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MCCAIN, OBAMA AND DRUG REIMPORTATION

As I have pointed out before, the one health care position John McCain and Barack Obama have in common is their wrong-headed support of prescription drug reimportation. It appears, however, that both candidates may be waking up:

Barack Obama and John McCain are reviewing their support for allowing individuals to import cheaper prescription drugs in light of tainted medicines and other goods made in other countries, their advisers said on Thursday.

Unfortunately, the myriad economic and safety issues that militate against reimportation have still not quite convinced them that they were just wrong on this issue:

Neither adviser said their candidate had abandoned reimportation, but had realized it would be more difficult.

One must, I suppose, make allowances for the fact that these guys are politicians. Presumably they will eventually decide to deep six this exceptionally dumb idea.

Posted 21 September 2008 † Catron § McCain BS § Obama BS § Prescription Drug BS ‡ Comments (6)

HISTORICAL IGNORANCE, HOLY WARS & GOD

As it happens, I’m not very religious. I do, however, respect those for  whom religion is important. And, as any informed observer knows, this group includes many of our greatest leaders—-past and present.

On the other hand, I have nothing but contempt for people who combine smugness, faux-secularism, and historical ignorance. As the following video demonstrates, this group includes Charlie Gibson:

What Gibson and the rest of the self-complacent, stuffed shirts of the “news” media don’t get, their seemingly limitless hubris notwithstanding, is that this sort of  condescension drives voters to the Republican Party in huge numbers.

Their smug ignorance is our secret weapon.

[HT Commentary]

Posted 21 September 2008 † Catron § Journalistic BS § Palin BS § Political BS ‡ Comments (0)

ABC ATTEMPTS CPR ON TROOPERGATE

While head inquisitor Hollis French waited in vain for Todd Palin to appear for his show trial, ABC News was trying its best to breath new life into the sham troopergate investigation:

An internal government document obtained by ABC News appears to contradict Sarah Palin’s most recent explanation for why she fired her public safety chief, the move which prompted the now-contested state probe into “Troopergate.”

The document in question allegedly shows that the Governor’s office Ok’d a trip that Palin cited as one reason for Monegan’s dismissal:

The governor’s staff authorized the trip, according to an internal travel document from the Department of Public Safety, released Friday in response to an open records request.

But the physical act of going on the trip wasn’t the problem. Monegan’s unauthorized lobbying is what got him fired. As one of Palin’s aides put it:

When you receive permission to travel, it does not mean that you receive blanket authorization to discuss or do whatever you would like on that trip.

Sorry, ABC. This won’t damage Palin anymore than cheap shots from washed up comediennes or corrupt politicians. Face it, guys: troopergate’s a goner.

Posted 19 September 2008 † Catron § Palin BS § Political BS ‡ Comments (3)

KRUGMAN AGONISTES

While participating in a debate about universal health care, Paul Krugman apparently wanted to demonstrate how happy Canadians are with their health care system. So, he decided to involve the audience in the discussion, with the following result:

PAUL KRUGMAN
And private insurance? That’s the thing, I— Actually, can I just —I wanted to ask a question. And—

JOHN DONVAN [MODERATOR]
Please—please do—

PAUL KRUGMAN
—and I wanted to ask, actually two questions, to the audience. First, how many Canadians, would Canadians in the room please raise your hands. [ONE PERSON APPLAUDS, LAUGHTER]

JOHN DONVAN
We have about seven hands going up—

PAUL KRUGMAN
Okay, not as many as I thought. Okay, of those of you who are not on the panel who are Canadians,, how many of you think you have a terrible health care system. [PAUSE] One, two—

JOHN DONVAN
We see—almost all of the same hands going up. [LAUGHTER]

PAUL KRUGMAN
Bad move on my part. [APPLAUSE]

It would seem that there is some justice left in the world after all.

Posted 19 September 2008 † Catron § Canadian BS § Universal BS ‡ Comments (0)

MORE BS ABOUT MCCAIN’S HEALTH PLAN

Barack Obama is not the only one lying about John McCain’s health care reform plan. Many of his supporters in the establishment media and blogosphere are being equally mendacious. An illustrative example is the following assertion by Joe Klein:

John McCain wants to tax your employer-provided health care benefits. He wants to replace those benefits with an insufficient tax credit–$2500 for individuals and $5000 for families (the average cost per family for health insurance is $12000).

