Link of the day

B-Daddy in writing about Medicare and fraud presented this from Aghaegbuna Odelugo who was testifying before Congress about Medicare fraud but wandered off course and started riffing on Medicare reimbursement rates:

I would like to finally talk about what I perceive to be the most significant flaw in Medicare: the rates of reimbursement. I do not know who decides, or how the decision is made, but the rate of reimbursement for certain pieces of durable medical equipment is beyond exorbitant. An example is the case of the knee braces. These items are available on the market to a DME provider for less than $100.00. Medicare, however, reimburse, if I remember correctly, approximately 1,000% of this cost. Back braces that cost approximately $100.00 are reimbursed at a rate of almost 900%. Wheelchairs that cost less than $1,000.00 are reimbursed at almost 500% of cost. For anyone engaging in fraud, these numbers are too good to be true.

Not fraud, not even a bug, but a feature!

Medicare is popular and expensive. No wonder, right? Expensive for obvious reasons as illustrated above but popular also because of a lack of cost transparency. It's not as if you are paying out of pocket for those mark-ups... not expensive for you so what's to worry about?

And that's pretty much it: "paying into a system" soon slips the clutches of reality as increased layers of bureaucracy and rules and regulations shield just what are the real costs of healthcare. And when those rules and regs are at the whim of the pols, there is no end to the amount of candy that will be tossed around.



Here's B-Daddy to wrap things up:

Ultimately, I understand that the U.S. has a robust social safety net. But I think we have gone overboard. We aren't a country that promises cradle to grave support, like socialist Europe.

There might not be an explicit promise but there appears to be an increasing implicit acceptance by the public that there is indeed a promise of cradle to grave support. How else do you explain the across-the-board bad polling numbers when it comes to any mention of entitlement reform?

Until there is "skin in the game", until there is true cost transparency as to realizing what health care goods and services actually cost and until we remove the layers between the health care providers and consumers, we will never succeed in bending the cost curve downward.

Smack of the day

Ann Coulter, when asked to opine about the riots in Vancouver after the Canucks dropped Game 7 in ignominious fashion, 4-0 to the Boston Bruins on Wednesday night:

The sad thing is Canadians hurt in the rioting will have to wait six months for an MRI.

And we're sure the shop owners of downtown Vancouver are comforted by the comportment shown by the one sign-carrying lad as are we. This is a family values sort of website afterall. So Canadian.

Video clip of the day

Via Dueling Bar Stools:


Rand Paul (R-KY) on the confiscatory nature of alleged "rights".

"It's not an abstraction."

"If I'm a physician in your neighborhood and you say you have a right to health care, do you have a right to beat down my door and with the police escort me away and force me to take care of you?"

If you live in Indiana, the answer is an emphatic "yes!" Paul is right - these aren't abstractions. The confluence of declaring health care a right and the authorities' unfettered ability to enter your home, no matter how unlawful the reason, makes what he is describing above a real-life scenario.

Not evidentiary

Officials in China are struggling with allegations that a tainted baby powdered-milk formula is to blame for an alleged outbreak in infant puberty.







If that is true, it's clear that it never effected one particular segment of the population.

Since you won't be needing that liver anymore...

This is the sort of nonsense that goes down when you cede control of your healthcare decisions to the government as is the case with New York state's government-managed healthcare system.

Organ donation has become a vital way to save lives around the world, but a vast shortage of donors continues to mean people are losing their lives while on waiting lists.

But there is a unique proposal that could change all that.

New York State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky nearly lost his daughter, Willie, at 4 years old when she needed a kidney transplant, and again 10 years later when her second kidney failed.

"We have 10,000 New Yorkers on the list today waiting for organs. We import half the organs we transplant. It is an unacceptable failed system," Brodsky said.

To fix that, Brodsky introduced a new bill in Albany that would enroll all New Yorkers as an organ donor, unless they actually opt out of organ donation. It would be the first law of its kind in the United States.

"Overseas, 24 nations have it. Israel has it. Others have it. And it works without a lot of controversy," Brodsky said.

Currently one of the biggest obstacles to being a donor is while 9 out of 10 are favorable to it only 1 out of 10 is signed up to be a donor.

Isn't it benevolent that New York's overseers have seen fit to allow its citizens to opt out?

