Les Jones

Projection

Sunday, October 18th, 2009 | Health Care, Media Behaving Badly | Permalink | 2 Comments |

Obama accused hundreds of thousands of Tea Partiers of being astroturf planted by the insurance and health care industries. Turns out it was Obama using astroturf health care outfits.

They concocted two groups — Americans for Stable Quality Care and its predecessor, Healthy Economy Now . . . . That’s as good an example of astroturfing as you’re going to find. There’s nothing illegal about it (unless campaign-finance laws were broken, for which we have seen no evidence), but it’s fundamentally dishonest. The White House orchestrated support, played to the support, and crowed about the support.

If our media wasn’t so ridiculously in the tank for Obama you’d hear about this on CNN instead of on blogs.

Tags: obama

Even Obama has stopped claiming “47 million uninsured Americans”

Thursday, September 10th, 2009 | Health Care | Permalink | No Comments |

Remember 10 million Americans, not 47 million, chronically uninsured?

As of last night’s speech even Obama has stopped using the 47 million number. Obama: I used to say 47 million uninsured. Now, it’s 30 million.

That’s an enormous concession. Now instead of claiming 1 in 6 Americans being chronically uninsured, Obama is claiming only 1 in 10. The real number is closer to 1 in 30, but this is progress.

One reason it isn’t 47 million is that that number includes illegal aliens, who wouldn’t be covered by a national health care program. Or would they?

The Democrats’ bill in the House, H.R. 3200, contains gaping loopholes that will allow illegal immigrants to receive taxpayer-funded benefits. And these loopholes are no accident.

The legislation contains no verification mechanism to ensure that illegal immigrants do not apply for benefits. Republicans offered an amendment to close this loophole — it would have required verification using the existing methods that are already in place to verify eligibility for other federal benefits programs. But, when they were asked to put the language of the bill where their words were, in a party-line vote, House Democrats rejected the amendment to require verification and close this loophole.

Obama will fight for you (except against lawyers, because they know Latin and Kung Fu)

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 | Health Care, Politics | Permalink | No Comments |

CNSNews.com - Howard Dean: Democrats Left Tort Reform Out of Health Care Bill Because They Feared ‘Taking On’ Trial Lawyers

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, a medical doctor who served as governor of Vermont, said at a town hall meeting on Tuesday night that Democrats in Congress did not include tort reform in the health care bill because they were fearful of “taking on” the trial lawyers.

“This is the answer from a doctor and a politician,” said Dean. “Here is why tort reform is not in the bill. When you go to pass a really enormous bill like that the more stuff you put in, the more enemies you make, right? And the reason why tort reform is not in the bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everybody else they were taking on, and that is the plain and simple truth. Now, that’s the truth.”

Tags: obama

Electronics get cheaper, health care gets more expensive

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 | Economics, Health Care | Permalink | 5 Comments |

Glenn Reynolds says of the digital camera’s improving performance and lower prices, “Yes, why isn’t healthcare this way? Hmm, what could be different?”

The most likely reason is Baumol’s Cost Disease, a 2007 word of the day that’s worth repeating.

Baumol’s cost disease (also known as the Baumol Effect) is a phenomenon described by William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen in the 1960s. The original study was conducted for the performing arts sector. Baumol and Bowen pointed out that the same number of musicians are needed to play a Beethoven string quartet today as were needed in the 1800’s; that is, the productivity of Classical music performance has not increased.

In a range of businesses, such as the car manufacturing sector and the retail sector, workers are continually getting more productive due to technological innovations to their tools and equipment. In contrast, in some labor-intensive sectors that rely heavily on human interaction or activities, such as nursing, education, or the performing arts there is little or no growth in productivity over time. As with the string quartet example, it takes nurses the same amount of time to change a bandage, or college professors the same amount of time to mark an essay, in 2006 as it did in 1966.

Baumol’s cost disease is often used to describe the lack of growth in productivity in public services such as public hospitals and state colleges. Since many public administration activities are heavily labor-intensive and have a limited desirable provider-customer ratio, there is little growth in productivity over time. As a result, the costs of the bureaucracy will inflate quicker than the growth in the GDP.

