Category Archives: markets

Yet Another Veterans Administration Failure

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Here is another failure of the VA to take care of our veterans as they are charged to do, and as the VA’s motto promises they’ll do.  Here is another casual dishonor of that promise [emphasis added].

More than 1,000 Department of Veterans Affairs patients in Kansas didn’t get proper follow-up care after initial colonoscopies last year, a problem that was addressed only after a whistleblower repeatedly reported it, according to a government watchdog.
The watchdog found patients didn’t get follow-up screenings on time and when they did, often didn’t get the results in a timely manner because of [a string of excuses].

Here’s that motto which the VA has so routinely dishonored:

To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan

After all this time, and with VA failure rate continuing unabated, it’s time to get off the dime and get rid of the VA altogether.  As I’ve said many times, commit this Failure Administration’s current and putative future budgets to vouchers for our veterans so they can get the care they need and want from the doctors they choose, the clinics they choose, the hospitals they choose.  It’s time to unshackle our veterans from the VA’s determined resistance to perform.

 

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

A Thought on Medicare for All

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University of Massachusetts-Amherst Economics Professor and Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute, Robert Pollin, had a thought on this.

Of course, so do I.

Pollin opened his tract with this:

All Americans would be able to get care from their chosen providers without having to pay premiums, deductibles or copayments.

No, we’ve already seen the lie in this. We experienced the broken, falsely presented promise with the sales job on Obamacare and the oft-repeated lie that if we liked our doctor, we could keep him and the associated lie of lower premiums.

Roughly 30 million people, 9% of the US population, are uninsured. Another 26%, 86 million people, are underinsured…

With millions of those Americans thrown off insurance plans they preferred because Obamacare made them illegal. This “economist” carefully elided that small fact.

We propose that all businesses that currently purchase health insurance for their employees be mandated to pay 92% of what they now spend into Medicare for All—saving 8% of their health-care expenditures.

Thereby throwing even more people off the plans they prefer.

This person also ignores another salient fact: the complete failure that is an existing single-payer plan, the VA.

And one more: even now, folks with surgical needs or prompt-but-expensive care needs or any other non-cookie cutter needs in other nations’ “free for all” health programs come here for those needs’ satisfaction rather than bear the interminable delays in getting that care in their nations’ programs.

Pied-à-Terre Tax

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New York City wants one, and The Wall Street Journal, among a host of other folks, think it’s a terrible idea.

The idea is what the politicians are calling a pied-à-terre tax—which is French for “give me your money, fat cat.”

I’m not sure I agree with the WSJ.  I see the pied-à-terre tax as a vast boon to New Yorkers, and to others.

a Journal analysis this week suggested it could crash New York’s luxury property market.

There actually are strong upsides to this tax. Fewer of New York’s rich folks will be hurt by the SALT cap on Federal income tax deductions as they leave this high and higher tax State for better States.

To the extent the WSJ‘s analysis is accurate, the luxury property market’s crash will have cascade effects that will make all housing property cheaper—and more affordable—for middle- and lower-class folks in New York at large as well as in New York City.  And that will have its own knock-on effect: even fewer people impacted by the SALT cap.

I’m having trouble seeing the downside to NYC’s pied-à-terre tax.

Disruption

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And the widening gyre may be dissipating, finally.

Recall that a Federal judge in the 5th Appellate district ruled rump Obamacare unconstitutional because the tax imposed on not having health insurance was rescinded and the law had no severability clause—making the law itself an unconstitutional demand that private citizens buy something they did not want.

An outcome of this is feared by the NLMSM and Progressive-Democrats to be

particular disruption within the industry as no replacement system would be put in place.

It’s certainly true that there will be disruption—but no greater than the disruption from the imposition of Obamacare in the first place, which entailed the Federal government seizing control of the health care provision and health care coverage industries—a full sixth of our economy—and throwing millions of Americans off the health insurance plans they had and wanted to keep by making those plans illegal.

The disruption will be considerably less than the current plans of Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates, whose aim is to make illegal all hints of private health insurance and to seize the rest of those two industries through “Medicare for all” plans, forcing Americans to participate in—and to pay for—yet more programs that they don’t want.

Indeed, both Obamacare and the current Progressive-Democrats’ plans have nothing to do with insurance, health or otherwise; they were and are nothing but Government mandated and privately funded—lately proposed taxpayer funded—welfare programs overlain like a new room on a settler’s prairie house on the existing ramshackle house of welfare programs.

The disruption will be short-lived, too.  The “no replacement system put in place” is only technically true: the Federal government isn’t mandating a particular system (whether by design or by Republican fecklessness).  The resulting newly unfettered health free market will very quickly fill that niche.  The freed-up industries will rapidly produce plans that fit the customers’ needs and wants for their personal health care and true health insurance plans.

The new insurance plans will be based off the plans extant prior to the Obamacare debacle, and then they’ll be tailored to current customer wishes rather than Government one-size-fits-all coverages.  No longer will Americans be required to pay for coverages they don’t need or don’t want, no longer will young and healthy Americans who don’t need or want coverage be required to pay for any sort of it, no longer will grown, adult human beings be treated like children barred from making their own risk-related decisions concerning their own health and the specific insurance coverages they want.

Cowards

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The Senate voted on the Green New Deal, but the proposal, first offered in the House (and yet to be voted on there), failed a cloture vote to let it come to the floor for discussion, debate, and subsequent vote up or down.

The Senate on Tuesday failed to advance the Green New Deal, the ambitious plan to combat climate change proposed by Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, after what Democrats said was a politically-motivated show vote.
The measure, which needed 60 votes to clear a procedural hurdle, failed in a 0-57 vote, with 43 Democrats voting present.

Those 43 Progressive-Democrat Senators without the courage to vote their convictions included Senator Ed Markey (D, MA), the proposal’s Senate cosponsor, along with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY) in the House.  Apparently, the Senate cosponsor isn’t serious about his own proposal.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) demonstrated the fundamental failure of the Progressive-Democratic Party with this rationalization:

[W]e are finally talking about the issue, and that is great….

Well, no, the Senate is not finally talking about the issue; 43 Progressive-Democrat Senators hid under their desks during the vote and called “Present,” deliberately blocking the Senate’s opportunity to talk about the issue.

Senators Joe Manchin (D, WV), Doug Jones (D, AL), Kyrsten Sinema (D, AZ), and Angus King (I, ME) were the only Progressive-Democrats with the moral courage to vote for cloture, to vote to allow the Green New Deal to be talked about on the floor of the Senate, in full view of Senators’ constituents.