WTF Is This?!
July 2nd, 2009
Study: Medicare’s costs have risen 34% more than vast majority purchased through private sector
July 2nd, 2009
From Investors.com.
The results are clear: Since 1970 — even without the prescription drug benefit — Medicare’s costs have risen 34% more, per patient, than the combined costs of all health care in America apart from Medicare and Medicaid, the vast majority of which is purchased through the private sector.
Since 1970, the per-patient costs of all health care apart from Medicare and Medicaid have risen from $364 to $7,119, while Medicare’s per-patient costs have risen from $368 to $9,634. Medicare’s costs have risen $2,511 more per patient.
These conclusions are true despite very generous treatment of Medicare. My study counts Medicare’s prescription drug expenditures as part of privately purchased care, rather than as part of Medicare. It counts health care purchased privately by Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries (including Medicare copayments and Medigap insurance) among the costs of private care, without counting its recipients among those receiving private care — thereby magnifying private care’s per-person costs. And it doesn’t adjust for cost-shifting from Medicare to private entities.
Government Giving Elderly Medical Advice; Are Britain and France good examples of what to look forward to?
July 2nd, 2009
In a nationally televised event at the White House, Obama said families need better information so they don’t unthinkingly approve “additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care.
He added: “Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.”
Obama said he has personal familiarity with such a dilemma. His grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given less than nine months to live, he said.
She fell and broke her hip, “and the question was, does she get hip replacement surgery, even though she was fragile enough they were not sure how long she would last?”
That was during ABC News’ special about ObamaCare (or Infomercial). Here’s what the elderly should look forward to.
Medical decisions should be made by patients, their families, and their doctors, not by government bureaucrats, but that’s ObamaCare for you.
In the Washington Examiner, “Guillaume Vuillemey, a researcher at France’s Institut Economique Molinari, and Philip Stevens, a researcher at Britain’s International Policy Network write”:
The Obama plan is supposed to make health insurance more competitive. But heavy subsidies will give it a big advantage, pulling an estimated 118.5 million people from private insurers to the public system. This government-subsidized system will eventually dominate the market in a way that would overrule competition.
This is precisely what happened in Britain. The state provides most health care, via the National Health Service. Patients have almost no say over which physician, surgeon or hospital they can use, while professionals have to conform to government plans and targets.
After its birth in 1948, planners soon found that “free” health care multiplied demand. NHS founder Lord Beveridge predicted free health care would cut spending as health improved.
The opposite was true. Between 1949 and 1979, it tripled in real terms. The service now costs twice as much as it did 10 years ago, with productivity down 4.5 percent.
One way government tries to limit demand is to decree which new drugs can be prescribed. Many drugs, widely available in America and continental Europe, are denied to British patients.
State mismanagement has also created waiting lines for hospitals, on average causing 8.6 weeks of waiting. Once inside, budgetary cutbacks on cleaning and maintenance mean higher rates of an antibiotic-resistant variety of staph infection. This “superbug” has turned even routine surgery into a lottery of death.
Britain may be an extreme example. Many point to France as a better example of public insurance delivering high-quality, equitable care. While it’s true that French patients do enjoy better care and shorter waits than the British, this is due to a far greater reliance on independent health care and greater freedom from government for doctors and patients.
Yet this plus side is expensive. The French government is trying to control costs by increasing regulation of the private sector, meaning it will soon become more similar to Britain.
In France, there are already “medical deserts,” particularly in the suburbs and countryside. In some places, patients wait more than six months to see an ophthalmologist.
Veep Joe Biden more popular than I thought
July 2nd, 2009
Apparently stimulus money and broadband are not all that interesting to the local folk here: Only around 100 or so people have showed up so far to hear Biden talk at noon at Seneca High School off Route 8 in Wattsburg. The room looked so sparse that about 30 or so chairs were removed by volunteers to give the illusion of a full house. The effect didn’t exactly work.
Obviously Biden The Popular isn’t following the Go “Fuck Yourself” Cheney model of the Vice Presidency. If he did, he might gather more than 100 people at a rally.
Is it right that Obama uses a cancer victim and volunteer at DNC to argue his health care plan?