The tone of the article seemed puzzled that 90% of New Yorkers were for (voluntary) organ donation but only 10% participated the program. Seems to be perfectly in keeping with the volunteerism nature of America, to us... If it works for you, brother, go for it.

We understand that compulsory organ donation might work great elsewhere but that's not really the point. The point is, where do you draw the line? What other aspect of your literal body is the government going to invite itself to?

Very quickly and without much notice, that slippery slope of resigned personal choices becomes a Vancouver Olympics bobsled run. Enjoy the ride.

Quote of the day

Hey, do you remember when they told us that if we voted for McCain it would be at least four more years of the obstinance, bull-headedness and moral certitude of the Bush regime? Well, they were right.

“We may be wrong but the point is, we believe in what we are doing.”

That from porkulus fall-guy, Joey B., responding to charges that his boss may be trying to do too much, especially with respect to health care and the economy. These remarks were made in Philadelphia at a gathering for something called the Committee of Seventy. What the heck is a Committee of Seventy? Read on.

Gov. Rendell and Mayor Nutter praised Biden and the administration's economic-stimulus program. Rendell said that $2.6 billion prevented deep cuts in state programs and layoffs for 10,000 to 15,000 employees. Nutter touted a $30 million federal grant unveiled yesterday to help pay contractors to make houses in the city more energy efficient.

The fundraiser, a breakfast in the ballroom of the Park Hyatt Philadelphia at the Bellevue, brought in between $350,000 and $400,000 for the Committee of Seventy, a good-government watchdog group now expanding its role beyond elections to larger issues such as ethics and transparency.

Sometimes the irony is so rich, any commentary is redundant. This would be one of those times.

The U.S.P.S.T.F. will see you now

Last week we covered the new guidelines put out by the U.S. Preventative Service Task Force that recommended that women cut back on their mammograms and additionally not to start them until age 50 vs. 40 which had been the accepted start age for decades.

We also noted how the Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told everyone to pay no never mind to the Task Forces recommendations as they were merely guidelines and that the charges of rationing were just overheated rhetoric.

So, which is it? If Sebelius is telling everyone to carry on with the at-40/twice a year regimen, then what the hell good is this task force and why shouldn’t we be concerned that this just represents the blueprint for healthcare services rationing?

Well, guess who shows up in the Senate version of healthcare and is charged with determining what sort of medical procedures are covered under Obamacare. Yep, it’s our friends at the U.S.P.S.T.F.

Let’s roll the tape (for the sake of expedience and our own sanity, we’re transcribing from the .pdf file here, sans paragraph numbering and indentations.

From Section 2713 COVERAGE OF PREVENTIVE HEALTH SERVICES:

In General – A group health plan and a health insurer offering a group or individual health insurance coverage shall provide coverage for and shall not impose any cost sharing requirements for –

Evidence-based items or services that have in effect a rating of “A” or “B” in the current recommendations of the United States Preventative Services Task Force;

Stop right there. That’s all we need to read, thank you.

By the way, the task force members that recommended the new screening guidelines for mammograms? Not a single one of them was an oncologist.

So a politically-appointed task force that heretofore was only making "recommendations" that we were told to disregard and which may or may not have any relevant professional experience in a particular medical field will be rendering what preventative services will and will not be covered by your healthcare plan. Aren't you feeling healthier already?

Over the next couple of weeks, time permitting, we hope to get into more of the fine print of the Senate health bill that will be debated next week.

H/T: Hedgecock

No rationing to be seen here, please move along.

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
- Ian Fleming


First, it was the recommendation to cut back on those dubious start-at-forty mammograms and now the second shoe has just dropped.

New guidelines for cervical cancer screening say women should delay their first Pap test until age 21, and be screened less often than recommended in the past.

The advice, from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, is meant to decrease unnecessary testing and potentially harmful treatment, particularly in teenagers and young women. The group’s previous guidelines had recommended yearly testing for young women, starting within three years of their first sexual intercourse, but no later than age 21.

But the timing was coincidental, said Dr. Cheryl B. Iglesia, the chairwoman of a panel in the obstetricians’ group that developed the Pap smear guidelines. The group updates its advice regularly based on new medical information, and Dr. Iglesia said the latest recommendations had been in the works for several years, “long before the Obama health plan came into existence.”

Isn’t it crazy-wacky how these new recommendations are coming out now, on the eve of a big vote in the Senate on healthcare? Man, it’s just zany. (by the way, Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius said pay no attention to that mammogram recommendation. So, who’s right and who’s just covering their ass with respect to politicizing the healthcare debate?).

