Tuesday, June 23, 2009

It's a crazy, mixed-up world.

In the Politico Monday, an article entitled "why we will win back healthcare this time" was published with what may presumably have been a straight face. The article breathlessly touts reform of the American healthcare system to provide affordable healthcare for all Americans. I think their idea of affordable healthcare is that a handful of people will tote the note for everyone else. Who is John Gall?

Golden chestnuts from the article:

Progressive eras also rise from a reaction against the excesses of conservatism, which in this case is the national rejection of the overreaching of the Bush administration.


and:

There is also unity on messaging, starting with reassuring Americans that they can keep the insurance they have if they like it. This is the best response to the opposition’s entire message, which is to scare the public about reform. The other weakness that opponents have in their message about “government-run health care” delays and denial of care is that there’s hardly anyone in America, including people with good insurance, who don’t believe that the private insurance industry is delaying and denying people care every day while driving health care costs through the roof.
[emphasis mine]


There was a time when good health insurance was part of the incentive to strive for a good job. These days, however, many people have the idea that health insurance is an entitlement. Rather than preserving our freedom to achieve (or not) as we each choose, lumping every American together in one nationalized healthcare system will cripple caregivers' ability to deliver service and rather than a rising tide which raises all boats, we will be effectively yoked together in a limiting and tragically rationed system.

I'll be honest - I genuinely liked George W. Bush as a person. I found him sincere. However, if his administration was over-reaching in any way, I think it was far too fiscally liberal. For the entirety of his terms as president, I was baffled by the hue and cry from the left, when it seemed to me GWB let slip the doors to the national coffers in the name of compassionate conservatism. Aspects of government which should have shrunk grew instead.

We really need to get a grip on spending. The healthcare industry is already effectively hobbled by our government. I'd like to box the ears of anyone who thinks healthcare will be better and the public better-served by that industry when it has been manacled by the embuggerances which the federal government so masterfully engineers.

As Ambulance Driver said, when our government takes over the health care industry, it will have the efficiency of FEMA with the compassion of the IRS.

We're so screwed.

5 comments:

Rustmeister said...

All we have to do is look and MediCare and the VA system to see how the .gov does with healthcare.

NotClauswitz said...

I've had "good" health insurance that did little and I've had "bad" health insurance that did less, I've had a HUGE GALAXY of stuff my employer stuffed down my throat and I couldn't eat, and expensive stuff I bought myself and nibbled on. Currently I have Kaiser via my wife's employer, which I take in little bites - but I spend more on dental care than physiological/animatronic, and that's outside "Teh Healthcare."

What's the big freaking Universal deal? There really is NOT one, not until it get's desperate and serious and tearful with blood everywhere - and then guess what? Regular-Joe Healthcare doesn't do it either.

All this La-La-La Fluffy Bunny Healthy Hippo Happy Horses Healthcare is for band-aids and sprains and poison-ivy - kids with skinned knees who need a tetanus shot and oldsters who need some blood-pressure medication. What they want is to intervene in
"LIFESTYLE CHOICES" - which mainly matters to pregnant women.

And to do this they will implement a plan that will bring down and destroy the Insurance Industry and have *Government* run even more of the Financial System in a way that is NOT transparent but completely opaque and mysterious, with money disappearing down one rabbit hole after another into their Alice-In-Wonderland Mad Hatter Economy.

Universal Healthcare is a fake.

Jon said...

Considering the unwillingness to purchase our debt, I'm thinking they won't be able to scratch up enough money to buy a bandaid. The congressfolks will posture and gnash their teeth, but in the long run, the only thing that will happen will be too much wasted space on the evening news.

Rabbit said...

I started to post something earlier, but decided to roll it through my noggin a little more first.

Consider this:

Imagine a potentially fatal genetic disease that hits in the fourth decade of life, for which there is no cure, per se, but there are therapies to slow, if not nearly halt, the progression of the damage for years. The therapy is expensive- anywhere from 80 to 120k per year, but is available from three producers and is covered by most insurance providers and Medicade. Medicare provides substantial underwriting, but all three are largely 80% covered for the cost.

There are approximately 5 to 10 thousand people in the US who have been diagnosed with this, but statistics indicate there could be as many as one hundred thousand who will develop symptoms, and simple Punnett square calculations indicate that 300,000 are carriers of the defective gene.

Roll those numbers around for a moment.

Untreated, the mean life expectancy is 52 years, with the last 10 of those in a significantly debilitated state. Treatment, while costly, can result in a relatively normal life expectancy roughly equal to the mean of the general population, or another 26 years or so.

Somehow, I'm not at all convinced this one is going to make the "A" list for inclusion.

Regards,
Rabbit.

TOTWTYTR said...

It's interesting that the vast majority of Americans are happy with their health care, even if it's expensive. If the Democrats get their way it will be more expensive and far fewer people will be happy with it.

For the record, Ambulance Driver got that saying from me.