The No-Good Obama Has Altered American Medicine For Good

Barack Obama, Healthcare, Regulation, Socialism, Taxation, Welfare

Dr. Ramin Oskoui spoke extremely knowledgeably, on the Laura Ingraham Show, about the precise connection between curtailed medical care and ObamaCare. These are a few of the many ways in which the creep-in-chief’s signature legislation will degrade American medicine:

* Cancer: The concept of personalized medical care and the use of specific, state-of-the-art drugs that work with the individual’s genetic make-up—these will diminish considerably. ObamaCare puts access to “crucial medical progress at great risk.”

* PET scans, for example, will be limited to three in a lifetime, although cancer patients often have that many during initial diagnosis.

ObamaCare aims to control costs, explained Dr. Oskoui. For cancer patients this is achieved by blocking the patient’s ability to seek out specialized doctors. Because insurance provides cannot adjust premiums and benefits, the only thing they can do to control costs is to limit access and care—they must limit the network of providers with which they contract.

Bundle payments: doctors get lump sums of money to care for patients with particular conditions. This coerces them to cut down on the use of costlier, newer drugs and tests. It also pits what the doctor earns for caring for these patients against his payment, reducing his incentives to offer the best of remedies if these are more costly.

After all, doctors in private practice are small businessmen. They cannot provide a service for less than it costs them to provide.

Even if ObamaCare collapses under its own weight, warns Dr. Oskoui, it has “already changed the medical landscape.” Many specialists have migrated to the hospital system because, as “favored providers,” hospital-based medics are allowed to bill more than they would when working for themselves.

Both the host and this intelligent cardiac surgeon have concluded that ObamaCare is not about the practice of medicine, but about wealth distribution.

It is a tax bill.

“The entire medical landscape,” observed Ms. Ingraham, “has shifted to help the few who didn’t want healthcare or couldn’t afford it. (A point made back in 2009 in “Destroying Healthcare For The Few Uninsured.”)

Dr. Oskoui: ObamaCare has transferred financial risk to the providers of healthcare and away from Big Pharma, the insurers, those receiving healthcare. The latter, and the electronic health-records manufacturers, profit.

Again: it’s a wealth-transfer program; an entitlement program.

Debt-Addled America

Debt, Democrats, Economy, Government, Republicans

“Like father, like son” goes a saying about the similarities between the behavior of a child and his parents. In the case of the nation, infantile America mirrors its squandering government with respect to debt carried.

Is there any wonder the American people, happliy gulled by the moron media, disapprove of Republicans for entertaining the idea of not raising the debt ceiling?

“American companies and consumers are embracing [debt], running up record amounts in 2013,” reports CNBC.

Total household debt, according to the Fed’s flow of funds report, is at $13 trillion, nearly back to its pre-crisis level in 2007 and a shade below government debt of $15 trillion. … The debt deluge doesn’t end there, either, with lots of loans being taken out as well by companies. U.S. loan volume alone totaled $1.53 trillion through the first three quarters, a gaudy 25 percent higher than the same period in 2012. …
…Consumer credit, for instance, surged past the $3 trillion mark in the second quarter of 2013 and continues on an upward trajectory, according to the most recent numbers from the Federal Reserve.
At $3.04 trillion, the total is up 22 percent over the past three years. Student loans are up a whopping 61 percent.

Warns financier Peter Schiff:

The belief that deficits add to the economy, and that debt can be dealt with in an imaginary future (that never seems to arrive) is the foundation upon which the President can chastise the Republicans as irresponsible suicide bombers. Using this logic, he can argue (with a straight face) that borrowing is the equivalent of paying. That the President can make this delusional argument is not so surprising (no lie too great for the typical politician to attempt). What is alarming is that the media and the public have swallowed it so willingly. As they call for limitless increases in borrowing, Democrats have offered no plan to reduce the current debt and they are unwilling to negotiate with Republicans on that topic. Yet somehow they have been perceived as the party of fiscal responsibility. …
… According to modern economists, an elimination of deficit spending will immediately cause a dollar for dollar decrease in GDP. For example, if the government stopped sending food stamp payments to poor people, then grocery stores would lose business, employees would be laid off, and the economy would contract. But this one dimensional view fails to appreciate that the purchasing power of the food stamps had to come from somewhere. The government can’t create something from nothing. Taxation transfers purchasing power from people living in the present to other people living in the present. In contrast, borrowing transfers purchasing power from people living in the future to people living in the present. The good news for politicians is that future people don’t vote in current elections (and current voters don’t seem to appreciate the cost to their future selves of current policy).