From The New Yorker:

Continue reading the rest of this post right here ›››

Our government: lying about health care costs since 1962

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 | Health Care | Permalink | No Comments |

NPR via Reason - Lying for Health Care Reform - LBJ’s Example for Today’s Democrats:

We believe, after looking at the evidence, my co-author [David Blumenthal] and I, that if the true cost of Medicare had been known — if Johnson hadn’t basically hidden them — the program would never have passed. America’s second-most beloved program would never have happened, if we had had genuine cost estimates.

Amazingly, NPR even included this Ronald Reagan quote:

“One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people, has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project — most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can’t afford it. Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it.”

10 year deficit raised $2 trillion

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 | Economics, Health Care, Social Security | Permalink | No Comments |

Zero Hedge - Long-Term Budget Deficit Revised, Now $2 Trillion Dollars Worse:

White House budget review set for release Aug. 25 will show cumulative deficits over the next decade amounting to $9 trillion, up from $7.1 trillion that the administration predicted in May, the official said on condition of anonymity because the figures have not been made public.

So that’s another $2 trillion that can’t fund health care.

My theory is that if Obamacare-style nationalized health care doesn’t happen by 2016 it won’t happen for the foreseeable future. By 2016 the depth of the government’s deficits will be so great that no national health care will be unfundable. Besides the deficit itself, the liabilities for Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid will eat up so much of the budget that we’ll face a crisis just trying to keep the existing programs intact. The public will finally realize how badly the government has managed its finances and promises.

Tags: deficit

Economic Mccarthyism: “Are you now or have you ever been highly compensated?”

Friday, August 21st, 2009 | Economics, Health Care | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Associated Press - House Democrats Seek Financial Records of Health Insurance Companies:

Democrats on a House committee are seeking detailed financial records from dozens of large insurance companies, officials disclosed Tuesday, part of an investigation into “executive compensation and other business practices” in an industry opposed to President Barack Obama’s plan to overhaul health care.

The request included records relating to compensation of highly paid employees, documents relating to companies’ premium income and claims payments, and information on expenses stemming from any event held outside company facilities in the past 2 1/2 years.

The letter from Waxman and Stupak requested the information be provided by early September. While companies are not under legal obligation to comply, the committee could respond to a refusal by voting to subpoena the information at a later date.

These are private companies. They aren’t being bailed out by the government. What business is it of the government how much their employees make? It’s a rich hunt.

Gates Foundation charity exits health care, pharma stocks

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 | Health Care | Permalink | No Comments |

Wall Street Journal - Gates Foundation Sells Off Most Health-Care, Pharmaceutical Holdings:

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest private philanthropy fund, sold off almost all of its pharmaceutical, biotechnology and health-care investments in the quarter ended June 30, according to a regulatory filing published Friday.

The Seattle-based charity endowment, set up by Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates and his wife, sold its total holding of 2.5 million shares in health-care giant Johnson & Johnson in the quarter, according to the filing.

The foundation also sold millions of shares in major drug makers, including 14.9 million shares in Schering-Plough Corp., almost 1 million shares in Eli Lilly & Co., 8.1 million shares in Merck & Co. and 3.7 million shares in Wyeth, over the same time period. The foundation no longer holds shares in any of those companies.

Among the other health and life sciences-related investments the foundation liquidated are Allos Therapeutics Inc., InterMune Inc., Auxilium Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc.

The only life science-related holding the foundation retains is a 3 million-share stake in Seattle Genetics Inc.

Gee, can’t imagine why they’d do that.

Tags: investing

Memo: Obama made backroom deal with pharma companies

Thursday, August 13th, 2009 | Health Care, Politics | Permalink | 5 Comments |

Via Ace of Spades, Huffington Post - Internal Memo Confirms Big Giveaways In White House Deal With Big Pharma:

The memo, which according to a knowledgeable health care lobbyist was prepared by a person directly involved in the negotiations, lists exactly what the White House gave up, and what it got in return.

It says the White House agreed to oppose any congressional efforts to use the government’s leverage to bargain for lower drug prices or import drugs from Canada — and also agreed not to pursue Medicare rebates or shift some drugs from Medicare Part B to Medicare Part D, which would cost Big Pharma billions in reduced reimbursements.