But we’ll give all those nice people in Congress and the White House who tell us healthcare services won’t be rationed the benefit of the doubt, again. No more freebies, though – next completely coincidental “recommendation” we get to cut back on testing/screening, we go full metal jacket.

But just to be on the safe side, why don’t you lob your Congressperson a phone call as the Senate will be making a very important procedural vote this evening at 8 P.M. (EST)… a time when all important votes concerning nationalizing 1/6th of an economy take place.

Senate phone numbers here.

What we did on our summer vacation

Normally, we’d apologize for going so heavy on a particular subject but we won’t with respect to our bias towards healthcare coverage because it has been so enlightening.

Enlightening on a couple of different fronts. First, it’s forced us to do our homework. Yes, we’ve actually read portions of this bill… and it confuses the living daylights out of us. And through this homework, we honestly hope that our presentation of the debate has been forthright and absent any demagouging of the issue. And don’t confuse being adamantly opposed to the current version of healthcare reform with demagougery.

We were talking healthcare with B-Daddy over the weekend and we came to the conclusion that much like the alternative energy debate, we’ve become all-of-the-above types with respect to healthcare. Health savings account? Sounds good to us. Med mal reform? Gotta have some sort to keep costs down. Allow health plans to cross state lines? Why not? Loosen regulatory restrictions so that individuals can customize their health plan which will reduce premiums? Absolutely.

That is why it so discouraging that the current plan is of the none-of-the-above variety. It’s like Congress went into the Stink Store and cleared the shelves of ideas and threw it all into the healthcare bill. We cannot come up with a single redeeming quality to this piece of legislation. How does that happen? How can these allegedly smart people sit down to hammer out legislation that is simply so atrocious? That takes a special sort of talent, though not any which we would wish upon friends or family.

Perhaps the reason is because of the second elightening thing that has emerged from our studying, observing and commenting on the current healthcare debate and that is, you are not thought very highly of. Yep, this whole process has lifted the veil on how our elected leaders feel about all of us and it’s not pretty. In fact, the level of condescension, contempt and presumptuousness that has been displayed by members of Congress and the White House over the past few months has been jaw-dropping and helps to explain the passionate if less-than-constructive behavior we have seen at townhall meetings in this, the summer of ass-kickings.

And through structural imbalances such as congressional districting, franking privileges and campaign regulations that favor the incumbents, the huge gulf that now exists between elected officials and the electorate will continue to widen and which will result in an increasingly acrimonious relationship between the two groups.

P.S. The Democrats made a huge tactical mistake by pushing healthcare through committee before the summer break. Instead of plausible deniability that Democratic congressmen could legitimately claim at the townhalls if the legislation was held back in committee, it is now public record and can be picked apart, piece by crappy piece, as it is being done right now and which allows for the true bipartisan exchange the President promised us all in the first place.

The dangers of the statists' new god: controlling costs

(Apologies up front for the heartwarming photo. It's a shameless attempt at shielding ourselves from charges of demagoguing the issue and of acting out of fear and ignorance)

If you choose to study electrical engineering and land a job with HP, you have earned health care under our current system. If you choose to smoke dope in high school and end up as the night manager of the local No-Tell Motel with tattoos all over your body and a Home Depot Sampler Set of fasteners piercing your face, you have not earned health care. The Death Board, to a great extent, is controlled by your actions. Obamacare does away with that.

That from KT on incentives and personal responsibility.

And then we have the following from B-Daddy on his current misadventures in this country’s government-managed sector of healthcare:

This is the myth of single-payer. Obama's former personal physician, Dr. David Scheiner, was on Larry King spouting off how single payer would be so much more efficient as a health care system and we should just abolish insurance companies. There are many things wrong with our current system, but the lack of economic incentive that accrues to single payer would devastate health care. At least with insurance, somebody has some skin in the game to push for efficiency. I am already seeing the effects of single payer in the relatively well funded military medical system, but it is struggling to contain costs. How much worse would it be for the whole country, which cannot afford the per person expense of military medicine.

In different ways, the two paragraphs above illustrate the theme that runs throughout the healthcare debate when you are talking about effectiveness and controlling costs and it’s called “skin in the game” or incentive or for you Friedman-esque pigs out there, profit-motive.