This is a particularly clever piece of agitprop because it combines fear-mongering, fallacious claims, and bogus data in a single, succinct fabrication. But anyone who has actually read John McCain’s health care plan will recognize it as a lie.

The fear-mongering is, of course, obvious. Klein is attempting to scare the bejabbers out his readers by insinuating that John McCain is going to slap them with a hidden tax increase. Never mind that any tax increase will be more than offset by the accompanying tax credit.

Which bring us to Klein’s falacious claim that the tax credits will be “insufficient.” He is clearly implying that McCain’s $5,000 tax credit is not enough to cover the $12,000 increase in taxable income that his plan would impose on everyone.

But even if McCain’s plan raised your taxable income by $12,000, your taxes on that income (at a 30% rate) would be $3,600, well under $5,000. But no one’s taxable income will increase by $12,000 under McCain’s health plan.

Which bring us to Klein’s bogus data. When he writes, “the average cost per family for health insurance is $12000,” he is deliberately misleading his readers.  This figure comes from a widely-quoted study by the Kaiser Family Foundation which states:

Annual premiums for family coverage averaged $12,106 in 2007, with employees on average paying 28% of the cost, or $3,281.

In other words, the $12K is the combined premium of the employer and employee. The average cost borne by the actual employee is only $3,281. So, if that amount were suddenly subject to taxation (at the 30% rate) the tax increase would be $984, which even a journalist knows is less than $5,000.

But Klein is only a journalist, and they tend to be a little dim, so one has to make allowances. Sadly, however, many others who certainly know better are promulgating the same lie. Among them are Brad Delong, Joe Paduda, Tom Bozzo, Ron Chusid and countless others.

That Barack Obama and his supporters are so willing to deceive the public is enough reason to support McCain, even if his health care plan were not so obviously superior.

Posted 19 September 2008 † Catron § Journalistic BS § McCain BS § Obama BS § Reform BS ‡ Comments (2)

OBAMA LYING ABOUT MCCAIN HEALTH PLAN

Among the canards promulgated by Barack Obama’s increasingly desperate presidential campaign is that John McCain has gone through a sudden and shocking metamorphosis. The ”once-principled” Republican (i.e. one willing to supinely accept defeat) has somehow become a pathological liar.

This nonsense is, of course, being robotically repeated by all of the usual Obamatons. Yet, with the laudable exception of Andrew Sullivan, none of these people seem to notice any of Obama’s stretchers. Nonetheless, they are there for those who have eyes to see.

Among the most brazen of Obama’s whoppers is the one he keeps telling about McCain’s health care plan. He is aggressively peddling the false claim that McCain wants to tax everyone’s health benefits. Not even CBS News could let that pass. In the following segment, they provide the facts:

As the report points out, McCain’s plan would actually result on a tax reduction for everyone but the very rich. The average tax cut would be about $1,200 in 2009. Moreover, the reforms McCain wants for the health insurance market would reduce the overall costs of coverage.

So, the bottom line is that Barack Obama is deliberately and repeatedly lying about McCain’s health care plan. Unfortunately, only a few observers are pointing out the truth, and a lot of people who normally don’t fall for this kind of BS have swallowed this particular canard.

But, hey, I’m sure all those righteous souls who seem sooooooo outraged by McCain’s dastardly lies will sound the alarm on Obama’s prevarications as well, right?

Posted 18 September 2008 † Catron § McCain BS § Obama BS § Reform BS ‡ Comments (3)

AN HONEST LOOK AT OBAMACARE

Although we can safely disregard the WSJ piece by David Cutler and Brad DeLong on Obama’s health care plan, there is an excellent article on the plan in Health Affairs, and its conclusion is not flattering:

It greatly increases the federal regulation of private insurance but does not address the core economic incentives that drive health care spending. This omission along with the very substantial short-term savings claimed raise serious questions about its fiscal sustainability.

Its ”play or pay” feature and potential for private insurance crowd-out also trouble the authors:

Heavy regulation coupled with a fallback National Health Plan and a play-or-pay financing choice also raise questions about the future of the employer insurance market.

This is a detailed, intelligent though somewhat dry piece. But if you want an honest, realistic assessment of Barack Obama’s health care plan,  it’s well worth a read.

