Socialized Medicine: Saving Money By Killing Grandma

From Adolf Hitler on, the Left have consistently shown a hostility to medical care for the frail elderly.  They justify that by saying such things as "Two thirds of all medical care received by a person are in the last two years of their life".  To them that is self-evidently a waste.  Individuals don't matter, only the State.

That was most vividly seen in recent years with the "Liverpool Care Pathway" of Britain's National Health Service.  Under the "pathway", hundreds of thousands (est. 130,000 p.a.) of the frail elderly in NHS care were knocked out with morphine and denied food and water until they died of thirst.  It is doubtful that even the morphine suppressed the resultant suffering but it did prevent the patients from complaining. Hospitals were even provided cash incentives to achieve targets for the number of patients placed on the LCP.  Families were often not informed of clinicians’ decision to put a relative on the pathway.  It is no longer supposed to be used but versions of it still happen.  It's still sometimes unsafe to be old in a British government hospital.

The pathway was used for all of the term of the Blair Labour government  and was phased out by the Conservatives under David Cameron, starting in 2013. Just a few of the many available reports of Pathway deaths here,  here, here, here and here.

It is hard to believe that it happened in a modern Western country unless you know how authoritarian Britain is and how Britons have brought hypocrisy to the state of a high art.  It was all done in the name of "caring", that wonderful Leftist caring of course.

Conservatives however do respect the individual and point out that the elderly care has been PAID FOR -- in the form of taxes paid in their earlier years that were paid partly in response to a promise of life-long care through public hospitals etc.  So it is not a waste.  It is a service bought and delivered


Democrats, such as Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have recently begun to show their true colors and advocate openly that America should become a socialist country. The sales pitch for Americans to abandon constitutional liberty is that socialism is fairer and will give every American equal access to the essentials of modern life; healthcare, education, food, housing, etc.

To those struggling to pay-off student loans for degrees in women’s studies, find housing in over-regulated urban housing markets and obtain affordable health insurance after the debacle of Obamacare this probably sounds pretty attractive.

However, as the President’s Council of Economic Advisors documented in its recent Economic Report of the President (the CEA Report), the historical evidence suggests that the proposed socialist program for the U.S. would create shortages, or otherwise degrade the quality, of whatever product or service is put under a public monopoly. The pace of innovation would slow and living standards generally would be lower.

Indeed, in other countries where socialism has been imposed in the past, production of whatever was socialized often (and quickly) fell by about 50 percent.

The Economic Report of the President has several interesting sections on the effects of socialist policies and one of the most interesting is its examination of socialist healthcare plans, such as the Socialist Democrats’ “Medicare for All” (M4A) legislation.

Current proposals to increase government involvement in healthcare, like “Medicare for All”, are motivated by the view that competition and free choice cannot work in this sector. These proposals, though well-intentioned, mandate a decrease or elimination of choice and competition. We believe that these proposals would be inefficiently costly and would likely reduce, as opposed to increase, the U.S. population’s health. We think the data shows that funding them would create large distortions in the economy. Finally, we agree with the the CEA Report that the universal nature of “Medicare for All” would be a particularly inefficient and untargeted way to serve lower- and middle-income people.

However, despite the large volume of data supporting the contrary position, a free, single-payer healthcare system has become the cornerstone of current socialist policy proposals in the United States. The Senate and House “Medicare for All” (M4A) plans, sponsored or cosponsored by 141 Democrat members of the 115th Congress, are designed to use the scale economies of a public monopoly to sharply cut costs (S. 1804; H.R. 676).

These plans make it unlawful for a private business to sell health insurance, or for a private employer to offer health insurance to its employees. Although, at the time of passing the Affordable Care Act, it was promised that consumers could keep their doctor or their plan, M4A takes the opposite approach: All private health insurance plans will be prohibited after a four-year transition period.

M4A would not make healthcare providers government employees, rather it would be a Federal program having a nationwide monopoly on health insurance. The price paid to the government monopoly (the analogue to revenue received by private health insurance plans) would be determined through tax policy.

The quality or productivity of health insurance would be determined through centrally planned rules and regulations. As opposed to a market with competition, if a patient did not like the tax charged or the quality of the care provided by the government monopoly, he or she would have no recourse. In addition, price competition in healthcare itself, as opposed to health insurance, would be eliminated because all the prices paid to providers and suppliers of healthcare would be set centrally by the single payer.

Proponents of M4A often refer to European-style programs of socialized medicine as their role model, but the European programs appear to deliver less healthcare to the elderly and result in worse health outcomes for them. Many of these programs ration older patients’ access to expensive procedures directly or through waiting times.