We covered this phenomena previously, where spending your own money on yourself, yields the most optimum results and all other methods result in inefficiencies and a drop in quality.

What is the government’s motivation for you to stay healthy in a single-payer system? There isn’t any. The government has absolutely zero skin in the game when it comes to your health. This is not to set up the government as a nefarious bogeyman but just as there are no actual death panels in the current healthcare reform bill, because of how the system is structured there is the eventuality that the results will be the same.

Recall the situation in Oregon where a lady suffering from cancer was denied expensive medication by the Oregon health board (“death panel” by omission rather than commission), who was it that stepped in and provided the meds for free? That’s right, the evil pharmaceutical company. Why? Beyond any sense of altruism that may have guided the decision, they had skin in the game. They had a (gasp), profit-motive.

Where the government had no incentive to keep this woman alive (indeed, in order to control costs, they had every incentive for this woman to be permanently taken off the rolls), Big Pharma has every incentive for people to stay alive in order to continue to buy their products. So, greed is good

Big Pharma: Keeping people alive so that they can live to pay another day.

Given the alternative, how is this a bad thing?



Keep your politics off our bodies.

Robert Reich doesn't think there is anything to worry about

...because that “anything” would be “healthcare reform”.

Why are these meetings brimming with so much anger? Because Republican Astroturfers have joined the same old right-wing broadcast demagogues that have been spewing hate and fear for years, to create a tempest.

But why are they getting away with it? Why aren't progressives—indeed, why aren't ordinary citizens—taking the meetings back?

Mainly because there's still no healthcare plan. All we have are some initial markups from several congressional committees, which differ from one another in significant ways. The White House's is waiting to see what emerges from the House and Senate before insisting on what it wants, maybe in conference committee.

But that's the problem: It's always easier to stir up fear and anger against something that's amorphous than to stir up enthusiasm for it.

We’re not sure what Reich is talking about with respect to “no healthcare plan”, it’s referred to as H.R. 3200 and checks in at over 1,000 pages so we can only assume he got a hold of some bad shell fish before he wrote this.

But let’s take Reich’s finer point about the plan lacking specifics and being short on the details. Given this, the President’s master plan for the summer was to send Democratic congressmen home to their districts to fight for healthcare legislation and which would be supported by “hit back twice as hard” force from the White House for this same legislation that Reich claims the White House is waiting to see what emerges from the House and Senate?

That was the plan? How does that make any sense? Maybe that’s why the summer of ’09 has become the summer of ass-kickings.

It is refreshing to hear a proponent of government-managed healthcare admit a) his side is completely incompetent in pitching a plan that may or may not exist and b)we should be in favor of something of which no one knows what it is to be in favor.

To counter Bill Maher, we all may not be the sharpest tools in the shed, but we damn sure know when we’re getting jerked around, especially when it involves something as critical as healthcare.

Keep your politics off our bodies!

Grassroots saying of the day

So, why are all the special interests groups (PhRMA (the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America), the AMA (American Medical Association), the AHA (American Hospital Association), AHIP (America’s Health Insurance Plans), and the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) and the health insurance industry).
that we have been told are obstructing meaningful healthcare reform…. lining up behind healthcare reform?


If you are not at the table, then you are on the menu.


Nothing we have ever heard or read speaks as succinctly and effectively to the cut-throat, "in" or "out" lobbyist and special interest culture that exists and thrives more than ever before (but which we were told would be virtually eliminated) in Washington D.C.

H/T: Hedgecock

Oh great. Another right

So, how are yachts just like healthcare? KT explains how, here?

So, how's that swine flu treatin' ya? (UPDATED)

(UPDATE #1): Comment of the Day

In response to B-Daddy’s post on the profit motive in healthcare which we link to below, Foxfier said the following:

Thing that annoys the CRUD out of me in the "healthcare is a right" argument:
how the heck do YOU have a right to SOMEONE ELSE'S work?

She claims the idea for that came from either us or B-Daddy so perhaps we will have to give B-Daddy credit because we never really looked at health care as a right in those terms before and Foxfier is spot-on.

Once you start declaring goods and services as rights, you are automatically putting an imposition on someone’s livelihood.

People will enter the medical field for a variety of reasons to varying degrees. But we guarantee you that if after 8 years of medical school and the incumbent expenses and then the years of internships and residencies after that; if there is not a big ol’ house in the hills and several nice cars in the driveway at the end of that tunnel, you are going to see a whole lot less doctors and the ones you will see, will be of inferior quality. Nothing personal, just another immutable fact of economics.