[HT WSJ Health Blog] 

Posted 16 September 2008 † Catron § Obama BS § Reform BS ‡ Comments (2)

ALASKA AG SAYS CUT THE CRAP

The tide is turning on the Obama partisans who concocted the “troopergate” fraud. In addition to Governor Palin’s refusal to particpate and the lawsuit filed by Alaska legislators to stop it, Alaska’s AG has put them on notice:

Alaska’s attorney general says state employees subpoenaed in the investigation of Gov. Sarah Palin will not testify. In a letter to the Democratic state senator overseeing the investigation, Attorney General Talis Colberg asks that the subpoenas be withdrawn.

And Colberg makes it clear that he’s not playing:

He also says the employees will not appear before the investigator unless either the full state Senate or the entire Alaska Legislature votes to compel their testimony.

It will be interesting to see if Senator French and his accomplices still go ahead with the October surprise he has promised.

Posted 16 September 2008 † Catron § Palin BS § Political BS ‡ Comments (2)

DR. OBAMA’S MODERNIZATION CURE

Today promises much toil for a blogger dedicated to cleaning the Augean Stables of the health care reform dabate. I guess a good place to begin shoveling is the steaming pile of BS deposited by David Cutler and Brad DeLong in the WSJ.

An important part of their argument for the superiority of Barack Obama’s health care plan involves the claim that Obama will cure U.S. health care through the miracle drug of “modernization,” a euphemism for an extremely expensive health care IT mandate:

One-third of medical costs go for services at best ineffective and at worst harmful. Fifty billion dollars will jump-start the long-overdue information revolution in health care to identify the best providers, treatments and patient management strategies.

The obvious implication here is that, though the taxpayers will have to cough up a small investment of $50 billion, the efficiency associated with ”modernization” will save them a lot more than this in the long haul. But this canard has been repeatedly debunked. Per FactCheck.org:

Obama says his health care plan will garner large savings – $120 billion a year, or $2,500 per family – with more than half coming from the use of electronic health records. And he says he’ll make that happen in his first term. We find his statements to be overly optimistic, misleading and, to some extent, contradicted by one of his own advisers. And it masks the true cost of his plan to cover millions of Americans who now have no health insurance.

And the “true cost” of the Obama plan will be stupendous. A couple of months ago, I linked to a piece in the NYT that spelled this out in no uncertain terms. Kenneth Sack wrote the following about the combination of tax credits and subsidies that Obama’s plan envisions:

The subsidies are expensive, estimated at well over $100 billion. Other components of the Obama plan also bear up-front costs, like a pledge to spend $50 billion over five years to speed the computerization of health records, $6 billion a year on tax credits to small businesses that provide coverage to workers, and an unspecified amount to buffer businesses from high-cost insurance claims.

Their WSJ piece covers much more than “modernization” and health care IT, of course. But if you take the time to dig through the BS, Cutler and DeLong are touting a plan that makes hopelessly implausible assumptions. It is not better than McCain’s free-market approach. It is, in fact, far worse.

[HT Economist’s View]

Posted 16 September 2008 † Catron § IT BS § Obama BS § Reform BS ‡ Comments (2)

THE FASTEST GROWING SEGMENT OF THE UNINSURED

When “the uninsured crisis” is covered in the news media, the stories always insinuate that vast hordes of people are doing without coverage because they can’t afford it. The reality is, however, quite different.

In fact, as Devon Herrick of the National Center for Policy Analysis points out, the fastest-growing segment of the uninsured population has been upper-income families. He provides a chart that drives the point home:

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As the chart shows, the percentage of low-income families without coverage has dropped significantly during the past ten years while the percentage of upper income families has gone up by a whopping 65%.

Now, how does one explain such a counterintuitive phenomenon? Herrick explains that the problem goes back to state regulations and benefit mandates that create perverse incentives: 

Many states try to make it easy for a person to obtain insurance after becoming sick by requiring insurance companies to offer immediate coverage for pre-existing conditions with no waiting period. Thus, when people are healthy they have little incentive to participate and tend to avoid paying for coverage until they need care.

In other words,  government has once again worked its peculiar magic. By meddling in the health insurance market, it has increased the ranks of the uninsured among people who can afford coverage.

Yet another example of government at work, and why we would be crazy to give these boneheads any more control over U.S. health care. 

Posted 15 September 2008 † Catron § Uninsured BS ‡ Comments (1)