It’s Do Or Die: How Important Is NOT Raising The Debt Ceiling?

Debt, Economy, Government, Republicans

One of the most important stands the near-irrelevant Republicans can take is to NOT raise the debt ceiling. As was pointed out in “Debt-Ceiling Hike Denier And Proud,” on EPJ (the preeminent libertarian site on the World Wide Web), if the Republicans stand firm just this once and “refuse to raise the debt ceiling,” they would force the government to balance its budget. Also explained in the column: The government’s receipts are more than sufficient to cover its debt payments by a factor of approximately ten.

More via Professor Jeffrey Dorfman, at Forbes:

Reaching the debt ceiling does not mean that the government will default on the outstanding government debt. In fact, the U.S. Constitution forbids defaulting on the debt (14th Amendment, Section 4), so the government is not allowed to default even if it wanted to.

In reality, if the debt ceiling is not raised in the next two weeks, the government will actually have to prioritize its expenses and keep its monthly, weekly, and daily spending under the revenue the government collects. In simple terms, the government would have to spend an amount less than or equal to what it earns. Just like ordinary Americans have to do in their everyday lives. …

… An increase in the debt ceiling allows the government to continue to run a budget deficit, which by simple accounting means that the national debt will increase. Not raising the debt ceiling does not mean defaulting on the current debt, but rather that no new debt can be incurred.

As a libertarian, it hurts me to “plot” all the state’s immoral and wastrel appropriations. As an economics professor, Dorfman has done the necessary work. He has worked out a balanced budget for the plundering class.

Read it.

It really is do or die.

Eurocrats Award Themselves A Peace Prize

EU, Government, The State, UN

They sure use up all the oxygen in the world, don’t they? A glorified governmental committee awards a close ally of the United Nations with a prize for its “efforts” to do a job it was entrusted to do. Wow!

The Norwegian Nobel Committee (appointed by the Norwegian Parliament) awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Arguably, the OPCW is an arm of the UN. Via Wikipedia:

The organisation is not an agency of the United Nations, but cooperates both on policy and practical issues. On 7 September 2000 the OPCW and the United Nations signed a cooperation agreement outlining how they were to coordinate their activities.[13] The inspectors furthermore travel on United Nations Laissez-Passer in which a sticker is placed explaining their position, and privileges and immunities.[14] The United Nations Regional Groups also operate at the OPCW to govern the rotations on the Executive Council and provide informal discussion platform.

The OPCW received the award for its “efforts to eliminate chemical weapons,” and for “trying to destroy Syria’s stockpiles of nerve gas and other poisonous agents.”

The always unintelligible U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon—does anyone English-speaking understand this man’s mixed metaphors?—approved, of course. Perhaps he will win next year?

“Like the United Nations, the mission of the OPCW was born from a fundamental abhorrence at the atrocities of war,” he said. “Together, we must ensure that the fog of war will never again be composed of poison gas.”

The evil European Union, “which endeavors to herd Europeans by stealth into a supranational European State,” “won the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize for uniting a continent ravaged by two world wars and divided by the Cold War.”

Uniting? As was observed in “Adieu to the Evil EU,” “[a]dding an overarching tier of tyrants—the EU—to European governments has benefited Europeans as a second hangman enhances the health of a condemned man.”

The name of Malala Yousafzai, “the 16-year-old Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban last October for advocating education for girls,” had been floated as another candidate. She is certainly courageous. But she’s a pacifist, venturing recently that if a Taliban attacked her, it would be wrong to defend herself with a shoe, because that would be stooping to his level. Come again?