Pelosi is once again claiming the end is near on healthcare. That’s nothing new, a fact Drudge had some fun with today, but this bit rankles:
These states, New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts among them, already provide coverage under the low-income program for the poor that other states do not but would be required to if the legislation passes. The 12 are concerned that they will effectively be penalized for having been more generous than the rest of the country.
Memo to whoever writes the AP’s style guide: it isn’t generosity when you’re spending other people’s money. That’s called “social justice” or more commonly “socialism.” Generosity describes an act whereby the politicians donate their own personal assets to charity (the accompanying frost warnings in Hades might also end the whole global warming scare).
Oddly, the article doesn’t mention Stupak. Unless he and his bloc back down on abortion, the House cannot pass the Senate version, and if they pass a modified version the Senate cannot pass the modified abortion language through reconciliation even if they can get the votes for such a move as it isn’t a budgetary measure.
Meanwhile, Obama’s healthcare push has him at a new low of 43 percent approval — and an astounding -21 on the passion index; he’s down almost two to one among those with a strong opinion. It’s a longish way to November 2012, but Obama has a lot of ground to make up. And the number of people who buy the Obamacare budget numbers is about the same who think Elvis is somwhere out there crooning to little gray people on a mothership.
It does look like this will probably be the last Obamacare push either way it goes, if only because there won’t be enough elected Democrats to pursue the destruction of American healthcare after November. So anyone who doesn’t want their bodies or the U.S. budget on the Liverpool pathway should push back hardest over the next couple weeks or months.
Spread the mantra!
U.S. does 2x as many transplants as OECD average
U.S. has best cancer survival rates in OECD
Death panels in Britain are putting people to death who could have recovered
Death panels: now in kids’ sizes too! Infants being left to die.
U.S. has about twice as many MRIs as OECD average
U.S. performs more operations than any country in the world.
Please share, steal, print on a bumper sticker, chisel in granite, or drip in syrup on a naked woman any of the above facts without attribution. Don’t let them take the best care in the world away from us without a fight!
{ 14 comments }
Pretending to care, putting on a charade with other people’s money is easy. It’s a cheap trick to fulfill one’s sense of “moral obligation”. It’s just an act, though. It’s a show, a facade. Just lie to yourself and the rest comes easily.
Actually caring is hard.
> … putting on a charade with …
– other people’s money
– a philosophy you know won’t be implemented
– a plan you know won’t be implemented
– a religion that doesn’t effectively call for change
– laws which don’t effect you
are all easy.
It’s pretty easy for me to get all self-righteous about other people’s money and freedom – and I do. Effective policy change right here is harder.
Yours,
Tom
OK, so, when I advocated that we forcibly remove Saddam Hussein’s despotic regime–using the collective power of the state–I genuinely cared.
But when I advocate universal defense for all Americans against injury and disease, I guess I am just putting on a show and a facade and I don’t really mean it.
Got it.
Meanwhile, the best health care system in the world is massively full of holes and has one horror story after another of people getting screwed by private insurance or manhandled and mauled by private hospitals. Those matter… not?
When you have the power to do something, including, the power to prod reluctant people into doing the right thing, that doesn’t mean your only or even main motivation is anything other than what you say it is. We have the power to do something here, and it’s not all that hard.
Strawman, Dean. To do that:
You don’t need that ridiculous 2711 page POS in Congress to do it.
And you’re right, helping those people that are not covered WOULD be easy, if only 1) the Democrats were willing to do anything remotely close to bipartisan, and 2) thats what they were really trying to do – which it most certainly is not.
The funny thing is you and the rest that support this HCR bill continue to rant about the “horror stories” of OUR health care system but completely ignore the systemic horror stories of health care systems we seek to emulate. All you are really agitating for is spreading the misery around. No thank you.
Accusing people of not being genuine in their care simply because they advocate collective action via government is the problem. I don’t know if it’s strictly a “straw man” but you’re engaging in attempted mind-reading. I advocate this, I do it because I know people who desperately need it, and I firmly believe it’s a very appropriate thing for government to do.
