"The first step to wisdom is admitting how little we know and constructing a trial-and-error process on the basis of our own ignorance. Inject controlled experiments throughout government. Feel your way forward. Fail less badly every day."
"Controlled experiments throughout government"? An interesting idea, but what happens when you are unwilling to recognize the results?
US ground involvement in Afghanistan is a disaster, which has lasted more than a decade and has consumed on the order of a half trillion dollars. Peculiar how this has not become an issue in the forthcoming presidential election.
Obamacare? According to Chuck Blahous, public trustee for Medicare and Social Security, the Affordable Care Act will add more than $1.15 trillion to federal spending over the next decade, and between $340 billion and $530 billion to federal deficits over the same period (see: http://mercatus.org/sites/default/files/The-Fiscal-Consequences-of-the-Affordable-Care-Act.pdf). This is not sustainable.
Who needs experiments when the writing is on the wall, but no one is able to read it? Maybe, instead of experimentation, remedial reading coursework is required.
Yes, health care costs will go up with Obamacare. After all we have millions of Baby Boomers retiring. What you neglect to mention is that the CBO's estimate (most reliable source and certainly a lot better than one Medicare, SS trustee) says the cost will go up a lot more without Obamacare.
ReplyDeleteThank, Bernie.
ReplyDeleteThe CBO says that the gross cost of Obamacare to the federal government from 2012 through 2022 is some $1.76 trillion(http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/03-13-Coverage%20Estimates.pdf). This is the twice the amount proffered by the Obama administration when the law was enacted.
Again, this is not sustainable.
Jeffrey
I am digesting information that my hospital's CE0/"MBA" (Columbia Presbyterian) is "making" 10 million a year. I don't have to digest information that patients (check the bills they are receiving) and the medical staff are squeezed more and more. The mentioned hospital with its upstairs and downstairs patient categories and utter barbarity (a friend, a foreign born former academic, visited some physical rehabilitation PHYSICIAN who was interested only in "BUT WHAT do you do now?). The friend was so shocked that she forgot to retort in the style "Are you a physician or a pretender?" and report the accident.
ReplyDeleteWhy? I think that American health system functions perfectly - its role is to process as many patients (the way Hitler's doctors were processing) at the greatest benefit to insurance, pharma and hospital "real people" (or if you prefer UEbermenschen). Does anyone check how many people are "processed," including how many the Holocaust survivors are tortured to death on machines for money and money only. I most certainly can name two.
ReplyDelete