As I noted a couple of months ago, the volume of uninsured patients at my hospital and most others is spiking because people are losing their insurance coverage along with their jobs. So, yesterday’s bad news about unemployment was not welcome:
Lack of confidence in the economic recovery led employers to shed a more-than-expected 85,000 net jobs in December even […]
Health Care BS
Economics BS —
Category Archives: Economics BS
JOBS TALK AND BS WALKS
ROUNDHEEL BEN TRIES TO CHANGE THE SUBJECT
Having been lambasted from all sides about his “Cornhusker Kickback,” Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson wants to stop talking about this pesky health reform issue and focus on the economy. He’s back home among the angry voters, where he requested an interview with a local paper, to which he averred:
I think it was a mistake to take health care on […]
WAPO: CADILLAC TAX ISN’T A TAX
For a revealing look at the Orwellian perspective that Obamacare supporters bring to the reform debate, take a gander at Jonathan Gruber’s op-ed in today’s Washington Post:
The Senate assessment on high-cost insurance plans doesn’t walk like a tax or talk like a tax — because it is not a tax. It is an innovative way of financing […]
THE CBO STIMULUS REPORT: A MEME IS BORN
The Congressional Budget Office has issued a report on the economic effect of the “stimulus” bill, and the Obots are giddy. They are all quoting the same passage:
CBO estimates that in the third quarter of calendar year 2009, an additional 600,000 to 1.6 million people were employed in the United States, and real (inflation-adjusted) gross […]
OBAMA’S “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” RECOVERY
In the last few months, my hospital has seen a dramatic spike in uninsured admissions. In October alone, the percentage of our patients with no insurance jumped by 7%. This is obviously the result of increased unemployment. People without jobs tend to be uninsured.
These patients recieve the same high-quality care as all our patients get, but they do put […]
HEALTH REFORM À LA COWEN & KLING (& ME)
Cowen offers a more detailed blueprint than does Kling, but it is WAY too dependent on the kind of government meddling that has created much of the current health care mess:
Construct a path for federalizing Medicaid … produce a greater net increase in Medicaid than the current bill will do … Boost subsidies to medical R&D by […]
WHEN SMART ECONOMISTS SAY STUPID THINGS
David Henderson points out an exceptionally foolish assertion from “The Economic Case for Health Reform,” produced by Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. Here’s the CEA money quote:
In medicine, however, technological progress in recent decades has been almost exclusively cost-increasing, without generating a commensurate increase in value.
Henderson is scrupulously polite in his response to this BS, calling […]
RECOVERY? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
Last year, when unemployment was below 6% and GDP was still growing, Barack Obama’s supporters kept saying we were in “the worst economy since the Great Depression.”
Now, when unemployment is at nearly 10%, and we are actually experiencing negative growth, these very people are yammering about “the recovery.” Sullivan is typical:
I have no doubt that the recovery is still fragile; but I […]
WHY O CAN’T CLOSE THE DEAL ON REFORM
Because the voters already invested in one of his grandiose schemes, the stimulus package, and the ROI has been pretty dismal. That boondoggle has done serious damage to his credibility.
More and more voters are taking a dim view of his performance on the economy. As this chart highlighted by Sullivan shows, O is going south even with […]
HOW NOT TO STIMULATE THE ECONOMY
As I pointed out recently, the socialized medicine crowd has come up with a new pretext for imposing government-run health care on the country—-that it will somehow stimulate the economy. Michael Cannon asks an inconvenient question:
That seems to contradict their usual spiel … that America’s health care sector is wasteful and inefficient … How is pumping more money […]