In exchange, the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA) agreed to cut $80 billion in projected costs to taxpayers and senior citizens over ten years. Or, as the memo says: “Commitment of up to $80 billion, but not more than $80 billion.”

Obama got cuts in exchange for not asking for more cuts. He also got the pharma companies to pledge $150 million in advertising to support the plan. (Which may well be illegal, as Ace notes.) That quid pro quoe seems like collusion against taxpayers and against citizens opposed to his healthcare plan, or even less generously like Obama was charging protection money to the pharma companies.

If this is happening before the government takeover of healthcare begins, imagine what’s going to happen later. We’ll see non-stop influence-peddling and influence-buying. That’s what happens when politicians control money and power.

UPDATE: Linda Douglas, the communications director for the White House Office of Health Reform, was on CNN August 13th. CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked her if the White House had struck a deal for pharma to cough up $150 million for advertising to support Obamacare. Douglass deflected the question. Blitzer immediately asked about the $150 million again, and Douglass again evaded the question. RealClearPolitics has the CNN transcript.

BLITZER: Did the White House make a secret deal with pharma, the pharmaceutical lobby here in Washington, that would limit how much cost reductions they would have going forward over the next 10 years?

DOUGLASS: Here is what — what happened. The White House, the pharmaceutical industry, the Senate Finance Committee agreed that the pharmaceutical industry would contribute $80 billion over 10 years — a very, very substantial sum of money that would lower the high cost of prescription drugs for seniors, who are paying exorbitant costs for prescription drugs. That was a crucial piece of this deal, as well as other steps that they would take to lower costs.

It’s an $80 billion agreement. That’s what the White House, the Senate Finance Committee and pharma have agreed to. And the final details are being worked out with the — with the Senate Finance Committee.

BLITZER: Did pharma, in exchange, make a promise of $150 million to pay for advertising to help the president’s plan go forward?

What — what you have, Wolf, is this deal that is $80 billion. And we are very pleased, obviously, that — that the pharmaceutical industry agrees with us, that there’s an urgent need for comprehensive health insurance reform that’s going to protect Americans from unfair rules, from rising costs. They agree with that. They’ve agreed with it from the beginning. That’s why they came to us and we worked out this agreement with the pharmaceutical industry. And they’re supporting health reform legislation. And that is good for the country.

BLITZER: So is part of the deal that they would support this legislation, go forward with $150 million in advertising?

DOUGLASS: You know, Wolf, part of the agreement here is that we’re all going to work together to bring comprehensive health reform. I mean, clearly, the pharmaceutical industry said we are going to support comprehensive health reform. And that’s what they’re doing.

Tags: obama

Obama delegate lies, claims to be physician at town hall meeting

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 | Health Care, Politics | Permalink | 3 Comments |

Roxana Mayer identified herself as a “pediatric primary care physician” at a Houston town hall meeting on government healthcare and that’s how the press reported it. She now admits she is not and never has been a doctor. Instead, she was Obama’s registered delegate in Texas.

Patterico’s got the story. Me, I’ve got a prediction.

During the Bush years we saw lots of phony anti-war soldiers - people like Micah Wright and Jesse Macbeth who lied about their service and made up atrocities to fit an anti-war narrative. With healthcare front and center I expect to see more fake doctors shilling for Obamacare. Roxana Mayer is just the first.

LATER: Patterico found the video.

After Mayer says she’s a primary care physician, Rep. Sheila Jackson (D-TX) leads a round of applause, thanking her for being a primary care physician and hugging her. Jackson asks Mayer how long she’s been practicing. Answer: “Four years.”

Tags: bullshit artists

So many lies about town hall debates on Obamacare

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 | Health Care | Permalink | No Comments |

Turns out it’s the paid astroturfers for Obamacare and others of their ilk who are drowning out town hall debates . Go figure.

Marko on government health care

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 | Health Care, Political Survival Kit, Quotes | Permalink | No Comments |

“A mandatory public health care system is a universal adapter for unlimited Nanny State legislation, because there’s very little personal behavior that wouldn’t impact public health care costs in some way.”
– Marko Kloos

Eat the rich!

