It's a mystery!
Massachusetts can't figure out why its health care costs are growing:
Can you imagine if these jokers tried to run a restaurant?
"Bill, I'm confused. We're serving more people, but for some inexplicable reason, we suddenly don't seem to have enough food anymore."
Give Massachusetts credit for setting audacious health care goals. It took the lead in guaranteeing near-universal health insurance coverage for its residents, providing a template for the federal reforms to follow.... But when it comes to controlling health care costs, Massachusetts has no advantage, and in fact is starting behind most other states. Its costs are among the highest in the nation, and they have been growing in recent years at 6 percent to 7 percent while the economy has been growing at less than 4 percent.The amusing thing about America's left-liberals is that they are so "thoughtful" and "nuanced" and "complex" that they can't see blatant causation when it is right in front of them. These are the sort of people who stare at a light, wonder what is meant by the red color, and then conclude that it must mean they are supposed to drive ahead. The subsequent car accident, of course, is nothing more than sheer happenstance and bad fortune.
Can you imagine if these jokers tried to run a restaurant?
"Bill, I'm confused. We're serving more people, but for some inexplicable reason, we suddenly don't seem to have enough food anymore."
Labels: trainwreck
58 Comments:
The red light obviously represents redshifted green light and means that they need to drive ahead VERY FAST.
Vote Republican in this election, Romneycare is the devil you know vs Obamacare I mean the costs could grow in the double digits, and you don't want that do you?
BWAH HA HA AH AH AH
I'm voting for myself, at least I know the candidate won't inflict that kind of horror show on the electorate.
I noticed this story a few days ago and chuckled. What else did they expect? Of course, there is no hint of introspection, just applause that they are so courageous in acting to control costs.
Oh save us - Capt. Underoos - from the scourge of Obamacare!
Causation is of no matter to the left-liberals. It's the agenda that matters.
Oh, I am sure they will make it up once the volume of transactions is high enough to make up for the fixed cost.
What's that? Oh, it's the cost per transaction that is the problem? Oh well, it's all for a good cause.
I like how one commenter on that Times story says everyone needs to learn to accept death with dignity instead of pushing for expensive tests and treatments that drive up costs.
That will be the battle call of the libs once they get single payer implemented, costs spiral, and ration focused death panels pop up. Probably try to claim that was ALWAYS their position too.
Many Mass residents live on the southern border of NH, yet still claim Mass residents. They also happen to all be of a certain race and claim no taxable income. Soon the whole nation will be like this.
Residency, almost all the same race
I was in the Department of Defense working budget through the Clinton/Bush transition. For the first two years, I was mainly trying to figure out how to cut the budget without destroying basic capability. Then 911. Once we went to war, government demand drove up prices. Whether the contractors were gouging the government or if a fast ramp up in demand forced it, I can't be certain. All I know is that prices on many items went up, and continued to do so because a war was on.
Government run socialized medicine does the same thing, increased patient base equals increased demand and with the government promising to pay, you might as well charge however much you can get. Beyond that there are giant corporate and state bureaucracies that must be funded to make this all work. Denninger's recent piece about the Oklahoma Surgery Center is instructional. They don't take credit, insurance, or government funds, they perform surgery for cash and on average charge 80% less than the corporately managed healthcare centers. A consultation is only $200.00 (applied to surgery if you have one), less than I recently paid for an urgent care trip for strep throat.
The only answer to the medical crisis is the free market, taking responsibility for ourselves, relying on charity for the indigent, and simple, risk-based, voluntary, personal (not employer based) multi-year health insurance to cover major medical bills. Let the consumer pick the deductible. In other words, back to the 1950s and 1960s with some improvements.
"I like how one commenter on that Times story says everyone needs to learn to accept death with dignity instead of pushing for expensive tests and treatments that drive up costs."
Resources have to be allocated in some manner and modern society has voted - with nuance and careful consideration I'm sure - for political allocation over that hideous and unfair free market allocation.
I will find it interesting this summer, as America's corn harvest burns up in her dried and cracked fields, just how the politicians will continue justifying their ethanol subsidies in the face of $8 corn and starving African-Africans.
Denninger has an interesting post up about a cash only surgical center in OK. Cash price comes in at about an 80% discount to insurance charges for similar procedures.
"Can you imagine if these jokers tried to run a restaurant?"
Imagine no longer, friends.
Is this a preview for tomorrow's column?
Simple out: Insurance companies. They are the scape goat for all that is wrong with US healthcare for progressives.
Nothing can control the rise in health care costs except the free market. Third party insurance for routine care has caused costs to increase beyond what ordinary people can afford.
ObamaCare is designed to bail out the for-profit healthcare industry before their profits flat line.
The health insurance industry spent $1 million a day to influence the national healthcare reform debate in their favor. Written by Liz Fowler of the nation’s largest insurer, WellPoint, the law delivers 30 million new customers and $447 billion in taxpayer subsidies directly to the private health insurance companies."
