It’s About Time

Now we need to act on it.

The US Pentagon and State Department have devised plans to supply Ukraine with antitank missiles and other weaponry and are seeking White House approval, US officials said, as Kiev battles Russia-backed separatists and ties between Moscow and Washington fray.

We should have done this as soon as the Russians went into Ukraine.  We should have done this, in fact, as soon as the rebels tried to secede and started their war of separation.

These are defensive arms, though.  Badly needed as those are, we should be selling/leasing offensive weapons to Ukraine, also: Kiev needs to be able to take the offensive and recover the three oblasts that are trying to leave, and one of those will require driving out or destroying Russian troops.

Still better late than never—assuming we suit the deed to the word before it becomes too late.

A Bit More on Health Care Coverage

Senator Susan Collins (R, ME) is worried about health care plan availability to our poor, which she thinks would be endangered were President Donald Trump to act on his thoughts regarding cutting off the funds the Feds pay to health coverage plan providers to get them to charge (artificially) lower deductibles and copays from the poor.

It really would be detrimental to some of the most vulnerable citizens if those payments were cut off. They’re paid to the insurance companies, but the people that they benefit are people who make between 100% and 250% of the poverty rate.

Couple things about this. One is that folks making more than the poverty rate…aren’t poverty-stricken.

The other is that, if the money really is intended to help folks pay for health care coverage plans, the money should go directly to those folks and not to the insurance companies. That way there would be no loss to internal friction in the middlemen of health care plan providers—a friction loss extant even in the most honest and well-intended of providers.

And one more: these aren’t insurance companies selling insurance policies.  It isn’t insurance when risks are transferred by Government fiat and at fees that bear no relation to the risks being transferred.

Collins knows these things full well.