Thursday, August 6th, 2009 | Health Care, Politics, Social Security | Permalink | No Comments |

Washington Times - Congress in Fantasyland:

The Congressional Budget Office projects a total additional deficit of approximately $4.9 trillion dollars during President Obama’s first term (2009-2012). Currently, the top 1 percent of taxpayers pay 40 percent of the tax, or $450 billion a year, or approximately $1.8 trillion dollars during the next four years, leaving a $3.1 trillion hole. Increasing the tax rate on those high earners to 100 percent might yield an additional $1.5 trillion the first year, but this will only work for the first year. Most people, after being taxed 100 percent on their income, will quit work and/or put their investments in nontaxable entities, such as tax-free local government bonds.

It is also not mathematically possible to take care of all the new spending by increasing taxes on the top 5 percent of taxpayers (those making $160,000 or more annually) who already pay 61 percent of the federal tax (or $676 billion per year). Most of these people are now paying close to the revenue maximizing rate, which means that any increase in their tax rate is unlikely over the long run to bring in much more tax revenue

“Cash for Clunkers” suspended

Friday, July 31st, 2009 | Health Care, Politics | Permalink | 1 Comment |

This post has been updated with additional information.

The government has suspended the Cash for Clunkers program. Officially, the program had run through 20% of its four month budget in just one week, but car dealers expressed concern that the government hadn’t recognized many more sales that might empty the program’s $1 billion in funds.

Gee, a government program going over budget. Who could have guessed? Like Insty says, “Hmm. So the program ran through the money faster than they thought. I wonder how their healthcare plan will work out?”

I’m sure when the government takes over health care that Cash for Cancer won’t run out of money in one week. Probably. For instance, Hawaii’s healthcare program lasted a whole seven months before being shut down due to bankrupting cost overruns. So as long as you can get through the waiting list for cancer treatment in less than seven months you probably won’t even die.

Tags: we're from the government

10 million Americans, not 47 million, chronically uninsured

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 | Health Care | Permalink | 1 Comment |

From Bala Ambati via Megan McArdle:

On the 47 million people without health insurance point, that too is a statistic where there is less than meets the eye. First, health insurance does not equal health care (there are not just emergency rooms but cash-based clinics, and conversely, a lot of people with insurance don’t get good health care). Second, of that 47 million, 14 million are already eligible for existing programs (Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, SCHIP) yet have not enrolled, 9.7 million are not citizens, 9.1 million have household incomes over $75,000 and could but choose not to purchase insurance, and somewhere between 3 and 5 million are uninsured briefly(<2 months) between jobs. That leaves about 10 million Americans who are chronically without insurance. Needless to say, extending the blanket of coverage to this group should not cost $1.5 trillion and require a wholesale overhaul of all of medicine.

Lessons learned from TennCare

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 | Health Care | Permalink | No Comments |

RealClearPolitics - Lessons For Health Care Reform:

“Free” Care Is Expensive: No matter how forthright the Administration’s cost estimates are; no model accounts for the rational decisions that push people to over-utilize the “free care” a public option offers. TennCare’s gold plated coverage included every doctor’s appointment and prescription. As such, patients with a cold opted to charge the state hundreds of dollars for doctor visits and medicine instead of paying $5 out of pocket for over-the-counter cold medicine. Over-use caused TennCare’s anticipated savings to evaporate and its cost to explode. While TennCare consistently covered between 1.2 and 1.4 million people; costs increased from $2.5 billion in 1995 to $8 billion by the time of TennCare’s restructuring. It consumed a third of the state budget including nearly all state revenue growth. When the illusion of “free” care is fostered, it is always over-utilized.

Employers Prefer “Free” Care to Private Care: If the government offers universal health care, why wouldn’t businesses move employees to the plan as a sound business decision? In Tennessee, this behavior dramatically expanded the public burden as people who had once been on private insurance migrated to the “free” option of public care, adding to the State’s unanticipated cost. Studies indicate that only 55% of those added to TennCare came from the uninsured population, while the rest came from a decline in private coverage.

