Comments on: Fool me once, shame on you….

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 18:26:06 +0000

and the laughter, and real change, will start.

I think it would be more like the Queen of Cards in Alice’s Wonderland.

The manic and insane laughter will promptly lead to the execution of the one who shouted such blasphemy.

Which I believe was also what happened to the crowd around the Emperor in that little allegory. Any sufficiently capable and ruthless narcissistic megalomaniac would have done no less than to kill everyone in the crowd, women and children included.

By: Al

Al — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:55:19 +0000

At some point, some harassed, overworked, Zantac popping hospital administrator of a small western Ohio health care system will cry “The Emperor has no hospital gown.”, and the laughter, and real change, will start.
Al

By: nosiafd

nosiafd — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:11:39 +0000

I would expect these promised cuts will of the Obama type, promised but not delivered, probably because “things are worse than we expected”.

By: BrianE

BrianE — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:21:23 +0000

It seems an obvious question. Why can’t the drug companies cut prices $8 billion a year and the hospitals cut costs $15 billion dollars a year sans health care reform?
While assuring the public that government run health care won’t reduce access or limit services, the savings touted to pay for this universal lite plan are supposed to come from cutting the administrative overhead in the “public option” versus private insurance companies.
According to proponents, Medicare administrative costs are 2% while private insurance companies are 15-30%. They claim since Medicare is so much more efficient, these savings can pay for increased coverage.
Only according to recent studies, Medicare administrative costs may actually be higher.

Expressing administrative costs as a percentage of total costs makes Medicare’s administrative costs appear lower not because Medicare is necessarily more efficient but merely because its administrative costs are spread over a larger base of actual health care costs. When administrative costs are compared on a per-person basis, the picture changes. In 2005, Medicare’s administrative costs were $509 per primary beneficiary, compared to private-sector administrative costs of $453.

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/07/does-medicare-have-lower-administrative.html

http://www.cahi.org/cahi_contents/resources/pdf/CAHI_Medicare_Admin_Final_Publication.pdf
I think the public knows intuitively that nothing the government does is ever cheaper than they claim it will be.

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:04:17 +0000

The limitation of all conquering bodies is logistics, logistics, logistics.

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:01:58 +0000

It is speculative that these cuts will actually be made, when they would begin, or whether they would reduce government health-care spending.

Oh, they’ll be made. You can save a lot by letting those over 80 die. “Voluntary” or not euthanization. Elimination of babies, reduced support for pre-natal care or low birth infants.

That’ll really save the state some moola.