Current Medicare beneficiaries would likely be hurt by M4A’s expansion of the size of the eligible program population. The evidence for a trade-off between universal and senior healthcare is supported by both the European single-payer experience that limits care for the elderly compared with the U.S., along with the recent domestic U.S. reforms under the ACA that reduced projected Medicare spending by $802 billion to help fund expansions for younger age groups (CBO 2015).

The President’s Report documents that United States’ all-cause mortality rates relative to those of other developed countries improve dramatically after the age of 75 years. In 1960—before Medicare—the U.S. ranked below most EU countries for longevity among those age 50–74, yet above them among for those age 75 and higher.

This pattern persists today.

In a study cited in the CEA Report, Ho and Preston (2010) argue that a higher deployment of life-saving technologies for older patients in the U.S. compared with other developed countries leads to better diagnosis and treatment of diseases of older people and greater longevity.

Cancer is the leading cause of death in many developed countries, especially among older individuals, and it constitutes an important component of overall U.S. healthcare spending. The availability and utilization of healthcare are particularly important for cancer longevity.

The President’s Report cites data from Philipson and others (2012) which found that U.S. cancer patients live longer than cancer patients in 10 EU countries, after the same diagnosis, due to the additional spending on higher quality cancer care in the U.S.

The CEA Report also cites data from Ho and Preston (2010) pointing out that in Europe, where the proportion of surgically treated patients declines with age, five-year survival rates for colorectal cancer are lower for elderly patients than younger patients. However, in the United States, where utilization of surgery does not decline with age, colorectal cancer survival rates do not decline for elderly patients. (Emphasis ours.)

This effect is not confined to cancer treatment, noted the President’s Report. For ischemic heart disease—the world’s leading cause of death—the use of cardiac catheterization, percutaneous coronary angioplasty, and coronary artery bypass grafting declines with patients’ age, but declines more steeply in other developed countries than in the United States. Compared with these developed countries, the U.S. has a lower case fatality rate for acute myocardial infarction (the acute manifestation of ischemic disease) for older persons but not for younger persons age 40 to 64 (Ho and Preston 2010).

This disease-specific evidence is more informative about the benefits of healthcare than often-discussed cross-country comparisons of nationally aggregated outcomes, such as overall population longevity and aggregate healthcare spending.  The fact that many wealthy foreigners who could afford to obtain care anywhere in the world come to the U.S. for specialized care is perhaps the strongest indication of its superior quality concludes the CEA Report.

The authors of the CEA Report go on to review other measures of healthcare quality, such as wait time for surgery, wait time to see a specialist, and found that all decline under socialized medicine.

The recent push in Congress to enact a highly restrictive “Medicare for All” proposal to increase access to health care would have the opposite effect—it would decrease competition and choice. The CEA’s analysis finds that, if enacted, this legislation would reduce longevity and health in the United States, decrease long-run global health by reducing medical innovation, and adversely affect the U.S. economy through the tax burden involved.

SOURCE 

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Metastasizing Media Mendacity

The Leftmedia's collective effort to undermine Trump over the last two years is remarkable

“People on the left say whatever advances their immediate agenda. Power is their moral lodestar; therefore, truth is always subservient to it.” —nationally syndicated radio talk-show host Dennis Prager

“It became a business model for most media to attack Donald Trump.” —Donald Trump Jr.

Perhaps nothing more succinctly summarizes the current state of America better than the above quotes. For nearly two years, a collection of partisan hacks presenting themselves as journalists assured the American public that Donald Trump had conspired with Russian President Vladimir Putin to steal the election from its rightful winner, Hillary Clinton.

The effort was breathtaking in range and scope. NewsWhip, a social-media analytics company, revealed that since May 2017, an astonishing 533,074 web articles were published about Russia and Trump/Mueller, generating 245 million interactions on Twitter and Facebook.

The Media Research Center revealed that from the presidential inauguration through March 21, 2019 — the last night prior to Mueller sending his report to Attorney General Robert Barr — just the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC alone generated 2,284 minutes of “collusion” coverage, with 1,909 of those minutes occurring after Mueller’s appointment on May 17, 2017. “Since his presidency began, nearly one-fifth (18.8%) of all of Trump’s evening news coverage has been about this one investigation,” MRC explained.

Moreover, there was no mistaking the slanted nature of that coverage. MRC adds, “From January 1 through March 21 of this year, the spin of Trump coverage on the evening newscasts has been 92% negative vs. just eight percent positive — even worse than the 90% negative coverage we calculated in 2017 and 2018.”

CNN and MSNBC also contributed to the debacle, averaging between two and three hours per day of Russian collusion stories since the inauguration, rife with reports of imminent arrests, implications of treason, etc.

