Thursday, August 13, 2009
Fun with math
By Ellipses
A couple weeks ago, I wrote up a spectacularly brilliant blog about the hypocrisy of those against health care reform when it comes to folks who weren't born here. You can read it here.
Well, they are back... sorta.
I was watching Fox News last night, as I usually do when I can't sleep... and it was the Greta Van Susteren hour. She said something to the effect of this:
Technically, we may be out of the recession, but to the 9.5% of people who have lost their jobs and can't find a new one, I'm sure it doesn't feel that way.
I fully expect this line of reasoning to dominate economic discussion from the right. Certainly, a poor economy benefits the GOP, considering Obama was elected, in part, to "fix" the economy. Therefore, it is in their interest to play up the negative aspects of the economic picture. But here's where it is amusing...
The same people that will proclaim Obama a failure if unemployment is above, say, 0% in 2012, are the SAME people who will (and currently ARE) making the point that 80-85% of the population is currently insured and the majority of those people are happy with their coverage. Therefore, well, you know, there's no need to do ANYTHING in the realm of health care reform because the current system "works" just fine for "most" people.
The same people that will play up the fact that 1 in 10 people are unemployed as proof that Obama is like a rabid dog raping your kids are the same people that will ignore the fact that 15-20% of people can't afford to pay for medical care, if and when their kids ACTUALLY get raped by a rabid dog.
9.5% unemployment is not a pretty number. I would DEFINITELY like to see that figure in the 4's. But at the same time, it will take a little while to get there, and that certainly does not discount the 15-20% of people who are forgoing routine, basic care because they are not insured. Sphere: Related Content
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2 comments:
Barbara Wagner was diagnosed with a recurrence of lung cancer. Her doctors recommended a specific drug to help pro long and improve the quality of her life.
However, Barbara is a resident of Oregon and therefore, part of the state-run Oregon Health Plan. The state refused Barbara Wagoner's request for the drug since it doesn't cover drugs that are meant to pro-long the life of individuals with advanced cancer. After all, when the Oregon Health Plan was established in 1994 it 'was expressly intended to ration health care'" to save money. "But Oregon also has legalized assisted suicide, and in an unsigned letter from the state, Barbara was informed that the health plan would pay to cover the costs of a doctor to help her kill herself," but not give her the drug to prolong her life. She was not ready to have herself killed. "However, it seemed she had reached a dead end until a pharmaceutical company that invented the drug learned about her case and stepped in to provide Barbara with the drug free of charge."
We already have Obamacare in several states. These death panels that -- and, "Sarah Palin Doubles Down on 'Death Panels,'" according to the Politico. She's now defended her claim that the Democratic health care proposal would create 'death panels' in a statement Wednesday night slamming" Obama. If you go to her Facebook page and you look at the notes and you look at the things she wrote about death panels, it would seem to me that all of the inside-the-Beltway elites -- from Peggy Noonan to Mort Kondracke to Charles Krauthammer to whoever the hell else -- said (mocking voice), "She needs to educate herself on the issues! She needs to become more sophisticated. She needs to do some homework!"
It seems to me if you go to her Facebook, she's done some homework on this health care bill. She's become an expert on Section 1233. Politico writes about she's "doubling down." She's not backing down. She is doubling down, and this has got the White House in a defensive tizzy. But I would suggest that anybody who doubts her intellectual heft or her ability to learn and study, go to her Facebook page and look at the notes that she's taken. It's right there, the study that she has done and engaged in, in order to learn about section 1233. Now, this story in Oregon involving Barbara Wagner again it's in Mark Levin's book Liberty and Tyranny, illustrates that they are death panels. And it's a great way to phrase this end-of-life counseling and so forth. There's no question that these expenses, these end-of-life expenses are among the most costly, and they will be used to cut costs. But the thing that nobody's talking about is you don't have to be old for them to kick in.
All you have to do is have a disease that the government says, "Eh, it's just not worth paying for this." You could have advanced cancer, you could be 35 years old and they could say, "Sorry," and that's where this is headed. When you boil all of this down, when you really synthesize everything Obama wants to do down, it comes down to this: He wants to put your medical records on Google; wants to have everybody be able to see them. He wants to take over control from Congress of deciding what Medicare and Medicaid will spend, on who, and on what. He wants the White House, he wants the executive branch, to be making determinations of who lives and who dies -- which will lead to the regulation of every lifestyle or life in this country. When you boil down all the legalese and all of these 1,017 pages, you boil it down, Obama wants to run it. And the reason that he's not being specific about his plan is purely politically strategic, right out of the brain of David Axelrod.
Blame the pharmaceutical companies that overcharge for medicines, not the state plan. Of course when you see a chance for a publicity stunt like that, you're going to go right out and give some away for free so that you can look like the good guy to Joe Six-Pack Dumbfuck. Your story is an argument that the system does not go far enough in my opinion.
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