With an aging population that uses more health care dollars as they approach death, the insurance companies cannot make enough in insurance premiums to pay the medical care costs AND make a profit. The "individual mandate" forces the uninsured to buy insurance which will give the medical insurance companies one last big payday before medical care is eventually turned over to the government in a single-payer system like Medicare.
This is why there's no hope that America will recover, the programs (and yes, the vocabulary)are the end state. Results matter not. There are simply too many left-libs in the country to overcome their mindlessness. And thirty years from now they will rise from the ashes of their idiocy and insist that "if only we had more money and control, we could have made it work". It's like the generals in Vietnam, "We could have won with half a billion more troops"... or Unicorn mounted cavalry.
I thought Sikhs believed in being armed at least with ceremonial knives ... so how could that happen?
Of course, there will be more calls for gun control so we can save all those immigrants from death at the hands of racists.
This is an opportune time to learn about APES.
Nah, not the kind that throws faecal at each other. Although, one side of the equation is getting quite close to the effort...
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[1] aka Britney Spears et al
Red Comet August 05, 2012 1:51 PM
That will be the battle call of the libs once they get single payer implemented, costs spiral, and ration focused death panels pop up. Probably try to claim that was ALWAYS their position too.
Ah yes, my favorite: Soylent Green
The red light is oppressive white patriarchy at work. The liberal driver feels that the light should allow her to pass, and therefore it should. Indeed, womyn and vibrant minorities should be allowed to pass at any time due to the discrimination and favoritism shown by green lights in the past to racist, oppressive, evil white males.
If there is an accident, it is only because of greedy capitalist corporations and their unsafe cars which kill the children. And the planet by burning dirty oil and producing global warming exhaust. Whether or not there is an accident, the greedy, evil corporations which produce the children killing cars and the dirty planet killing oil need to be taxed at 99%. They didn't build their businesses after all. Their businesses wouldn't exist without government roads, and government teachers who teach the children how to drive.
In a socialist worker's paradise there would only be safe, renewable energy vehicles. These vehicles would be designed in a manner sensitive to the many vibrant cultures, and would run off sunshine and wind. And there would be no classes of red and green lights, for classes divide us and oppress womyn and vibrant minorities. There would only be one light, shining brightly to guide us all equally through the intersection.
Of course, the red light is at fault!
Yeah right, o'Romney will repeal ACA during a time when the system is desperate for revenue.
The article doesn't actually say what you're claiming.
Free condoms?
ANd Romney was the liberal that signed this into law. And he's running as the Repub candidate. Oh boy.
"The article doesn't actually say..."
Just like the article several weeks ago on the Denver shootings didn't actually state that those without arms were easy pickings for someone who was. And then will come the claims that higher crime rates don't really follow from tighter gun control [e.g., Australia] - and then the actual stats next post will show the complete opposite [e.g., Australia again], with a sudden drop in someone's commentary afterwards.
Here we go again.
I think the great martini comes across more as a shirley temple or cosmopolitan.
A Liberal is like a naive childhood friend. While standing on street corner a pervert pulls up in an old dirty van with tinted windows and no license plates. The pervert promises you both delicious candies if you get in the van. You tell your friend not to enter the van. You plead with him not to trust the deceitful stranger. You even warn him of the potential horrible fate that may await him. Sadly your friend blankly stares at you and says “but he has candy” and then happily he skips towards the van.
A Liberal is retarded child. How can you be angry with a retarded child?
'Bama is bad, Willard is worse. It will be amusing to see the reaction of all the "conservatives", "tea-party-patriots", etc.
The article doesn't actually say what you're claiming.
Really? What do you think I am claiming, Martini?
I'm amazed at the straightness of Obama's learning curve. I know he's programmed to initiate national socialism and continue it for 2 terms, but at no time will he hide his tracks. He must think his followers are really dumb and will automatically give him a 2nd term. Maybe he's right.
Romney, if he wants to be elected, must show he's learned something. I may be wrong but that's why I'd vote for him instead of the single-minded Manchurian candidate.
A Liberal is retarded child. How can you be angry with a retarded child?
While your analogy is apt, liberals only act like retarded children. In reality they are adults who force us all, at gunpoint, into the van with them.
That's why we can be angry at them. If they were willing to get into the van themselves but leave the rest of us alone, I would merely have pity on them.
Yeah, he's learned something. He knows from George W. Bush that the Republican masses will tolerate almost any amount of betrayal.
The amusing thing about America's left-liberals is that they are so "thoughtful" and "nuanced" and "complex" that they can't see blatant causation when it is right in front of them.
Now you know why so many left-liberals tend to love academia, and why so many academics are left-liberal.
Safe, orderly, secure, predictable. Even when it totally sucks, like being an adjunct instructor or when paying massive student loans, it is still safe and predictable. Everyone with their delegated roles, everyone knows their place. Tenured jobs for life outside cause and effect. Even the politics, while vicious, have very little at stake. Orderly speech guarded by political correctness and speech codes on the one hand in public, while in private academic-speech is safe from attack by being needlessly verbose. The university campuses resemble a park. A playground of endless social engineering.