The print media? The New York Times and The Washington Post alone published nearly 1,000 front-page articles, many of which precipitated retractions long after after the damage was done. The Associated Press and Reuters followed suit, dispatching similarly slanted stories to their newspaper, radio, and television-station subscribers throughout the country.

How good was that for business? “There was an omnipresent awareness that this was, strategically, a very important story for us,” an MSNBC executive told Vanity Fair columnist Joe Pompeo, who also noted the network had its best year ever in 2018. “There was no market for skepticism about it. As a business model, they see the ratings, and we were getting rewarded for this every day. When we had a slow day, it was kind of like: when in doubt, call the lawyers on; call the F.B.I. people.”

Columnist Peter Barry Chowka concurred. “The ratings success of MSNBC and to a lesser extent CNN … suggested that the strategy of the executives at NBC and CNN starting in November 2016 to go all-out 24/7 anti-Trump was paying off,” he explains.

In fact, while Fox News has long been the leader in the field, it was often topped in the 9 p.m. time slot when MSNBC’s chief conspiracy-monger, Rachel Maddow, beat Fox host Sean Hannity in both the total numbers of viewers and the coveted 25-54-year-old demographic.

After the Mueller report was released, followed by the release of Barr’s letter exonerating Trump? “The Rachel Maddow Show” endured a 13% decrease in viewership, including the loss of nearly 500,000 viewers on her Monday, Mar. 25 show, compared to her show a week earlier. She also saw a 15% decrease in the 25-54 demo audience.

She was not alone. Fox New surpassed CNN and MSNBC combined in every hour on Monday, March 25, from 5 p.m. to 12 midnight. In addition, CNN had its second-lowest weekday prime-time ratings of 2019 and its third-lowest 25-54-year-old demographic viewership for the year, according to Nielsen Media Research. Ratings for other shows on both networks have also declined by as much as 50%.

Repentance? Introspection? “I don’t know anybody who got anything wrong,” insisted CNN’s Jake Tapper. “We didn’t say there was conspiracy. We said that Mueller was investigating conspiracy.” CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter asserted that viewers weren’t tuning in to CNN and MSNBC following the release of Mueller’s report because “there hasn’t been much news.”

MSNBC’s Lawrence O'Donnell declared that “no one in the news media … has read a single sentence of the Mueller report,” and network president Phil Griffin insisted via a spokesperson that his network is going to “keep doing our job, asking the tough questions, especially when it involves holding powerful people accountable.”

One is left to wonder whether that includes those powerful people at Griffin’s own network who flat-out lied to America for more than two years, including regular contributor and former CIA Director John Brennan, who actually stated a “treasonous” Trump was “wholly in the pocket of Putin.”

Brennan’s response to the report? “Well, I don’t know if I received bad information but I think I suspected there was more than there actually was.”

Former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson summed up Brennan’s judgment — along with the judgment of his equally contemptible Obama administration colleagues Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and James Comey — in a devastatingly accurate tweet: “If Clapper, Brennan, Rice, Power, Comey genuinely believed Trump ‘colluded’ with Russia and he didn’t, what does that say about the judgment of our one-time top intel types?” she asked.

Maybe it’s time for the American public to find out. But they shouldn’t expect any help from the likes of CNN. In fact, an astounding quote by CNN President Jeff Zucker reveals the level of corruption that infests his network. “We are not investigators,” he insisted. “We are journalists, and our role is to report the facts as we know them, which is exactly what we did.”

That the term “investigative journalism” apparently eludes the president of an ostensible news network is amazing.

Going forward? If the wholly discredited “hands up don’t shoot” media campaign of Ferguson, Missouri, is any indication, the media continue to believe that wholesale lying is a good business model. And when that model is employed to delegitimize this president, and the 63 million “deplorables” who voted for him, so much the better.

The bigger picture? The media remain wholly in service to a Democrat/Deep State/Never-Trump Republican/corporatist/globalist alliance determined to reimpose the status quo — by any means necessary. And their media accomplices are so all in, they are warning Americans that if Trump shuts down the border, we would soon run out of … avocados.

When national sovereignty and security is even part of the same conversation as America’s guacamole supply, the corruption is all-encompassing.

In 2016, the electorate expressed its collective disgust when it put a media-despised, status-quo-crushing outsider in the Oval Office. Reelecting Trump in 2020 might be the only real antidote to the legions of braying jackals whose shameless pursuit of power made a complete mockery of anything resembling truth and journalistic integrity.

One collective middle finger aimed in their direction was an anomaly. Two would be the beginning of a welcome trend.

SOURCE 

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