I was quite amused to watch how CNN is dealing with the fact that the Russia collusion thing fell apart. And I've told you before that the way you can tell what the editorial, you know, the high-level editorial direction is for CNN is you look at the stories that are on the top left, because those are the important ones. So at the highest level, apparently, I mean I don't know this for sure but it seems evident that there's some kind of larger direction. Because for example today every, I think every story on CNN on the top left is about healthcare. Let me check and see if that's still the case.

All right, so in order these are the headlines on the top left of CNN: Ending Obamacare would be a headache for Trump, something about the support the court and healthcare. Obamacare it's the next one. The real reason Trump wants to get rid of Obamacare. Okay, they're all basically all healthcare now. When was the last time that CNN was so concerned about healthcare? Now it's of course driven by a story that a court has apparently says Obamacare is unconstitutional or whatever they're saying. I don't care about the details. But the point is Obamacare is under risk of disappearing at the same time the GOP has just nothing. They have nothing that looks like a plan.

So this is one of those be careful what you wish for things. Because if Obamacare disappeared tomorrow, Trump could not get reelected, right? So if Obamacare really just went away and it really just took however many millions of people off of healthcare, it wouldn't matter what else went right. It just wouldn't matter what else went right. That would be enough to deny him reelection. So presidents should be careful of what they wish for if they don't have a replacement. The last thing you want is for Obamacare to go away right away because that's a bad look.

Let me suggest what a Republican plan for healthcare should look like in a general sense. I've said before that the best approach against the Democrats, at least the Green New Deal part of the Democratic Party, is the statement that capitalism can deliver what socialism promises. Capitalism can deliver what socialism promises. But it doesn't work the other way around.

And the second thing that should be said about the Green New Deal and full socialism is that it's risky. Because we have a system that has problems but it's working. We have a solid economy. I think there may be something like 16% or 18% don't have healthcare insurance. That's not as big a problem as it's been in the past. It's a big problem and we should solve it. But it's hard to get people to make a big risky change to a system that could doom the planet to annihilation. I mean if you get capitalism wrong you could ruin the whole planet. So a big socialist experiment would be by far the riskiest thing that the world has ever experienced. Probably riskier than maybe literally everything. I don't know if anything would be a bigger risk than that.

By the way, the bad arguments against socialism go like this. Here are the bad arguments. We don't want to become Venezuela. Well it's true we don't want to become Venezuela. But I don't think anybody on the left fears that. I think people look at Venezuela and they go, well that's not us. You know, whatever happened there, it's unlikely that that exact stuff is going to happen to us. We don't have a dictator, blah blah blah. So I don't think it's convincing. It might be true that we could end up like Venezuela. I mean I'm not sure exactly how that would look. But it's just not persuasive to the other team.

The other thing that's not persuasive is that socialism has killed hundreds of millions of people in the past and led to dictatorships and misery beyond compare. It's true but it's not persuasive. And the reason is that I've never heard anybody yet make any kind of a connective argument. It's like, okay well socialism ruins everything and I know it's happened in the past but they're all different cases. Like explain to me why socialism ruins everything. That part nobody really does a good job of explaining. And it goes like, and I'm not even sure I know the argument. So I'll tell you what I think the argument is and maybe somebody can correct me. And I need correction on this.

I think the argument goes like this. That when you centralize control, either of the entire government or if you start with let's say healthcare and that becomes centralized in the government, that whenever you centralize control abuse happens. Because there are too few people in charge of something big and those few people can become corrupt too easily. Too much power, not enough control. But does that happen every time? And is there some situation that causes that abuse to happen and some situation that causes it not to happen? I don't really know. So the argument is too conceptual.

So arguing that socialist policies about, well let me say how it sounds to the left when you argue that socialism leads to hundreds of millions of death and centralization and abuse of power and all that. That could be completely true. Here's what the left hears: you're telling me that if my healthcare improves it's the end of the world. Do you see how stupid the argument from the right looks? Okay explain to me genius how having 16% more healthcare, you know that's how many people are uncovered or something like that, it's in that range. Explain to me how that leads to dictatorship because that just sounds crazy. Now it might be true but it's completely unpersuasive.

So the argument that is persuasive is that any radical changes to a system that's at least working, even if it has problems, is the riskiest thing you can do. And nobody likes risk when they don't need it. The only time you should introduce risk is when you're sort of in a bad situation and you don't have much to lose. Overstating the case but you know the more desperate your situation the more risk you should be willing to take on to fix it. And if things are going well the less risk you should introduce to the systems. That's the better argument. Everybody understands risk.

All right, so here's what the Republicans should do. They should package up the things that they're already doing right and the things that they plan to do right. The capitalism can deliver what socialism promises. When you're talking about healthcare you could say all right capitalism is what got 75% of you healthcare. So we got that part. Capitalism is what makes sure that even the people who don't have healthcare insurance still get healthcare because they do. They might have to go to an emergency room. It might be a waste of resources. Might be the worst way to do it. But they still get healthcare and capitalism delivered that. Now how do you make it better?

A market-based Republican approach would first of all look at the regulation cutting and the streamlining of let's say competition. And that would include things that they're actually doing but for reasons that boggle my mind they don't talk about enough. So the weirdest part about the Republicans in healthcare is that they're doing actually good stuff that they put out a press release from whoever puts out those press releases and then you don't really hear about it.

One of those things is pushing to make it easier to fast-track generic drugs. Because apparently the rule is that when the third, or is it the second generic hits the market, it's more than one but I think when you get that second generic or third that the price of the original drug just plummets. So the faster you can fast-track the generics the lower the prices will be for the public. So the administration has actually made changes to fast-track. That's a really big deal. I don't think they're selling that enough.

They've made a number of other changes that involve doing things across state lines, etc. So there are probably a dozen or so rules changes to make things more market-based and competitive that could be packaged up. And they say all right this is what we've done and this is what we plan to do more of. Here's some more. So we've already done these rules changes to make things more competitive and now we're going to do these extra things also. So that would be one part of the package. But they should all be together and they should be presented as here's what we've done, here's what we're going to do.

The next thing would be to look at states. Apparently some states are looking at their own healthcare plans. The smartest thing the president could do is to back it, just back it and say I love the fact that the states are experimenting. Why don't we watch it for a year, see if it works and pick the good parts if there are any good parts. See what that does.

And then the last part would be spurring innovation. The part that I think the administration is just missing an action on this even though they're probably doing it. So I'm going to blame the government, the current administration, for not doing enough of something that they might actually be doing. I just don't hear about it and maybe that's the problem. Which is stimulating the new entrepreneurial healthcare businesses. You know, making sure they get funding and attention. Making sure the government gives them whatever resources make sense for a government to help out with.

So if we could focus on and package up that, even as a fund. You know, could even be just an investment fund of specifically companies who are in the healthcare space. But here's the key: they're not just a new cool thing.

And I see if that makes any difference. No sound. All right. Well I'm going to turn it off and I'll be back. I'll be back. I'll be back. Okay.