Always working in theory, with no need for outside cause and effect.
That's academia.
I just bumped into this.
Browser Application Allows Photos of Babies to be Replaced with Cats
I think the scientific idea that cats owned by childless women are actually baby surrogates has finally been settled. Therefore, I think that every single woman over the age of 30 should have a free kitten provided, along with her government-subsidized birth control pills.
Fight that patriarchy one meow at a time!
The Obama administration, quite to the contrary, is known to have actually distributed thousands of assault rifles, although, unfortunately, most of them went to Mexicans rather than Americans.
Laughed my ass off!
Things really starting going badly in the mid-2000s when MA forced people to have proof of insurance when paying income taxes. Doctors had already stopped taking new patients. A lot of places do not accept cash or credit (only insurance) and if you didn't have it, you could go to the clinic. After that law passed, you could only get into the clinic if you had an emergency. If you wanted to have a physical, it was at least a several month wait.
Romney is such an ass for saying he thinks his plan is good for MA, but bad for America. It's exactly the same as Obamacare. More people have insurance and more people will demand medical care figuring they're already paying for it anyway.......
I like how the NYTimes can't figure out how healthcare costs fell over the past two years. Perhaps they should look at the number of illegal immigrants.
Romney is such an ass for saying he thinks his plan is good for MA, but bad for America. It's exactly the same as Obamacare. More people have insurance and more people will demand medical care figuring they're already paying for it anyway.......
But think of the savings. It's like when I drink less beer at the bar, I save more money. Same thing with this. Having less access to healthcare and routine checkups allows you to $ave more money!
And if you die sooner, there's less worry about having money for retirement. Even more $aving$.
Vox anti-Underoos column is up at WND: "Willard is Even Worse."
tiarosa August 05, 2012 8:22 PM
Yeah, he's learned something. He knows from George W. Bush that the Republican masses will tolerate almost any amount of betrayal.
Like an abused spouse.
"But I love her and she promised she would stop! If I left, where would I go"
The Obama administration, quite to the contrary, is known to have actually distributed thousands of assault rifles, although, unfortunately, most of them went to Mexicans rather than Americans.
And maybe this recent shooter will be found to have received government funding
It also looks very convenient that we have another mass shooting when the administration (and Romney) want stronger gun control (other than advising people to use two hands and aim for center of mass.)
Hmmm
For some reason I cannot seem to post a link to the shooting in Wisconsin.
http://www.vdare.com/posts/sikh-temple-shooter-apparently-a-white-male-clearly-identified-as-such-in-msm
Perhaps he too will be found to have received government funding of one sort of another. It is curious that so many shooting have happened recently.
For some reason I cannot seem to post a link to the shooting in Wisconsin.
http://www.vdare.com/posts/sikh-temple-shooter-apparently-a-white-male-clearly-identified-as-such-in-msm
Perhaps he too will be found to have received government funding of one sort of another. It is curious that so many shooting have happened recently.
4 shooters.
4 shooters
Which ones are you counting? (Ignoring the shootings in Chicago, I guess.)
i'ma just comment here to demonstrate that i'm not a COMPLETE moron on the concept of unintended consequences to legislation ...
You all voted for a dumbocrat and here we are.
You all voted for a repukocrat and here we are.
You all voted for the devil and here we are.
You all voted for the devil incognito and here we are.
Surprised?
4 shooters
Which ones are you counting? (Ignoring the shootings in Chicago, I guess.)
There were 4 shooters at the Sikh Temple, not just one.
There were 4 shooters at the Sikh Temple, not just one.
Do you have a link?
There were 4 shooters at the Sikh Temple, not just one.
Link?
Really? What do you think I am claiming, Martini?
That Mass can't figure out why their health care costs are rising. Where exactly does it say that?
The closest thing to a statement of ignorance is this: "The growth rate of health costs has slowed significantly over the past year or two, but nobody knows if this is a temporary or lasting change."
Which is not exactly the same as not knowing why costs have risen.
Since others are posting OT, 45 minutes from now NASA should know whether or not the rover made it.
4 shooters. It is those evil homegrown extremists and bitter clingers.
There were 4 shooters at the Sikh Temple, not just one.
Link?
http://www.infowars.com/eyewitness-4-man-team-behind-sikh-temple-shooting/
Thanks for your patience, Vox.
Truman couldn't run a haberdasher shop and McGovern swiftly ran a hotel or B&B into the ground. Hoover however was a successful engineer, so we have that to look forward to with Romney.
"they can't see blatant causation when it is right in front of them."
With that sort of "thought" process it's no wonder most of them are atheists.
This discussion gives me the impression one could more easily have a sane conversation about economics with a hardline Marxist than with a "Left-Liberal" welfare-statist.
The commie would at least understand basic concepts like "means of production", man-hours, limited resources, and that mooching off others is both morally wrong, and unsustainable if too many people try to do it.
The Liberals - don't. And will not listen.
Meanwhile - look who's here in South Africa.
http://alturl.com/jdbtu
With a facial expression like that... would you want this person as your president?
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