July 2nd, 2009
You may have seen this picture — it’s Obama hugging a woman named Debby Smith during a “town hall” meeting to discuss his Health Care initiative. Smith has kidney cancer. She “told Obama of her kidney cancer and her inability to obtain health insurance or hold a job.” Smith is also an active member of Organizing for America, Obama’s political wing of the Democratic National Committee. Is it right of Obama to use Smith’s aliment to further his argument that even the most liberal democrats are abandoning? Basing American policy on sympathy and emotion is a doomed prophesy. While I feel sorry for Smith, I think it’s terrible for any President to have this “staged” to further a political ideal that’s flawed, dangerous and bankrupt.
Not so surpringly, the press is eating this up. Some are calling out Obama’s pledge for transparancy. The press is upset that the town hall was completely staged — not just Mrs. Smith.
President Obama’s hug for the cancer victim, an Obama volunteer, gets the media attention, but of the seven questions he addressed, four were selected by his staff from groups supportive of his health care agenda, including the Service Employees International Union and Health Care for America Now. One of the questioners came from a group that is a part of the Democratic National Committee.
A more relavent question however, is that if voters actually want Health Care reform. The Weekly Standard’s Gary Andres writes that while the debate is split, it really depends on who asks the question. Is the media driving opinion? Criticism is also hitting the Obama administration because questions asked at the last forum were “asked by individuals who were members of groups that supported his health care plan.”
Change to change, just because we need change and saying the word change, doesn’t make change a better option just because there’s change. Change sometimes makes things worse. When passing laws that are 1,200 pages thick without even reading a word is arguably bad change. Supporting socialized Health Care means you’re ignoring the socialized Health Care in practice around the world. Take time out, research more than an article you find with a Google News search. The details of how this is going to be paid is bare. The evidence of existing systems is overwhelming.
If you really want to help people obtain Health Care, do the things necessary to help them become independant of government. Forcing reliance on government is an early stage of socalized policy. And the beginning of the end of the best country on Earth.
Voters in California say no to five propositions, massive deficit looms larger
May 21st, 2009
The state of California is the middle of a $21.3 billion shortfall, which could reach a $42 billion deficit that’s projected midway through 2010. On Tuesday, the state put six propositions on the ballot that critics suggest, will only reduce the deficit to $15 billion; the burden of a budget that’s too inflated with services that, let’s speak frankly, aren’t required for the necessity of the state to prosper will be at issue for several years while states seek alternative dimensions with enough revenue to ease the strain on the state’s budgets.
Furthermore, the statist federal government made a heavy-centralized gift to "assist" in the states recovery from red-colored budgets which — like in Oklahoma — has ironically caused states to reassert their sovereignty. In other words, states need a lot of help. However, the way the federal money works, the states have little authority over how that money is distributed. How that money will magically appear two years from now, while states are still looking for revenue and have the additional burden of new, or sustained, jobs that state can’t afford on their own, isn’t known.
The six proposed changes in California:
Rainy Day Fund: "This measure would limit the growth of government spending."
Education Funding: "This measure would restore $9.3 billion to schools if Proposition 1A passes."
Modernize Lottery: "The proposition would authorize state officials to borrow $5 billion that would be repaid by profits from a revamped California State Lottery."
Child Services Funding: "This measure would shift about $1.7 billion away from early childhood development programs over the next five years and use it to help balance the state’s budget."
Mental Health Budget: "This measure would temporarily shift money away from a mental health program established by voters in 2004, paid for with a 1% tax on personal income above $1 million."
Elected Officials Salaries: "This measure would prevent pay raises for legislators and statewide officeholders in deficit years."
How did voters react? The top five propositions failed miserably, by at least 62.5%. The one measure that passed, did so with authority. Elected Officials won’t see an increase in their salaries during deficit years. That proposition won with 73.9% of the votes. I won’t get into the reasoning as to why voters didn’t pass any measures to help relieve, at least, some of the state’s deficits. However, unless you start axing these services to make the state more self-staining, then the cost will always be high and simply because you can’t afford to pay the people to support these services, they’ll be gone anyway.
At least debating legalizing marijuana is progress
May 19th, 2009
The Govenator suggests that a debate should be waged regarding the legalization and taxation of marijuana.