And with respect, I very much believe that we do indeed need the “ridiculous 2711 page POS in Congress” to get it done.
Now, you may not agree, as is your right, but the presumption that those of us who you disagree with you don’t actually care is rather… questionable.
As for whether or not I ignore the horror stories and systemic failures in other systems of health care: I write about this regularly, and I acknowledge them frequently. I do so here as well. What I object to is cherry-picked data. And I object whenever anyone on either side does it.
> OK, so, when I advocated that we forcibly remove Saddam Hussein’s despotic regime–using the collective power of the state–I genuinely cared.
Ooooo – the old moral equivalent war argument in it’s pure form as advocated by true original progressives (not classical liberals) – such as Woodrow Wilson, the nation’s worst President ever, and FDR, the nation’s worst domestic policy President ever. They were the earliest and most powerful practitioners of the Imperial Presidency. They wholly overran the Constitutional system the founders established via the brilliant and simple expendiant of championing the Living Constitution Doctrine. In the case of Wilson, this was knowing and purposeful. His writings show he wanted to overturn the Constitution so he could do God’s work – social justice used to be known as the social gospel. The social gospel was (and is) widespread among mainline Protestant churches in this country – including fundamentalist ones, such as the Baptists. Hello, Jimmah!
Don’t let anyone tell you that progressive politics is atheist. Progressivism is firmly within the pale of orthodoxy as far as I can tell, although the Bible Answer Man may disagree with me.
I’m sure you disagree with me, Dean, and may even be complemented by my reference to Wilson and FDR, whom you may admire. I’m perfectly happy for you to be happy to be compared with them. We all need heros, right? Even if they are other people’s villians.
BTW, although that 2XXX page monstrousity is clearly unconstitutional, it wouldn’t be if it were implemented by each state. Tell you what, Dean. Why don’t you get Michigan to implement Obamacare and let the rest of the states implement their own plans? Michigan has ten million people – twice the size of Denmark and Switzerland. It’s big enough to have it’s own health care system. What I hear about people who live in Europe is that they think Obamacare is crazy because we have 300 million people here – just like Europe – and they don’t have one system for the entire continent. Why would Danes want their health care governed by Germans? This Kansan doesn’t want his health care governed by Lansing or Washington. I can drive to Topeka and my State Representative and Senator are far, far easier for me to see and influence than my Congressman or my Senators.
Oh, and we could both lobby Congress to let states cooperate in the health care arena, rather than forbidding it (which is also unconstitutional – neither medicine nor finance is commerce). That way Kansas and Missouri could agree to set up insurance pools – and Michigan and Massachusetts could merge their similar plans. States cooperate all the time. We even have bi-state taxes here.
Yours,
Tom
Tom – as a minor point, i just want to point out that a 2xxx page bill is a better bill in general than a smaller one. Have you seen the actual legislative text? Go into Word, open it up in double-space outline mode, and devote one line to every section, sub, sub-sub, sub-sub-sub… section title, and you’ll start to see just how little content per “page” there actually is. Its on thomas.loc.gov – grab any bill you like and check out how they are written.
the bills are basically written as a “patch” to the existing federal US code. So instead of saying, “Americans must from now on buy a minimum health insurance plan” the bill will instead spend a page or two saying things like ‘in code section x.x.x.x. amend the word “may” to the word “shall”‘ (and must have a line like that for *every* area in the Federal Code where such changes are relevant.
A short bill will be one that makes much more sweeping changes to law than a long one, because the longer bills close loopholes and are more thorough in expalaining limitations of the legislation.
The federal Code is a huge body of law, and so any large scale legislation is going to impact it in multiple areas. Imagine the effort nvolved in going thru *all* the Code and finding *all* the ways in which a complex piece of legislation might impact it, and then amending *all* of that.
A long bill is a great great thing. a short bill shoudl scare the crap out of you.
Aziz,
> A long bill is a great great thing. a short bill shoudl scare the crap out of you.
