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Daily Tech News 29 March 2024
No, Children, You're Wrong. Once Upon A Time There Was An ONT Lovebomb Cafe The Feds Investigated James Biden's Americore Transactions NYC Begins Handing Out Free Cash Cards to Illegal Aliens, Worth $1200+ Every Month Fire Alarm Puller Jamaal Bowman, Who Has Previously Pushed "Bush Did 911" Trutherism Conspiracy Theories, Now Claims That Jews Are Fabricating Evidence About Hamas' Rape Teams Federal Appeals Court Rules that Pennsylania Must Verify Signatures for Mail-In Voting Jon Stewart Defrauded New York By Severely Undervaluing Home, Depriving New York of the Property Taxes It Deserved Democrat Mega-Donor Sam Bankman-Fried Sentenced to 25 Years for Swindling Billions from Customers Chief Democrat Witness Against Trump in Phony Ukranian Phone Call Impeachment Registers as a Foreign Agent for, Get This, Ukraine Absent Friends
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August 18, 2009
60,000 Quit AARP, Many Signing Up with "Conservative Alternative" American Seniors AssociationA Waterloo, too, for Washington's permanent quasi-governmental lobbyist elite. CBS News has learned that up to 60,000 people have cancelled their AARP memberships since July 1, angered over the group's position on health care. The article notes that the AARP, while not formally endorsing Obama's plan and cuts, seems to be "waffling" on the issue in the eyes of many, supporting it through deed if not word. Dick Morris, who -- credit where credit's due -- has been pushing the cuts to seniors as our best line of attack for longer than anyone I know of, crows a bit and says thank God for seniors. Whether or not he admits it even to himself, Obama's talk of cutting "inefficiencies" and reducing costs translates to less care, of lower quality, for the elderly. Every existing national health system finds ways to deny state-of-the-art medications and necessary surgical procedures to countless patients, and ObamaCare has the nascent mechanisms to do the same. With the limited options that Obama's vision would leave them, many will find that "end of life counseling" necessary and even welcome. Through the eighties and nineties, Republicans would sometimes propose limiting Medicare and Medicaid (increased co-pays, etc.) and every time the Democratic war room accused them of trying to kill Grandma. Suddenly, the media-Democratic establishment finds such rhetoric to be beyond the pale. What Terry MacCauliffe, Harry Reid, and Tom Daschle said without media objection one hundred times is suddenly the most toxic and dishonest thing ever said in the history of saying stuff, when Sarah Palin writes it once. It should also be noted that the Republican plans were concerned with keeping the system solvent and therefore alive. Obama is right -- but then, so is everybody -- when he says the system will become insolvent without reforms. True, true. But what he proposes is entirely unresponsive to that observation. Rather than making the system self-sustaining and solvent, he proposes instead to flood the government-health-care-system with upwards of 50 million new enrollees, quite a few of them not even American, and will raise taxes and cut benefits from seniors to make this scheme (supposedly) close to "deficit neutral." But even if it were "deficit neutral," it would still become insolvent -- as Obama says, without reducing the costs, the system is guaranteed to go broke. So I don't quite understand how merely making it "deficit neutral" will improve the situation. All I see is Obama taking health care from some people to give it to others. A case could be made, of course, that to the extent we have a socialized subsystem for health care, we're misallocating resources, paying quite a bit for the elderly and not so much for, say, a premature baby. One could make that case. But one would almost certainly lose on it, as seniors vote in large numbers and are understandably reluctant, as anyone would be, to lower their own standard of care to benefit someone else. And because Obama knows he'd lose on that argument, honestly stated, he simply lies about it and assures seniors that his $500 billion in Medicaid/Medicare costs will all be achieved through improved "efficiency." No one believes that. We all share, I think, an understanding that whatever system we're talking about, its inefficiencies are either hard-wired into the system (often due to politics) and difficult to undo or modify, or else aren't really "inefficiencies" at all. I'm not at all sure, for example, it's "inefficient" to remove a kid's tonsils if he has perpetual infections, nor that it's always "wasteful" to conduct multiple tests when diagnosing an illness. At most, even with fairly heroic measures and politically-gutsy changes, a system -- particularly a government system -- is going to become, at the very most, maybe 5% more efficient. Tops. Apart from reducing predatory tonsillectomies and entrepreneurial maimings by our Saw-fan surgeons, Obama's pretty damn vague about where he sees these bountiful new efficiencies emerging. Oh, right. If we all get in great shape we'll save the system billions. Kinda. We'll save the system a bit of money as our death-spiral of declining health is put off a few years, and then we'll go through the same costly end-of-life hospitalizations as those who are less healthy. Same costs, just delayed five or six years. The savings here are only the interest on a cost delayed by a short time. There are a huge number of reasons to lead a healthy lifestyle -- including attracting a mate, feeling good and strong, living to see your kids graduate high school, etc. -- and many of us do not respond to such tangible, crucial incentives. And yet I'm to believe that an abstract interest in keeping the federal budget deficit down is going to cause someone to think, "Maybe I should look into quitting smoking" or "Maybe I should drop the 80 pounds I've put on since my twenties." No sale. The cuts will include a pittance of arguably "wasteful" costs, but the bulk will either 1) cut into actual health services or, more likely, 2) won't be made at all, thus blowing up the deficit as Obama simply provides all the health care we're already obligated to provide but cannot afford and adds to that strained system 50 million more needy souls. | Recent Comments
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Daily Tech News 29 March 2024
No, Children, You're Wrong. Once Upon A Time There Was An ONT Lovebomb Cafe The Feds Investigated James Biden's Americore Transactions NYC Begins Handing Out Free Cash Cards to Illegal Aliens, Worth $1200+ Every Month Fire Alarm Puller Jamaal Bowman, Who Has Previously Pushed "Bush Did 911" Trutherism Conspiracy Theories, Now Claims That Jews Are Fabricating Evidence About Hamas' Rape Teams Federal Appeals Court Rules that Pennsylania Must Verify Signatures for Mail-In Voting Jon Stewart Defrauded New York By Severely Undervaluing Home, Depriving New York of the Property Taxes It Deserved Democrat Mega-Donor Sam Bankman-Fried Sentenced to 25 Years for Swindling Billions from Customers Chief Democrat Witness Against Trump in Phony Ukranian Phone Call Impeachment Registers as a Foreign Agent for, Get This, Ukraine Search
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