"Well, I think it’s not time for (legalization), but I think it’s time for a debate," Schwarzenegger said. "I think all of those ideas of creating extra revenues, I’m always for an open debate on it. And I think we ought to study very carefully what other countries are doing that have legalized marijuana and other drugs, what effect did it have on those countries?"
Let’s face facts. The whole debate about it is dumb. Sorry for my simplistic ways, but words with more effective descriptions are saved for more relevant issues. The arguments against legalizing marijuana are outdated with twisted analysis and often canceled out with the adjacent point about the legalization of alcohol. It’s for the kids. Lame. Cheap. Disillusionment of total government control, weakening you by using your kids as their petty argument. You should be ashamed that you’ve been suckered by such a thoughtless tactic. Even so, the kids with ADD might benefit from it. But that’s another topical cream debate.
The issue is about the economy. Taxation specifically.
Marijuana legalization would raise an estimated $1.34 billion annually in tax revenue, according to a February estimate by the Board of Equalization. That amount could be offset by a reduction in cigarette or alcohol sales if consumers use marijuana as a substitute.
It’s not about accessibility. Trust me. If you want it. You’ll find it. If high school kids want it, they just need to look down the hallway for the school’s trusty dealer. Sorry for the reality, or simplifying fiction. It’s just true.
Sam McManis puts it best, in terms of the debate’s climate, saying, "Yet when the arguments for legalization of marijuana, both for medicinal and recreational use, are put forth, solid medical science often gets clouded in an ideological haze."
You mean there’s emotional, pointless, and unsound ideological issues when debating this?
Consider something else. Marijuana isn’t just about smoking, getting high, playing video games and drinking Mountain Dew. Hemp is considered to be the durable and longest lasting natural fiber that exists on Earth. From before Christ until the 1930s, most ship’s sails was made from hemp. So was canvas for paintings. Most textiles, such as clothing, linen, drapes, rugs, bed sheets, were made from hemp. Rope. Even the American flag was made from hemp at one point.
Think of the taxing possibilities. And I hate government taxation. But it’s a source of income with a weak argument, at best, for making it illegal. If you want, we can examine the money saved with the "War on Drugs".
But no. Apparently our moral compass is too strong for something like this.
Senator Lindsey Graham slams Libertarians
May 19th, 2009
South Carolina Republican Mark Sanford responded to Senator Lindsey Graham’s comments regarding libertarianism, slamming the ideologue saying “We are not going to build a party around libertarian ideas." For Graham’s speech.
Now Mark Sanford.
There was almost a pejorative comment a moment ago. Sen. Graham spoke and said “I’m not a libertarian,” whatever, whatever, as if that’s an evil word. Liberty is the hallmark of the American experiment … People say, you know, “Mark, you’re kind of libertarian,” you know, and they say it as if it’s an evil word, like you’re a communist or something. I’m like: Throw me in that briar patch … I’ve been accused of being a libertarian and I wear it as a badge of honor.
I agree with the assertion that Graham is one of the many reasons of what’s wrong with the Republican party. No message. No leadership. Little unity and explosive repudiations of trivial name calling. I’m a self-confessed libertarian. So admittedly, I’m a bit biased. However, if the choice is between a Republican and a Democrat and a Libertarian chooses to vote, which side do you think he’s more likely to choose? So why is someone like Graham so repulsed when it comes to Libertarians, who have similar viewpoints as Republicans on some issues?
Ohio Seatbelt Laws are still a secondary offense
May 19th, 2009
Starting May 21 through Memorial Day agencies are participating in the national “Click it or Ticket” campaign. Officials said there will be “zero tolerance” enforcement and no warnings will be issued to those caught driving or riding in the front of a vehicle without wearing a seat belt.
However, Ohio’s seatbelt laws are still a secondary offense. Brian Thomas confirms this with his blog entry, "State Sen. Gay Cates wanted me to remind everyone that seat belt violations are a secondary offense in Ohio." Therefore, even with their zero tolerance enforcement, the police must cite you with a primary violation, which means police enforcement can’t simply pull you over for a seatbelt violation; they have to pull you over for something (aka, finding something else).