I can tell you have never worked on a large computer project. Massive refactorings of large code bases which require thousands of small adjustments are typically nightmarish expensive failures which are frequently abandoned.
And this is computer code, where the machine does exactly what you tell it to, rather than trying to find a way to benefit itself. The side effects are uncalcuable.
No doubt you believe in the precautionary principle when it applies to CO2. Apply it to health care and you won’t want to change anything. People are going to die because of unknown side effects of this bill.
You live in Wisconsin now, right? Get something passed in your state. As many pages as you like. Maybe we’ll get something smaller passed here. Wait ten years and we can compare results. I’m sure we will both be surprised.
Yours,
Tom
And really the biggest problem with ObamaCare is that we can’t afford it. See Wrong Bill At The Wrong Time. We can’t pay for Social Security. We can’t pay for Medicare and Medicaid. (Every dollar we take from Medicare to fund ObamaCare just puts Medicare further in the hole unless this Adminstration can fix Medicare. Ha! Show us Medicare savings first and implement ObamamCare later.) We can’t pay for public employee pensions. We can’t pay for the bailouts and the stimulus. We don’t have the money, even if we raise taxes enormously.
And what does it mean when we say we can’t afford it? It means poor people are going to suffer. That’s right. Spending more than we can afford always is worse for poor people. Rich people are always good at keeping their money – that’s how they got rich. And they are very good at politics. Middle class people are the political powerhouse in this country. So who will disproportionally pay? Poor people. Who won’t get the jobs that rich people can’t create? Poor people. Who won’t have the resources to do things for themselves when other government programs are cut? Poor people. Who has the least capability to withstand inflation? Poor people.
That’s what the truth means. The truth is we can’t afford it. And that means poor people will suffer.
Yours,
Tom
Dean,
You say you care.
You’ve had available time for the last couple years. What have you done to reduce the cost of health care or help others receive health care during that time?
Maybe you’ve done something, but all I’ve seen from you is advocating that someone else be compelled to take care of it.
Why not?
Because it’s hard.
Don’t tell me you care. That’s just words. I don’t count compelling someone else to take care of something as evidence, either. Show me you care. Prove it.
You’re looking to start a business of some kind. Maybe that’s relevant. You have technical skills. Show me what you’ve got.
Prove you care. Yes, I know it’s hard.
… or you can just tell people what you want them to think about you. Strike the pose. Some are gullible enough to fall for it.
Well, by the Dishman standard I don’t care either. I hang around on blogs and attend the occaisional protest and call or sometimes even see my Congressman. But I haven’t done anything either. I used to be what’s called an armchair model railroader. Read books and magazines, sure. But I didn’t build a model railroad and I didn’t run model trains.
Shorter Dishman: Armchair people don’t care.
Have I got that right?
Yours,
Tom
My comment came out kinda harshly.
I’m not sure how else to express the thought behind it, though.
I’m getting really frustrated with people demanding that I do something I don’t like, and taking my refusal to do so as evidence that somehow I want bad things to happen.
For someone else to demand that I take some action when they will not dirty their hands themselves strikes me as treating me like some kind of slave.
I’m not ok with that. It’s a cookbook.
Dishman,
> For someone else to demand that I take some action when they will not dirty their hands themselves strikes me as treating me like some kind of slave.
That’s a really good way to say it. Reminds me of responsible mothers everwhere, “… it yourself. I’m not your slave.”
A lot of what’s wrong with the nanny state is the way it infantalizes people. Let me alone to finance my own health care. Even if I don’t do it so well I’m taking responsibility and being an adult. I don’t mind if I’m penalized for screwing up. You let me drive a car (with my kids in it) and prepare uncooked poultry (for my kids to eat).
Yours,
Tom
It is very, very difficult to compare healthcare systems across national boundaries. There are just too many variables.
For example, the mortality rate due to prostate cancer is significantly lower in Sri Lanka than it is here (it’s lower in Japan and South Korea, too). The hypothesis is that Vitamin D may have something to do with it (consumption of fatty fish offsets less sunlight in the cases of Japan and South Korea).
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