House of Eratosthenes

NY Daily News dissembles this number of which we’ve heard so, so much…47 million. As in, uninsured. What’s in that number? The answer may surprise you.

Maggie’s Farm, linking to the above, ponders that which tends to go unpondered as these hardcore lefty proposals are debated: Exactly what problem is this bill supposed to be solving?

What a silly question to be asking right now, Maggie’s Farm. You’re supposed to actually pass the bill…watch everything go sour for a decade, maybe a whole generation…and then ask that when it’s far too late. You’re breaking form.

Nevertheless, Boortz has an answer in his latest newsletter, but don’t read it. Not unless you think you can handle it. Remember what Jack Nicholson said about the truth…

The Democrats want to make people more dependent on government. They are going to do this by offering something that more Americans now value above all: stability. Americans think they want freedom. What a crock. Americans will whine about their freedom to choose which sports team to root for or which Hollywood gossip magazine to buy. But when freedom requires any ounce of personal responsibility, people immediately wipe their hands clean and want someone else to do it for them. This is where the Democrats come in .. the Democrats will make sure that the government is there to do the things the people of this country no longer feel is their personal responsibility. The reason why the Democrats are willing to do this is also simple: power. Ensuring votes. Not hard to figure out, is it?

The New York Times has a thought-provoking entry (hat tip again to Maggie’s) about why health care m-u-s-t be rationed:

You have advanced kidney cancer. It will kill you, probably in the next year or two. A drug called Sutent slows the spread of the cancer and may give you an extra six months, but at a cost of $54,000. Is a few more months worth that much?

If you can afford it, you probably would pay that much, or more, to live longer, even if your quality of life wasn’t going to be good. But suppose it’s not you with the cancer but a stranger covered by your health-insurance fund. If the insurer provides this man — and everyone else like him — with Sutent, your premiums will increase. Do you still think the drug is a good value? Suppose the treatment cost a million dollars. Would it be worth it then? Ten million? Is there any limit to how much you would want your insurer to pay for a drug that adds six months to someone’s life? If there is any point at which you say, “No, an extra six months isn’t worth that much,” then you think that health care should be rationed.

Somewhere in the basement of some liberal headquarters, perhaps the DNC, perhaps the Speaker’s Office in the House of Representatives, perhaps the White House, where all the old stuff is stored, someplace between a giant portrait of Sam Rayburn and a stack of unpaid bills…I’m convinced there is a chart, and there may not even be any dust on the chart. I’m thinking across the bottom of the chart, there are days, maybe weeks, marking off the time some bold new initiative like health care has been in the public eye…one…two…three…four…etc. And then on the left side, counting up, there’s a percentage of interested voters who have figured out The Truth. The curve is something that starts out on the left side, a third of the way up that Y-axis, and then snakes up farther north, toward 100%, as you go out to the right. That curve is of pressing interest to your typical democrat politician. I envision a chart that has gobbled up reams of data to verify the accuracy of this curve, one that is revised constantly. So maybe it’s not in the basement after all. Just well hidden, very well hidden.

What is The Truth that people figure out? That some 30 percent of us already know, and that more and more of us learn as we debate back and forth on the latest “gimme”? Simply this: That the government doesn’t really have money; it spends only what it has taken from others, plus what it borrows on the credit of others. Which naturally means that one man’s “right” is another man’s burden. That when we debate these proposals, we aren’t debating how to make life more secure, we are in fact debating how to make our country less free.

Hillary-care was debated for an extended period of time, IIRC. Someone was saying quite a lot about it in ’93, and they didn’t nail the lid on that boondoggle until ’94. That really is what killed it. People talked for awhile about how wonderful it would be when no one “would have to worry about health care.” And then someone mentioned a rule…someone mentioned another rule…before you knew it, there were all these pages and pages of rules, naturally some noise was made about them, and people got concerned. It started to look like what it was: Just another hardcore liberal democrat way of making people dependent on government for their daily needs.

This time, they’re going to do it the right way by golly. Get that reeking shit sandwich sold and shoved down our throats before we even know what we’ve swallowed.

And then hussle down to the basement, and get that chart updated.

There is nothing more expensive than something billed as free. What can never be quantified is the new rise in demand and the new drop in supply of what we all have (as an image in our head) of “healthcare.” Why are those that oppose this bill letting cost figures become a point of discourse? It is imperative to stop anyone from looking at the numbers here; it gives up ground that should not be given up. No one needs numbers to figure this one out (and I’m an accountant). Numbers fool folks all the time – in this case, it assumes we can quantify something this large. I can guarantee that no one can.

Social Security (SS) made folks save less. Social Education (SE) made parents parent less. Social Health will make folks care less about their health, and its costs. Put the “social” in front of anything and watch people care less. I don’t have to argue how these other programs were vastly more expensive and created over-reaching expansions of state power from what was originally touted before passage (the ones who proposed SS and SE would be crying were they to see what damage they’ve done). I can simply state that apathy makes everything more expensive, and that growing the government should always be stopped when they try to take over something this large. Always.

When did making something consequence free improve it? Sex? Marriage? Parenting? Credit? Crime and Punishment? Social Civility? In every case, the unintended consequences were worse than the original peeve.
- wch | 07/16/2009 @ 10:15
[…] year, because very late the night before a profound, meaningful thing happened. The question “what problem is this supposed to solve?” got answered. Ha ha! No, that’s a little joke right there. Of course that didn’t […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 08/27/2009 @ 06:16

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What Problem Are We Solving?Thursday, July 16th, 2009

What Problem Are We Solving?
Thursday, July 16th, 2009