Hat tip to Instapundit

CBO estimate of ObamaCare 2x expensive as generally reported

Thursday, July 16th, 2009 | Health Care | Permalink | No Comments |

A trillion dollars over 10 years? Nope.

Actually, it’s really a cool trillion over five years. Eyeball the graph Philip Klein posted this afternoon and admire the left’s sleight of hand. They’re using a 10-year timeline to create the illusion that the program costs $100 billion a year or so. In fact, it’ll be more than $200 billion once it gets going, which won’t happen until 2014, and that’s assuming that the cost projections aren’t wildly over-optimistic the way every other projection they’ve made this year has turned out to be. In fact, the trillion-dollar figure doesn’t even account for all expenses; as MKH notes, the CBO has yet to compute “administrative costs” of implementing the program or the effect it’ll have on other areas of federal spending. Still, give The One credit for consistency: Whether it’s borrowing from future generations to pay for the stimulus or hiding the costs of his health-care boondoggle by backloading them, he’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

Scary hockeystick graph of the Obamacare cost nightmare found here.

LATER: Obama healthcare bill would outlaw private insurance:

It didn’t take long to run into an “uh-oh” moment when reading the House’s “health care for all Americans” bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee. It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

Tags: obama, obamacare

French “universal” health care only covers 75% of doctors

Monday, July 13th, 2009 | Health Care | Permalink | No Comments |

Denis Boyles at the Corner:

A couple of things you can learn if you’re in France:

First, the meaning of “universal.” It doesn’t mean what you think if you’re a poor person in France, where “universal” health care is arguably better than elsewhere in the EU. It means about 75 percent. Le Parisien reports this morning that, as in the U.S., the more money you have the better care you get. Shocking. The paper backed up a recent study with a small-scale sting of their own and discovered that if you rely on France’s medical insurance alone, 25 percent of French doctors will refuse to treat you. That’s how you say ObamaCare in French.

Previously - Myths of European Healthcare

Are Medicare cuts being subsidized by private health care?

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 | Health Care, Social Security | Permalink | No Comments |

Reason - ObamaCare is a Trojan Horse for Socialized Medicine:

Medicare hasn’t controlled costs by discovering some wonder drug to deliver new efficiencies that the private sector doesn’t have. In fact, the Government Accountability Office lists Medicare as a “high-risk” program, thanks to its long-term financial problems and its vulnerability to fraud. Rather, Medicare has cut costs by deploying the economic equivalent of leech-therapy: slashing payments to providers. The only reason providers haven’t been bled out of existence is because they have offset these cuts by raising prices charged to private insurance plans. In effect, then, the good performance of Medicare that Obama and Co. tout has been purchased by beggaring the private plans that they deride.

There is a rich literature testifying to this phenomenon. A study last December by Milliman Inc., an independent consulting firm, commissioned by America’s Health Insurance Plans, found that underpayment by Medicare and Medicaid accounted for nearly an 11% increase in the health care costs of private plans. This means that on average a privately insured family is forced to pick up about $1,800 extra every year of the government’s slack. Private plans, all in all, are subsidizing government programs to the tune of $90 billion annually.

Did Obama’s stimulus plan destroy the chances for his healthcare plan?

Monday, June 22nd, 2009 | Health Care | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Obama’s health care plan faces rising cost estimates and declining support.

Public anxiety about red ink — muted during this winter’s debate over an economic stimulus package — has come roaring back, with a Gallup Poll showing deficits and spending as the only issues where more people disapprove of Obama’s performance than approve of it.

Megan McArdle asks, Is Comprehensive Health Care Reform Dead?

But two things are also clear: the Democrats overestimated the boost they’d get from both the crisis and Obama’s popularity. And they dissipated a hell of a lot of the money and political capital they’d now like to spend on the stimulus and the GM bailout. They got very carried away with visions of 1932.

But this is not 1932, and Obama is not FDR. FDR came into office with 20+% unemployment and a banking crisis that was wiping out peoples’ life savings every day. FDR also came into office with a trivial national debt, and a Federal government that consumed less than 4% of GDP. He had a lot of run room.