(here endeth the update)

For all the talk about rising costs, a big part of the reason that health care is consuming a larger share of spending is that we have chosen this through a somewhat free-market process. We spend less on other things, like food and clothing, because they don't require high tech, and more on something we care about, like surviving swine flu. How is this bad?

The profit motive. It’s something statists simply refuse to acknowledge. Try capping reimbursements to doctors or prices on pharmaseuticals and watch both services and advancements in medical technology evaporate like water on asphalt in the middle of August. That’s not disinformation. That’s an immuatable law of economics. B-Daddy has more here.

"That’s a well-oiled machine you got yourself, sir."

At the end of the day, it’s not the Republicans and probably not even the town hall crashers that is this administration’s biggest problem with regard to health care. It’s their own party.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel warned liberal groups this week to stop running ads against Democratic members of Congress.

The powerful top aide to President Obama made his feelings known at the weekly closed-door strategy session of an array of progressive organizations, according to two sources who were there.

Emanuel’s request came on the same day that Obama himself told a meeting of Democratic senators that he didn’t like seeing dollars used by liberal groups to target congressional Democrats.

Moderate Democrats who are elected and re-elected in GOP-leaning districts and states earned their spurs in part by running away from liberal orthodoxy and are unlikely to be moved by outside progressive groups, goes the White House thinking.

But wait… we thought G.O.P. lost its grip on Congress because they were too conservative, or something?

We suppose now that the Democrats control Congress and the White House, the truth can finally be told.

But dig this:

Organizing for America, the president’s political arm, is engaged in an intensive grassroots effort to rally support for healthcare reform legislation, going so far as to air ads in the states and districts of targeted Democratic members of Congress. But the spots were tame, not mentioning the names of the members, and White House officials indicated that they were being run to give their allies air cover to support the legislation.

You got that? When citizens show up to townhall meetings to protest health care reform, it’s the result of a well-orchestrated astroturfing enterprise. However, when the community organizer-in-chief rallies support for healthcare reform its “grassroots”.

Priceless

Suicide Pact? (UPDATED)

(UPDATE #1): Oopsie-daisy.

Turns out that keeping track of all those scary emails and blog sites spreading disinformation about Obamacare is not only unseemly and buffoonish but probably illegal, as well.

5 U.S. Code 552a. (e)(7) commands that any Federal agency

"(7) maintain no record describing how any individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment unless expressly authorized by statute or by the individual about whom the record is maintained or unless pertinent to and within the scope of an authorized law enforcement activity;"

When something seems a tad unsavory, it usually is.

H/T: Of Arms and the Law via Instaglen

(here endeth the update)


Amid the charges that pushback on healthcare reform is being coordinated from the highest levels of the vast right-wing conspiracy network, it would appear that the White House is doing some high-level coordination of its own.

We can’t begin to tell you how awesome this is. Found on the White House web site blog, currrently:

Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to "uncover" the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions.

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov

(italics, ours)

H/T: Weasel Zippers

There’s just some scary and crrrrzaaaaazy stuff out there on the interwebs..… and we’d like you to do some of our dirty work for us.

Consider it done. We dunno. Maybe it will bring some more traffic but if anyone wants to turn us in, please do so… and we might return the favor. For reals. It’s the dog days of August and not a whole lot is happening so let’s see what lies down this road and see when we return from sea in a couple of days whether it’s the dark night of facism or the dark night of incompetence and buffoonery that will descend over our great nation.

Link the site or perhaps this, our last health care posting or just spam’em with this, a BwD “health care” word search result. You know what? Let's turn in B-Daddy, also. We've always been wanting to exact some little brother revenge. Although, spamming the White House with porn could be equally amusing.

P.S. You are ALL in on this, by the way. Why do you think we turned off the anonymous commenter feature?

Mmmmmwwwwaaaahhhaaaaahhhhaaaaahhhaaaahhhaaaa.......

Paul Krugman has little use for a show of hands

Greetings, Healthers. For those of you convinced those unruly mobs showing up at Congressional home district town halls to express their displeasure in full throat are mere pawns of Big Medical and the vast right-wing conspiracy, we give you one of your leaders, Paul Krugman. Because when Canadians can't even stand their own health care, it must be manufactured outrage.

