memo distributed to staff members late Tuesday. "Certainly there will be those who disagree. But we believe this suspension is the appropriate and proportionate action."

Lester Holt, who was tapped to fill in while Williams sat out, will continue to serve as substitute anchor of NBC Nightly News. Williams took himself off the air Saturday after soldiers revealed that his account of being on a Chinook helicopter that went down during the U.S. invasion of Iraq was not true.

"We felt it would have been wrong to disregard the good work Brian has done and the special relationship he has forged with our viewers over 22 years," Turness said. "Millions of Americans have turned to him every day, and he has been an important and well-respected part of our organization."

Williams replaced Tom Brokaw in 2004 as NBC Nightly News anchor after working as a reporter at the network since the early 1990s. Mixing serious journalism with occasional appearances on late night talk shows, Williams has helped NBC Nightly News retain its lead over competitors. Despite the overall drop in evening news viewership over the years, NBC Nightly News averages about 9 million to 10 million viewers a night, edging ABC's World News Tonight and CBS Evening News.

The scandal erupted earlier this month when Williams attended a New York Rangers game with a soldier who helped guard him and other American soldiers while a convoy of military helicopters they were flying on was forced to land on a desert in Iraq in 2003.

Williams said the helicopter he was on had been hit by enemy fire and forced down. Veterans from the convoy challenged Williams' story — which he has repeated in the past — on Facebook. And the anchorman recanted the story on air Wednesday after Stars and Stripes wrote a story about their online exchange and interviewed Williams and the veterans.

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and more?

Kauai's electricity

While NextEra Energy's $4.3 billion bid to buy Hawaiian Electric Industries dominates the local energy debate, a group of Hawaii island residents is quietly investigating another possible future for their utility. They are turning for inspiration to Kauai, where pioneering folks banded together in a cooperative and bought their electric utility for $215 million in 2002 in a completely debt-financed deal.

"We had zero equity," recalled Dennis Esaki, who runs an engineering company and was a founding director of the nonprofit Kauai Island Utility Cooperative. "We didn't have any money. It was an amazing feat."

At first he ducked when people called about the idea of buying the electric company.

"I didn't take their phone calls," he said in an interview. "I figured they must think I got money that I don't have."

By the Numbers Kauai Island Utility Cooperative is a not-for-profit electrical co-op owned and controlled by the members it serves. >> $215 million: Cost of the utility when purchased in 2002 >> 33,000: Member-owners, who are its customers >> $80 million: Equity stake owned by members >> $30 million: Returned to members since 2002 >> 9: Elected board members Source: Kauai Island Utility Cooperative

But he decided to join the effort. The cooperative got rolling with $200,000 fronted by a Lihue businessman, Gregg Gardiner, and the support of the National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corp. which put up $2 million and financed the acquisition.

Since its launch 12 years ago, the nonprofit Kauai Island Utility Cooperative has returned $30 million to its members, who are its customers, money that is left at the end of the year after expenses are met. And it has built up more than $80 million in equity, the members' ownership stake.

"Main thing is, we don't have off-island owners that the profits go out to, like an investor-owned utility," Esaki told a forum in Hilo last month. "All of the profits, called margins in this business, stay on the island."

The co-op is guided by a board elected by its 33,000 ratepayers, who each get one vote. It has aggressively pursued solar power and focused on rate stability.

Residential electricity cost 34.1 cents per kilowatt-hour on Kauai in January, compared with 35.9 cents on Hawaii island, 35.1 cents on Maui and 29.5 cents on Oahu, where there are economies of scale.

Kauai's residential electricity rates fell by 1.6 percent from 2008 to 2013 while Hawaiian Electric Co.'s rose by more than 21 percent, according to KIUC, which crunched data from the Public Utilities Commission.