Tyler Cowne asks, Is the revolution over?:

I’d just like to repeat a simple question I asked at the beginning of the Obama administration: which would you rather have, the fiscal stimulus or $775 billion in public health programs? Even better, how about $300 billion in stimulus — the immediate stuff like aid to state governments — and $475 billion in public health programs?

And I don’t mean this post as a poke at Democrats in particular.  Conservatives, libertarians, etc. all commit their own versions of this error, at least if they find their way to power.  The basic mechanism is simply that policy advocates underestimate the opportunity costs of the measures they propose, as they tend to see those measures as more “win-win” than others are willing to believe.

Tags: obama, porkulus

Candidate Obama vs. President Obama on healthcare

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 | Health Care, Social Security | Permalink | No Comments |

National Review - What Obama Used to Think of Medicare Cuts:

“Now, first of all, we found out that Senator McCain wants to pay for his plan by taxing your health care benefits for the first time in history. Just like George Bush. That was bad enough. But ‘The Wall Street Journal’ recently reported that it was actually worse than we thought. It turns out Senator McCain would pay for part of his plan by making drastic cuts in Medicare. $882 billion worth. $882 billion in Medicare cuts to pay for an ill-conceived, badly thought through health care plan that won’t provide more health care to people.”
– Barack Obama on the campaign trail

Now President Obama wants to pay for his healthcare plan by … taxing health benefits and making cuts in Medicare benefits. It’s almost as if he’s making up a multi-trillion dollar national health care plan as he goes along.

UPDATE FROM THE FUTURE: Five Health Care Promises Obama Won’t Keep

Tags: obama

Social Security and Medicare: outlook worsens by the day

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 | Health Care, Social Security | Permalink | 1 Comment |

AP - Social Security and Medicare finances worsen:

The Congressional Budget Office recently projected that Social Security will collect just $3 billion more in 2010 than it will pay out in benefits. A year ago, the CBO had projected that Social Security would have a much higher $86 billion cash surplus for the 2010 budget year, which begins Oct. 1.

The trustees report projected that Social Security’s annual surpluses would “fall sharply this year,” then remain at a reduced level in 2010 and be lower in the following years than last year’s projections. The report said that the Social Security annual surplus would be eliminated entirely in 2016, reflecting increased demands from the wave of 78 million baby boomers retiring.

That means Social Security will have to turn to its trust fund to make up the difference between Social Security taxes and the benefits being paid out beginning in 2016. The trustees projected the trust fund would be depleted in 2037, four years earlier than the 2041 date in last year’s report.

And what about Medicare?

Medicare’s condition is more precarious, reflecting the pressures from soaring health care costs as well as the drop in tax collections.

That’s all the details they provide. They presumably can’t bear to bring themselves to say how bad off Medicare is.

Which would be typical at least. People will talk about the federal deficit. Some brave souls will talk about Social Security shortfalls. Few people have the fortitude to explain that Medicare in anything like its current form is completely unsustainable. From a post last week interviewing a Wharton economics professor:

Medicare is tough for two reasons. One, the shortfall in Medicare is six to seven times larger than in Social Security. Social Security is a major problem; Medicare is a crisis. You add both of those… shortfalls together and you’re getting something that’s … between $80 and $120 trillion in total present value shortfalls. … People can’t even imagine how big that number is. If you took the total value of the United States, except for the people (all the land, houses, buildings, everything that’s non-perishable, your washer and dryer, cars, and so forth), it has about a value of about $50 trillion. So we’re talking about a shortfall of twice the value of the value of the U.S. except for the people. Now, the value of the people is about three times that. We’re just talking about biblically large shortfalls. We’ve never seen this type of problem.

We have no idea how to fix Medicare, in part because we don’t have the stomach to discuss it. Yet while our country’s largest medical care program is heading to certain doom George Bush introduced the unfunded Medicare prescription drug program and Barack Obama has expanded other government health programs like SCHIP and is trying to expand health programs further.

Take any politician’s estimate of how much these programs will cost and double it, then double it again. Then realize they have no idea how they’ll pay for all of this, because they don’t even know how they’ll save Medicare.