Krugman, an NYT columnist, didn’t think porkulus was large enough. In fact, Krugman thinks we need another stimulus package because the first 3/4ths of trillion dollars ain’t getting the job done. It’s logic like this that would help explain the clip below and Krugman’s, a proponent of government-managed single-payer systems, grasp of facts-on-the-ground.



Notice how he phrased that question? Not, “how many of you are satisfied with your health care?”, which leaves some degree of wiggle room but “how many of you (Canadians) think you have a terrible health care system?” Even with that extreme black-and-white line of questioning, all the Canadians still raised their hands.

Yet, all that probably doesn’t matter to Krugman. Afterall, he’s Paul Krugman and those people that raised their hands just don’t know what’s good for them.

"I see ass-kickings" Pt. II

Here’s the scene at Congressman Keith Ellison’s (D-MN) town hall meeting.



But, but…. but, where’s the passion? Where’s the anger? Where’s the unhinged behavior that we’ve come to expect from these unwashed yet read individuals.

We fear the movement is losing steam. No… it can’t be. Reacting to health care reform in a dispassionate fact-based manner was something that we have done all along but did not ever want to make public. The mask has slipped. It may be over.

That's what happens when a town hall meeting from Minnesota, people of whom couldn't piss off anyone if they tried, gets loose on the internet.

P.S. That's Congressman Ellison himself going around with the mike and taking the questions/statements. Pretty cool, although he does not answer the "public option question" at least, in this clip.

Health care and economics

There are essentially four methods of financial transactions:

1. Using your own money to buy something for yourself.
2. Using your own money to buy something for someone else.
3. Using someone else’s money to buy something for yourself.
4. Using someone else’s money to buy something for someone else.

It doesn’t take a degree in economics to see which transaction will result in the best return on investment. Transaction #1 represents the situation where both sides of the transaction will be informed by your own self-interest. It’s your money so you will naturally want to minimize the expense but also maximizing the quality of what you will be buying for yourself.

In each of the other 3 transactions, however, there is a scenario whereby there is no incentive to act in one’s best self-interest in at least one end of the transaction. Either you are using someone else’s money (no incentive to rein-in the cost) or aquiring for someone else (no incentive to maximize the quality of the purchase).

And it doesn’t take an econ degree to realize under which transaction model the government operates. If you guessed #4, then move to the head of the class.

Now, check out this video and see how things get skewed a tad.

Unfortunately, the video has been diabled but here is the jist of the scenario:

After weeks of bad news, things turned Barbara Wagner’s way this week.

Last month her lung cancer, in remission for about two years, was back. After her oncologist prescribed a cancer drug that could slow the cancer growth and extend her life, Wagner was notified that the Oregon Health Plan wouldn’t cover it.

It would cover comfort and care, including, if she chose, doctor-assisted suicide.

Wow. When it comes to health care, the government has a sudden change of heart and the transaction goes from a #4 to more along the lines of #2. And when one’s own self-interest becomes involved on the outlay end but is not coupled to one’s self-interest on the purchase end, the quality of the product being purchased will undoubtedly suffer. And you don’t get much lower on the quality scale than dying.

(The chemo medication being offered by Genetech was more expensive than the doctor-assisted suicide by order of magnitude. There is somewhat a happy ending as Genetech offered Wagner the meds for free. There’s your greedy Big Pharma for you. Keeping customers alive only so that they live to pay another day. Same Transaction #2 but with a totally different outcome. Besides perhaps some compassion, Genetech also has an economic self-interest in keeping people alive. The Government?)

In a sense, we’re glad that the video is diabled. We wanted to, for a moment, decouple the emotion of this case from the rational aspects of economics and rationing because watching the video enraged us. Barbara Wagner is our Mom. She’s our Dad. She’s a loved one or a friend. She is someone who is at the mercy of a system that is acting only in their best interest, not hers.

Only when our health care system moves more towards Transaction #1 will it be more empathetic and affordable.

H/T: P.J. O'Rourke

Choices to be made

As you may know, Chris Dodd has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Connecticut Senator and we believe that with the health care availed here in the states and, in particular, to members of Congress, the treatment of this cancer should be a relative formality.

Having said that, we don’t think anyone in there right mind, were they in a similar situation as the senator would opt for any other health care system than what we have here, let alone one managed by the government which is what Dodd will be voting on in the fall.

Secular Apostate has more, here.