Walgreens offers free health consultations to recently unemployed

Monday, April 20th, 2009 | Health Care | Permalink | No Comments |

Retail clinic offers free care to recently unemployed:

The Walgreen Co. and its subsidiary Take Care Health Systems are offering free care at all 342 Take Care Clinics through the end of the year for patients who have lost their jobs and their health insurance.

However, the deal comes with conditions that address the struggles of getting people into the door outside of evenings and flu and cold season.

The Take Care Recovery Plan offers unemployed, uninsured people free care from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday. The offer extends to families, dependents and same-sex domestic partners of those who have lost their jobs and benefits after March 30.

The company admits the weekday hours are low-volume times, but says it is looking at that low-volume time as an opportunity to address a need. Critics, however, view it as a way to get customers in the door, with the hope that they spend money on other things.

No doubt that’s how Walgreens is justifying it as a business case, but this could still help some people. If you get a prescription it definitely pays to compare Walgreens prices to Wal-Mart’s.

Tags: wal-mart

De-pression eyeglasses and contact lenses

Thursday, March 19th, 2009 | Economics, Health Care | Permalink | No Comments |

Reuters - Wal-Mart cuts prices on contacts, kids’ eyeglasses:

The world’s biggest retailer said on Thursday that it had teamed with 1-800 CONTACTS to reduce the price of a yearly supply of contact lenses by 12 percent to 50 percent.

Wal-Mart also said it had cut the prices of glasses and eyeglass frames for children and teenagers. It is selling full sets of eyeglasses for as low as $39 in its nearly 3,000 U.S. Wal-Mart vision centers, down from the previous price of $59.

Those are great prices for a brick and mortar store. You can find eyeglasses even cheaper online.

Tags: This Here De-pression

Veterans angry about Obama’s insurance proposal (UPDATED)

Monday, March 16th, 2009 | Health Care | Permalink | 6 Comments |

Obama wants private insurance companies to cover service-related injuries for military veterans. The American Legion is strongly opposed to the plan:

Commander Rehbein reiterated points made last week in testimony to both House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committees. It was stated then that The American Legion believes that the reimbursement plan would be inconsistent with the mandate that VA treat service-connected injuries and disabilities given that the United States government sends members of the armed forces into harm’s way, and not private insurance companies. The proposed requirement for these companies to reimburse the VA would not only be unfair, says the Legion, but would have an adverse impact on service-connected disabled veterans and their families. The Legion argues that, depending on the severity of the medical conditions involved, maximum insurance coverage limits could be reached through treatment of the veteran’s condition alone. That would leave the rest of the family without health care benefits. The Legion also points out that many health insurance companies require deductibles to be paid before any benefits are covered. Additionally, the Legion is concerned that private insurance premiums would be elevated to cover service-connected disabled veterans and their families, especially if the veterans are self-employed or employed in small businesses unable to negotiate more favorable across-the-board insurance policy pricing. The American Legion also believes that some employers, especially small businesses, would be reluctant to hire veterans with service-connected disabilities due to the negative impact their employment might have on obtaining and financing company health care benefits.

If Obama’s plan goes through many veterans will become uninsurable for pre-existing service-related injuries.

Hat tip to an email from Mark O’Dell.

UPDATE: Here’s candidate Barack Obama a week ago last year:

When soldiers return from fighting, they deserve nothing but the best in medical care, he said. More needs to be done, he said, to understand the effects of post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury on soldiers returning from war.

“We’ll have to keep our sacred trust with our veterans and fully fund the (Veterans Administration). We’ll have to look after our wounded warriors, whether they’re suffering from wounds seen or unseen,” he said.

Newsflash: Obama lied his ass off. Follow the link for then-Obama’s take on debts and deficits vs. now-Obama’s porkulus spending plan:

“Because of the Bush-McCain policies, our debt has ballooned. This is creating problems in our fragile economy. And that kind of debt also places an unfair burden on our children and grandchildren, who will have to repay it,” he said. “John McCain seems determined to carry out a third Bush term.”

Tags: deficit, obama, porkulus